Memory

That day

The curtains were sunflower and white checks against the dark grain of the bed and the sun came in through a yellow window and blinded the freshly mopped floors a river of light

Before I noticed her foot held up to me like a helpless water bird her toes curled in around the ball with pain, or the growing ring of red around a blue pimple, I heard her wail and the pigeons just outside take flight in alarm

On that glorious afternoon

That day my sister stepped on a push-pin.

Pooja Room

The gods smile down at me
Fixed benevolent molded forgiving painted divine printed loving
The dry caked bloody copper kum kum disfiguring Lakshmi the Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity
The fragile brown spider suspension of old jasmine strings worn proudly around Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles
the dispersed ash and unburied stumps of deceased incense sticks burying the veena of Saraswathi the goddess of Art and Learning
And still
The gods smile.

Rain Song

I fell in love that afternoon
When the monsoon touched the earth so powerful in its passion
that the stone compound wall keeping vagrants out
came under siege by an exiled lake returning to the drained bed of our houses
and rolled like a prolonged crash of thunder into a drowning grey rubble
We held hands under the umbrella,
marveling at newspaper imaginings and TV hearsay
the high excitement of a modest flood in our neighbourhood
with the inclement wind in our faces
slate water, up to ankles, that washed the human dung from the shelters in with our flower beds and bicycles
and the Raag Megh unnecessarily keeping tune in my head