I see my mother, as a rehabilitation zone. An interim between a generation that fell to its knees, and children that learnt to accept their bandaged bodies. She had taught her legs to quicken, on her way home. Chased, more by the thought of bringing shame to her family, than any relaistic personification of danger; maybe a thief, maybe a dog, maybe a man. Her hands, grew stronger, resistant to the heat of a stove, moulded by candle light as she studied, before the sun set on her future. Marriage, was both her destruction and escape. Just as she had learnt, that her trees and creepers needed no mountain soil, that her birds were her own, her crops, acclimatized to the taste of her rivers- She was taken; to a foreign land, to a foreign man, to a foreign idea of self. I grew up a gypsy child, my first language was Bengali, separated miles on land, from my mother's tongue. But my mother taught me, taught herself, to look at the Bay of Bengal, and taste the Indian Ocean. As if her separation were a pilgrimage, an homage to every woman who was stuck, between cultures, between men, between ideas of self. And I, have taught myself to look for her ancient heritage, in her coconut dominated delicacies, in her religious adages for my safety, and her reluctance to step over our threshold. My mother might have been a rehabilitation zone, but she has never understood the rules of a life, post-disaster.
My Mother, is a Rehabilitation Zone // a.z
day 17 - write a poem about a natural disaster.
