Pumpin'

In my armchair, feet up on the table, morning sunlight through the lace curtains. And the hoarse drone of a pump.

A morning sound that reaches back through the years. A squat aggressive Kirloskar in its grooved casing, under the stairs in the first house I knew. A seemingly effete Tullu in its own barred alcove behind the kitchen in Salt Lake, the object of my father’s anxiety. A mysterious and temperamental machine in an outhouse in Purulia. And now this one that used to choke and hiccup like an asthmatic, till Mr. Handyman came round and transformed it into a boringly predictable monotone. Continuity made audible.