to my nana

The radio was always on in his room
the only sign of life in the old house
the dark green paint on walls, peeling off in places
the rusting window grills
and the unswept corridors
all seemed ancient and cold

in the living room
drops of rain fell through the cracks in the ceiling
they sounded like the ticking of a clock
distinct yet not noisy

Here I spent so many days
i came almost every weekend
dragged by my mother
i would have preferred to stay back instead
in my house where there was a television
and the luxury of no prolonged power cuts

here there were too many mosquitos
and my hands ached with all the slapping and fanning
I fanned myself with a newspaper
it used to be hot
There was no fridge
no television too
only an old radio that played old songs
and blared the news

I fretted
I grumbled
yet I would be here
everything had dust, tons of them
I sneezed a lot

Sometimes, nana would take me with him when he went to buy vegetables and kerosene oil
i tagged along, helped him carry the bags
in time i started counting the money and handing it over to the vendors
as nana could not see very well
yet he walked proud, head held high
i knew it required effort
i knew he was hurting
but he would not grab the stick

then he picked it up one day
and would not go anywhere without it
i still went with him
because he still needed eyes

at home, he poured out whiskey from a small bottle that he kept hidden somewhere in his dusty bookshelf
and drank alone
i sat there for lack of anything else to do
and he talked of matthew arnold
and of shakespeare

In time
during one of those visits
don't know when or how
We started talking
nana and i

He wrote me letters
i wrote to him too
and we talked about poetry when I visited the old house
sometimes, he would let me read to him from one of the books

I studied literature because he did
I wanted to be him
and wanted him to know I understood Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach too
that i could understand my nana
and i felt for him

And then one day
he died
it was a silent death
he died in his sleep

i found his diaries later
and i reconstructed his life
bit by bit
a painful journey for me too

I looked for my name
i was scattered in those pages
no special mention
just a log of when we visited

So many years later
I miss my nana
i know we could have talked at length now
now that i have grown up
among so many things
and with the radio in the background
we would have talked about Maxim Gorky, about Karl Marx
and over those whiskey glasses, i know he would have loved to recite from Dover Beach
and I know i would have understood