Narrating Grandma

I found it difficult

to approach her

for help.

She was so frail

and irritable.

So I offered her

an orange.

And made my circuitous attempt

a gift.

Grandma ate it

ravenously.

Grandma obviously knew little

Of poetry and writing.

For her, poets were

“talented men”

“gyaani”

“one in thousands.”

Between the savouring noises

she told me her story.

“I was a beautiful girl”

“Married at nine”

“and for many years

longed for a home

amidst a gaggle of geese”

“I prayed in a house

blown apart by storm”

and looked into the evening

with sere, distant eyes.

I asked if she remembered

anything of her husband.

“only nut brown shoes.

Sometimes muddy

Sometimes polished

like a bell.

Going off at regular intervals.”

She could not recall the magazines

she had read in summer afternoons.

“but I felt like a butterfly

fluttering happily

in a bell jar.”

In her eyes was the ghost

Of a youth wrapped in

sandalwood and velvet shoes.

Did she want to write?

She toyed with an orange peel

and threw it like a dart.

“I tried. I failed”

And laughed at the fading day

like women at weddings.