Five-o-clock
sorrow stubbles father’s cheeks his eyes
fly
swiftly across the room greeting glances with kin
and kith
then return like two homing pigeons to rest
on the
small silent figure in a handspun white sari lain
(in that room with marble-flecked floor and seven windows)
upon a
braided coir mat beside a carved bronze lamp
thigh-high
all twenty-four wicks on six tiers ablaze
fuelled
by fresh coconut oil and husks of early memory
retrieved
from half-forgotten teakwood crannies
A kinswoman
stretches a hoary hand to smooth a strand
of
still-sentient hair flopping across granny’s naked face
her face
with newly ironed furrows crisp and neat
as the
seven starched pleats on her best white handspun
cotton
sari edged with gold brocade and blue flowers
she
caresses that face abandoned ground now that the enemy
who swam
up granny’s blood hammered holes in her mind
melted
muscles into mush and carpet-bombed her brain
has
decamped after seven-year-long V-day revelry
Far-flung
cousins an estranged daughter-in-law
her
resident nurse three betel-chewing crimson-lipped
neighbours
nephews and nieces a community leader
or two
and packs of grand and great-grandchildren
(three to thirteen years of age from pre-school to puberty)
a few
former fellow teachers too flit out and in some
feigning
sorrow others breathing honest relief gesturing orders
checking
wrists for holy hours or skipping in infant energy
then
tiptoeing past death with confused suddenly-caught breath
In a far
corner her daughters lip wordlessly together
ancient
prayers and invoke ageless wayward deities
in a bid
for peace and protection as past present and future
merge into a roiled landscape of the known and
unknown
litanies
for her soul but not without a plea for freedom from their
birthright
rescue from a legacy that could just swim
up their
blood hammer holes in their minds melt muscles
into mush
carpet-bomb their brains and chain their children
to
many-year-long sentences beside desiccating bedsides
Rodin while casting The Kiss
Sculpture is the
art of hollows and mounds.
Feelings emerge; passion and
life vibrate,
flood the surface as
Francesca astounds
Sculpture.
Is the
art of hollows and mounds
licensed – in my hands – to break all bounds,
let love reign on
Hell’s Gates?
Yes, for slighting Fate
sculpture is
the art. Of hollows and mounds
feelings must surge,
passion and life vibrate.
Karthika Naïr, 29/04/07
Francesca
da Rimini on The Kiss
As I seize his starved
lips, desire in blithe undress
rises, like the sun,
lighting bodies to their core.
Rodin released us from
sin, poor souls that transgressed
as I seized his starved lips.
Desire in blithe undress
arches my back, love cast in curves will egress
from the
shades as high albedo of a new lore.
As I seize his starved
lips, desire in full undress
rises, lighting, delighting bodies to their core.
Karthika Naïr, 01/05/07
Interregnum
Is it day
where you are, or does the moon
loiter
overhead, watching you like I
used to,
tracing with an unsteady breath
those
eyes, sleeping brows, the arc of a smile?
Do your hands
still stray unbidden at night,
angling
to fold my beat within your heart?
It is an
odd, wakeful creature, my heart,
tossing gravelly queries at the moon –
as though
to smash the murky pane of night
and
retrieve a name, a latitude I
seek: the
exact location of your smile.
Delhi,
Dhaka, I cite under my breath,
Bangkok,
Beijing, or up north where the breath
scars the
air still, white (like absence a heart):
Vostok,
Yukon? Legends that made us smile
once, and
contrail maps under a half-moon.
You had checked
airline schedules while I
counted
cash and clean socks that muggy night.
Your last
letter said they woke you at night:
strands
of memory that cut off a breath;
roving
thoughts you cannot call to heel. I
find
those in the mail, addressed to my heart,
dropped
by the same russet-tinted moon
wearing
faded love bites and a smug smile.
Free from
nations and rules, that tramp can smile:
no
trolled borders lie between her and night!
Not
celestial travellers like the moon,
you and I
fill up forms, plead, hold our breath;
cling to
vagrant hope that an unknown heart
will
relent, sign, scrawl ten digits. Then I,
decked in
new, numbered dignity, yes! I
could
indulge this tropism towards your smile;
rush
across to you, blood back to the heart.
Swathed as
one in the ample down of night,
we'd
learn anew to synchronise the breath
of
desire, and shut out the strident moon.
Till then,
though, there is just the moon as I
carve
with hushed breath the template of a smile,
sword to
end the siege of night on my heart.
- Karthika
Nair, 10/09/06
KN, 18/01/07
(first published in Indian Literature of the Kendra Sahitya Akademi in June 2007)
P(l)ain speaking : serenade of a stalker
Thirty-three years, two months and seven whirls
of the Earth on ageing toes: I have wooed
her smile through cities, seasons, the spread of
ink beneath those eyes – with all the longing
of an insomniac for sleep’s exiled
embrace. Seldom have I let that face bolt
from my gaze. No stakes, locks or windows
with bars could block my path; they should have told
her right at the start: I am what you’d call
the persistent sort. But refined too, I
was sent to the right schools: switch off the stars
before spearing a throat with throbbing tongue;
leave blood-roses by the pillow, after –
or a choker, five ruby welts set in
purple filigree for a slender neck.
Follow firm the old strictures of courtship,
timely reminders, even when apart:
a blank call at breakfast, sweet nothings sent
up blushing veins while at the grocer’s …
an errant heartbeat at noon – an echo
of me in the mirror? Yes, souvenirs
of desire to tell her I’m never far.
Yet my suit lies
spurned afresh: she is riled,
and the litany of love’s failings long.
I never knock, nor
say when I will come.
My constancy robbed
her of the suitors
from her youth, my shadow of space to grow.
Thirty-three years, two months and seven whirls
of the Earth on ageing toes: proof of rare
passion, yes, I see you nod. All
reduced
to restraining orders, and a black curse
on my head. Starched witches in blue hunt me
with pellets and poison darts; once, they,
with lead-clad kinsmen, strapped me in a hull,
strobed me
to smithereens like a mad dog.
But
love lingers in pieces, as I do.
The
moon may forsake its night oft and on,
but not I my prize: shards are better still
to enter each pore, swim in her waters
and court her thoughts. If possession be nine-
tenths of the law, I rule her breath, blazon
my colours ’cross the frontiers of her skin.
Yet
I wait, and wait again, for all my
reign, in the hope of recognition in
a smile, and unclenched eyes to make me whole.
- Karthika Naïr, 11/03/06
Afterwards
It still
feels new, this moment metronoming my days.
Fuzzy-edged,
it stretches like a twilight shadow,
while
sore eyes adrift on a trolley lift in a haze.
Liveried
attendants on wheels speck the weaving space,
blue-green
with steel legs and burdens – yes, them I greet, though
it still
feels new. This moment metronoming my days
returns
for the thirtieth time; I wake sliced by blunt rays
hurled
from a murky sky whose clouds clog my throat and slow
sore eyes
adrift on a trolley sifting through a haze,
seeking
feet, hands, a human voice, someone in this maze
of steel
widgets and sterile breaths to tell me they know
it must
feel new, this moment metronoming my days.
My hand,
decked with lifelines, reaches a papery face –
mine: a
far planet, arid, though streams spurt rust and flow.
Then sore
eyes adrift on a trolley peer past the haze
of thiopentane and pain to snag a surgeon’s cool gaze;
he rakes
my chest, and proclaims to a nurse, “It will snow.”
Yes, it
stays new, this moment metronoming my days,
when sore
eyes adrift on a trolley lift in a haze.
KN, 18/01/07
(first published
in Indian Literature of the Kendra Sahitya
Akademi in June 2007)