}} Exile on Every Street |

Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










Exile on Every Street

I gather the street has awoken.

 
There used to be a bookstore here once

It lingers, still, like the negatives of a dream

Perhaps it’s those very pages, who knows

That today help in wrapping the meat

Leaving behind the filtrates of marinade

A caravanserai of garlic, lime, rub, and tahini

And the smouldering proof of what once whirled

Only minutes ago, on vertical broiler spit.
 

Abdul Chacha’s café around the corner

(It’s a stall impersonating a shack, really)

– Façade dressed in green, third lane from the left

When you approach the innards of Diyafah Street –

Lies brimming with the slow drip-drip of nostalgia

As he drapes Kabul around him like it were a fable

Pounding the dough and pouring his tears

Into vast vats of what only regret really knows.
 

Maqbool hums a rowdy tune, a sidewalk removed

Kerala in his eyes as they sparkle at spice

The loud grinding of turmeric and cardamom

The sly swirl of oil crackling into flame

The slow dance of heritage on pans and plates

Each joyous ditty of his a secret teardrop

To a coastline now surely denied by time.
 

The eye embraces, the aromas infuse

Whispers of forgotten homelands as lagniappe

Aapams and cradles and the sweet kiss of curd

Karachi invoked through illicit darkened meat

Koshary eliciting Cairo through profuse chickpeas

Abruptly, mafroukeh, Beirut dazzling the stars

This curious life of exile coming to boil

On streets muffled by sighs that seas can’t part.
 

I gather the street has awoken.
 

Flavour persists, like a stubborn lover

Much like this poem, never quite fully consumed

Hinging on the ricochets of things you can’t clasp…

A taste, a smell, a photographic memory.
 
 
 
← Siddharth Dasgupta