She awakes before dawn, three generations flowing past as she hangs threadbare, white saris along a high line embedded in the mortar of her wattle-walled home.
Her son departs first, cows in tow, hop-scotching them through blocks of green, checkered between modern apartments the cows may enter, venerated, but never he.
Her eldest grandson pauses each morning, touching her feet, to honor,
Namaste, good day
before rolling up khakis to the knee and hailing a city-bound rickshaw.
Great grandchildren close the daily procession, speaking quietly before slipping lunch pails around their necks and worn satchels atop pragmatically oversized uniforms, gaining two year's wear out of an expensive school requirement,
emerald & marigold plaid shirts, proudly creased, defy the thick air.
What has she experienced as Kolkata encroached into her world of rice paddies and conch shell horns heralding the coming of day, passing into night?
The stillness of daybreak provides calm, comfort, from the frantic demands of the day, the whirlwind of activity as she launders and washes and scrubs, perpetually removing what life dirties, her day a litany of dust, scrawled
across her floors, her family, her face.
Solace finds her, tucked into brief moments - a neighbor child crashes into her arms, wrapping himself, naked, in her matriarchal protection, refusing to cross the mud road towards his mother's cross words, hoping to delay dressing, the school bus arrival, pushing the weekend boundaries by minutes.
Later, as dusk falls, her son's call to return the cows goes unanswered. We search, he through puddles, I two stories above, then a glimpse of white...
My balcony vantage point invades the privacy she found, between two buildings, in solitude, cleaning herself in dark water. The sari slips off her shoulder easily, she exhales, coolness splashing, rewrapping, more loosely, as the night's breeze
ripples the thin veil of cotton. She heard her son's demand but sits quietly,
heifer and calf in view,
focusing instead on a collection of leaves, plucking, two, three
folding, bending, tucking, forming a corsage she twists between thin fingers,
smiling as layers multiply, a tight center,
patterned, fluted edges expertly aligned to form the outer row.
Finished, the treasure rests in her lap as she brushes a wisp of hair from her face.
She deserves to wear it, so many years this day repeated, worn on frail body, stooped spine. She deserves to wear it, a respite, light, before her son, drawing nearer, pulls her back to the reality of nightly chores. I long for her to nestle the newness of it behind her ear, to help her stand stronger, taller, to see into the spaces the future holds, beyond the cattle, the fabric, the rain, always rain.
Bellowing, the mother cow answers the herder's request, revealing Grandmother's sanctuary to all. She floats the corsage at pond's edge,
sending it flitting, glittering with her toe as she stands,
gathers the calf's tether, turns towards home.
I wonder her age...
Pounding in the heifer tether with an available brick.
Location:Kol, WB
No comments:
Post a Comment