Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
The bank officer laid out his register with the number of my locker written neatly at the top of a page.
There were columns for me to enter and exit on days and times of my choosing.
I almost fell in love with him.
He had drawn lines on the page – parallel, inviting– like prisons of our own making.
He seemed like a man who knew how to enter and, more importantly, to exit. These and other thoughts, along with jewellery, I placed in the locker.
Back at his desk he gave me forms, asked for a Nominee, and conjured an imaginarium
of families, birthdays, parakeets, heirs and expectations.
Now I, who check-in my shadow at airport counters and watch cartoons on TVs at
railway stations, I, who buy too much food at movie theatres, ransacked pigeonholes
for a name to fill in the blank that would one day open a metal box
that has known no other hands.
Last week I caught up with my Nominee at the market as she looked over the aubergines with sad eyes. “One never knows,” she muttered absently, “sometimes you cut one open and there, in the flesh, in a dark hole something stirs.”
I smiled. She who seeks the black in the dark inherits my night.