A Burning

by Megha Majumdar

VIOLENCE

cutlass

laugh

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is the pain I am carrying with me when I am going home and seeing a woman squatting outside my door. Her head is down, and her hair is silver. Hearing my footsteps, she is standing up, and immediately I am seeing the resemblance: It is Jivan’s mother. Inside, she is sitting on my mattress, because there is nowhere else to sit. With her legs folded, her glistening eyes, her small hands, she is looking like a child. Then she is asking me a question that no mother should be having to ask. “Mother,” I am saying to her afterward, “I am knowing what it is like to lose a loved one. And poor Jivan is also lost, at this moment. But the good thing is that she will be coming back.” Jivan’s mother is holding her tea glass in her hand and looking at me, waiting for my

the fall and slide of the new bangles. Their movement delights her. I soothe myself with daydreams of Lovely in the courtroom. Imagine when she comes to my trial and says, in that bold voice of hers, that the package all these