Photo credit- pxfuel.com

LAST VISIT TO GRANDMA’S SISTER
 

Who are you? She asks, as she rakes
the ashes to uncover a few embers.

“I am Bahadur’s grandson. The son
of your sister's elder one. Let me touch
your feet, Grandma!”

Blessings! Let me kiss your forehead!
I thought I know this moonlike face,
so like your father’s in so many ways.

Grandma’s shaky hands sculpt my face.
Maybe she scowls as she is struggling
to remember. Smiles when she recalls.

Ha! I know son. You are the foreign one.
But you spoke our boli*, how come?
Nobody speak our boli, our phrases
after leaving our Himalayan villages.

“But how can I forget our boli, Grandma!”
She grins. She softly protests as I wrap
her in a shawl from Macy's Chicago.

“Ma, papa send their regards. We
hope you are feeling better now.”
This body is a bag of bones grandson,
no juice runs in these veins,
ears can’t hear, eyes are fog-filled.
 

My sons want me to wear glasses.
I told the eye-doctor, I am no scholar,
and I won't start now. I recall you got
those glasses when you were eleven.
My sister and I got so worried.
I laugh as I recalled my Grandma's letter
saying she hadn't slept a blink, worrying
who would ever marry the bespectacled,
blind one? Her sister here is eighty-two,
still says to glasses: can't do.
Can't see with eyes, can't hear with ears!
'Moh' (attachment) doesn't let me leave,
but son, all the nine pores are shutting down.

I forget things, people even. Who are you,
she says, and winks, and grins at her joke.
 

Notes

*Boli- Language/tongue
 

THE MAUSOLEUM OF QUAINT HOPES

Situated in the quandary district,
near the fork in the Jeopardy Street,
the mausoleum attracts a tourist
or two in the dusk of a nostalgic retreat.    
         
              Like a memoir of unrequited desire              
majestic like a war widow's tunics,
a monument to a non-existent esquire
engaged in unseen, quixotic heroics.

A pit-stop for tourists for varied reasons,
 admiration laced with faith or suspicions,
sustained by awe, dreams and legends,
the mausoleum curates hope, or pretends.

Some seekers of quaint hopes believe exists
a hero worth revering in the past, and in us.
Each myth and hymn about that hero insists,
an Elysian paradigm, with an unearthly bliss.
Beyond the doors of imperfect ideas, terrifying
idols of hope and faith reign. A mere streak
of inexplicable precipitates a spiritual cyst.
The mausoleum is fabled for such trysts.

Many pulpits show us as inept, sinners,
require pilgrimages that make us remorseful.
Inscribed on the mausoleum is its only scripture:
Universes yield to the quaint, to the hopeful.
 

A SEQUESTERED WESTERNER

 

Should I describe myself in America as an Eastern Westerner?
Is it melanin or genes that make me a sequestered Westerner?

Baby suckled Eastern air, but also said: "Ne'er twain shall meet"
Ape Kipling, forget my East -- behave like that bastard Westerner?

Americans index a life's quality with the mortgage interest rates. 
Seek an insomniac luxury to turn into a flustered Westerner?

Traffic tantrums, dust-storm Junes, mosquitoes, monsoon roads,
For me that chaos makes sense, I am not no dastard Westerner!

Deli sandwiches, deep-dish pizzas, Buffalo wings, pub burgers–
Can't swallow, can't relish, I remain a spicy-mustard Westerner!

Grammar of choices flatter with 24/7 AC-water-power-security. 
Yet I ache for the desi ordeals; ain't I am an absurd Westerner?

Rushdie claims we are all migrants, from our territories or pasts.
What if my nostalgia is the optimism of a disinterred Westerner?

Whenever I visit India, callous comparisons engage my every step.
Am I embarrassed of my roots, am I now an awkward Westerner?

I live in the West, ever pine for the East: I await what epiphany?
Does the glory-ghoul tempt me to return as a conferred Westerner?

Jazz, Disney fables, turkey feasts, pumpkin ghosts, Coke's Santa Claus! 
Don’t I faithlessly adopt rituals to pass off as a die-hard Westerner?

Always ambushed by memories, as if, in East is my unfulfilled love.
Why not divorce my Amriki dream-life of a cloistered Westerner?

My creativity may flourish or famish in my East of parochial values.
Will my Eastern mother tongue forgive this blustered Westerner?

O disciple of duelling heritages – is Vivek Eastern or a Westerner?
Maybe an either / neither: dervish / bum, an erred/deferred Westerner.