Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 4, Number 1. May 2021. ISSN: 2581-7094
Memories of my
Grandmother as a Clock
--- Basudhara Roy
Motherless since five
and having been given in
marriage
by her lawyer-father at
fourteen
with forty-five sarees
in her dowry,
a body adorned by gold
fetters of every sort
and a talisman that she
would never lack anything
as long as she did not
lag,
my grandmother hustled
to tie in her anchol,
along with her bunch of
responsibilities,
an invisible timepiece.
Post seventy years of
breathlessly
keeping time to my
grandfather
in a number of houses
through varied fortunes
and amidst an assortment
of in-laws,
sons, nephews, nieces,
grandchildren and servants,
when she could finally
run no more,
grandmother decided it
best
to metamorphose into a
clock.
She had, by now, broken
her femur and pelvic bone
and also the cast of her
mind so that
as she lay in bed gutted
with her own past,
memories squirmed
everywhere
feeding steadily on the
debris of her days.
In her speech, she would
randomly bring them all –
the neighbour boy next
door
who brought her green
mangoes at thirteen,
the sister-in-law who
was married away
to a widower twenty
years older
because she had tried to
elope with a Muslim,
another who ran off with
a Nepali
and was neither sought,
nor returned,
the two women her
father-in-law kept,
one of them his wife’s
childhood playmate.
It was unsettling to
overhear her,
especially for father
whose impeccable family tree,
he thought, had
unimpeachable branches
obedient to fences
and commands.
Mother would sit beside
her, trying to caress her into calm
but the hourglass in
grandmother’s mind
was too sincere for
silence or decorum.
Body stiff as a bamboo
pole,
unkempt hair strewn
across her pillow
like fractions caught in
a web,
she inevitably circled
clockwise as she lay now,
marking all temporal
hours steadfastly between her limbs.
"Does my son harm
you in bed?" she would ask mother.
"Take care. These
men, once possessed,
won't hesitate to gallop
across a woman's body
and grind it to dust. It
runs in the family.
You are educated which I
was not.
You earn for yourself
which I did not.
Never give in. I am
telling you."
My father, each time he
heard this, would cringe.
My mother would try to
usher me away.
I was too unsure to
understand much except
this was something not
meant for my ears and
I would attempt to,
indifferently, look afar.
But sometimes,
grandmother would hook me in.
"And you young
lady, give more attention to books.
Though your little body can
easily be conquered,
it is up to you to make
your mind a fortress.
Make it invincible. It
will be your armour."
I was yet to know what
that meant
but one fine day when I
broke a plate
and someone chanced to
mention
that breaking glass was
inauspicious,
grandmother hoarsely
insisted it was only
as inauspicious as a
strong woman
because it was no longer
docile
and could hurt if
handled without care.
She passed on one day,
as punctual as she had lived,
her eyes promptly
falling vacant to the call of death,
her hands outstretched
that summer afternoon to mark three,
the unaltered time,
life-long, for her basil tea.
Mother missed her most.
She would return from
work to sit on an empty bed each day,
trying perhaps to figure
out the right time for things.
I remember grandma
mostly as a clock
with a voice as sharp as
a shard,
too defiant to believe
that times will not change.