Minakhi Misra

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  • Letters

    Some letters are hard.
    They loop too much.
    Or worse, flourish.
    They twist your wrist
    Into positions
    You’d rather not take.

    Unnecessary, the need
    To dot each i,
    To cross each t,
    Breaking the flow,
    For custom’s sake.
    The dots that matter most
    Mark the ends. Periodically.
    The crosses worth crossing
    Run head to heart,
    Shoulder to shoulder,
    In prayers more sincere than
    A grammarian’s remarks
    Or her pencil’s red marks.

    Some letters are not meant.
    To be written or read.
    To be sealed or opened.
    To be blocked or cursive.
    Some letters have no replies.
    They end without ending.

    September 18, 2021

  • Worthy News

    No one talked of her red-red hands
    When she finger-painted on the wall
    Stick figures of Maa and Daa,
    And later posed for Instagram.
    But one fine day,
    She sticks them into a table fan, and…

    No one talked of his oily hands
    When he sat his little sister down
    To a head massage with herb oil
    And later both inhaled his palms.
    But one fine day,
    He drops a neighbour’s chinaware, and…

    No one talked of his hairy hands
    When he flicked them on blanket wool
    In the darkness of the night
    To spark a joy for his little kid.
    But one fine day,
    He gets stuck on a velcro purse, and…

    September 17, 2021

  • Tragicomedy

    And what’s a joke if not a form
    Of miniature poetry?
    And what’s a poem other than
    A cryptic tragicomedy?
    Two, slowly cooked. Too quickly judged,
    The moment readers have a taste.
    Intelligent are poets who
    Remember this and do not waste
    Their prides defending poems when
    The moment’s passed ignoring them.

    September 16, 2021

  • Coloured lives

    Two stairways go to the temple door
    Standing up on the lonely hill:
    One from the east by the waterfall,
    One from the north by the bathing pool.
    She sits below the eastern steps.
    He sits below the northern ones.
    Each with sindoor in little heaps.
    Each with a music in their hearts.
    She sings the songs of hilltop Gods.
    He strums the tunes on his Single-string.
    And both call out to devotees
    Who dare to climb the hundred steps:

    “Bright red for the worthy Rama,
    Vermillion for Sita Maa,
    Deep red for brother Lakshman,
    And Orange for Veer Hanumaan.”

    They sell packets of rupees ten,
    Coloured powder in paper white,
    And barely make three hundred each
    On the best of weekend rushes.

    When the sun dives into the pool
    And visitors into their cars,
    They walk into the waterfall
    And rub their colours on their cheeks
    And laugh and do things couples do
    And walk the long way back to home,
    Where she lights up the candlesticks
    And he washes the coloured clothes
    And she cooks what all they could buy
    And he does all the dishes then
    And she brings out the silver cup
    And he brings out their special drink
    To celebrate another day.
    And why not? They have such a life!
    Every day is a Holi day.
    Every night, a Diwali night.

    September 15, 2021

  • Free

    They kicked him out of the house
    When his mother finally died
    And his father brought a woman
    To birth a new child who wasn’t
    So broken in the head.
    They sent him to the outhouse
    Which had once been a haystack,
    Then a cowshed-cum-urinal,
    Then a government-sponsored toilet,
    And most recently a garbage dump.
    They made him clear it out,
    Which he didn’t mind a bit.
    He didn’t mind much anyway.
    Not his mother dying. “Free!”
    Not his father remarrying. “Free!”
    Not his house-ousting. “Free!”
    Not his isolation. “Free!”
    He just had a gap-toothed smile
    And that solitary word: “Free!”

    He climbed trees and ate fruits:
    Guavas and berries and mangoes.
    He climbed pipes and drank water:
    Taps and tanks and balcony hoses.
    He ran like the madman he was
    When the kids chased him around.
    He ran like the madman he was
    When he chased the dogs around.
    But when you asked him how he was,
    He just had a gap-toothed smile
    And that solitary word: “Free!”

    He was useful too in certain ways.
    When the bull from the Shiva temple
    Got into heat and jumped on cows,
    Only he had the ferocity to keep it off.
    When the street’s drain choked
    On the droppings of men and cows,
    Only he had the generosity to clean it up.
    But when you asked him how much,
    He just had a gap-toothed smile
    And that solitary word: “Free!”

    So, when his father, drunkenly sick,
    Caressed his hair and politely asked
    If he could perhaps donate his liver,
    He just had a gap-toothed smile
    And that solitary word: “Free!”

    September 14, 2021

  • Early poems

    Someone asked to see my poems
    From early college days.
    And though I looked up all my files,
    A lot I could not trace.

    A few were never digitised.
    A few had been erased.
    A few sat on a TB drive,
    Which I have now misplaced.

    I found the one I wrote for her,
    Which never could I send.
    And the one I wrote to her,
    Which she didn’t comprehend.

    Also the one I could not write
    Until it wrote itself
    On the wall with a pencil lead
    Behind the wooden shelf:

    “I hate my life outside my books.
    In writing, I belong.
    I want to be a writer now,
    But what if I am wrong?”

    September 13, 2021

  • Wild

    I spent a day in Nature’s nose
    Through which the breath of Beauty blows:
    So cool and full of Life at first,
    Then hot and Deathly and reversed.
    I was a fowl from poultry farms:
    So lost in wild, so in alarm.
    I’d walked in as an urbanite
    And felt the forest close in tight:
    So twitchy as an itchy shawl.
    It shot me like a cannonball
    Into the sprawling chicken coop,
    Into the falling pigeon poop
    That’s sometimes called Society,
    That’s mostly a variety
    Of cancerous malignancy
    Of humankind’s ascendancy.

    September 12, 2021

  • Manikantaka

    The first time I saw an elephant
    Was in 1996 when into our street
    Marched Mahanta the ‘Megik Mahout’
    With his ‘Mejestick Manikantaka.’

    To my five-year-old height and weight,
    The beast was almost a dinosaur.
    Yes, I had already seen Jurassic Park
    In the theatre by the swampy lake.
    Yes, I was the kid who cried aloud
    And denied his Zoologist mother
    The best scenes of the movie
    She had fought with her in-laws
    To come and watch with her kids.
    And yes, to this day that day’s sin
    Is slapped on the bargaining table
    When Mom and I contest in earnest
    The possession of the TV remote.

    There weren’t any overhead cables then.
    So, Mejestick Manikantaka walked tall,
    Flaunting its tattooed forehead and trunk
    Of sandal, turmeric, and vermillion paste
    That matched the elephantine garland
    Of jasmine, marigold, and rose flowers
    Adorning his royally upraised neck.
    His tuskers shined Colgate white
    Casting doubt upon the Odia proverb
    That elephants never brush their teeth.
    His nails had painted lotus buds and leaves,
    His tail had a mehndi-dyed brush of hair,
    And his back had a mandala of intricacy
    That shamed the women of sixty years
    Who had been drawing jhoti-chita doodles
    Daily on their doorsteps.

    When all had come out to marvel at him,
    When all eyes and fingers were on him,
    Manikantaka listened to the Mejik whispers
    Of the Mejik Mahout in his flapping ears
    And edged to the side of the muddy street
    To our pride and joy, the open drain.
    He turned around once more to face
    The appreciative crowd gathering about,
    Raised his tattooed trunk up high,
    Lowered his mandalaed rump down low,
    And performed the trick our street performed
    Every morning while I walked to school.
    The trumpeting of the trunk matched
    The trumpeting of the ample rump,
    And it stank like someone’s septic tank
    And looked like peeled coconut coir.
    The most fitting salute I’ve ever seen
    To our street’s historic notoriety.

    Today, in 2021, living on the same street,
    As I surrender the TV remote to Mom,
    Dad emerges from his battlefield
    With arms raised and fists pumped,
    Declaring, “Manikantaka!”
    And I add a row to the scoreboard:
    Dad – 1, Constipation – 0.

    September 11, 2021

  • Awakening

    It fell on a drop of dew
    To fall on me and break through
    The fog of rue I’d made home,
    Within which I’d roam and roam.

    The dew had dropped from a leaf
    That now was jumping in relief,
    Shrugging off the water weight,
    Which had seemed its rooted fate.

    September 10, 2021

  • Half-half

    They dropped their plastic bat and ball
    And ran full-speed after the orphan kite
    Penduluming down the January sky,
    Threatening to fall into an open drain.
    One was six years old. The other, nine.
    Nine was naturally faster than Six,
    So he reached the kite first and caught it.
    He raised it above his head to one side
    Like the World Cup picture of Kapil Dev
    That his father had stuck to the mirror
    All those years before he was born.
    Six came panting and jumped up to grab,
    But Nine kept lifting it out of his reach.
    Then both stood still and laughed out
    The laughter that only kids can laugh.

    I caught it, said Nine. So, it’s mine.
    I saw it, said Six, and so, it’s mine.
    But I ran, Nine pointed out.
    After I pointed, Six ran at him.
    Okay-okay, said Nine. Half-half?
    How half-half? It will tear, no?
    I keep the kite. You keep the string.
    What? Not fair at all. It’s all mine.
    You get the string, or nothing at all.
    What? What will I do with the string?
    Here, let me show. Come come.
    Okay. I will hold the kite meanwhile.
    Nice try. Shut up and come with me.

    Nine cut the string from the kite
    And ran back to their bat and ball.
    He wound the string around the ball:
    Twice top-to-bottom, twice across,
    Twice top-to-bottom, twice across,
    And one last time, just to be safe.
    Tying the loose end back to the string,
    He hurled the ball over a branch
    Of the guava tree in the yard,
    And caught it again as it swung down.
    Then he let it pendulum and smiled.

    Cadet! Attention!
    Left, right, left. At ease!
    This is your training ball now.
    Nine gave the string a bit more slack
    Till the ball descended to Six’s waist,
    And tied the other end of the string
    Just once around the guava trunk.
    Attention! Take arms!
    Six took the plastic bat from Nine.
    Cadet! Right Turn! And hit for six!
    Cadet Six took his position,
    Took in a sharp breath and swung.
    Nine nodded at the arc made by the ball
    And said Six had lived up to his name.
    Cadet! Another Six! Higher this time!
    Cadet Six took his position again,
    Took in a sharp breath and swung.
    The ball went higher than before
    And came down faster than before
    And Six turned at the last moment
    So the ball crashed into his bum.
    Then both stood still and laughed out
    The laughter that only kids can laugh.

    Half-half, fair? Half-half, fair.

    Six is now Sixteen (plus GST)
    And still hits a leather ball
    Penduluming from the guava tree.
    He almost made it to the State team.
    Just miss. Or so he tells everyone.
    Nine decided against double-digits.
    He fell off the terrace flying his kite.

    September 9, 2021

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