MY SYNONYMS FOR MY GRANDMOTHER

 Wearing a veil of amnesia my grandmother wakes every night from her rosewood cot and examines my throat,tells me not to utter a single word and places a sugar cube in my naive tongue.  Like a good daughter I smile and thank her and call her 'Nani' when she returns to a blue blurry silent zone and asks me who I am.

I tell her am a profound cell, so small but with so much inside me.

I am the burnt mole on mother's wrist an unlucky charm she hides under a leather strap of her favourite watch.

I am the rolled tobacco resting on my father's bottom lip, soon to be ash without a proper burial.

I am a broken crayon in my brothers school box melted,ignored and lost interest in.

Iam my lover's old poetry, written, read and re read then locked in the bottom drawer of cupboard,forgotten.

I am the adamptant breath inside an eighty year old's rugged lungs, dancing to an orchestra of denial. 

Iam an old scarf picked from the streets,  much loved that washed, hung and ironed, now torn.

I'm the empty bottle of your favourite perfume, useless, nostalgic, dusty and soon to be broken.

Iam the letter my aunt is waiting , an unwritten one from her dead lover with the lyrics of Sufi poetry.

Iam a crushed insect hanging in a spider's web, awake yet sleepy ,dead yet existing. 

Iam a mannequin in front a second hand store :cold, plastic and waiting to be abandonded.

Iam a bee, an infamous ballerina, flying around a child's body found in a public dustbin.

Iam the phone number of a migrant worker, the man next door scribbles on his palm with blank promises,washed away on his three course dinner.

Iam a college's consulting brochure, to  the boy who works part time in the grocery shop- shiny,  smooth and mocking his bank balance.

Iam the second grader crying near the park, his uniform tattered and specs broken, a victim of some  practical joke.

Iam the face in poster in the walls of a noisy street announcing "missing", it's letters now brown and messy from spit.

Iam a paper torn from a month old newspaper, folded into a rocket by greasy hands of daughter of a house servant.

Iam that bloated corpse in Ganga, lacking a proper name and noun, disgusting to turning away faces of sympathy.

Iam the white silence of a doctor near the autopsy table of a girl with  an iron rod in her vagina.

Iam the vacant stare of the man who hanged himself, looking afar for his wheat field now dry.

Iam the half printed exclusive report by a journalist, for whom his mother hasn't stopped preparing dinner for.

I am the helpless grey serpent moving through a public bus as a man gropes against any Saree

Iam the flower that blooms in the rusted gate outside the temple where mother of four was raped. 

Iam the silenced prayer in a Ramadan morning,  a ranting against a silent god when our tailor was called an anti nationalist.

Iam the folds of red coloured Saree a "kali" bahu next door found as an answer for an Audi her in laws wanted. 

I am the science book hidden by a poor girl inside her tangled hair ,forever, answering her duties.

Iam the lipstick stolen by a fifteen year boy, simply because it is the way he is. 

And that is what I say my grandmother,

am herself, but with a voice 

am herself,  but not afraid of stars.