Nostalgia UTI by Trisha Dhar Malik
Can our most vulnerable, potent emotions linger in the objects lost in our childhood bedrooms? In her flash fiction “Nostalgia UTI,” Trisha Dhar Malik exchanges sentimentality for the practice of remembrance. Malik escalates the intensity of her memories, treating “nostalgia as an infectant.” In her author’s note, she reflects that this piece “came almost in one big breath.” A reader is therefore urged to hold their inhales alongside Malik as this author hurtles through an inventory of her adolescent bedroom—a cascade of intimate items that conjure up her youthful self. The short descriptions and mosaic-like gems of memory that Malik unearths evoke the captivating adolescent sensation of “being introduced for the first time to feelings larger than yourself.” In this intriguing duality, the brevity of Malik’s crafted images elicit contrastingly sprawling emotions. “Nostalgia UTI” provokes readers and author alike to relish the pleasures and pains of remembering. —CRAFT
Packing up an old home into boxes. Heat of Bombay in May—impossible. Sweat everywhere. Sticky nostalgic and sad, the scene—not poetic or sexy. Sound of that stupid fan, an old creaky man. Over and over and useless like a jerk’s point. Leaving the worst for last. That godforsaken childhood bedroom. Turquoise paint that refuses to ever budge. So many orange peels and bobby pins lost behind the headboard. First kisses, virginities, that game you play where you close your eyes and touch a body part and guess. At fifteen he touched my soul instead. A cupboard full of his things. I breathe deeply from fear. Twenty-four now and still scared. A finished notebook, black and hardbound in leather. Scent of another time. Filled with entries of each date gone on. That first ice cream. Alphonso. The richness of its chill. Running away from papa, home early from work. An angry shade of red. Me in a black dress, twirling. An unsleepable happiness. And then, there it is. A singular drumstick. Immediate flashback to watching him play, an audience full, but eye contact reserved for me. Sweat flying in pearl drops! Him, in the bitter and sweet of sepia. I have to sit down, the pictures too bright in my mind. Stupidly, I smell the stick, wrapped in bandages to prevent splintering. Another image from hell: his fingers bandaged up. A sudden hit of arousal. The full young feeling of those fingers inside me. A foolish need to take off that dirty old bandage and wrap it around my own fingers. Only to put inside. To feel how it felt to become all open in that way.
TRISHA DHAR MALIK is a queer writer based in Mumbai, India. With a combined honours in English and creative writing from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, she is now back home in Mumbai, navigating what it means to be twenty-four and know nothing. You can find her drinking a beverage and dreaming and writing in and around her city, and on Instagram @whereoceansmeet.
Featured image by Ajala Kings, courtesy of Unsplash.
