Malavika Binny on Clubhouse

Bio

🧑‍🎓🕵️Historian.
♀️Intersectional Feminist.
🪂Traveller.32 countries and counting ....
🧑‍🍳 Foodie...

Tak, tak, tak….went my mom’s sewing machine;

it whirled and wheezed churning out  tapestries of magic;

lace, buttons and sequins laid out in mango pendants, persian ovals

and a thousand other patterns; delicate tussar to the finest jute,

fabric came alive and danced to the machine’s tune-

at the touch of her needle. Off-shoulders, boat-necks, high collars

flowed out as rivers of frocks, blouses, suits and trousers.

 

Every night as I was lullabied to sleep

with the rhythm of the sewing machine,

stacks of unlabelled haute couture lay beside me,

only to vanish in the morning-like the memory of an unruly sibling

who disappeared last monsoon, never to be seen again.

 

Tring, tring, tring… rang the school bell,

as I scampered from the corridor to the classroom;

red ribbons, t-strap rubber shoes, pleated green skirt,white shirt;

Which was of a hue of white with a tint of ujala;

a blue-white which deserved a patent of its own.

 

The class monitor stood like a miniature sentinel with pig-tails;

her eyes peering to catch a flaw in a sea of bobbing heads and blue-whites.

Ribbon-check, shoe-check, braided hair-check, uniform-check

-Oh no,it’s a fail!

As the little Sherlock showed Rosakutty Miss my frayed-torn left cuff,

 her eyes glimmered with dutiful pride and mine filled with fear.

Miss Rosa smirked and asked -

“So, the tailor’s daughter doesn’t know to sew, eh?!”

 

The calluses on mother’s fingers, the smell of machine oil and cuticura powder,

the forever faded sarees, amma’s ill fitted blouses, the bedsheets with patches,

images rang through her brain as the class laughter flooded the school corridor,

‘No, she doesn’t and she never will!’

– an answer she whimpered to herself resolute.

 

As she moved from the schoolyard to the university library,

Years later in her bungalow; she would stack her silks and suits

on the bed everyday next to her as she slept; fearing in her dreamless sleep

that in the morning, these too would disappear;

 like a father who walked off into the monsoon rains,

like a brother who faded into the sunken soil,
she clutched her silks as if they were her mother’s shrivelled hands;
even as an unheard sewing machine song lullabied her to sleep.