My Grandma

My grandmother, granny
Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon old
Is the strongest woman on earth
My grandmother, granny
With eyes like tender, dew wet
Grass on winter mornings
Like a dark overcast sky
Eyes, liquid and placid
With untold tales
Only she herself knew
Is the strongest woman on earth
Her long, flowing hair
Now washed on alternate days
With shampoo and later doused
In Cantheridine
Is not as old as her
It was cut, forcibly
When two and a half summers ago
The doctor, with a constipated face
Had clicked his tongue, and predicted
The unimaginable

Her hair, white as the fresh snow
Which formed,on the tops
Of the tea-trees
In the tea-gardens
Where she lived with Grandpa
Would wash her hair, herself
With a generous dousing of Cantheridine
Is still the strongest woman on the earth

Her mind, once a treasure to be mined
From where she had recounted
Age old wisdom to her grandson
Of things interesting, of things unkown
Now lies looted and empty, widowed
Like her
Like the middle
Of her forehead
Which she’d once adorn
With a big, red bindi
Perhaps she’d concentrated
Her indulgent self, all of it
Into grandpa’s pyre
And sacrifices all
To the flames which engulfed him
My grandma, who now sits
In a permanent stupor
Is still the strongest woman
Who cannot be shaken out of her rut
Like six springs back
When she had to watch
Her younger son
Consecrated to flames

My grandma Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon-old
Is the strongest woman
Who is not afraid
Of the holocaust wind
That sings a perennial dirge
Of burglars on the prowl
Of economic recession
Rising price of essentials
And all petty matters
Which worry, and make
Her progeny sweat
Their foreheads, dotted
With beads of sweat
As they discuss strategies
And counter strategies
To fulfil their earthy existence

While all the while
My grandma Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon old
Sits there, in no hurry
And contemplates
The glass of water
On the table

Believe me, my grandma
Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon old

Is indeed

The strongest woman
On earth

She is
My hero

P.S : This poem is dedicated to my grandma, who has turned totally blank and mute, thanks to schizophrenia.

This is her story.