Requiescat In Pace

I came home late evening to find Baba engrossed in the French Open women’s final and Ma packing some of my old books and notes and other pointless college memorabilia (so long piled on my creaking bookshelf) in a fresh carton to be stowed away in a safer corner of the storage loft. Scattered on the floor were obsolete memories and yellowed pieces of an old life.

Ma was explaining to Ro why it was important to go to college and Ro was suitably daunted by the heap of books one had to read in college. With that, he looks at me with new respect and awe.

“You read aaall these?”

"Yeah..”

Suddenly his eyes catch a bunch of wilted photocopied pages that had faded a little.

"Who's that?"

"His name is Freud…"

"Froo-ed? Why did he have a funny name like that?"

"I don’t know…"

"Ok. What did he do?"

"He wrote a few books."

"Books? About what?"

"Well…lots of stuff.."

"Like what?"

"Like dreams…"

"Dreams? What’s there to write about dreams?"

"Lots of other things…you will know when you grow up.."

"Why can’t I know them now?"

"Cause you wouldn’t understand…"

"Why?"

"Cause you are young…"

"Noo I am not, Mommy! What did he write?"

"He wrote about the mind…"

"Hmmmn….what’s in our brain?"

"No not brain sweets…mind…psyche.."

"What’s that?"

"OK…lets see, it's like when Dii gives you your glass of milk, what do you think, honest?"

"I hate milk."

"So what do you really want to do?"

"Throw the milk."

"Do you?"

"No. How can I do that? Dii will feel bad. I drink it. What to do…"

"Right. That’s what he wrote about."

"Milk???"

"No, not milk, honey....about the mind."

"How?"

"When you want to throw the milk, it’s the bad part, not really bad bad but well it's called Id. Then you don’t want to hurt Dii, so that’s the good part, your Superego. So what do you do? You drink your milk, that’s your Ego. Simple!"

“Ohhh! Ok…I get it…”

He looks satisfied with the explanation and trots off to his next mischief muttering to himself and Mr. Freud must be glad that he died when he did, thankfully a long time back. .