(Continuing with my last prose entry)

My birth had made my mother’s mother a grandmother. I recall fond visits from my maternal grandparents. In particular, I remember my grandfather.

Kaka, as I called him, was a man of energy. He had been born fatherless and poor. Yet, by the time he was in his 20s, he had traversed half of Asia and Africa. Then he left his civil services job. He had quarelled with his boss and resigned. He was an impatient man. But he was also a man of intellectual leanings, a Sanskrit scholar who wrote plays for the radio.

Kaka was enchanted with his first grandchild. He would spend hours near my cot crooning, winding the screw of the revolving toy above to make it whirl in a flash of rainbow colours, taking delight in my happy gurgles. It did not matter that I was a six-month old baby and he a successful lawyer, patriarch, an authoritarian man of years. At that moment, we were equal, and he was as much a child as I was.

I was told he had been a strict father to his children. He had bundled off his two sons to boarding school, left his daughter to his wife. I imagine that all the affection he never expressed towards them, now welled up like the waters of the flooded Brahmaputra, burst through its constraining banks, and poured its abundant affection on me.

But perhaps this is my imagination, crying with the greed of a six-month old child, seeking to claim the love of a man reduced to ashes.

Kauri pore…
The crow alights…

The day he died was this year. April morning was shattered by the shrieks of the black bird. It crowed frantically. I stared at its bristling feathers, bereft of comprehension.

Kaka, you betrayed me.

You took five years to die. You could have waited a month more.
Where did I fail you? Why didn’t you want me at your funeral? Don’t you know, it is your voice that speaks through mine, it is your wanderlust I carry in my veins? Don’t you know I am your ghost?

“I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?” (Electra on Azalea Path, Sylvia Plath)

Haiku

Up in the sky, you
Are the harsh blue this June noon
Embracing my world.

And I would have you
Pick me up from this earth, eat,
Make me immortal.

Then I could with you
Roam the milky way at night
Shower stars on you.

See the world below:
Insignificant ant haunts-
And be assured

That no more am I
Cacophony, illusion,
But in heaven’s arms

I am pure as the
Gold grains rinsed from the waters
Of Subansiri.