Who Lives in your Freezer?

All day through, Pihu, very musically floated about in her workplace -- a big 'stockyard of stuff'. She was the supervising and development head, on site, and strangely found herself loitering more through the stacks than she would have liked to. Pihu Pillai would rather count stars, like in childhood she did. Because of the width between her ancestral surname and geographical belonging to north India, she was fondly called Peepee by her friends. She was always the dreamer and the musical genes in her from her mother's side made their presence felt rather strongly during her training years in classical music and the veena and while at her sizzling performances on school or local stage shows. The unbelievable number of entrance exams she qualified, however, charted a completely different course for her life. Like her father, she studied Electrical Engineering and though she would have liked to go on pursuing a specialization in Sound Processing, she studied Marketing instead. She landed up with a fantastic job with endless working hours in a city that did not allow her to see clouds, or birds in their flapping wings, talking to them.

Having no time or energy left for her musical endeavours, she often took to the shelves. Surprisingly, five kilo sized washing powder packets spoke to her out of their orange and white packaging, "What are you doing with us, Peepee?" Sometimes shampoos and soaps would tease, "Spare us your sight, Peepee. You do not even have a taste for finer things in life!" As she inspected the electronics section, flashy white microwaves would look down on her from top shelves, compactly touching another silver one as it said in a high pitch voice, "Haha Peepee, we will remain your only friends. You have nobody to return home to, to eat your cold food with." Pihu could feel the wires inside her head unfolding, her heartbeat increasing, her eyes swelling.

She ran around, ambitiously looking for a safe corner in that hardware section but could only manage ending up amongst huge closed doors shouting out shooting blue and white stars, as if contending for an electoral seat based on their conserving capabilities. She landed up in the refrigerator section. A good looking, sober one continued, as if from the previous room, "What kind of a name is even that, Peepee?" The steel grey one, next to it, too, rather coldly, "Pihu, for whom did the birds sing?" She felt drained and rolled towards a maroon one, marooned in a dark corner. Resting her heavy head against it, she dozed off for a while. Perhaps the silence woke her up. 

She looked up, it was the "Defects Section", and quite obviously the handle of the deep freeze in the maroon fridge gave away. It needed to be sent to the concerned company. She stood up, carefully held the broken piece and opened it. The small door opened into a warm sun colour universe giving out condensed air like drooping mist. The power supply was on, she calculatedly noted. And braved a "Hi". 

The freezer replied, oh-so-sweetly, "Hey. Had a good sleep?"

"Yes. I am Pihu Pillai. You have a lovely voice", trying to cover her embarrassment. 

"You are beautiful, Pihu."

She did not know what to respond to such a statement. She smiled, unsurely, and blurted a completely unrelated, "You have to leave, you do know, right?" 

The freezer's sureness unnerved her. "I do." It sounded like a maestro beginning a concert, fingers born to make music. "Who lives in your freezer?" 

Pihu paused to think. Yes, she knew. She began the list. "Appa had once got me these colourful ice cube trays from his trip to Sweden. Ikea, you know. You must be knowing. They are fancy shaped ice trays -- lime green little bottles, blue stars, yellow stars and black squares. I need to change the water. They have stayed unused for quite sometime now. Two blocks of vanilla ice-cream for my weekend cold coffee." She stopped for a while to wonder where the weekend went, and continued, "a half-packet of corn kernels, another of peas."

"And?"

"And, a box of boneless chicken pieces and another of fish." Pihu was so happy to have remembered everything that she started humming a recent song.

The maroon freezer asked her back wisely, "What about the Invisible Cake?"

Pihu was shocked. How did it know? She was working on a one-woman-project of baking The Invisible Cake. As of now the batter consisted of couple of heap-full of Curiosity, some spoons of Love, a good measure of Intention and invaluable amounts of Value. It sat pretty in its tin box inside the freezer, ready to rise once the mix was complete. One bite would guarantee a...she had not decided on what. A limited edition of invisibility, perhaps.

Graciously she replied, "Yes, The Invisible Cake too. Would you like a bite?"

The freezer danced up to the magic of this mad woman. "Yes, yes, yes. In fact, can I be your freezer?"

As she was about to answer, the misty bite brought her back to her senses. Pihu Pillai sang her way out of the Freezer, out of the factory. Invisible voices sang along.