Saliman as usual sits in her makeshift confectionery shop,

As I arrive there to do menial shopping;

I know what she will ask me, for she has asked it

hundreds of times before when I came to her shop —

‘What’s your age, my son?’ And I always tell it to her.

Then she smiles with moisture in her eyes recalling her daughter —

The baby-girl was born on 14th August — the same day as I was born.

. . . but the girl, Varisa her name, died in her infancy, and I survived.

So Saliman loves me like a mother loves her child.

Even after thirty-five years, she cannot forget her daughter.

And I distinctly see a mixed expression of pain and satisfaction

writ large on her face — pain for having lost her child and satisfaction

for having someone in her life of the same exact age and color.

Saliman is seventy now, but she carries a childlike aura on her face.

She is snow-white and her color has not faded through terrible time.

I’m awe-struck as I return home: Saliman doesn’t ask the Question today.

Just she asks after my wellbeing, my job, my family and nothing else.

But the moisture is there still in her vacant, infantile, smiling eyes,

perhaps Time has taught her to accept life and bear all its backlashes.