You look at me, child, and you laugh.
You call me old-fashioned,  traditional, simple.
Oh, my dear girl, my lovely love, my fire-brand modernista —
call me what you will… I am happy to be.

But, before you shut these cupboard doors
and laughingly dismiss me as impractical exotica,
tell me first…
what stories do you carry upon you, dear girl?
Stories of our brothers and sisters
from across the river,  across the border,
that tell tales of zamindari splendour
and ‘bonedi’ elegance.

What songs have been woven into you by hundreds of hands;
hands as ancient as the sea, and as deft with the warp & weft, as with fishing nets?
I am the fisherman’s wife, waiting by the shore,

praying to the water gods to remain calm and steady.
Singing my love, safely, fervently, back home.

What poetry has been breathed into your threads,

so that you can cling to the curves of all womanhood?
I am the bloom of sunrise, the poignancy of sunset.

I can wrap you in leaves, I can wrap you in flowers.
I’ll bring down the sky for you, and a million stars.
I can cover you are in grass and perfume you with fresh earth and rain.
I will bring you storm clouds. I will bathe you in memory.

You will think of your mother, when you see me,

and how you dried your wet hands on her pallu.
You will think of your grandmother and the warmth of her lap
covered by the softness of her tangail

as she emptied her jhuli of tales into your eager imagination.
You will think of your favourite aunt, getting married
and looking resplendent… baffled by her newfound shyness,
awed by her until-then unnoticed beauty.

I saw it in your eyes, you know.
The way your heart knocked behind your eyelids
as they rested upon a patchwork of grandmotherly memories;
each square a different story, a different meal, a different song,
but all stitched together with her jumble of fragrances  running in neat lines
one after another  after another.

I felt it in your touch, when you ran your hands, all over my body.
Those silken threads, you glided over,  recount so much more than a single scene from a beloved epic.
I carry the history of your parent’s love upon these threads as well.
Did you know that I was your father’s first gift to your mother
after she became his?

Come closer, child. Come.
Take in a lungful of air and breathe me in.
That smell of sandalwood is your grandmother’s Mysore Sandal Soap,
the mix of halud & jeere bata, from your favourite chingri malai,
that she would never fail to make when you visited.
That whiff of burnt milk is your mother’s attempt at payesh  for your first birthday,
the cinnamon & apples  are from the cupcakes she made for your tenth.
The jui phuler gondho  is from the garland your  grandfather  would buy your grandmother  every day while coming back from his evening walk;
if you listen closely, you can hear the temple bells from where he bought them.

Don’t lock me away from the sun as mere trinkets of the past.
I am your history. I am your story. I am you.

~ Baishali Chatterjee Dutt~