By Kavita Nandan.
for our parents
Within reach is the waratah –
a mere stretch of hand past balcony
slips through a membrane
where one world disappears, another begins.
On top of leafy robe
sits the crown four metres high,
blood red lotus of the sky
multiple petals turned up to the sun
sparkle like Turkish lamps on display.
Others before, through bush, have marvelled at its crimson beauty,
first sights are a unique experience;
the Taj Mahal – resplendent ivory through a city of red dust –
a memory hard to erase.
Remember how we waited for them to bloom?
Closed pods swaying in the night lost
in the chirp of cricket, hoot of owl, click of possum,
waratah, wind – sisters waking from dehydrated menopausal sleep
now they wear their jewels in late winter
a pandemonium of parrots
come for days, drink nectar,
beaks selfishly drip with sweetness.
In silent witness and over time, you begin to belong.
Our ancestors –
beautiful like the waratah,
part of the diverse Proteaceae family –
people who
moved from an aquatic world to dry land –
the first journey: from villagers to indentured slaves
across the kala pani,
the second journey: from citizens to exiles
after a coup d’état –
switching emblems inexpertly.
Words can mean so little, then so much,
the waratah holds all of us in her cup,
Mother Nature at her best, unthreatening unlike people.
Our parents are her two green sepals
providing protection
at first, when we were only bud-like,
then, when we bloomed,
storing wisdom
in lignotuber – for living and losing –
(dis)possessed through migration
from place to place,
one phase of life into another,
resurrecting many times over –
once native then migrant then native again in
nature, equaliser of everything:
who’s boss, who’s slave, who belongs, who doesn’t.
We return to your circumference over and over
even in our middle age
and when the time for leaving comes
we’ll see you from afar –
warada.
warada – Eora Aboriginal word for the native waratah plant which means ‘beautiful’ and ‘seen from afar’.
kala pani – Hindi words which literally means ‘black waters’. To cross the kala pani to foreign lands was seen as a taboo, resulting in the loss of caste.
