these wooden boxes travelled with us

at least my memories say they did

one smelled of the village my parents grew up in

invoking unremembered affective memories of a maternal (farming) grandfather

handing me sweets

and bananas – bananas from his fields

and his sister – my paternal grandmother teaching me to write

on a palaka with balapam

in telugu

[perhaps this is why my father's literacy always reached for his mother
and my mother made fruits and flowers out of earth wherever she had a patch of land]

The screeching of this dark wooden box – as they wove yarn out of cotton
is in chorus

with the humming of the other box that

trying to train my voice to sing melodiously to a beat

a beat I could never quite master

as the screeching of the the balapam

called to me to write in another language

taught to me by a white british lady in a land of very dark-skinned people

as my mother grew mangoes and snake-gourds on that patch of land

and I grew up with playmates climbing trees not knowing color differences

searching for community

trying to connect

it is the weaver in me that allows my child to program computers

it is the poet in my father that compels me to write

it is the singer in her that forces me to seek shruti

always falling out of taalam – missing a beat once too often

the creaking old box with the smell of cotton and wood – the musty rurality connecting

with the patches of earth

It is the weaver in you that teaches you your perfect rhythm

as you sing and seek
It is the musician in him that allows him to lead you to sing

It is her desire for literacy that aids my struggle to write

dialoguing with a community of old men and their ghosts …