By Miraya Mittal
In my mother’s eyes,
You’re still fifty-five.
She talks of you, to this day,
As a young man,
Bold, strong and unafraid.
To my five-year-old self,
It was the strangest thing.
How is it that Maa has Nani for her mother?
Old, wrinkly, sweet and wane,
But you for her father,
With hair that’s barely white?
You live in Maa’s routine of walks,
The way she laughs,
The beat of her heart.
The shape of her hands matches yours,
Just as mine does hers.
A living proof,
You were real.
A constant reminder, a gift and curse.
Yamaraj has a sense of humour.
Your death,
A single moment,
Brought about,
As many tears as the laughs,
That the entirety of your long years caused.
I think Maa sees you in me sometimes,
Wishes your soul somehow,
Found its way back to her, when I was born.
I’m afraid I disappoint her often,
And sadden her twice.
Not only as her daughter,
But by dwindling her hopes,
Of me being you.
Nana, your life was my bedtime stories.
A fictional character on adventures to me.
You’re still fifty-five,
Always will be,
Frozen in time.
Nana, I don’t know you at all,
And you know me even less.
But somehow everyone says,
You would’ve loved me.
But after all, they can only guess.
Nana, the man I never met,
And yet,
Without you, I wouldn’t be here.
I somehow have a million things,
To say,
To the man I never met.
Of course, a few thank you’s,
But most are apologies.
I can never be like you,
I give up too fast.
But what if our timelines had collided?
Would you have taught me patience?
In that life, perhaps,
I would still be,
A pianist,,
A dancer,
An artist,
Or maybe all three.
Would you have taught me to swim?
Or to make your favourite barfi?
Maybe then I’d be more like you,
Because I would’ve known how to be.
Would you have loved me, Nana?
You would have, I suppose, just as everyone says.
But would you have liked me, Nana?
Even if I was just the way I am?
Nana, I don’t know if you get post where you live.
Do the heavens accept the whispers that the Earth has to give?
Do tears make their way through winds,
And pass through clouds to you?
Do prayers travel on sunbeams,
Making rainbows for you?
Do thoughts find wings when they’re heavy with ‘why’?
Do they float through the dark to your piece of the sky?
Do you truly talk through dreams?
Making us forget on purpose,
So that your loved ones don’t feel,
The ache any harder?
Perhaps there’s a mail truck.
Carrying post for the other side.
So I’m writing you this, just in case.
The truck ever decides to take.
My words to where you lie.
Nana, I hear your stories less and less now.
I do not know if it’s because Maa has run out of them.
Told me every anecdote she has of you.
Or if she is starting to forget you, too.