By Aditya Rajiv Ratnam
In evening's fading light, she struggles to sleep,
Like an old banyan whose roots forget their earth.
Her prayer rosary slips through trembling fingers,
Each bead a familiar memory, taking flight.
"Are you Aditya's son?" she softly asks once more,
But that is my name, and I am her grandson's child.
Her eyes, once lanterns, now dim and distant,
Rain-swollen rivers searching for forgotten shores.
Once she taught me the Vishnu Sahasranamam by rote,
Her voice ringing out like temple bells in morning light.
Now the same verses tangle on her tongue,
Monsoon clouds that can't recall their song.
In her room, the calendar stays frozen,
On a monsoon day lost to the years.
Her mind, once the keeper of family stories,
Now shrouded in a fog that will not depart.
At night she asks for her daughter,
Calling out in childhood's tender tongue.
While I cradle her papery hands, so fragile now,
That once brushed tears away from my young face.
In her steel almirah, pressed between careful folds,
Of Kanchipuram silk sarees from her wedding day.
Like autumn leaves, sepia photographs curl at their edges,
Time’s heavy breath has turned each face worn and grey.
I quietly gather her scattered yesterdays,
Like sacred Ganga water cupped in my palms.
But they seep through my fingers with haste,
Each dissolving drop, a memory I could not save.
In tune with her breath, the ICU monitor hums,
As my father stands beside, shoulders bent by grief.
The doctors speak of dysfunctional synapse gaps,
Ephemeral bridges crumbling in her mind.
But how do I tell them about that lucid dawn,
She called me by my childhood name?
For one fleeting heartbeat, Time realigned,
Before darkness swiftly reclaimed its hold.
So I wait beside her hospital bed,
As she threads jasmine flowers that aren't there.
I count each moment together we have left,
Diwali diyas flickering in the shifting mist.
"My mangalsutra—where did it go?"
"Has he come back home? Dinner grows cold!"
But he passed away nineteen years ago,
Leaving her adrift in nostalgia’s embrace.
She presses his old photograph close to her heart,
The past and present blur, then cease to be at all.
Hand in hand, gently they walk away into the light,
Until Memory no longer matters, and Time finds its rest.