My grandmother, <br />wise even at eight, <br />hid under her bed <br />when her first suitor came home. <br /> <br />Grave and serene <br />her features, defined <br />as majestically as a head <br />on an old coin, I realise <br />through photographs, clouded <br />by the silt of seasons, like the patina <br />of age on Kanjeevaram silks, <br />that in her day, girls of eight didn’t <br />have broken teeth or grazed elbows. <br /> <br />Now in her kitchen, <br />she quietly stirs ancestral <br />aromas of warm coconut lullabies, <br />her voice tracing the familiar <br />mosaic of family fables, chipped <br />by repetition. <br /> <br />And yet, <br />in the languorous swirl <br />of sari, she carries the secret <br />of a world where nayikas still walk <br />with the liquid tread of those <br />who know their bodies as well <br />as they know their minds, still glide <br />down deserted streets - to meet <br />dark forbidden paramours whose eyes <br />smoulder like lanterns in winter - <br />and return before sunset, the flowers <br />in their hair radiating the perfume <br />of an unrecorded language of romance. <br /> <br />The secret of a world <br />that she refuses to bequeath <br />with her recipes <br />and her genes.<br /><br />Arundhathi Subramaniam<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/heirloom/
