Written piece
The Unbroken Stitch
Kunal Sharma
India
About this piece
The Unbroken Stitch" is a poem exploring the enduring bond between a grandson and his Dadaji (grandfather) as he faces dementia. It depicts how the "thread" of love transcends lost memories, woven instead through a shared ten-rupee Chocobar and a hand that still holds on.
My Dadaji was a teacher who spent his life
sharing the threads of knowledge with a thousand sons.
He has the deep, rolling voice of an old cinema actor
a voice that used to command a classroom,
now wandering through the fog of his seventies.
He is an old man, but never an old soul.
We used to sit close to the screen,
sharing the satire of a movie we both loved.
He never made fun of people; his wit was a gentle needle,
poking fun at the world with a dry, clever laugh
that only I knew how to trigger.
Now, the dementia tries to unspool him.
He loses the name of the film, the plot, the year.
So I go to the corner shop and bring him the only
thing that still tastes like home:
a ten-rupee Chocobar.
We sit together in the quiet—the teacher and the student.
As the chocolate melts, the years fall away.
He doesn't need to remember my name to be my best friend.
The thread between us isn't made of memories anymore;
it’s made of the cold sweetness of an ice cream,
and the warmth of a hand that still knows how to hold on.
*Note: 'Dadaji' is an Indian term for Grandfather.