I have grown up
in a family
where love doesn’t happen
in the way DDLJ’s
Simran hugs Raj
amidst the mustard field
But where love smiles
in the kitchen
when baba helps mami
in household chores
so that they both can
shower punctuality
at their job places.
I have grown up
in a family
where good morning kiss
& good night cuddles
are the luxuries
that my parents can’t afford
and gift to each other publicly
But love crowns their heads
when their feet
tap simultaneously
on a morning walk,
when they doze
in a united rhythm
while sitting on a sofa
late at the night.
I have grown up
in a family
where ‘I love you’ & ‘I miss you’
are the sentences of
foreign language
that my parents don’t know
in fact, they never try to learn
But love sings
an ode for them
when she calls him
to interrogate him
“tiffin khaisarilani?”
when he dials
her number to ask her
“school ru pherilani?”.
I have grown up
in a family
where neither pseudofeminism
threatens my father
nor patriarchy
bothers my mother
But here interdependence
breathes freely
without the pollution
of ego & attitude
when clinging to the culture
she touches his feet every morning
instead of putting a question mark
on the equality norms of society
when smashing the set of masculine rules
he massages her feet every time
she goes to bed after heavy workload.
I have grown up in a family
where my attention while listening
“Kaho naa pyaar hai“
gets disturbed by the
explanatory talks of baba
to make mami understand the things
that she doesn’t know
and then asking her
for suggestions
to lessen his confusion,
where my thoughts while scrolling
the HD-quality lovey-dovey photos
of lovers on Instagram
with hashtag relationshipgoals & blah blah
loaded with dozens of colored hearts
get interrupted by
by the repeated shriek of mami
from the kitchen
to make baba have
his before food medicine in time.
I have grown up in a family
where romantic love doesn’t smell
like that of branded perfume,
where romantic love doesn’t sound
like Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect”,
where romantic love doesn’t look
like aesthetic couple pictures,
where romantic love doesn’t feel
like the petals of fresh red roses,
where I get perplexed
whether to mug up the definition
of romance, of love
that dialogues of movies tell
or to decode the ditty
of romance, of love
that my parents sing silently.
But as I grow up
my perplexity discovered
the flavor of the love between them
romance between them
how it tastes like
the delicious recipes of
paneer pasinda or mushroom munchurian
of fish besara or prawn dopiaza
which are named after
single key ingredient
but incomplete
and completely tasteless
without the salt of support
oil of loyalty
& spices of esteem.
©ruchiabhisikta
Half earth, half sky 