When I was a child and an angry soul, as most children are, 
my mother gifted me a harmonium, hand pumped, 
with strong German reeds 
and powerful bellows. She always wished I could be her daughter
after three sons and she used to wrap me up in a little girl’s attire 
when I was really small
Later she wished I could at least sing her favourite Tagore songs
as her youngest son 
and I always imagined someone with a delicate voice had been waiting 
long in the box for my music class
since it was made in Dwarkin & Son’s Harmonium Workshop 
in Calcutta’s ruined north 
 
But the harmonium remained a locked classroom 
of blue notes and trills 
which I could never open in my entire life. I fumbled with its parts,
forgetting the whole;
Nobody from the box could ever respond at all 
 
You always need someone close to open anything new: love, hate, 
music, desire or death,
and gradually learn how it works inside you like a rust , a patina 
or a tarnish
But my mother, a poet, unpublished, 
believed all beautiful things come naturally to man and woman 
if our minds are open. Later I found out she almost echoed 
David Hume, the philosopher 
But life is a spoiler.
I could never meet the person in the harmonium; 
the harmonium could never turn into a box of two-some carnival; 
my mother could not publish her poems anywhere; my father lost 
the hearing in his right ear
when I finally grew up as her mumbling fourth son 
 
The harmonium lay, like a sleeping cathedral without a spire, 
in a deep drawer, a womb in a wooden wardrobe
my mother's wedding gift, for decades waiting to be greeted 
by someone close: 
breath to breath, reed to reed
Its every part longed to be touched by caring finger tips, 
the bellows eager for new air pumped into them, the reeds dying 
for a reassuring voice 
to match the music box's refined pitches bit by bit,
like running up a hill 
 
After the death of my mother, I sold the wardrobe 
with the old harmonium still in it