In the dead of the night,
lying on the ghats,
I smell of you and your sperms in me.
I am sick of your stench,
I wish you had died,
so I could wear your ash,
and feel alive.
Suddenly, echoes of a distant kirtan from somewhere —
too late in the night to forget,
too early to die.
I walk instead.
From a two-hundred-year-old Shiva temple,
turn left.
The market road in Gokarna
has two castes,
the worshipper and the curious.
On a half pink wall, sits
a yellow snake,
below which, is a border in Kanchipuram red.
In the Narayana temple on the left,
sits a sadhu,
his ochre robes a contrast
to the lavender from the jacaranda tree —
bending down, touching feet.
Confused, I bow,
do a namaste.
The sadhu raises a hand —
his smile setting on fire,
the dry leaves of fall.
The pujari at the door,
sears a red bindi on my forehead —
religion claims me,
like sudden water on dry earth.
On a moonless night
deep in the ribs of a dry Ganga,
lies Kashi, in new dung and sacrament of the old —
still, complex, terrifying.
Suddenly,
on this white sand — two horses, their riders, a boat,
you and me.
Messy and disgruntled —
if there was love,
it was here, it was here, it was here —
this soiled faith and bareness.
A long cantilever bridge,
steel frames and a bewildered city.
In the waters,
are three boats, and two steamers —
from this distance though,
no one knows which is which.
I imagine goats tied on the deck of the steamer,
a receding skyline and empty chimneys
once filled with the smell of jute.
There are protesters on the bridge today,
just like the eighties,
when everyone had left.
Communism is dead, long live the communists.
The water is a grey-green stripe now,
no grass,
no cannabis, no revolution, no gunshots —
but mostly,
no more the land of bhadraloks.
People are like people here,
and poverty,
the same old lover.
A Marathi woman with her sari between her legs,
her breasts parted by the embroidery —
and a young boy with a bag of bananas,
they all walk the bridge alone.
A flash of colour — a balloon seller —
later,
a sudden afternoon sun
and its eclipse.
In my mind,
the Howrah bridge came tumbling down that afternoon,
and the Irrawaddy dolphins jumped in twos.
Maitreyee B Chowdhury is a web columnist, poet and creative writer. She is author of three books 'Reflections on My India', 'Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen: Bengali Cinema's First Couple' and 'Where Even The Present Is Ancient: Benaras'. She writes on cinema and art too. Maitreyee writes for Criterion Literary Journal; a journal of media studies 'Kottaka'; Indian Express (Bay Area); Indian Ruminations; YOMO Art Gallery (South East Asian Art House); Gallery 2000 (French Art House); The Sip of Life, etc.
