aruni

letter to her grandmother

dear grandmother,
i want to start this letter
with the abandoned street
you lived in
your wish to learn and dream
melded with the concrete of
street that had been alive once
with laughter, rope skipping
and game of seven stones
when you had to take care
of your siblings
and was married off early
remember grandma, when
i heard of your wish
i plucked a star
from the sky and gave to
you in the form of a slate
and starlight
became your chalk
and i taught you alphabets
अ आ इ
क ख ग
you learned to write your name
and i was your teacher, you said
i want to tell you i did the same to
my son
taught him alphabets
and countings
1 2 3
and i was an awakener
i thought of you then
you who showed
generous zest, and mirth on slate
while learning to write your name
and i was not an awakener for you
it was you
you who conveyed me the essence
of education
i went back to the street
and saw the old cars waiting for
their owners
their horns broken, their batteries
dead
dear grandmother,
i remember how you
were getting old, the wrinkles
were the map of your hard working
endeavors and your hardened soul
and i remember you standing with
a lath in your hand
in front of the door
and you beat your son with it
when he came home late and drunk
on gambling and alcohol
did you know grandma that your son
had broken my mother's jaw
the same way you broke his
the same way my grandfather broke
yours
the same way my mother
tried to break mine
when she found out i took
pennies from the lota to buy
Kurkure
(you used to give me pennies
for Kurkure, remember grandma)
but grandma,
i am not going to do the same
to my son
i want to be the last step
on the staircase of violence
and i would not let him climb it
for i will be the last step that would
shoulder the staircase and walk
carrying it
never letting it touch my son
dear grandmother,
i remember the taste of
the gajar ka halwa you made
on the chulha
and your eyes burned with
smoke
and you were turning old
moltened with the fire
of chulha stove
did you know grandma
my mother was also turning to
fossil that once was a fawn
and grandma i want you to
know that i do not
want to be molded
into an empty vessel
i want to be the fire that is kindled
unlike the flame in your chulha
that left your eyes with tears
i went back to the street
that had flickering lamposts
on the sidewalks
making way for the fluttering
shadows as i walked under them
dear grandmother,
you realised the importance
of having a voice at the dying
stage of your life
but grandma you always had one
your voice was robust, unwavering
filled with garden weeds
and crippling petals of spring flowers
i stand on the street you lived
and i played in
the snow cover the ground, sky hushes
as still as my heart
but then the shards of ice vanish
in the moonlight
and the voice springs from my
many graves
in the naked night
and words float up
dear grandmother,
i want to end this letter
with the street you lived in
that now opens itself
to the nature it craves.