Our evenings have withdrawn into a closed living room, where we don’t chat but let a large TV cheat us. We watch life on a screen with a vicarious thrill. There were children everywhere in our ancestral home. You could see one even within a bamboo basket lying upside down. ‘One’ is the ideal number now. No one likes noises annoying the living room. We’ve banished our only daughter into an adjacent study – where she’s seen as a broiler chicken. A savory smell, wafting up from the kitchen, used to tickle my nostrils, while sitting on the veranda. Now our cooker rarely whistles; fast-food parcels really silence our kitchen. Our pa and ma had defeated the hard soil. It was their sweat drops that soothed our stomachs. We’ve discarded the defunct parents in a dark stinking room, even where they pray for us. We peep into others’ life with a voyeur’s eyes. Love and fun hatch not out of our muted words. We aren’t living here, only imagining of living. First published in The Literary Hatchet, US, and then reprinted by punkswritepoemspress, US.