Poetry defined

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land and wanting to fly in the air. -- Carl Sandburg

The Warning

For love -- I would
split open your head and put
a candle in
behind the eyes.

Love is dead in us
if we forget
the virtues of an amulet
and quick surprise.

--- Robert Creeley (1957)

The Road to Thottapally

Sometimes I call myself Renjini,
at other times I choose Usha, shorter
to my breath, easier on my tongue.

It depends on what I feel,
who I'm with
or just the time of day.

But when I set out on my journey
changing names was not my intent
nor deceit a plan of the mind.

Such deviousness was never
a part of me.
All I wanted was a job,
some means to send my mother

a hundred rupees or so once in a way.
So when the Village Officer
promised to get me into

the Alleppey Government Hospital,
my heart beat faster
than ever I could recall

and I was even happier
than when our first calf
was born to Lakshmi,

brown, with one ear wrinkled
like a dry jack-leaf. That
was long ago, when I was smaller

and my mother stronger.
Lakshmi was soon sold off
and her little one taken away too

when I was off at school,
rubbing away from my nails
the Cutex we had found
on the sandy path,

smearing its crimson promise
onto my green skirt,
the uniform of our government school.

But when I set out that bright day
my skirt was not green
but of a sheen more exotic,

a kind of silk, the clothseller said,
and which the tailor near
the ration shop
felt, rubbed,sniffed; confirmed its worth.

Into my plastic airbag with its white
aeroplane angled upwards, my mother
helped me pack two more skirts,

not as fashionable, though,
three blouses with puffed sleeves,
two bras, white cotton,

a towel with a line of green
as border, and some fine cloth
to absorb the flow on those days

when I oughtn't go to the temple.
My mother saw us off
at the crowd-choked municipal bus stand

at the hour the astrologer said
was auspicious, a harbinger
of good times,
and she cried, of course,

not loudly but with quivering mouth
and thin streaks of tears
that coursed down her scale-hard cheeks.

I wept too, even though I knew
the money I'd soon send would
make her a little happier

and give her much to tell
the neighbours.
I sat on the Ladies Only side of the bus
and kept staring at my mother

as the mist of dust and exhaust smoke
rose up all around her and hid her
finally from my tear-caged eyes.

The Village Officer sat far behind
in the last row, near the huge spare tyre
and the frayed gunnysacks of copra.

Beside me was an old woman with
crinkly hair
burnished like old silver lamps
who said she was getting off too

at Haripad. In the white heat of noon
we didn't talk much, lulled
by the shimmer of the freshly
tarred road.

But when we reached our stop
she hurried off without
even a goodbye.
Perhaps she was afraid of
missing her son.

We stopped at the Jena Hotel for tea.
His was strong and dark, mine
sweet and milky. I didn't dare tell

him I like my tea strong
as I always commanded my mother
to make it. The waiter stared at me

and so did the potbellied man
who sat on the other side. I looked
out of the window, between sips.

The sand on the ridge where
the roadsmen
were working was a pale brown,
bleached
in the heat, gritting their sweat-cooled
armpits.

Each bus that swerved by threw up
a nimbus of dust that separated me
from the fuzzy row of passengers,

some nodding in sleep,
some peering out of
the windows. Some of the dust floated
over to my glass, settling

on the flotsam of tea. He paid the bill,
with money from the waistfold
of his dhoti
and hailed an autorickshaw.

We got off just before the Thottapally
spillway,
which I recalled the government
proclaim
a boon to the farmers of Kuttanad.

The hotel was wooded in green,
immersed in acres of coconut palms,
some bent, some upright,
some swaying.

He asked the man behind
the Formica counter
for a cottage. A short boy, unsmiling
in a purple uniform, came

and led us beneath the sky of coconuts
along a muddy path lined with grass
to a cottage with a door painted white.

Let's rest, said the Village Officer,
after the boy had left with his tip.
It was dusk and I could tell

it was getting darker
because the crows were quieter
outside the cottage, flying back blackly

to nestle among the palm leaves.
When he locked and bolted
the plywood door,
I began to cry.

I knew what was coming.
I thought of my mother
and the tears on her ageless face

and I bit my lip so hard
the tears stung its redness
when they reached the toothmark

many pains later.
Don't cry, he said, you'll enjoy it
after a while. All girls do.

He hurt me while I cried,
thinking of my mother
through the searing,
as he rode roughshod over the tears

that I felt writhing down
like rivers of molten ice.
He finished fast, puffing, out of breath.

The bed was narrow, the mattress foamy,
the sheet a hospital green
like tender coconuts.
I shut my eyes but it hurt all the same.

There was blood all over the sheet
and between my thighs, on my stomach
and on my fingers too.

He rose as I turned away, choked.
The wall was stippled with
red reminders of mosquitoes.

When I looked again,
he had a bidi between his teeth
and was smiling. He urged me

up, and from his black suitcase
pulled out a sari fringed with flowers.
From now on wear this, he said,

as he pulled away the bedsheet
and took it to the bathroom
where the tap soon began to run

and the squelch of washing
drowned the tinny cries of the cicadas
outside, near the paddy fields,
near the loam,

in the dark, in the blessed dark
which from that gloaming on
became an accomplice,

a confederate so close and familiar
I would burn joss sticks
to welcome him,
the god of my darkness.

I didn't get the job finally.
I never even reached Alleppey,
but I found a trade alright:

it found me, befriended my doubts.
The Village Officer was only the first
in a long line of men,

ceaseless like the waves of Kovalam
where I often go by myself,
in a cab these days.

They come and go:
government clerks, rice merchants,
doctors,
car salesmen, drunks, medical reps;

but never a Village Officer, not once
in all these years since I set out
on the hot road to Thottapally.

Sometimes I feel like a queen,
and then I never fail to call myself
Renjini, the star of the arc lights,

glittering on the screen,
the maiden of men's dreams.
But men don't dream, do they?

All they want lies between my thighs
or on my raisin nipples
or on my lips that often feel like bark

scissored with striations
of thickened deaths.
Sometimes I feel I'm just spicules
of flesh, effervescent and seething,

forming and reforming
on the edge of the sun, forever
on the road to Thottapally.

And now as I lean back on my bed,
not far from the waves I so love,
amidst the laughter of the other girls,

I wonder where my mother is:
at home winnowing paddy
in the shade of the mango tree

or at her sister's, the aunt I never knew...
Or is she no more, dead,
as I too will one day be...

Did they cremate her by
the lone tamarind tree at the edge
of the coconut grove, I wonder...

Sometimes I wish I could see her;
if only I had a body
to take out of my own, a skin

to leave behind when I go
back to the home of my mother
and her single slow groan.

Blood and mucilage won't show,
the gelatinous splotches of his semen
won't seep through. And I can always

tell my mother
the discolourations on my skirt
are just the drops of Cutex

that I found when I left her side
before I set out that day, long ago,
on the road to Thottapally.


--- first published in MANUSHI No. 60, Sept-Oct 1990

Poetry defined

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land and wanting to fly in the air. -- Carl Sandburg