Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
grandfather’s house.
A warren of rooms.
All conceivable minor inconveniences
housed within intransigent walls
that in all its hundred and forty-two years
refused to believe
that electricity was real.
Wires snaked across walls and
slunk into plug points that
were singed at the edges
while bulbs were surreptitiously housed
in flower shaped holders.
The house wasn’t fooled.
The attic was a wonderland
I had never been in
but grandmother would swing
herself up through a trapdoor
and return bearing coconuts
or a dead civet.
I hid from visitors
who’d pull my cheeks, sharing
instead a dark room with newborn kittens.
Glass squares shone
between terracotta roof tiles
through which the freshly dead peeped
to ensure I was sufficiently sad
on the night of their funeral.
Those nights I would not look upwards.
Instead examine my grand-aunt’s blue stone studded bangles
which she claimed kept her blood pressure in control.
I must believe her.
When she died
her wrist was bare
her blood had no pressure.
Sometimes the house blew a fuse. People became dark
disembodied voices. We would sit, all of us,
in the backyard in companionable silence
before voices broke out babbling about ancient grouses:
tales of actions and consequences
of toddy tappers and women who loved them
of storm nights and harvest days
of meaningful hums and heavy sighs —
while disrespecting chickens that were trying to sleep.
On those nights
grandmother would say
the moonlight is blue. True.
In that black to which we had lost
our bodies
the moonlight looked icy blue.
I’d venture like a pirate on a shaft of moonbeam
then run into her arms when dry leaves
rustled.
No one minded a bit of cowardice.
It ran in the family.
They looked kinder in that blue light –
a little loveable.
One day I grew up.
The people are gone.
So is the house.
Sold to a man who dismantles old ones to sell to resorts.
His electric blades, I’m told, were blunted
by our wood that refused to believe in saws.
Bigger, better saws arrived
to see-saw through our moonlit stories.
Nothing remains.
Ground zero is now a ‘terrace-house’
electrified
gentrified.
Wiring well-hidden intentions
behind smooth-talking walls
and obsequious, oleaginous tube light smiles.
These days our moonlight is a white bright.
It too has been cleaned.