Our Verandah Tailor

For the last ten years or more
you made my mother’s home your own;
Traipsing in and out as you pleased,
Your demented son on your trail
To torture you with complaints of his life
Unfulfilled, possessed, sterile, alone.
You bore his barbs in sad silence.
But I know how deep the scars ran,
For you, verandah tailor,
Farid our Durzee
were something special.

     Hazratganj was your beginning
     The havelis of Atiya and Rezia Hussain
     where the tales of Ismat Chughtai
     were spun, and nawabs and begums moaned
     as they tossed down pounds of pan
     sighing on charpoys
     heavy with satin ghararas
     muslin kurtas and chiffon dopattas.
     But your strength Farid
     lay beyond that opulent decadence.

          For you, first and last
          were a memsahib’s verandah tailor.

               Like Fazlu of my childhood
               whose breath fumed acrid toddy
               but whose hands could conjure up,
               from fashion books in alien tongue,
               sheer shimmering velvets and ruffles
               straight from Calcutta’s Hall and Anderson.
               His smocks, rompers and dungarees
               looked like off the pegs of Selfridges.

                    In that mould and from that clay
                    you carved my silken waistcoats, Farid
                    and with my printed blue dressing gown
                    in Christ Church - Oxford town
                    they walked with me on fresh meadows
                    not far from my cathedral room in the House.

                         And on that hot August day in 1970
                         Encasing me in Aman’s brocade Sherwani
                         (Conceding once to tradition)
                         You cunningly crafted those sequins
                         on my bride’s gharara
                         magenta and gold.

                              On gossamer lawn you inserted lakhnavi lace
                              And filigreed cut outs then tucked away
                              In your faded cloth hold-all jhola
                              to Chandni Chowk’s women you went
                              to weave magical ‘kalis’ into kurtas
                              with delicately gnarled hands.