Storyteller of the Week

 Abha Das Sarma

 

 

 Abha Das Sarma family at wedding of youngest son Akash in 2016.

Abha Das Sarma lives in India and has been married to her husband, Dipankar, for 44 years and they have three sons, twins, Atish and Anish, and Akash and four granddaughters who all live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

She has always been more passionate about the literature and arts than her profession as engineer and manager.

She has been writing personal poems in her blog for over ten years, however, she began writing to publish in 2020.

Her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, The Ekphrastic Review, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press. Blue Heron Review among other journals and in the print anthologies Pixie Dust & All Things Magical and Soul Spaces (Poems on Cities, Towns & Villages).

Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

When Abha Das Sarma and I first complimented each other on our poetry on Verse-Virtual by email in 2020, we were drawn to each other like magnets and instantly knew we would be friends forever.

“I love the feeling of melancholy in your poems,” she wrote.

“Your imagery is exquisite,” I wrote.

We soon learned we had more in common than we thought. Although she lives in a city in India and I live in open range and a wildlife habitat in Arizona, the climate is similar, and we both live in homes built to keep us cool in the hot summer months and warm in the winter. Both of us are professional women, we both have three sons and grandchildren we adore. We both support each other’s poetry any way we can.,

When I decided to sign on with a publisher from India, Abha offered to be my interpreter.When my publisher’s wife read my poem on YouTube, Abha immediately told me every word she recited.

When she travels from India to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit her three sons and granddaughters, she always calls me on my birthday. She told me one of her sons lives on a hill and they see doe, fawn, coyotes and rattlesnakes just like I do in my front yard.

When I was recovering from a bad fall in 2021, Abha was one of my cheerleaders encouraging me and giving me hope I could walk again.

She was the first poet friend I mentioned in my tribute poem: “Mind Traveling.”

https://impspired.com/2022/10/03/sharon-waller-knutson/

When Silver Birch Press was asking for submissions in their One Good Memory Series in 2022, I encouraged Abha to submit. She wrote me that the editor rejected her poem and gave her an extension to write a narrative poem.

“I don’t think I can do it,” she said.

“Of course, you can,” I said. “Just write about our telephone call.”

When her poem was accepted, she said if it hadn’t been for my faith in her and encouragement, she probably wouldn’t have bothered.

I am proud as punch to publish that poem and others that show who Abha is as a person.

As I call my poet friend Sharon in Arizona

Springing army of hands
grip from sides of the lazy-boy couch,

contrasting in color to my hair
now a pure white.

Get the hair brush, quick—
commands the elder by three years
as the little one shoots back and forth
with combs, headbands and a box full of hair coils.

No, not black! Get the others—
Which color do you like, Dida? the sisters chatter.

Is it Sharon? Sharon in Arizona? I try to hear
still in captivity of tiny fingers,
Yes, I’m calling from San Francisco.

My granddaughters continue to part my hair
into as many strands as the colors of ties—
Alcot and Merry still at my feet
purring, their tails up, joining in celebration,
sensing ultimate victory as I surrender
to pulling, plaiting, and simply knotting.

Why don’t you comb mine?
I hear my husband say in distance—
After you color them white
the answer is clear, a blessing
that I have carried for the last thirty years.

Oh Sharon, are you still there—
Can you hear my granddaughters?

Two faces and four eyes swoop over my mobile
swift as an eagle on its prey contemplating flight
with growing dusk and fading light.

I’m going back to India in two days
I struggle to complete—
Is Sharon your friend? the eldest asks,
Yes. Would you like to talk to her?

There is silence—
It is ok to be shy, I tell them
as I say goodbye to Sharon.
My granddaughters continue to install a bun
out of my scant hair
with the dedication of a monk.

The Lives We Hold

I learnt to drive at the age of thirty-five,
a commendable feat considering what it means
to be on the Indian roads. I was now free
of the queues, edging past the bus doors,
negotiating the rides wishing I was trained to be a trapeze artist

I was delightfully on my own.

Before long I began to miss the way the buses moved
disregarding completely the three wheelers and the motorbikes
that dared to come close. In and out of the pot holes,
sending all shrieking in decibels and the pitch they were capable ofand in search of a bar, handle or a shoulder.

The view akin to being on top of a hill or a place of virtue.

It was not only the landscape that was lost but the faces
on the footpaths, the little eateries in bylanes
offering snacks and tea attempting to stay time momentarily.
The bonds invisible at first from those hours in the bus
irrespective of origin, upbringing and reach.

Designer wallets to cloth bags, learning to cope with what we had.

Today when I pass by a bus tilting with weight,
hands pressed against the window panes,
feet playing the balancing game, I remember most
the lives we hold.

 

The Letterbox

I never lived in that house that stood
opposite a village of sorts, inhabited by
builders of gravel paths, dead alleys and the ghost of a town,
a house I did not visit until
my boys began to walk, and the town's little pond
turned into a swamp, still
at the gate of this house they would stand, all day watching
the piglets come out of the pond, happy,
huddled in the warmth of the sun, their mothers, and several generations,
shaking their little twisted tails as devotees would
burst into prayers at the emergence of the priest after a solemn dip in the holy water, based on belief, like the ritual
my father would conduct, twice a day

as he would walk through the door, slowly, up to
where the gate ended. Nailed in the corner hung the letterbox, locked.
His expression unchanged as he returned from
this act of complete faith—he never found any letters, yet
that is what I remember about him best.
He would cycle to Bhootnath, a market named after deity Shiva
to get the sweets and savoury that the boys loved,
continued on that old bicycle, dressed and hair combed
even though we visited less and less. He kept up the habit,
until the accident caused the fall.
The last time I visited the house, the letterbox
hung rusted shut, crucified at the corner of the gate
guarding my father's memory, my house,
and my faith is my inheritance.  
                      
The Story Keepers

The morning stirs
and the rain slips through my bedside window
dropping gently on the ground
bringing back days of youth, of music and food
to an otherwise abandoned piece of land
from Rampur, a small north Indian town.

It would come alive all winters
past evenings and until midnight
with lights sober and bright
as the music played and the food was laid out.

The musicians arrived from around the country
with tunes their hearts desired, pop, light and classical,
the food stalls filled with chaats, kachoris and rolls,
ice cream and cakes in corners.

The entire town would reach
sons, daughters and their parents of many generations
carrying years of rigor and fascination.
The air breathed with joy, filled with aroma.

All was possible and all was in doubt
as the food, music, hearts and minds combined
bringing forth the story keepers of modern times.

Untimely rains adding to belief
that all could be set right and there would still be time

She Held the Rainbow

in memory of my mother

The cushion had faded nursing the chair
by the dresser, a place I envied much
where she would sit, my mother,
hair entwined, dripping, searching through
the multitude of reflections as I wondered behind
if she wished what could not be or what was yet to come.

She was beautiful then and everything else I would dream.

Threading the beads, holding the thread in between
her fingers delicate and rich from the perfume of ‘sindur‘
and the lip gloss rarely used.”
It will probably be a cloudy day,” she would say
pulling herself, walking and settling on to her favorite bed,
Looking into the yard, wet wild shrubs, guavas and marigolds,
sewing small silks for the Gods studded with beads and mysticism.

A blank staircase solemnly watching, imagining children play.

As I returned to find the box of beads for the last time,
the dresser by now cobwebbed heavily and the yard
a haven of overgrown grass,
her pricked fingers caressed my hair, parting them in thick lines,
holding the ends of the string threaded with beads, still
she held the rainbow of life.

The Wait

As I write
someone, somewhere
waits.
I imagine 'What it is', to say
hungry and stay that way
and if
she could be my friend
at lunch,
a table well laid.
When asked
'Are you a vegetarian', I remark:
Hunger has no caste-

it eats, itself, and lasts
longer than
you and I, ever thought.

“The Letterbox,” first appeared in Verse Virtual, “The Lives We Hold” and “Story Keepers” in Visual Verse, “She held the Rainbow” in Sparks of Calliope and “The Wait” in Poetry X Hunger.
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