MY WINDOWS
I was born out of love,
Love between my parents.
I never understood what was
Poverty
‘Cause I saw my mother
Toiling everyday
To keep our only room,
The bathroom and ‘her’ kitchen
Spotlessly clean,
The house that I loved calling home.
Where she cooked the most sumptuous meals for Father and me
Stitched me the most beautiful dresses
And hung her shining pots and pans, a lot with pride!
And when I grew up,
I would polish the wooden floors
Like mother did,
Till I would be too tired to sleep that night.
Mother kept singing lullabies of comfort
For me!
Our only room had just one
Ventilator and
Two windows.
My windows to the World.
I would breathe, read, eat oranges,
Dream, sing, write, cry;
All next to the windows,
My windows of life.
When mother went out for work,
I would pull back the soft white curtains of the windows
And complete the
Embroidery mother taught me.
It was well lit only near the windows,
And I loved hearing the constant
Chirping of birds.
My neighbour practiced her singing
Everyday in the morning.
And her voice somehow managed to squeeze through
The spaces between the weathered panels
Of the windows.
I would wrap myself tighter inside
The soft warmth of my blanket
Till my mother pulled it off,
Defiantly waking me for school
Or to complete chores around the house on a holiday!
Oh, how I sometimes wished the room didn't have windows!
How I wished the room didn't allow sound
To come in,
Didn't allow even a draft of air!
But then, how could I wish such absurdity?
Those two windows
Were my only best friends!
How could I even wish for them not to be there!
They gave me so much!
They allowed me to see the stars,
The Plough, the Great Bear…...the Moon,
In all its resplendence.
The Venus in the early morning sky!
The windows were my telescope!
But I could never see the blue hills
Cause my windows faced a wall!
Just below the windows was a rose bush and
I loved watching the caterpillars making their way
Through the stems and eating up the leaves and the petals too.
There was a pattern to their eating.
It was more like they were in haste as they gobbled on the leaves.
I wondered,
Were they competing but with whom?
I remember mother getting flustered with me
Visibly angry she would be,
For more reasons than one
She would prop me up on the bed, which was placed against the windows
With pillows around me,
And she would hand me a pen and paper.
I was two years old then.
“Write” she would say “and don't move from here!”
As she leaves, I turn myself towards my windows
Smile,
To look at the pale blue sky with tufts of cottony clouds
Floating by,
And then start writing.
Lines and lines of indecipherable stories.
Stories from my heart,
Of my two windows
Of mother and father
Of the birds, stars and the orange caterpillars.
Mother had only smiled after seeing the endless number of pages
Written in absolutely straight lines
And then hugged me close to her heart
And I hugged her back!
The last time I heard of our house,
It was sold to a businessman
Who had pulled it down in a week.
He has plans to build a seven-storey building.
The two windows have been bought by a poet for five hundred rupees after much bargaining!
