My mother shows me a piece of news where they have found
a new species of a lizard, Indrasaurus Wangi, from the fossilized
belly of a microraptor. I don’t know anything about palaeontology or
herpetofauna & neither does she but we are joyous like that. More than
once she has pointed out Pleiades in the night sky while I’ve tried to spot
Orion. She knew the Seven Sisters before she knew what they were called.
She’s smart like that. She has this spatial-visual knowledge of things
that I can guarantee nobody in my family does like by some genius
intuition and logic she can imagine how pipes spread and plumbing
works or how the mechanics of heat operates in pressure cookers –
how do you think I have survived twenty-five years without burns?
And yet, if you don’t acknowledge the intelligence of someone who
second-guesses herself, she dwarfs in size like an island shrinking.
Mother – this is just to say, I praise you.
Kunjana Parashar is a poet from Mumbai who holds an MA in English Literature from Mumbai University. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Hellebore, Barren Magazine, The Rumpus (ENOUGH series), Nightingale & Sparrow, Camwood Literary Magazine, Mura, and elsewhere.
Twitter: @wolfwasp