MATCHBOX

NOSTALGIC FOR A PLACE NEVER SEEN

Brides in some places catch
moonbeams through a sieve.
A ritual insurance on a husband’s
longevity. When she left home,
my grandma smuggled a river
in her eyelids. Sugandha, it was called.
Su-gandha, the sweet-smelling one.
She stole the river so that whenever
she shed a tear, she could smell
the river in the air around her.
An insurance against forgetting.
Her new home had no water near it.

In Jhalokathi, her forever former
home, Sugandha courses on the same
as before. Canals branch out from its cool,
aquamarine breadth to steer thirsty
travellers. With a little help, the brook
learns to punctuate herself.
A green dreamscape
holds the water in
a bracket.

A floating bamboo bridge, bony, resolute,
gives a paragraph break to its carefree
run-on sentence streams.

On the edge of a fisherman’s home,
little girls pull toy boats, their giggles
running over the river’s ripples.

In a video about Sugandha, I see a mother
combing her daughter’s hair. Before I know it,
the daughter turns into my grandma
and breaks into a song.

‘Why don’t you come to our house anymore?’ she asks.

RETRACING DANDAKARANYA
for Titti, my grandmother

I search for your footmarks
In the arid, rocky terrain. The
Agility of your feet eludes mine.
The jungle notes you left behind
shriek with trauma. Of green groves
uprooted from rivers, thrown amid
stones and cacti. Yet I sleep restfully. The
shrapnel that ripped apart your
nights doesn’t touch me.
Half a century later, the cracking
earth has smothered the laughter
of the Adivasi girls you met. The
mountain still burns the same. With their
heaves. And the lava of their rage as mining
corporations show them their two-penny index.
The desert retains some of
your tears—corroded, insoluble.
Those refugee girls you taught? They
must be doing well by now. So I tell myself.
But look, how like them, like you,
I’m still looking for home. The
albatross refuses to take flight.

CRAFTING A RIVER

Between the two ends of a loom, a river flows.
The weaver sits on one bank, shaping the river.
Warp meets weft, the fabric’s ebb and tide, so

the textile breathes. Creating a river is backbreaking
work. You have to rein in the warps through reeds,
link each weft in with a shuttle, calculations

done with the math skill of a mother who has mastered
keeping her brood together. The river swells with colours,
its waves carrying shades the rangrez infused into each thread.

Temples and gardens grow on its banks, paisley
pearls and buds bloom on its body. In an ancient city,
drooping men weave crimson rivers for new brides.

They murmur the songs of a master weaver who worked
the loom and crafted a luminous tapestry without
a single hole. A river so whole, it forgot its banks.

BAGESHREE

At the Monday/Thursday class
eight of us circle our guru,
his cotton wool beard just about
eclipsing that concessional smile.
Bageshree holds the room
and our octaves together.

We sing to the mountain king’s
daughter. The goddess. Her elephant-headed
Son’s mother. A moon-bird to
her husband. Does she hear us
over the tanpura’s strains and
the vessels in the guru’s kitchen?

Bageshree becomes the night. The night
the lovebird can’t cross without seeing
its mate. The night a hurricane
rips doors apart, douses out
lamps. A night so black, darkness
flinches from it. A hollow that lets light in.

The bird flies away, far across, to
Norwegian woods. It carries echoes
of groves and lovers’ meditations.

Bageshree robs and releases,
carves holes and fills them full. It’s
the night you long to be haunted by.

PARADISE IS A KIND OF

A row of steel cases stacked with spines of varied girth,
tickets to adventures, printed. At six, the library, a place
where mother works and her colleagues stuff you with
pastries and cream rolls from the canteen. At seven, your
key to unlocking wondrous doors even as you stumble

against more. Sindbad’s voyages, Baghdad’s bazaars, sultans
and emirs with their tantrums hazaar, Dickens’s London
hung with despair. A sight of Borges’ paradise, a tryst to
collide with authors. Strange settings, stranger fellows.
Tenida of Potoldanga, Professor Shonku, Ernesto in Peru,

Paddy Clarke’s ha haha, ManeckKohlah fading out with
a blah. Rabble rousers, wackos, history makers, jaded heroes.
The paradise, a hideout as you grow in age and diminish in
self esteem. The figures poised on musty spines and dusty
shelves, now silent, disarming life coaches. In this windy,
noisy, crooked world, the library, an anchor for restless drifters.

DISPLACEMENT

Spaces corner me in my
dreams. I enter houses to lose
my way and sanity; mohallas I once
knew intimately I can’t find
my way out of. Classrooms
ask for lectures in ransom before
letting me out.

The sleep python
keeps recoiling within itself
and spits out counterfeit memories.
Is this why my bed misses me every
time I spend the night in another
city?

The dog in the balcony steps
aside; I’m a stranger in this
house that’s trying so hard
to welcome me.

Note: A mohalla (Urdu) is a locality, ward or street.

[Published with permission of the author and publisher]