Month: January 2023

He keeps with him a tarpaulin
To cover veggies on his cart,
But doesn’t carry anything
To cover any body part,

Except the dhoti wound around
His privates, wet and showing through,
As he decides to trudge his strides
Without a moment pausing to

Take shelter under dripping trees
Or squatting under ledges, eaves,
For he knows people sooner part
With clothes or longer handkerchieves

When they see Poverty parade
Its jaded jewels down the street,
Compared to when Sincere Trade
Is labouring in summer heat.

From task to task to task to task.
You pause, the darkness catches you.
So, move until it loses steam.
Or stop. And turn. And hug it too.

Evade it full. Embrace it full.
But anything between will hurt.
Already you have shoulder pain.
Perhaps, this time, embrace the spurt.

Do not sit idle. Seek no rest.
Do not be starved or overfed.
Exhaust yourself so much that sleep
Arrives before you hit the bed.

Come on, come on, come on, come on.
Outrun it now. Outrun it, please.
You have a cahance to show yourself
You can be free from this disease.

She’s learned to tie a simple knot –
She isn’t even nine months old,
She barely brings her palms to clap,
But she can tie a simple knot.

Of course, she can’t untie it yet.
That skill is harder yet to learn –
I struggle after thirty years
To open chutney packets still.

And that’s the trouble, isn’t it?
So easy to engage a knot,
So difficult to disengage.
The way we knot up everything.

I’m quite a mess of knotted Nots –
Do Not, Can Not, Will Not, Should Not –
That I have not (again, a not)
Yet figured out unknotting of.

And is that not (again, a not)
The word she’s hearing most these days?

To not eat random bits of trash;
To not run to the edge of beds;
To not play with our precious phones;
To not, to not, to not, to not…

So many Nots arresting her
Unfettered, novel energy.

The Nots my parents tied on me,
The Nots I tied without a thought,
The Nots I let some strangers tie,
Are still arresting most of me.

Perhaps, there is still hope for her:
She’s crazy fast at picking skills.

Sometimes, your zeal to be of help
Is what is getting in my way.
Because I ask you not to help,
You think I don’t appreciate.

When, on your own, you act for me
And make it somewhat worse for me,
You say you still deserve credit
For all the thought you put for me.

For me, for me, for me, for me.

You say you’re doing things for me,
But what you’re really doing is
Reminding yourself – later, me –
How good you are, though no one sees.

Reminding how you’re all alone
In working on relationships,
And how your loved ones do not care,
And take for granted how you feel.

And how they do not understand
The things that should be obvious,
That you shouldn’t even have to say,
‘Cause love is same for all of us.

Though you don’t stop from doing things
I tell you not to do at all,
You still expect they do the things
You do not even say at all.

Do not complain to me of them
If you can’t face them directly
And say to them those very words
And how you want the things to be.

To work on your relationships
Involves the act of making clear
The things you aren’t okay with
And wouldn’t want to face or hear.

But also be prepared for this:
They do not have to hear you out.
They have their own priorities
And every right to leave you out.

I’ve suffered one too many times
Because I felt entitled, owed.
Because I thought the ones I helped
Will help me lighten my own load.

You say you want to vanish off,
Because you feel you’re not required
By me or anyone at all.
You say you’re done, that you are tired.

Just know that I will always call
Whenever I feel need of you,
And also sometimes just to call,
To ask you how are things with you.

The doctors say he crossed a line –
A line on warning boards in woods
In which so many leopards live.

Policemen say he crossed a line –
A line of walkie talkie range,
Beyond which they couldn’t hear his call.

The rumours say he crossed a line –
A line in powdered contraband
The mafia had drawn with blood.

He hasn’t heard a single person
Moaning on the door of death,
“I wish I could have spent another
Hour at my working desk.”

He also hasn’t heard a person
Squatting in his waiting room,
“I wish you took some breaks, dear sir,
Your working hours will be your doom.”

“You cannot even swim a bit?”
“Or, make a fire for roasting corn?”
“Or, climb these trees to pluck the fruit?”
“Or, lead the cattle by the horn?”

The men are not impressed at all.
“You know, you’re like a poultry hen,
Who clucks all day and pecks all day
And spends her life inside her pen.”

“No wonder you spend all your cash
On branded clothes and stylish specs.
You have to show your money power
To get a girl to give you sex.”

They laugh, and as I laugh with them,
They find it strange and laugh some more.
“You have to man up, City Boy,
Or have to buy yourself a whore.”

“He’ll have to do it standing up.
He cannot push-up even once.”
“How can he when he has to lift
Those juicy juicy hot-cross buns?”

“You’re more a woman, aren’t you, Boy?”
“I saw you at the temple fair.”
“Yeah, dawdling with the womenfolk.”
“And shopping for some womenswear.”

“And when they tried on earrings, yeah?”
“He flattered them with ‘Naiice!’ and ‘Wow!’”
“And giggled with them all day long.”
So that is why they’re jealous now.

They call her to reverse the curse
That evil eyes inflict on kids,
That doctors with their medicines
Have failed so far to fully heal.

The energy she quietly breathes
Through blackened lips and vacant eyes
Diffuses and dilutes the curse
Enough for her to wrap it up
Around her golden bangled wrist.

She takes a heated, sharpened knife
And jabs its head into her wrist,
Until her bangles turn so red
One fears they might be bleeding too.
She cuts the bangles with the heat
And ties them in a blackened scarf,
Which everyone agrees she drops
Into the Shiva temple well.

Of course, the kids recover soon.
Of course, the parents cry with joy.
Of course, they buy her bangles new
So she can proudly continue
To keep our sickly street alive.

The only kid she’s ever lost
Was one she knifed within her womb
To learn this curse exorcism.

I step into her house and find
The truth behind the clichéd line,
That cleanliness is Godliness.

She wakes up at the dawn of dawn
And with a prayer carries on
Her daily act of sweeping mess.

And once her house is speckless clean,
She doodles with her chalk a scene
Of God in bountiful largesse.

She lives alone, without a phone,
Without a lot to call her own,
Except the clothes she keeps to dress.

Her neighbours always bring her food.
And if they don’t, all well and good.
She feels no hunger, no distress.

At dusk, she cymbals to announce
The object she’ll today renounce,
To live her life with one thing less.

She gives away a thing a day
In hopes the taker learns to pray,
For God is not so quick to bless.

He took away her man, her sons,
Her farms that yielded tons and tons,
Her pride of living in excess.

She’s grateful, though, for fortune’s fall –
A cautionary tale for all
Who lose themselves in quick success.

I volunteer to clear the plate
From which we both together ate.
She blesses with a kind caress.

I ask her if she’ll be okay
To let me take her gift today.
She picks her chalk and smiles a “Yes”.

“And what became of all the books
Of poetry she daily wrote,
Before our children woke for school?”
Exclaimed her husband’s smoky throat.

“They brought her medals once or twice,
And not a month’s worth rent in cash.
You know I found her book this week
In State Library’s termite trash?”

He handed me a threaded file
Of all her coverage in the news.
“No more than twenty headlines here,
No more than fifteen book reviews.”

He handed me a duffel bag
Of browning, flaking envelopes.
“She got a lot of reader mail,
Which kept on fanning all her hopes.”

He slapped atop my shaven head
A statement from the local bank.
“Beyond the three royalty checks,
Her entire passbook’s bleaching blank.”

He threw her journal on my lap.
“I don’t know why I married her.”
Her final words of deep regret:
“I should have started earlier.”