Radio waves dance between
sleep and the half light
of dawn. Yawning, Ma adjusts the
knob to wake up the station. The man
on the radio invokes the Mother in
gravelly chants. Malkauns,
waiting in the wings,
takes the stage. The beginning
begins.
Far away, in another lifetime,
a temple bell rang. The devotee,
crazy for a single glimpse of the
lord, cried his heart out. “Don’t
shatter my hopes; leave me not.”
The dark-skinned god stood still.
Wobbling across decades
of palsy, an old man’s feet
breathed life into its
stone.
Malkauns moves mountains. Cripples.
Stony gods. An adored mother goddess
and her carousel of
children. It moves sleepy heads
into a dozy trance. Malkauns
moves dark nights of the soul
into mornings that must
awaken.
y to imagine my mother’s face when I tell her over the phone that I’m coming home. When I tell her I’m coming home for Durga Puja. I try to imagine her face during every subsequent transatlantic conversation we have. I grapple to picture the contours of her face as we talk — has it grown a wee bit more cherubic ever since I told her I’m coming home? I ask her what she’s doing whenever I call her. She says she’s drinking her morning tea and I try to discern a smile in her voice, to distinguish it from the “tea drinking” reports she gave me every day until she learned about my visit. When she tells me she has asked for help to spruce things up around the house before I get there, I try to decipher the braille of her expression as she made that appeal. I trace impressions of jaws widening, eyes brimming up with sleepless excitement. We could Skype, we both have the tools, but we mostly talk over the phone. She knows how to see me through my voice, and the oceanic gulf that has kept us apart for the nine years since I got married enables me to see her the same way — through her quivers and monotones, her heaving sighs and squeals. Sometimes our phone calls trade in gossips and passionate debates. She cracks jokes on others. And on the government of the day. When this happens, I’m relieved in the knowledge that the weight of wrinkles haven’t yet buried that impish grin on her face. I see that, too. In the waves of her trills.
Bhaswati Ghosh 