Heirloom Poem by Arundhathi Subramaniam

My grandmother,

wise even at eight,

hid under her bed

when her first suitor came home.



Grave and serene

her features, defined

as majestically as a head

on an old coin, I realise

through photographs, clouded

by the silt of seasons, like the patina

of age on Kanjeevaram silks,

that in her day, girls of eight didn't

have broken teeth or grazed elbows.



Now in her kitchen,

she quietly stirs ancestral

aromas of warm coconut lullabies,

her voice tracing the familiar

mosaic of family fables, chipped

by repetition.



And yet,

in the languorous swirl

of sari, she carries the secret

of a world where nayikas still walk

with the liquid tread of those

who know their bodies as well

as they know their minds, still glide

down deserted streets - to meet

dark forbidden paramours whose eyes

smoulder like lanterns in winter -

and return before sunset, the flowers

in their hair radiating the perfume

of an unrecorded language of romance.



The secret of a world

that she refuses to bequeath

with her recipes

and her genes.