Reading Time: 2 minutes
In grief, a daughter argues with a half-remembered ghost of her father, yearning for a complete goodbye, a poignant poem of love and loss, by Sonali, exclusively for Different Truths.
when I forget you, baba, you come
unexpectedly, telling me
to wash those guavas
thoroughly, with drinking water
‘but that’s what you used to forget to do’,
I whisper angrily, as though
you are embarrassing me
in front of my supervisor once again
‘I still do’ you smile, your infectious smile
‘that is why I am reminding you’.
‘you had once filled my daughter’s bottle
with tap water’, I ask whether you remember
I am angry with you for leaving, for smiling
you say nothing so I have to carry on
imagining a one-sided conversation–
‘your granddaughter could have gotten sick
she was so little, what if she got typhoid?’
I mutter and bite into the guava whole
(you would have done half-half)
only to spit it out a second later
and I hear you again laughing,
“told you not to eat that one, it was rotten”
you are saying, as I throw it away
“you should have done half-half, anyway”
you tease as I stare at the spilt seeds.
‘you never saw me then’, I sigh tearfully,
‘but I see you clearly now’, you say
as I forcibly shut the broken lid of the bin
and try to swallow a lump, not guava.
‘that’s what convinces me that you
are a figment of my imagination
the fact that you still speak to me
not memory, nor a proper ghost even
not here nor there, just as you went
in a half-finished manner–
‘will you come back?’
I faintly speak aloud
the last ask.
nothing stirs.
‘I think you always wanted a son’
I chime, adjusting the hands of the clock
‘maybe’, you admit quietly, ‘but if I had one
I would have no remnants
of an unfinished conversation
to live this after life’
I am turning the hands anti-clockwise.
‘I live because you and I
were never done,
I would be sleeping peacefully
a quiet skeleton,
the son would have taken my place’
you explain.
I am sure this conversation is broken,
made-up by one who cannot let you go
nor conjure your ghost up.
‘I should have left you guavas
not flowers the day I left home’
I whisper, ‘and not by the shrine
but by the tree laden with ripe guavas
for you did love your fruit trees, baba,
but I keep forgetting to remember
you properly, or to place
like you would, one gone
and so, you return
in an absurd remembering
where I fight as though
you were listening
in your un-listening manner,
they think I am mad
not to revere you with silence
and sobriety but then
only the dead deserve that
and you remain, for me, half-half’.
*’half-half’ is one of those rhythmic double-words taken from English but creolised that my father used very often even while speaking to us in Odia. It remains with me today as I struggle with his being taken away suddenly by Covid and all that it brought with it.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
