Myths We Make

My considerate working-class parents
indulged me with chocolates by my bedside
each Christmas, they said,
came from Santa Claus.
I left lavish Thank You notes
on the night of every 24th.
Movies, I was told were ‘real’,
though what I watched in a film –
deaths, treasures, dacoits, aliens,
revolutions – I could never
spot in News channels
my father watched each evening.
Nonetheless, I wrote sympathy notes
to dislocated children, separated lovers,
failed heroes, telling them,
“they’d be fine, they’d be okay, as long as
there was no Algebra in their lives”.
In 1996, my mother’s belly
began to swell. This had
something to do with my loneliness
showing itself as a petulant six year old
standing outside a Grocery Store, asking
if, “babies were available for sale!”
I wrote petitions to my parents, grandparents,
aunts, neighbours, querying if being alone
was the only requisite for citizenship in their midst.
That was when Lord Shiva came into our home,
each night, making something
of a baby sister/brother, growing inside
my mother’s stomach. Mondays – was hair,
Tuesdays – fingers, Wednesdays – skin,
and so on. I started leaving Thank you notes,
chocolates, perhaps a glass of water each night.
None of these were found
in the mornings.
When I met my blob-of-a-sister
in the hospital, I whispered to her,
Shiva is your father. My mother keeps
the letters I wrote
to Santa Claus, movie characters,
Lord Shiva, in her Bank vault
beside her jewellery, as if
locking it up, would somehow
stop us from growing up.