On The Problem of Translation

Begin with the kitchen.
Do not translate the pressure cooker.
Keep the first whistle. Keep the second.
Keep the third,
when your mother turns down the flame
without looking up from the television.
Keep the steel dabba
with the lid that never closes properly.
Keep the smell of tadka
stuck to the curtains.
Keep the coriander
scattered beside the tomatoes,
waiting for its turn in the pot.
Do not translate
“Khaana kha liya?”
You may write:
Have you eaten?
But this is inaccurate.
The original contains
a reminder,
a reprimand,
a question about your day,
and the suspicion that you have been surviving on biscuits again.
There is no English word for all of that.
—
Translate the monsoon.
Begin with the balcony.
The clothes were brought in
five minutes too late.
The bedsheet smells damp.
Someone has put a bucket
under the leak in the ceiling.
There is a mosquito coil burning
near the window.
The whole house smells
of wet clothes,
Dettol,
and rain.
Keep the slippers
turned upside down outside the bathroom.
Keep the newspaper
spread beneath the umbrella.
Keep the pakodas
passed around with the warning
“Garam hai, sambhal ke”
If possible,
translate the first sip of chai.
If it tastes like home,
you have failed.
It is supposed to taste
like sitting cross-legged
on the sofa
while rain hits the balcony grill
and somebody says,
Aur chai bana doon?
—
Translate your father's voice
when he calls you from another room.
You will need no words.
The first call means:
Come here.
The second means:
I know you heard me.
The third means:
Don't make me come looking for you.
Do not translate the silence
after you finally appear.
Keep it.
—
Translate the school uniform.
The ironed collar.
The ink stain
on your fingers.
The smell of coconut oil
in the morning.
The hair ribbon your mother
yanks with force.
The lunchbox you forget
on the dining table.
The panic at 7:48 a.m.
The rickshaw waiting downstairs.
Your mother shouting,
“Jaldi!”
You running back upstairs
because you forgot your water bottle.
The door being locked
behind you.
Her voice from the balcony:
Call when you reach.
Write exactly that.
—
Now translate the house
after everyone has gone to sleep.
The kitchen light left on.
One plate in the sink.
Your father's slippers
outside the bedroom.
Your mother's phone
charging beside her pillow.
Do not call it beautiful.
It has cracked mugs,
plastic chairs,
a switch that works only when pressed the second time
It has your height
marked into the doorframe.
Call it ordinary.
Years later,
when you live somewhere else,
you will miss the chaos.
Someone calling your name
from another room.
A plate appearing
before you say you're hungry.
Call when you reach.
But they will sound different
outside that house.
Perhaps that is what leaving home does:
it leaves you with the words
and takes away
the voice around them.