Doux

Bloodlines

The lights go out just before
dinnertime. We sit out on the
terrace in the midsummer air
and father tells stories of the
places he has been to before he
settled down. Chandigarh, Delhi,
Bokaro, the dull grey soil of Bihar
where nothing grows. He tells me I
look like his sister, the one who
left her husband and 7-month-baby
daughter and ran away one night with
a soldier from Punjab. No one has
heard from her since, but I think
about her often, and wonder whether
the divided land that became her
home reminds her of the divided land
that was hers, for everyone knows
though we never talk about it, that
Punjab and Bengal suffered the
worst of the Partition. A country
isn't born in a day, a country is born
only of uncharted deaths and burning
trains, body counts so high they did not
matter, even then. Prime ministers
in this part of the world have a
strange way of dying. Indira, Rajiv,
Sanjay, Mujibur Rahman, Benazir Bhutto.
Countries aren't born in a day. A country
is born of the death of other countries,
Khalistan, Tamil Eelam, Kashmir,
an undivided Bangladesh. I want a
country of my own too. The soil
would be cracked and grey where
nothing would grow, a sky where it
never rains. My uncle says I look
like my grandmother around
the mouth, though when I take off my
glasses and look in the mirror I only
see my mother. Or rather a shadow of
her, with sunken cheeks, chapped
lips, salty weariness pooling under
my eyes. My country will be uneven
like the landscape of my face,
cracked and dying like Bihar, while
the India that was born of all the
deaths will be rich and beautiful
like mother.