Naukar

I took down your photograph last week. Bhaiya yelled at the kabaadiwallah; he had stolen a few thousand. from the windowsill. by the cardboard sign that reads Future Perfect.

He drinks. swilling and swishing and swimming. Mumma was afraid that night and she held my hand. the refrigerator broke again, the old godrej. that aunty’s kulfi melted. you weren’t watching any more, though. your photograph was in the steamer trunk, face down.
He keeps talking about china; they’re coming. through the mountains in Garhwal, he says. and you didn’t teach him how to pray in time.
Naani says it’s the poison. don’t be too intelligent, she told me. Eat some cloves. I go to your pantry and sit on the concrete. your check shirt from 1998 is still hanging there. and the matchboxes full of sealing wax. everything is gone now. but it’s still there.

one last cup of tea, he said. we’ll sit together on the drawing room floor. tell me about Amreeka.
Mamaya says alcoholics are liars first.
you would play with my earlobes as a child, he told me.

you sat with a palm full of lychees on the ground and you couldn’t sound out ‘chuh’. and I told you stories about maharanis.

one last cup of tea before I leave, okay? there were so many filthy cups. Chandra didn’t clean them well. they smelled of boiled milk. he took everything with him.
nobody will buy the brass. I’ll take it all. hire a tempo, I’ll take it to the village. there was a fire in the fields. the cattle died but the children survived. what happened to the forty thousand? what forty thousand? I don’t know. I don’t know.

your tulsi plant sits on the veranda. it’s still alive. I pass by it and tear off a leaf, the way you taught me; gently, gently. it is sour-sweet. the air smells of jasmine. it always smells of jasmine when I think of you.