by Abul Kalam Azad
( For Abdul Rasheed )
1
I don’t know much
about my grandfather
How did he propose
to his first love?
Did he fold his passion
onto a page at the end
of his four-ruled Math notebook?
( Did he go to school?)
Or did he swallow his longing
into silence that coated
his Adam’s apple?
When it rained,
did a part of him
drift away with the paper boats
the kids from the gully made?
Or did it hide
behind the pallu
of his wife’s old cotton saree?
What movies did he prefer?
Black and white mythologies
with lengthy dialogues?
Romantic musicals
with happy endings?
What did he dream of
in his snore-kissed sleep?
A roof that doesn’t crumble
when the wind blows its trumpet?
Days without hunger?
Eyes without tears?
Age without disease?
I don’t know much
about my grandfather
2
I do know
he dispensed tickets
at a cramped counter
of a cinema hall in a small town
for a living
When he was very young,
moustache just blooming
like shy black petals,
he toured the entire town
standing at the back of a creaky rickshaw
announcing the release of a movie
fresh off the reels,
“ See today! See today!
in your favorite theatre
Only four shows a day! ”
He smoked Berkeley cigarettes
from dark blue packets
He chewed Rajalakshmi supari
Or crane nut powder
after eating biryani
He wore wide square glasses
and had grey hair,
thick as the receding wave
of a white sea
When he returned for lunch
from his work at 4,
he never failed to buy
crispy golden boondi
or jelly orange jangri
wrapped in newspapers
of bygone mornings
for my hungry tummy
dead from a day at school
The days he forgot,
for lack of money,
I was sad,
he was guilty
He took me to the movies
at his work place,
free of cost
The tight grip of his assuring hand
wiped the hint of sin
that hung from my childish heart
Some humid evenings,
he asked me, in a gentle tone,
like devotees beseech a steely god,
to run a comb over his itching back
I played tunes,
fast and slow,
around the dark brown flesh
of his spotted backbone
like a percussionist who relieves pain
Often on rainy dusks,
he slit the brown shells
of boiled peanuts
and placed in my palm
the light pink seeds
I do know the pleasure
in eating them
without that effort
3
I don’t know much
about my grandfather
When he was bedridden,
wageless from disease,
and couldn’t form a syllable
with his tongue,
he wept
every time he gazed
at my adolescent face,
that infant he carried in his arms
was growing up and up
out of reach
from his still body
and moist sighs
He moved his lips
with great effort,
but words failed to escape
Shapeless breath
twirled around a tragic language
with no alphabets
One day,
I found him on a road,
with a stick in his hand
The one he used to support
his paralysed leg
like a boatman’s oar
wading through a cemented river
He was shockingly still,
almost like a helpless bird
whose wings had gone numb
in mid flight
I tried to lift him up,
too heavy a loneliness
for my fearful shoulders
With the help of stranger’s pity,
we placed him back in his cot
“Why did you go out
when you can’t walk,
you lame idiot? ”
his partner said,
with maddened love
He longed for something
he could find only in the world
without a ceiling
All were angry,
except me
I was possessed
by a grief
that froze my pupils
The sight of his immobility
on that estranged street
drowned my sweating flesh
“Never leave him alone,”
I said
I don’t know much
about my grandfather
4
I do know
that my family never told me
about his death
until I returned to my hometown
that he craved to see me
in his last moments
to feel this face of mine
in the retracting nerves
of his tired eyeballs
to say that thing
he could never wrap his lips around
I do know
how I asked my grandmother
why his bed was empty
how I wept
sinking into her saree
with an intense desire
to flee from that moment
from mortality
from love
from bonds
without closures
how death pulled apart
all the sutured fabrics
of my quivering being
how guilt raked my heart
over raging coals
lit with betrayal
I do know
that they built a tiny hut
inside the grave
to shelter his spirit
I knocked at its door,
no one answered
I still wait
seeped in regret
Someday,
he shall forgive me
and I will feed him
naked seeds of boiled peanuts
That day,
I shall ask,
“How did you propose
to your first love, Nana? ”
Abul Kalam Azad is a poet of Indian origin working in Japan.