The shadows of the big pipal trees
fall across the crumbling balcony
of my abandoned ancestral home,
but the sun still lingers in the far corner.
There, I see a younger me,
barefoot on the earthen floor,
watching a spider’s web shimmer in the light.
He furrows his brow,
looks me over, and smiles.
I smile back.
The mud-plastered walls,
once painted delicately with white and red earth,
the floors, once swept with cow dung paste,
now crack in silence, yearning for voices long gone.
The fields lie parched, the fences rusted,
the riverbed dry—where once water danced,
only dust spins in the wind.
As twilight settles, he beckons me forward
and opens the creaking wooden door
to my childhood room.
I step inside but move past it, drawn to the terrace,
where I gaze at the sky, searching for the colours
that once hopped in the clouds.
I remember the taste of ripe berries,
the scent of crushed guavas,
the elders scaling trees,
harvesting honey from wild hives.
A breeze murmurs something in my ear
then drifts away into the dusk.
I turn around. He is gone, too.
***
Madras Courier originally ran as a broadsheet with a poetry section. It was a time when readers felt comfortable sharing glimpses of their lives through verse. If you have a poem you’d like to submit, do email us at editor@madrascourier.com.
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