A few monsoons ago,
the bathroom door in my parents’ house
grew too big for its birches!
Grew stubborn as ego,
noisy as dissent,
refusing to close all the way ever again.

When asked to shave it down a notch,
Father absently grumbles about
expensive labour and missing tax rebates.
before turning up the volume and
returning to his news debates.
‘Come winter,’ he says,
‘and the recalcitrant door will shrink anyway!’

Mother is a funambulist. Walks a tightrope
between two skyscrapers. Expertly
protects her modesty by using the loo
in the silences of midnight and daybreak!
A fleeting window for all her ablutions.
The rude awakening of an icy shower
for her servile, exhausted bones.
Her noiseless footsteps
cradling a sleeping household.

Father clinks teacups and rustles newspapers.
Carries on like someone
who has never been told that his body
is both a treasure and a shameful little secret.
A credenza table upon which rests
generations of honor! A body
never burdened with teasing out crops
from the vaults of its soil, nor
suffered to hold social dichotomy
under the fragile barriers of its skin.
In this house he eats without waiting,
while mother waits till the very end to eat.
She calls it “love”, and we chuckle
and roll our eyes. But when
he calls it love, our lunch curdles inside.

It’s easy for us to censure her choices
from our perch. We, the defiant daughters,
bristling under our mother’s benign shade.
We, the Black Drongos, with split tails.
At the first sight of feather – flying our nest.
We live in our own flats now
with bathroom doors that are bolted
even when we are the only ones at home,
because so much of womanhood is
a frantic search for autonomy
through backwater and brome!
To be the curators of our own safety, through
private bank accounts, and bedroom doors
that shut tight, the company of other women,
and windows that let in all kinds of sunlight.

But when we visit the old house yearly,
we often walk in on him standing
at the commode, his back to us,
ejecting a staggering stream.
The broken sound of it rankles in our ears
like an unwanted intimacy.
We scatter about the house, evading
eye contact. Scarlet embarrassment
seeping through our skin while
he goes about his day.
How strange that in a house
filled with estrogen, a man is still
free of blame! How bizarre that
even as spectators, we absently reach
for the DNA memory of shame.

And when our turn comes to
brave the bathroom, we stand guard
for each other, or croon
miserable songs in our broken voices,
like caged songbirds plotting their escape,
longing to fly back to the moon.