There’a broken tap in the kitchen sink,
It keeps shredding pellets of water at night,
Many tried to fix it,
To repair the seal.
Yet it remains broken.
But doesn’t leak during morning hours,
For mum ties it with a muslin cloth.
“See now? There’s always a way to fix broken things,” Maa proudly says,
“I wish temporary solutions would work that way,”
I continue with the dishes for the day
With the soggy old sponge, I start cleaning the dishes,
It has holes now, blobs of black dots surround its core,
Yet it scrubs away the dirt and cleans the vessels perfectly fine.
Maa’s favourite steel kadhai is blackened due to overuse,
It takes me more than a couple of mins to scrub a small patch of dot,
“Ugh this won’t go away, Maa!!”
“Oh it’s an old stain, it won’t leave this quick,”
maa reckons to me,
“Then what do I do?”
“Find a way to clean the black stain, Shibu.”
“But it’ll take a lot more time, too much work.”
I sigh,
“Then what do you wish to do?
Let the stain get darker and even more difficult to get off?”
Maybe she was right,
Maybe old stains never leave their shore easily after all.
Keep getting darker by day,
And harder to forget or erase.
-Shivani Dubey.