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HAPPY DIWALI

 

All the things I’m meant to receive today;
sun warmth on yoga mat
bird song orange
jasmine lush lime
peeking through windows
vacuum cleaner whirrs; the cleaner is back
sweat on brow
hover
over me like a child whose mother died;

she’s four years old
unsure, she waits at the threshold
to be accepted, scooped up
by love—new/step/good/evil—no idea yet, no one explained
how to receive/give/connect

iridescent illusions
the moon, full and trembling with the waves, is not the moon
it’s a reflection

the girl waits
tilts her forehead—leaf seeking sun, tides beseeching moon
clamouring to touch
She waits her turn.

Of all the things I’m meant to receive today,
I choose to pick the hurt of your words.

Your words are dunes—shape-shifters; they are picture-perfect
when we have company
but they turn
when the door is shut
when we are alone, together in a room,
they move

shift—cover—consume— steal____________all/my — space —

entomb me alive

“Look at the way he looks at you…” friends, family ooze at Diwali,
"So much love!”

The lights, the fireworks, orange blossom jasmine, and birdsong are stuck at the threshold.

No one taught me how to pet a four-year-old’s forehead.
Or how to ask for help.

 

THIS (UN)DEFINED LOVE

 

This defined Love (of stories and tragic ends) La ILA Majnu
Romeo Juliet, Heer-Ranjha
is a kite
carved out of SKY
poured and pushed into frame-hearts of mortals
to pulsate with pulse
in a lover’s chest.

Lines of colour, of religion and all games earthly made-up
tether kites to the Montagues and the Capulets.
What’s in A. Name?

This defined Love, coursing in human veins
reels in sonnets of pain
seeking deedar on balconies and bazaars.
“Love comforteth like sunshine after
R

A

I

N”
 

This defined Love craves rihai…escape…

At last,
on a breezy seaside, or on Basant Panchami,
this fickle filament called Love
lifts rods of spar, spreader and spine
and soars and soars and sails—    when the wind is right.
“And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.”

This wind or is it the wailing sky? The riser rises to this call,
and edges forward —
flying flag-freedom of line laundry.

This bridle entwined of loops and loops of
web-entrapments of destinies
succcccummmbbs
and unravels to this call
of the wind, or is it the Sky demanding
his carved-out space
back
like dictators do, like colonists did.

There’s a war on every screen. So much innocence dead, dying, crying. Mute.

This defined Love
slices humanity into c  o  u    n  t    r i es.
The kites
rise and swirl
And pull     and yaw     and yaw
to    break free.

At last, the sails meet mid-air.
Their lines cross.

A KISS. Last entanglement.

No lines. No kites. No hearts, pleas, rivalries, vile histories.
Shreds. Paper. Fragments. Broken twigs
land in conquered shrieks in maidans, in gullies—unreachable chimneys.

this (un) defined Love (cut from ties and lines of destinies - doomed)
finally FILLS the empty.

"my bounty is as boundless as the Sea,
my LOVE as DEEP; the more i give to thee,
the more i have, for BOTH are INFINITE."

 

(Notes:

*Deedar means view or sight in Urdu
**rihai means escape or freedom in Urdu
***Maidan and gullies mean fields and lanes in Hindi
The stories of India’s partition of 1947 as told to me by my grandmother and the current Israel, Palestinian conflict inform this poem.
This poem is inspired by the style of E.E. Cummings.
The quotes in italics are from various works of Shakespeare.

 

ROOT CHAKRA AND A GARDEN POT
 

when days were mangoes, I sliced open a Sun
slid one half over the horizon
and kept the other in my pocket
pulp, juice, smell, innocence

I was copying my grandfather – his kameez pockets
were always full of jaggery

the mango seed, I scraped clean with my tongue, my teeth
and kept it hidden from everyone
seeds are trees, my grandfather used to say
Nature’s treasure chests, as precious as bees

My grandfather was a man of few words, many grunts and countless Ahas!
If his Ahas were a soundtrack, they’d be trending on Insta reels

he didn’t use labels to store the seeds, why force boundaries?
anything is a possibility. he kept them in jars; like jewels
but knew when to plant which
he read soil seasons like the roots of ancient trees

Mitti—soil—a man of the soil. The soil man. Soiled man;
dirty fingernails, muddy shoes, soil stains on salwar-kameez; pocket rims—filthy

when he died, overnight
his garden shrunk (turned into a terracotta pot)
the men, his heirs; inheritors of his DNA, his land—
my father and his brothers, couldn’t decide
how to dice up their father’s land

being the eldest, my father inherited the terracotta pot
in a blink, I grew up
alone on my father’s bit of land
memories don’t always keep
they drip, decay, turn rancid

one day, a mango tree coursed through confines
of terracotta lips, hips and produced two mangoes

the neighbours came to congratulate the man of the house for achieving such a feat
in a city cemented in concrete where only the showy
flowerbeds were allowed to breathe
“’tis a miracle!” they tweeted

“all the seasons of soil are lost.” everyone agreed
and left one by one to watch cricket, news – each to own screen

the day the two tart and green mangoes showed up,
(and when we were alone)
we coiled our roots hanging loose from our root chakras
(activated on yoga mats)
in our soft, clean hands and stood around
the round, terracotta pot
desperate to plug ourselves in—to renew, to recharge

I was on my period, my mother on her menopause
and my father looked utterly lost