The cane teapoy had stood in the middle of the living room as long as Ashwathi could remember. To Ashwathi, it was like a compass. When she closed her eyes and pictured the room, all the other objects that were there, centred around the teapoy. The teapoy was special because it was the last teapoy. If you ever heard Ashwathi say the words 'the last teapoy,' you would realise that she said them in a different voice altogether. I have heard her say it and each time, the letters leap into the air and orbit around Eli, the elephant.
Eli was the papier-mache elephant. He was also part of the living room. He had been gifted to Ashwathi's grandfather's older sister for her wedding. He stood cocking his head slightly to one side, as if whoever had started making him had had a dog in mind.
"Ganesha is better off. This poor Eli has two broken tusks," grandfather would say, often enough.
Even though Ashwathi knew how that had happened, she loved to hear the story again and again.
Grandfather would guffaw and exclaim, "How many times have you heard this story, Ashwathi"!
And when she cried, "Tell me again!" he would always oblige, and scratching his temple slightly, begin.
"When I was small, smaller than you, I had no one to play with. No brother, no sister either. So I used to play with the ants and I used to run after the clouds and pretend they were running after me. Then, when I lost track of which cloud was running after me (and imagine, how tired I would be, by then) I would crawl back into the house!"
"Tell me how you crawled!" Ashwathi would shout, sitting on her rocking horse.
And her grandfather would get on his knees and drag them on the fl oor, ever so slowly, waving his head from side to side, all the time. He would suck his lips inwards and roll his eyes and crawl towards the teapoy. Then, he would get up and in one sweeping motion, lift the giggling Ashwathi up and continue his story. Of how he crawled to the teapoy with Eli.
"How did you stuff him?! He is so big!" Ashwathi would say. "I scolded him for being so enormous. I remember saying to him, "Stop taking up allllllll the space. Stop eating alllllllll the laddoos. Stop not talking back!'"
"And then he spoke!" Ashwathi said, happily. "He told me, 'Keep quiet and let's play The Last Teapoy?' I scowled at him. 'What's that? Are you making that up because I don't know as much English as
you, you silly elephant?'
