My grandmother has an almirah

My grandmother has an almirah
in the corner of her red tiled dining room
Where she stores her years
in bits and pieces
Like shopping receipts
Tagged to rusty hairpins
and broken mirrors.


She sits on the floor
and pulls out the lower drawers
every other day, eagerly
as if she yearns to find,
among treasures withheld
in small rubber-banded newspaper packs,
A baby, she misplaced years aback.


Her sarees
dry washed and folded
are on the upper decks
Where, in-between bosoms ironed
she hid her market savings
for her new found culinary taste
From across the street end bake house.


Her deserted desires
of fleshly warmth
and cravings carnal
tarnished and disguised
as jasmine knots
for the backyard demigod.


When she dies
They will clad her
in one of those wedding silks
and suffocate her
In that unused dusty smell


That day she will get her garlands back
Fresh and heavy
on her worn out heart.
They will choke her way
with stinking sweat and incense dope


While,
I shall see her sitting
Legs stretched and absorbed
on that almirah floor
Counting coins from her sewed up backpacks
May be, for her favorite black coffee
and later, a frilled baby frock.