15 May 2021
Nani's nostalgia
• Her miles of loneliness •
"Chanda hai tu sooraj hai tu,
O meri aankhon ka taara hai tu",
her favourite song from 1960's,
that she playfully sang for me,
my Nani, in her batik print saree,
during those humid days,"when
the heatwaves last all summer"
and she sliced the yellow, ripe
mangoes with her monochrome
beauty and meandering curls,
and a stain of sweat on her creased
forehead, of ages, ancient and revered.
Her wooden almirah, carries reminiscences
of Nana, letters, photographs and memories.
She remembers and narrates her "working
with men to challenge patriarchy", in the
outskirts of Bihar, in a school, as a teacher.
Her threads of memories rewind of her
mellowed days, her eyes bulge with saltwater,
she recalls her "Students' spirit held high",
during the break of summer or Puja days.
She sits by the window, awaiting, she rejoiced
of the passage of nostalgia that took her to
Nepal, her ancestral home, she smells the
petrichor and the hilsa fish with mustard
on the rainy days, her nerves thriving to
get back and revisit her home, her homeland.
The pensive loneliness rummaging her tears,
I remember her face, watching daily soaps,
yet a hollow that was set like an alarm.
She was "seperated by geography,
yet united by melody", her songs of
India, her retro days, that has
crossed borders and dared to seek
a sanctuary in the corners of her heart.
Her deserted life resembled cacophony
of silence, her Gods visited her morn and
eve and she prayed, selflessly for her
children, grandchildren and wished an
afterlife with Nana in a safer abode.
I remember her joint pain, her constant
companion that shrieked time and again.
She retires to bed sulking into the pain,
I remember to ease her with myolaxin,
she always gave a smile with her newly
braced teeth. Years passed by, in void,
in looking for her grandchildren with her
blurred cornea. Her anguished lament
reverberated in her four walled room,
eagerly waiting for her guest, me.
Her mandir wih deities and the tulsi plant
that Nana gifted still stands tall like Nana.
But there is a void that she equates to and
all the frolic of her marriage she boasts off
in pride has an unfathomable emptiness now.
Her soft voice remembering her love, weighs
time and again. I remember how she narrated
Nana's poetries to us and told tales and laughed
around, camouflaging her long lost love and life.
Love indeed, not 'a midsummer night's tale',
but awaiting for a reunion, a unison amidst stars.
My eyes scanned her tears, invisible, yet
invincible, her memories spoke of times
and she chose prosaic verses to store her
loneliness, yet she was alive through her
soft skin, a porcelain one. Her insomnia
gave her enough thoughts, her own, a
vacancy where she resides all alone,
yet with living numbers. Now, she resides
in the air I breathe, I sink, and her smell
still lingers around my nose ~ lonely
