He came like a refugee from
The second world, craving human company;
Terminally ill, he seemed to seek
Vitality and hope; his past tumbling from
His lips, as if in a confession,
He felt visibly light and relieved.
Life and death, two sides of the same coin…
He seemed to traverse the thin mass in between.
Like a scout atop a tower who can see both
Sides of the railroad and the two fast-approaching
Trains on the same track, and not able to stop them,
He assumed nonchalance.
Destiny’s immediacy, and the dismay
At discovering it, made him seem
To disbelieve his own words…hesitantly in
A suggestive mode now, instead of falling back on
The assertive ways he was obviously wont to.
His days on earth defined; a reminder
To those who are still in the blind fray.

Lying diagonally
In the wide bed, vaguely
Listening to the early morning sounds
Of bird-chirps, an occasional car-horn
Against the soothing murmur of the slow-falling rain
The fan swirling above at tempest-speed…
Smugly detached from the ballasting past
And the mirage smile of the future…
Sixty-one years of struggles and joys,
Blood-bonds close to the heart--
All suddenly a big void…
The haunting prods of should-have-beens
Strangely absent… no place
Even for ambivalence; each individual path
Fading into the fugue horizon at different directions…
Somnolence spreading like a blanket, inducing
Weightlessness—like a kite cut loose, the mind
Hovering around consciousness;
Life’s drama
Unfolding before the inner eye…
…Is this it?

My mother’s leathery face and
Caved in lips, sans teeth or denture
The broken arm in plaster rubbing
The side of the left breast once fed me
But now turned septic. Her three months
In the hospital had got her life back
To be snatched away anytime;
Death was on the prowl we knew.
She who was so full of life and hope
Suddenly turned to me one day and said:
‘Why should I live on? My time is gone.
Let me go now. Don’t worry about me.’
There was a blank listlessness about her
Eyes and lips.
In her last stint in the hospital
When she went in and out of
Cubicles of consciousness
Her roving eyes could not see
The reassurance her son sought
To bring, the security of wellbeing—
Only blankness, blankness.

The wind is the same
As ever, over the centuries
Blowing in stiff, straight draughts
Keeping the tree-leaves akimbo
And the black-tipped clouds in great, straight streams
The sky looks clean-washed and dipped in indigo
Hung out to dry
The sunshine seems to shimmer more
As if it has a life all its own
The rural spirit
Superimposed with
The aspirations of a fast-globalising world . . .
Young women flash away on Kinetic Hondas
Older women on mopeds slug away
With funny caps on their heads!

I was always here
as blowing wind
or falling leaves
as shining sun
or flowing streams
as chirping birds
or blooming buds
as blue sky
or empty space
I was never born
I didn’t die

My body is a pile of papers
left behind on a bench.
Ordered to be burnt,
it sits unruffled.

My body is a metal tube
of paste, wires, clips.
A number on it diminishes steadily,
a shadow flits.

My body is a plant
that came with the tag
“For show.”
I stand in the garden, puzzled.
All day I stand, splodged with blooms like Pierrot.

*

Sa’adi’s gift comes late.
He writes:
Breathe easy in the garden and be glad.
Be a strange sight.
From this day on
your roses will stay fully open.

We are a motley crowd
with handbags, laptops and lunch bags,
sporting IDs of rings and toe rings,
buffering dark circles
for un-waxed conversations of etcetera
in food, fabric, finance, family.

We manicure safety and freedom
in lip-glossed songs, henna cones and
social network pages on the phone.

Nasal calls of peanut and samosa vendors
are flipped by in bookmarked pages
hoping that one day,
a rainbow would find the puffed eyes
gazing vacant at the window.

Our laughter
indulges in anonymous company
of dry sweat, an aura of our anatomy.

We waltz
with our Body Mass Index,
pH of pimples, dimples, wrinkles and
uneven tones of our skin
on pedicured sandals, cracked slippers,
stiff joints and a numb lower back.
.
The overhead bar syncs our pursuits.

We are one in many;
many in one.

Soon we would slumber to cricket songs
leaving the lady in the welcome poster near the door
to rattle alone with empty shadows.

Tomorrow will be a new dawn,
sun- screened with another ticket
for this daily soap in the ladies compartment.

He will never go there again,

Hip- flask in pocket, camera at hand,

Far from the crowded confines

Of the human animal he could not trust,

To the lush cricket-choired thickets

He so jealously loved;

Dense, creeper-canopied spaces

Where he would listen eagerly

For the sudden slither of a python's tail,

Or the persistent mating calls of leopard and crane,

Studying the stealthy ways of predator and prey,

Till panther, bison, hyena and stag

Seemed p art of a single guileless continuum

He had only begun to see his part in.

Now home and city hunt him down,

Building about him their busy labyrinth

Of doctors, nurses, brothers and sons;

Though tiger and spotted deer remain,

Frozen above his bed in black and white.

An egret pecks noiselessly at a crocodile's jaws,

As pale flamingoes, stripped irretrievably of their pinks,

Leap into a flight forever deferred.

Where you are going, they seem to say,

You will have no need for us or all you remember.

And yet the thought of getting there is not unlike

A great lone tusker taking the plunge,

His vast grey bulk sinking below the river line

Against a clear black sky,

Till there is no more of him to see

Than a single tusk,

White as a quarter-moon in mid-July,

Before the coming of a cloud.

As if to quench the first, flickering wisps of flame,

Rain poured in torrents when I reached the grounds,

Beating wildly upon the low tin roof,

Like a great hurt beast no will could tame.

Sweat covered your forehead, your blue sleeves wet,

As you took the hot brand into your palms,

Turning towards me before you lit the sticks,

Your brown hair drenched as when we first met.

Can I say I still loved the man I saw,

Whose loss I turned so quickly away from?

I saw you through tongues of leaping flame,

And cold eyes of ice no flame could thaw,

Your mother burning as I thought of my own,

Seeking no way into the cell of your grief;

No way out of mine as I heaped her with twigs,

Poured oil on damp wood and watched you like a stone.

He was my grandfather.

when I am eight

he is eighty

large, a giant

a twirling, white mustache

small bright eyes

under thick cotton cloud eyebrows.

a white dhoti

black velvet cap

I am small and frail

I pinch the skin on his hand

and watch it slowly

so slowly

go back

will you die soon? I ask

maybe, he answers

then will the skin stay up forever? I ask

he laughs softly

I climb onto his big armchair

and comb his hair

make it stand

like white candy-floss.

I can’t spell, I tell him

I may fail, I confide

he smiles

and kisses my brow

to blow cleverness there.

when I’m afraid

I hide under his chair

he glares at anyone

who comes looking for me

scuttling them

like dry leaves in a storm

you will cry

when I die, he says.

ha, I laugh

and so will your twenty five grandchildren

yes, but you will cry from your heart, he replies

one september morning he dies

we are called back from school

my sisters and I

I run to his room

his chair is empty

his walking stick standing still

he lies on the bed

his bushy eyebrows calm

his mustache not twitching

his bright eyes closed

I don’t want to pinch his hand

to see if the skin stayed up forever

I touch his candy-floss hair

and run from the room

I fling myself on my bed

and I cry

oh how I cry

great racking sobs choking me

no one, no one

can console me

no one can understand my loss

the first real sorrow

In my life

mine alone

that no one can console

the beginning

of knowledge

that we stand

alone

In the women's compartment
of a Bombay local
we seek
no personal epiphanies.
Like metal licked by relentless acetylene
we are welded—
dreams, disasters,
germs, destinies,
flesh and organza,
odours and ovaries
A thousand-limbed
million-tongued, multi spoused
Kali on wheels.

When I descend
I could choose
to dice carrots
or a lover

This shoebox started out
a stiff-upper-lipped quadrilateral,
Upholder of Symmetry, Proportion, Principle,
sanctuary to an upright couple
of pedigree leather moccasins.

This week
shoebox learns
to sigh
de-
cant,
contemplate
gravity.

Old idealist softens,
grows whiskers,
paw,
drowsing chin,
slumped tail,
Arctic eye.

Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form, Shariputra.

Shoebox abdicates
shape
and Gucci worship,
secedes from
nostalgia.
Pukka sahib
learns
to purr.

A Shoebox Reminisces

I renounced shape
a long time ago,

chose
bagginess,
endless
recess-
ivity,

but there are days
when the longing
returns

and I cannot abide
the sterile cynicism
of the Anti Couples Club,
the smug peddlers
of Uni-sole Advaita.

I know it means
the saga of
two old shoes
all over again,

their grubby leather unions,
tales of childhood,
prejudice, toe jam, politics,

laces in a perpetual snarl
of knots,
footprints,
footprints.

But some days
I’m idolater enough
to want it again:
that old charade,
otherness.

[Where I Live: New and Selected Poems; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2009]

I wake in the mornings
to find the city at my window,
a giant mouth
that’s forgotten how to close.

The telephone rings,
each ring a reminder
that I have been detected,

that I am She
whose e-mails pile up unanswered,
whose checklists grow
tangled,
matted,
unchecked.

She who is never on the right platform.
She who turns away
from importunate hands at car windows.
She who smiles when she doesn’t mean it.
She who didn’t vote at three elections.

But what no one guesses
is that it is She who after sundown
stalks the dark alleys,
hungry to annihilate anyone
who seeks to tame her
with clammy malarial tentacles
of guilt.

And on full-moon nights
She even dares
to look the world
square in the face
and say
no.

[Where I Live: New and Selected Poems; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2009]

NO
Arundhathi Subramaniam

Me despierto por las mañanas
para encontrar la ciudad en mi ventana,
una boca gigante
que ha olvidado cómo cerrar.

El teléfono suena,
cada ring, un recordatorio
de que he sido detectada,

de que soy Ella
cuyos correos electrónicos se acumulan sin respuesta,
cuyas listas de control crecen
enredadas,
enmarañadas,
desenfrenadas.

Ella quien nunca está en la plataforma correcta.
Ella quien se aleja
de manos importunas
en las ventanas del automóvil.
Ella quien sonríe cuando no lo desea.
Ella quien no votó en tres elecciones.

Pero lo que nadie adivina
es que es Ella quien después del ocaso
acecha los callejones oscuros,
con hambre de aniquilar a cualquiera
que intente domesticarla
con tentáculos húmedos, palúdicos
de culpa.

Y en noches de luna llena
aún se atreve
a mirar el mundo
en plena cara
y decir
no.

They matter,
the minor questions –
the smell of a new wardrobe,
the eternal bus ticket
in the bag’s second compartment, the leer
of the late shift security guard.

Yes, Draupadi’s sari is endless

and there’s no way to tame
life’s wild unstoppable
bureaucracy
but this:

Fill out the form. Do it in bloody triplicate. Enroll.

[Where I Live: New and Selected Poems; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2009]

APRENDIENDO A DECIR SÍ
Arundhathi Subramaniam

Ellas son importantes,
la cuestiones menores –
el olor de un nuevo vestuario,
el eterno ticket de autobús
en el segundo compartimiento del bolso,
la mirada de soslayo
del guardia de seguridad del turno tarde.

Sí, el sari de Draupadi es interminable

y no hay manera de domesticar
la burocracia
imparable, salvaje de la vida,
excepto esta:

Llenar el formulario. Hacerlo por sangriento triplicado. Inscribir.

The way your words reach me,
phantom-walking
through all these tensile,
suspicious membranes of self.

The way you unclog
these streets and by-lanes
so I can surge
through starshine and aqueduct,
the luminous canals of a world
turned Venetian.

The way you enter
and the day’s events scatter
like islands in the sea.

The way you arrive.

[Where I Live: New and Selected Poems; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2009]

They’re sodden, the lot of them,
leafy, with more than a whiff
of damage,
mottled with history,
dark with grime.

God knows I’ve wanted them different --
less preoccupied, more jaunty,
less handle-with-care,

more airbrushed,
less prone
to impossible dreams, less perishable,

a little more willing
to soak in the sun.

They don’t measure up.
They’re unpunctual.
They turn suddenly tuberous.

But they matter
for their crooked smiles,
their endless distractions,
their sudden pauses --

signs that they know
how green stems twist
and thicken
as they vanish
into the dark,

making their way
through their own sticky vernacular tissues
of mud,

improvising,
blundering,
improvising

dandelions...

how i learnt

to let go

wishing well--

the hollow sound

my penny made

sandalwood tilak...

we wrap grandma

in her favourite brocade

milky way...

footprints of the night

within the night

honking geese--

a raven's silent glide

into nothingness

rickety bridge--

a langoor's leap

from fog to fog

drawing...

a pailful of darkness

village well

(2)

Once I went inside the kitchen

The maid was glaring at the fire

As though she’d never forgive Prometheus

For his misdeed

Her dark face glistened with sweat

And the place had an awful smell

I tiptoed out

And wondered why

People had to have a hole like this

In their mansions beautiful and bright?

(17)

I’ll give blue curtains

To my lonely kitchen

And paint white birds on them

Birds in flight

Fluttering in the breeze

Staying right there

Day in and day out

Keeping me company

Till the curtains decay

And fall apart.

My heart leaps up

No – not when I behold a rainbow

But the first green mango in the market!

Vishnu* had but ten manifestations

My mangoes will have many more

When the green glory of the mango

Will light up my kitchen

Recipes collected from far and near

Will anxiously stand in a queue

Like monarchs awaiting the bride’s garland

Sweet and sour

Pungent as pungent can be

All by itself or with a few others

Submerged in oil or sugar or salt

The mango will fill up all my bottles

A few may be gifted away

But the rest will remain

Making me feel like a very rich woman

Who can defy a rainy day.

My granny's mother
Had a lovely sari
It was the colour of clay
Its golden edge
Caged in the flowers
Running here and there
Daily wash and daily wear
Just strengthened the sturdy silk
It was the priestess' robe,
Worn only when she entered
Her Holy kitchen
To prepare the daily meal.

મારાં દાદીનાં માની

એ સાડી કેવી સુંદર હતી!
માટીના રંગ જેવા વિપુલ વિસ્તારને છેડે
ચમકતી સોનેરી કિનાર!
એની અંદર પુરાયેલાં
રંગબેરંગી ફૂલો આમતેમ દોડાદોડ કરતાં હતાં.
એ સાડી દરરોજ વપરાતી
ને દરરોજ ધોવાતી.
એના મજબૂત રેશમી પોતમાં
પ્રતિદિન નવો પ્રાણ પુરાતો.
એ હતો પૂજારણનો પોષાક.
એના પવિત્ર રસોડામાં
હંમેશાં રસોઈ કરવા
પગ મૂકતી વેળાએ જ પહેરવાનો.

Once I write Woods on paper
every leaf, tree, beast, worm
mud, soil, hill, stream, river, pond
will remain where they are
till I dip the pen again in ink
and write another word
This means that if they are not on paper
they are not anywhere
and if they are they are forever in my command

Afterwards if I write Fire they all will burn away
and if I write Floods they will drown .
After writing Caterpillar so long as I do not write Pupa
a Butterfly cannot fly
After a Leaf if flapping is not written
wind cannot be felt
As long as I do not put Raven and Hawk on top of
Teak and Cedar the Sky will remain unseen
The Caveman busy with painting the walls
will not cross over1the fence of fire
Chewing the flesh of forest beast simmering in its fat
he would keep slurping juice of fermented fruits
Around him squirrels will prance merrily
Earthworms would tickle his soles
Lice will creep in his messy hair
and the pong from armpits of his kept females
will keep beckoning him

Till I write Helicopter
and put Binoculars in your hands
the Woods written by me on paper will remain Words only

O moon rolling like a ball
O buildings with windows staring
O million feet walking
O insane traffic
O gutters of Bombay
O gods in temples churches and mosques
O mad cellphones ringing
O screechy loudspeakers in slums
O pigeons on parapets cooing
O lovers in gardens
O grain of sand on the beach
O clothes fluttering in the wind
O flies at garbage dumps
O junkies on the street
O packed trains shuttling
O silent streetlights
O people buying groceries
O food that I eat
O water that I drink
O breath that I breathe
O words of this poem
tell me what I am looking for.

of rhythm
the old poems tumble out
of the mind.

Like the black cupboard
in the green wall
I would climb

to sample the darkness
through the shelves
I would crawl

opening boxes
entranced by the silence
and lulled
by the softness there

lie back and dream
I guess I may have wanted
to be one of them

know what it was like
that sweet little red tin box
with the blue bird on its lid
quiet sitting in some cosy tree

in the sun
and the rows of medicines
with their intoxicating smell
taking me half a world away

until I recognise
the bedsheets stacked till
the dark triangular roof

standing full of the softness
of welcome
telling me this is it
this is it
the real thing
the real universe
like a mother telling
her child
come
come home.

I did not reply to my father’s question,
“Who’s that fat woman over there?”
It was mother. He had gone past her
past his children into a land
without birds or flags.

He often said, ”All right, let me go.”
Once he walked out early in the morning
and was tracked down by a group
of neighbours. He had a vague sense
of being held there against his wish.

In his occasional lucid moments
he wept for words he could not find
for common things
like a bed-sheet or a newspaper.

All his life, he had taught children language.

On our way home from school
We often spent hours in the abandoned
orchard of mango, cashew nut
and tamarind trees, where each season

There may be a very small comfort
In knowing yourself finally
Useless – when even grandchildren
Have grown beyond your love,
And your would-be widow
Has outhobbled you and
Wont be around to break with
One or two of her last thick tears,
And you not caring much for
Your fellowmen, the doctors
Wont get your body –
To know how simply you
Will be bundled away, startling
A lifelong friend who finds
He cannot mourn
At the quick and easy changes:
A sprinkling of water,
The disappearance of an odour,
A turn of bed-sheets, leaving
A bed, a chair,
Perhaps a whole room,
With clarity in them.

The Saurashtra Express waits to start
Chained patiently to the platform,
Good pet, while I clamber in
To take my reserved window seat
And settle into the half-empty compartment’s
Cool; the odour of human manure
Vague and sharp drifts in
From adjoining platforms.
The station’s population of porters,
Stall-keepers, toughs and vagabonds relieve themselves
Ticketless, into the bowels of these waiting pets;
Gujarat Mail, Delhi Janata, Bulsar Express,
Quiet linear beasts,
Offering unguarded toilets to a wave
Of non-passengers, Bombay Central’s
In-residence population.

That odour does not offend.
The station’s high and cool vault
Sucks it up and sprays down instead,
Interspersed with miraculous, heraldic
Shafts of sunlight, an eternal
Station odour, amalgam
Of diesel oil, hot steel, cool rails,
Light and shadow, human sweat,
Metallic distillations, dung, urine,
Newspaper ink, Parle’s Gluco Biscuits,
And sharp noisy sprays of water from taps
With worn-out bushes, all
Hitting the nostril as one singular
Invariable atmospheric thing,
Seeping into your clothing
The way cigarette smoke and air-conditioning
Seep into you at cinema halls.
I sink back into my hard wooden
Third-class seat, buffered by
This odour, as by a divine cushion.
And do not suspect that this ride
Will be for me the beginning of a meditation
On the nature of truth and beauty.

It takes much time to kill a tree,
Not a simple jab of the knife
Will do it. It has grown
Slowly consuming the earth,
Rising out of it, feeding
Upon its crust, absorbing
Years of sunlight, air, water,
And out of its leperous hide
Sprouting leaves.

So hack and chop
But this alone wont do it.
Not so much pain will do it.
The bleeding bark will heal
And from close to the ground
Will rise curled green twigs,
Miniature boughs
Which if unchecked will expand again
To former size.

No,
The root is to be pulled out -
Out of the anchoring earth;
It is to be roped, tied,
And pulled out - snapped out
Or pulled out entirely,
Out from the earth-cave,
And the strength of the tree exposed,
The source, white and wet,
The most sensitive, hidden
For years inside the earth.

Then the matter
Of scorching and choking
In sun and air,
Browning, hardening,
Twisting, withering,
And then it is done.

It is startling to see how swiftly
A man may be sliced
From chin to prick,
How easily the bones
He has felt whole
Under his chest
For a sixty, seventy years
May be snapped,
With what calm
Liver, lung and heart
Be examined, the bowels
Noted for defect, the brain
For haemorrhage,
And all these insides
That have for a lifetime
Raged and strained to understand
Be dumped back into the body,
Now stitched to perfection,
Before announcing death
Due to an obscure reason.

She rises to go. Her body opens
up like a hurricane held by velcro
all breasty and unaware, her synthetic charm

the basement where the dark gods defacate
at night, and hold conclaves by day
waits to received here footsteps, the clatter
and the hooves. Pure animal satiated by scent, the virus

of all nonbeings on the astral computer.

It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.
The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.

I followed him across the sprawling sands,
my mind thumping in the flesh's sling.
Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.
Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth
his old nets had only dragged up from the seas.

In the flickering dark his hut opened like a wound.
The wind was I, and the days and nights before.
Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack
an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to those walls.
Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind.

I heard him say: My daughter, she's just turned fifteen…
Feel her. I'll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father's exhausted wile.
Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside.

Devi temple . . .
along with the ants
I enter barefoot

what is left
and what was there-
crescent moon
******************

Christmas night-
this sudden desire to
look at the sky

*******************
first winter days-
again in mom's frail hands
my unfinished sweater

*******************
tipsy night-
chasing the moon
puddle after puddle

*********************
cold wave-
the news reader's sneeze
goes uncut

*********************
Milky Way-
even the dead stars
light up my path

*********************
deafening rain-
to think it has no sound
of its own
*********************