Ordinary
By Akshita Sharma
I remember how
Amma used to light
clay diyas on Diwali----
wisp after wisp after wisp
slickly cloaked in oil,
in the lap of heady prayers,
burning impatiently,
and waiting
for daybreak.
I remember how
Amma would light
a brass one
at the break of dawn
and then
again
at the cusp of dusk,
read us the Chalisa
through the looking glass
slipping along the bridge of her nose
as we huddled near her feet,
on every ordinary day,
day after day after day,
and,
with the most beautiful smile,
tell us,
it was breathtaking----
day after day after day
wound into
a delightfully long
tale of love
and pride,
breathing life into
her wrinkles,
her greying hair,
and the soft fragility
that lived on the tips
of her time-worn fingers.
Ordinary days,
she said
had little hands
that held the world;
crooked shoulders
to hold the contours of a weeping face;
battles,
that had to be chosen wisely;
love, and then some;
beautiful pictures of gratitude;
some heartbreak brewing in a whistling teapot,
a teapot that
overheard verses after verses of unspoken utterances;
lots of mistakes to hope for, (mistakes are narcissistic that way);
light, loss, loneliness...
and little things
we so easily take for granted.
It is a romance of sorts,
wouldn't you say?
the skin of the back
drinking the fresh wet of the hair;
the aftertaste of tea
prodding lightly on the tongue;
the patience of the creases of a
crisply pressed and
neatly folded shirt;
the sublime repetition of dawn, day, dusk and night;
dawn, day, dusk, night;
Amma, sleeping,
night after night,
tucked tightly under a blanket
with Baba's snores at her elbow.
I remember how
Amma used to light
clay diyas on Diwali----
wisp after wisp after wisp
slickly cloaked in oil,
in the lap of heady prayers,
burning impatiently,
and waiting
for daybreak.
I remember how
Amma would light
a brass one
at the break of dawn
and then
again
at the cusp of dusk,
on every ordinary day,
day after day after day...
By Akshita Sharma
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