Grandma

My grandma has tears in her eye.

The wind that blows now is full of dust.

She opens her eye in contempt and disgust.

She cannot look up to the dry barren horizon.

She closes her eyes in pity and remorse. 

A tear, tired and impotent like her dreams

Runs

Aimlessly down her cheek –

Finding its lonesome way

Through the wrinkled highway.

I hold her palm.

But her fingers don’t speak to me like they used to.

They don’t even stir.

However the wrinkles steadily are making

An impression of passive hopelessness. 

Those are the fingers that had sown

So many seeds in the backyard

Of the old house.

All that is gone now.

The tenements now have paved –

Cemented – covered – constructed places

In the backyard, for inevitable chores

Like washing and storing things.

No room for her plants now.

Grandma, I believe died with her plants.

I want to wipe out her tears

And tell her that the world is

Never the same next second.

What with all these thermonuclear tests,

Ozone holes, Acid rains, Scams, Bans,

Global Warming etc. etc….

And this one-eyed monster of a TV…

The world is changing too fast for me too.

I want to tell her that I’m perhaps

As outdated and old as she is. 

But still,

I want to go on living and am

Grateful to her.

‘Coz she first bore the womb

That brought me to this world.

I don’t think she’ll apprehend.

She’ll go on living with that

Lost, forlorn and deceived look

In her sad teary eyes

And see the posterity dance to the tunes

That don’t even sound like music to her.

But I believe she died with her plants.