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SPENT CHILDHOOD

Your uncle becomes quiet,
becomes pale and white. His
body is heavy with the weight of
all he wants to carry with him. He
leaves, his body wrapped in plain
white clothes, cotton in his
nostrils and ears. You experience
death at the age of 14. You don’t
know what dying means.
Everyone has spent hours deep in
prayer, massaging his body with
oil to make it ready to be
consumed by fire. His absence is
felt even as he lies dead in the
living room. They react with
chest-beating, crying and
howling. How is it possible for
their lungs to stay inside their
bodies, you don’t know. You
don’t know what death means
until you know what death does
to the people around you. Then
there are those who’ll remind you
that death has to be mourned to
be accepted. You don’t cry at 14.
It takes time, it takes three or four
more bodies lying in your living
room. You wet your cheeks at 16,
18, 20. Your wardrobe has too
many black clothes. And a few
white ones that you have to wear
every other year.

 

HOUSEHOLD
 

A Tamil film on TV, the kitchen filled with the soundtrack
Of empty vessels quickly kept on each other repetitively

On a table for six, us five for dinner
The fan, like our conversations, slow and noisy

We seldom talk, blather about people, people’s people
The white walls of this house don’t remember our names

Small talk is the salt our food has been cooked with
Too much cardamom in chai, laal mirch in kadi,

Pumpkin seeds for anxiety, nettle tea for digestion,
Chamomile for sleep; the newspaper boy brings

Two papers less now: lynching, rape, #metoo
My sister’s corrugated face utters “me three”

A report asserts that India is less happier than last year
Making fun and bullying begin at home

“Schools are second homes,” my sister once whispered
These barbarous bruises are vowels of our dialect

There are softer words in Hindi for things like these
Her room has jammed French windows

She drinks more water now
e practice minimalism in our actions, reactions, retractions

The table for six has five chairs, the legs of the sixth
Retire in a storeroom; we don’t talk about catastrophes,

We cook them up, served with thick slices of mangoes
At the dinner table; we haven’t learnt to mourn the dead

 

EVERYTHING YOU NEED
 

You are running late, and in a movie, a woman scribbles
a secret on a chit of paper hides it between the cracks
of the wall before painting over it.

What is the last memory of a vacant house? The cups
and plates, spoons and forks have been held, then
placed in moving boxes. Meanwhile, you lower your neck

under the shower tap. You are running late, and in that movie,
a man figures that there is really no point. People don’t move on,
time is undone if you look hard at the window, a pie is eaten

and puked. The walls of the house in the movie are soaked in sun,
you see it carry a sparrow’s shadow. Two trees outside your window
move their necks together by the swish of wind.

You can’t read that secret penned in that chit of paper. Everything
you need is in that house in the movie, now with freshly painted
walls and vacancy. Meanwhile, you lower your neck under the shower tap.