One monsoon morning when he was ten,
Nana was granted his first set of new
Clothes- a vest and a lungi.
After a decade of semi-nakedness
And his father’s over sized rags.
“I laughed and I cried", he is said to have told
His four daughters decades later.
“I wore them once and folded them up for Id”.
His white vest and white blue lined lungi.
One monsoon morning when he was ten,
Dysentery felled Nana’s elder sister
Three fallen teeth and a hundred stories older
They didn’t have the coins for a two meter shroud.
They buried her that rainy day
They buried her in that white-blue dream.
“And I stood in the rain”
Nana is said to have told my ma and her sisters,
“And cried shamelessly”
That white blue-hemmed lungi.
Nana- Maternal grandfather
Lungi or longyi- Long loose skirt worn by men.
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