all that glittered

“In his use of diction, Kolatkar saw himself very much in the blues-bhakti tradition.”

A Woman’s Place Is In The Poem

Don’t look her in the eyes. Only the night could ever come between the moth and the flame, and the sun still crinkles the edges of evening. There is time for loss. There is time for prayer, for lips to understand the rubbed language of sighs. Till then, we sip our broken promises. Slowly.

At your service then, madam, the hands we hid behind our backs. Please watch them carefully as they unfurl. Note the blood under fingernails. Note the monsoons embedded in the seams. Note the weight of assumption. 

Electric Moon, directed by Pradip Krishen and written by Arundhati Roy. 

The internet has failed me, oh the horror. 

Demand

It was the usual protest at Jantar Mantar.

The monkeys and the beggar-women

sat arrayed in concentric circles.

The langurs demanded government jobs

in return for biting off the city’s sin every dusk

(primary targets included jilted lovers and the nouveau riche);

work they had been performing for the past seven generations.

The women − some immortal, some

balanced precariously on caste lines −

complained bitterly of the bad crop this winter.

Each of them had given birth to exactly two

tall, dark and handsome men

who had at once applied to British universities.

I was seated in the center of this colosseum,

this postcolonial tamasha.

The sundial refracted our tired ghosts

into tea and lentils.

Nodded at the gurdwara in the distance,

began to chide the natives for their

petty narratives in my taut English –

but it was missing.

One of the little chootiyas must have

stolen it. Why?

Hanuman, sitting cross-legged beside me,

leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper.

“Ah, but how else

can the subaltern speak?”