The Green Silk Saree and other poems

My sister and I drooled
over the aluminium box
which my grandmother finally
opened last summer.
The box knows all the secrets
of my family. It has become
a legend now. before we saw it,
we often questioned its existence.
But there it was, in metal and space.
My grandmother had decided that
the secrets were not important
enough anymore.
So she would distribute
them all equally. I was asked
to choose first. If allowed, I would
have taken the whole box
but I settled on her green silk saree.
It was the first silk he bought me
when we both went to a South India tour in 1976.
Bangalore or Madras.
I don’t remember anymore.
My grandmother said, in a dry,
matter of fact tone.
The green silk saree is
a symbol of love, that could not be.
Now I know why she didn’t want
to keep it anymore.
The pallu tells me the story of
the first time she wore it
anticipating a compliment.
Instead, she was handed over,
‘you look so fat’ and ‘stop eating all the time’.
The fall tells the story of the time
when she accidentally tipped over
but no hand came to rescue.
The hand was busy stroking
someone else. The oil stain
on it tells the story of the night
when he didn’t come back home
on her birthday. She ate alone,
finding comfort and love
in deep fried pakoras.
As I examine the oil stain
She tells me I can get it dry-cleaned
I decide not to.
When I wore it that night, she told me
That I looked beautiful.
I told her she too would have.
She smiled and her face lit up.
I am dry-cleaning the stains,
one yard at a time.

I always wanted to fall in love
With someone I can send poems to.
The sad poems, the happy poems
The pretentious poems, the poems
With an identity crisis, depressed poems
Bad poems written by good people
And good poems written by predators.
There is only so much your own poems
Can tell. Sometimes, only borrowed words
Can help you describe the shape of that one
Face you would want to see after your cat dies
And when that face walks away from you and
Your dead cat to walk the dog of a shiny new thing
In their neighbourhood, you can come back to your
Empty apartment and cry yourself to sleep after
Reading every poem you ever sent them.
You will realise there are poems that you will never
Be able to read without thinking about them.
Don’t read them for now. Let the poems reclaim
You slowly. They have a way of never leaving, you know?
While you wait, find a few poems which you can slowly
Unwrap from the memory of that afternoon
Spent trying to skip stones on a forgotten
Lake whose edges were lined with singe-use
Plastic bags. Once they are unwrapped, keep
Them safe for when the next one comes along.
That’s the beauty of poems written by other people.
They adapt quickly to the season of your heart.

As days turn to weeks
And weeks wait for their
Turn to feel complete as
Months, we stare endlessly,
Hopelessly for signs of a future
That promises something more
Other than the change of date,
Month and year. All the people
Who promised us a future are
Dead. All the people who fought
For our right to the future are dead.
Today shall be mourned as there
Will be no tomorrow. Tomorrow
Belonged to the man who
Died without kissing the
Forehead of his daughter. He
Died without passing on his
Baton, his rallying cry for a future
That despises us all. Now we
Will forever be trapped in a
Present that continues to mock
Us in a loopy fashion. No one
Prepared us for this day when
Words like ‘be in the present
Moment’ would sting like a bee.
Today, we want nothing of this
Present where a daughter is
Denied a last embrace of her
Father. Today we want nothing
Of the future. Take us back to the
Past where we are slurping
On melting ice candy on sticks
Under the hopeful gaze of
Mahavir Narwal who believed
That this country belonged to us all.
Now that he is dead, there’s no more
Pretending that it does.
Bhawna Jaimini