When I was young,
Ammu would cycle through paddy fields,
Come home and tell me stories
of farmers who see the Sun off
and rest.
Mustard oil, rice, onion and a green chilly -
Luxuriously on some days, a potato,
that is when I will know she was in mood
To tell stories.
I will walk up to her lap,
Alert so as to hear them all
and sleep off in the misty smell of her hair oil.
Magic was to find myself in my bed,
tucked in, the morning after.
Ammu would ask me to look
as big as the birds flying high
and migrate to places to bring in more stories.
Her eyes, wet and voice at times betraying,
she would tell me about neighbours
who did not flee but fly.
And so did I.
I came back with hundred stories.
Ammu would sit on the small stool on our earthly courtyard
with a paan in her mouth.
Her eyes will lit up, like the bird
who has just found a new country.
Her ears keen on hearing every word.
One night when it rained heavily
and our muddy courtyard gave away a bit of earth
and a bit of that earthly smell
to a seasonal monsoon,
I finished telling all my tales.
She slept in between, mysteriously smiling
through the corner of her lips.
But I knew
Ammu was flying, through
green paddy fields,
above the farmers' heads,
towards the Sun that was to set,
higher than the birds ever will.
Ammu had stories to tell herself.
.
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