120
heroica
Bride-Seeing BY TA N I A BA N E R J E E
My grandmother
likes to hear me sing.
In return,
she oils my hair,
untying the knots, one by one. The last time
my grandmother had sung
was forty years ago – when the bridegroom and his parents
arrived. With jalebis, gold, resham sarees, and a warning.
‘My child, don’t go around singing
even after marriage,’ laughed my grandfather’s father. Gentle but steady;
like his son grew up to be.
The only man who touched my grandmother.
My grandmother dips her fingertips deep
into the coconut oil bowl
and asks me why I want her to bring
the oil every evening. ‘My hair. Frizzy hair.’ ‘Your wounds. Deep wounds.’
She digs deep
and I finally tell her the truth
one by one.
I can’t sleep; the oil helps.
My mother said she wished she had aborted me. My father is sleeping with someone my age. I don’t like the colour of the soap bar.
I hate the heat and global warming scares the shit out of me.
On my seventh birthday,
my cousin took me to the store room; no one knows.
