By Prithvijeet Sinha
There are some windows,
like the one Manani* stood by,
with her sweet morning voice calling birds from all the surrounding trees,
to feed them her open heart’s musings
and a little bit of the loneliness she felt,
perched up here on the topmost floor.
.
She was a bird herself,
frugal and simple to a fault,
opening windows to the eastern sky
when the sunrise came to her inner eye
like the first stroke of the universe,
so essential to her at that age.
Living in two spare rooms,
with a prominent prayer house and a central kitchen,
her own birdhouse of sorts.
Just enough for her,
guarded most securely by a balcony and the worldwide open,
free and independent like her.
.
Her window to the world,
her soul left open to be free,
like the leaves and a cluster of beloved sparrows close to her feet
as they kept all her last wishes and secret correspondences in their tiny bosoms.
They sat with her at noon everyday,
peeking at each form and shade of clouds,
as she seemed to imitate the arch of that nose or the impression of that face,
from her family tree in the sky.
**
They come to me by this same window today,
tiny heads poking in and searching for a manifestation of her spirit.
She has simply flown out from here, l tell them,
with no inkling of her final moments or a destination.
.
She came to me with a whiff of the winter chill,
in my windowless room,
by the open partition between roof and yard,
as if arrived to say that her pulse had fallen,
that she had prepared her final prayers before her bath,
and her crop of falling, open hair was her only garment and adornment in that image,
on that fateful day.
.
She was here to say,
she had come out of her two rooms,
out of that forever open window,
held up by her coterie of birds,
right into the soft trillings of my heart.
.
Now I’m here,
vacating her sparse space
and the soul of her freedom
as a solitary sparrow comes to me,
staring at me with a slight right tilt of her head,
just like you always did when in joy.
Something tells me the myth is correct,
you have become one of your own
and come as a winged messenger,
telling me you will always be here.
.
And I’m glad it happens to the soul in flight,
the window of your spirit forever open for correspondences.
For there are some windows which trace our ancestry of memories,
from one distant line to our loved ones in heaven.
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NOTE : * the term of endearment ‘Manani’ used in the second line of this poem refers to the Indian compact of mother and maternal grandmother, Ma+ Nani, with which I called my grandmother. This poem is written as a tribute to her and the window of memories she has left open for me ; the details here are all culled from real life observations
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Prithvijeet Sinha is from Lucknow. He is a post graduate in MPhil, having launched his writing career by self publishing on the worldwide community Wattpad since 2015 and on his WordPress blog An Awadh Boy’s Panorama besides having his works published in several varied publications as Gnosis Journal, Reader’s Digest, Café Dissensus, Confluence, The Medley, Thumbprint Magazine, Wilda Moriss’s Poetry blog, Screen Queens, Borderless Journal encompassing various genres of writing ,from poetry to film reviews, travel pieces, photo essays to posts on culture . His life force resides in writing and poetry is his first and only love.
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