ARRIVAL

“Let’s make a home which seems prosperous,” she said or perhaps that’s what I heard. I had a fever. She was tired after a day’s work.

Darkness spread over her forehead and seeped through the rain.

There wasn’t a guest who hadn’t seen us quarrel.

“Let’s make a home which seems prosperous,” she said over and over again.

Water boiled uselessly on the stove.

There was still time for the train to arrive.

In the streets, drunkards murmured incoherently. Beggars slept on the dirty fringes of the city. A spider spun the night on a dark neem tree.

She cried out from the kitchen, “Look, look, the dead lizard on the wall has begun to move again! Wake up, wake up, our walls are still covered with grime and cobwebs!”

A QUESTION

I crossed the city square and reached the house which was lit up.

A widow sits in the empty verandah in front of the kitchen occupying as little space as possible. Her head rests on her knees.

She has come to attend a wedding at her sister’s house.

She urges me to leave as she looks at me with tear-filled eyes.

“Are you able to recognize her? She is my mother. No, no, don’t ask why she is in that condition. She hears everything. She has withdrawn into herself so much that if you were to ask her a question out of curiosity, it would not let her sit even there in peace.

FATHER

Late at night, father stands at the door. Half asleep, I open the door.

I sense mother’s presence behind me. Further back, under the shelter of clouds, she seems to scatter like random threads.

Father places his hand on my head and blesses me just as he had done before his death.

When I see him, I cry out, “Father, I couldn’t save you even then, and in my countless poems too I have failed to save you once again.”

From somewhere far away, Mother’s presence gathers close around me, spreads over my soul like a shadow.

SITA’S TEARS

Father is unhappy if I wander far from home alone. He buys me a cycle but doesn’t let me ride it anywhere.

Every other day, grandmother’s servant steals money from grandfather. He ignores the theft and concentrates on rowing the boat of his old age.

Mother tries to run the house with very little money. In order to pass journey, she reads Ramcharitramanas over and over again.

Then suddenly one day, as Sita sits in the Ashoka forest, the silhouette of father’s sick face appears through her tears.

(Translated from the original Hindi by Alok Bhalla.)