For a While

Sreekumar K 

We had a maid, a dark young girl from

Some place we had never heard of

She didn’t speak our language, nor we hers

I shared a love of nature with her 

 

Followed her up trees and down streams

My sister used to sing with her.

Young as she was, my dad and mom

Used to fight a lot over her in their sleep

 

No one taught her but she knew all about life

Though not much about earning a living

A breadfruit bud my mother had brought

She grafted on to a rosewood tree in our backyard

Soon we had breadfruit three times a day

I never knew trees are such wonderful hosts

 

She found a robin chick, a failed acrobat

Adopted it and became its foster mother

Persuaded our hen to take care of it

The hen never complained a cackle

And even gave it more time and space

Than she gave it to her own chicks

 

I never knew a hen could be so warmhearted

She had brought a song with her

Which she used to hum wherever whenever

She once drew on the sand a picture

A musical device that can bring out its flavour

(It hardly looked like one though)

 

When I gave her my brother's guitar one day

When my parents were not there, of course

She stroked the strings, listened to its feelings

Tensed a string and tightened a screw there

And taught it how to mimic to perfection

An instrument which it hadn't heard of

An instrument she had left back at home

 

I never knew a guitar would oblige so well

She could make anything out of anything

Coax everything to get along with her

Most of my sister's discarded wardrobe

Went to her on special days every year

Though the colour was a mismatch

Her figure was like my sister's

 

(Earlier we had made effigies out of them

And burned them at revived festivals

To warm our gods on winter nights)

 

I never knew dresses could be so adaptable 

We miss her much now, we had to let her go

In fact, we had no choice, she was taken away

She had forgotten to take her papers with her

When she jumped off a sinking boat long ago

 

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