JAMIR NAZIR
The Arrival,
Nazir, my grandfather and great grandmother
She left the others in the doorway.
Told them: wait.
Took his hand — Nazir, the younger one —
and walked toward the water.
The recruiter found her already moving.
Already looking for her husband.
He just pointed her
at a ship
and said: “he’s there.”
She packed her small god.
Her pot.
Her few pieces of jewelry
pressed against her skin.
She believed him —
as one believes
when the alternative
is to stand still,
to let the horizon swallow the shore.
The shore went small.
Then gone.
Nazir remembered the trees.
The Bhojpuri singing
hanging in the village air.
He didn’t know
he was memorising it.
His mother stood at the railing
looking for his father’s face
in every face
until there was only water
and she understood
and said nothing
and kept looking anyway.
No husband at the other end.
A man with a list.
A finger pointing at the cane.
She set her small god
on the shelf above the door.
She sang the old songs at night
so Nazir would keep
his language in his mouth.
She never said the husband’s name.
Not once.
Not in all the years that followed
in that field
under that other sun.
I am his grandson.
I have the trees he couldn’t forget.
I have the songs I never heard
but know the shape of.
I have her —
a woman who left half her children
in a doorway in Bihar
and crossed the black water
looking for her husband
and never found him
and didn’t stop
for a single day of it.
The salt took what it needed.
She gave the rest —
the cracked bone, the silent name, the dust of Bihar —
entirely to the soil.
That’s all.
That’s everything.
The Call of Her Eyes
The day was ordinary —
just sky and heat
and her standing there —
I looked up and was caught —
not mirrors, not maps,
but clear enough to get lost in —
two questions asking me back.
Her laughter startled the birds,
scattered light across my hands —
It startled me like torn cloth —
an ordinary sound
that empties a room of pretence.
I feel her eyes on me
the way you feel the sun
long after you’ve turned away —
They rise when the lamp flickers,
when I read and lose my place,
when I lie awake
and my name hangs in the silence
between us —
I forget to count the minutes,
forget what day it was before she looked at me — su
yet I fill these pages with her —
For what else can I do
but answer the pull that rewrites me?
There’s no answer.
Only this: I fill pages.
She fills me.
The Master’s Empty Chair
The bell rang.
Boys filled the yard, laughing, arguing, playing. Everything felt normal.
Then I saw your classroom.
The door was open.
Your chair stood behind the desk, pushed back, as if you had just stepped out.
I kept expecting you to return.
Sir, I still had your book.
You told me not to rush it. “Books are not races.”
I laughed. You didn’t — then you did.
Once, I gave you a story.
You returned it covered in red.
“Good. Now we can begin.”
You stayed after school and explained every mark.
At assembly, the headmaster spoke.
I remember your name. The word loss. The heat.
At lunch, I went behind the library.
You once found me there after I failed a test.
You listened, then pointed to a goat eating newspaper.
“If that goat can survive today’s headlines, you’ll survive mathematics.”
I laughed until it hurt.
Rain came that afternoon.
Lessons drifted when it rained. Somehow, we always learned something.
School ended.
Everyone left.
I stayed.
I took out your book, traced your name.
The room felt empty in a new way.
I looked at your chair.
For a moment, I heard your voice:
“Well?
What have you got for me today?”
I lowered my head.
And began to write.
