Tea with Maternal Figure

2025, Oil on birch board, cradled with teak, 18 x 24 inches

The air was rich with the smell of cardamom, tainted with domestic familiarity and dysfunction. The poet, swathed in a white kurta that glimmered faintly in the soft afternoon light, reached for his teacup with deliberate care, his movements as delicate as the brushstrokes of a miniature painting. 

Across from him, the mother figure sat enveloped in the deep blues of her sari, the fabric shimmering with a quiet luster, as if alive with secrets. Her face, half-lit by the fractured sunlight spilling through lace curtains, bore the calm opacity of a dream—unreadable, infinite. 

The room was heavy with the quaint hum of existence, as though time had folded in on itself. Between them sits a teapot painted with ghostly blooms, its spout slightly chipped, and a plate of biscuits glowing golden, arranged in unnerving precision. 

The intimacy between them is unspoken, a silent understanding born of years spent together in this very room, every corner alive with whispers of the past. Sparing, their conversation is a thread of silk unraveling in the quietude. 

As the light shifted, casting the lace curtains into fleeting patterns of shadow and gold, the poet found himself drawn into the hypnotic rhythm of her movements. He watched as she lifted her teacup, her fingers tracing its rim, as if searching for something hidden in the warmth of its brew. In her quiet ceremony, he felt echoes of his own search for meaning—each word, like each sip of tea, a small sacred act. It was in these moments, he realized, that life was at its most profound. Not in the grand gestures or the tumult of the world, but in the simple joys shared between two souls steeped in time. 

"That boy—he's taken to painting, they say. But only in black and white." His voice lingered in the air, then dissolved, swallowed by the room's strange stillness. The mother figure did not reply immediately. Instead, she lifted her teacup with deliberate grace, her bangles catching the light, casting fragmented rainbows onto the pale walls. Her expression hovered between thoughtfulness and detachment, like a figure in one of Vermeer's interiors, caught mid-motion. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper, yet it seemed to fill the room. "There's always a story behind a boy who sees the world in shadows," she said, her words unfurling slowly, like the curl of steam rising from her cup. Her tone held no judgment, only the eerie clarity of someone who knew more than she let on. 

The poet's gaze drifted to the lace curtains again, now trembling faintly in a breeze that carried with it the scent of damp Earth and distant flowers. For a moment, he was overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu, as though this moment, this ceremony of tea and quiet revelations had happened before, or would happen again. The mother figure tilted her head slightly, as if she could sense his thoughts, her eyes glinting with something both maternal and unknowable. The room seemed to stretch and contract with their shared silences, every detail charged with meaning: the faint stain on the divan's armrest, the distant flutter of a Myna's wing, and always pale gold light filtering through the windows like something remembered than real. 

And yet, as the poet sipped his now-cool tea, he felt a strange contentment. In this suspended moment, where time, memory and tea blended seamlessly, he understood something about himself—though what it was, he could not yet name.