Prologue
There is a kind of poem that does not explain anything. It just asks. An Enote belongs to that quiet tradition. Rather than describing what happened, it turns toward objects and places and poses the questions we usually keep to ourselves.
Most of us have stood at the edge of a remembered room, whether in sleep, in a photograph, or in the sudden smell of something from childhood. This prelude opens into one such return. The poem is not a map of one house, but a door left ajar into the inheritance we all carry: the moment we realize the people who raised us have settled into our gestures, our cautions, our voices, while we were busy believing we were leaving them behind. The questions inside belong to all of us. The answers, if there are any, belong to each reader alone.
Is the morning’s cool still trapped in the rustic floor?
Does the verandah recall who first took the easy-chair at dawn?
Do the wooden windows still groan on their hinges when lifted?
Does the temple bell’s echo arrive before the milkman’s bicycle turns the corner?
Do crows still bicker along the top of the compound wall?
And does the kitchen still stir to life before the rest of the house has opened its eyes?
Does the coffee filter still know which hand pressed the powder flat?
Did Mother take the smallest mango slice and call it hers?
Did Grandfather fold the newspaper into a puzzle no one else could solve?
Why did Father switch off the fan before the room had finished emptying?
Why did Grandmother keep pickle jars long after the last of the pickle was gone?
What made an empty biscuit tin worth a second life?
And why did every length of string end its days folded in a drawer?
Whose hand drew the rangoli in the front-yard before the lane filled with bicycles?
Who brought jasmine wrapped in damp newspaper from the temple street?
Who made certain the brass lamp held enough oil to last the evening?
Whose voice called us indoors before the dusk mosquitoes descended?
Who turned the radio louder for the headlines and softer for the rest of us?
And whose scolding filled the house when the front gate was left swinging open?
Whose hand checked the deadbolt after everyone went to bed?
Who called out, “Is the stove off?” though the kitchen stood dark and still?
Who called from across the house about the bathroom light left blazing?
Did we roll our eyes before switching it off?
Did we swear we would never become people who worried about such things?
And did the house store those vows somewhere for its own amusement?
At what point did I start folding the newspaper before putting it away?
When did a length of string stop being trash and start being worth keeping?
When did an empty tin begin suggesting something it might still hold?
When did my voice drop on its own when the next room held someone sleeping?
When did my hand check the bolt a second time before I turned for bed?
And when did I start calling out about lights left on in empty rooms?
Were their habits waiting in us while we laughed at them?
Did repetition do what advice never managed?
Did their cautions settle into our hands while we resisted their words?
Did we inherit the small things before we understood the large ones?
Did Father’s carefulness turn into what I now call common sense?
Did Mother’s fussing return through the questions I ask before someone leaves the house?
When did patience begin to look like strength?
When did silence become the wiser reply?
When did responsibility lose its dull reputation?
When did saving the better piece for someone else stop looking foolish?
When did worry begin asking whether everyone reached home?
When did their rules soften into gestures we now recognize as love?
Was the town our first teacher in what it means to carry forward?
Did the flower seller return each dawn because some things survive through repetition?
Did the rangoli vanish under footsteps only to return the next morning?
Did Grandfather inherit his thrift from someone whose name we no longer say?
Did Grandmother’s recipes carry hands older than hers?
Did this house see our parents as children, running through these same rooms?
Did someone once tell Father to turn off the light he had left on?
Did someone once scold Mother for a vessel left uncovered?
Did they sigh too?
Did they promise they would do things differently?
Did every generation leave this house certain that the next one would be wiser?
When their voices fade, will ours echo them?
When our children laugh at our saving and checking, will we hear our own laughter from long ago?
Will they one day ask when these habits became theirs?
If we have become our parents, where did they end and we begin?
Does a house forget a family that has left?
Or does it wait for each generation to learn that home is carried within?