Are united with me through the private language of women
Of secrets of healing from childbirth
Of the fragrance of sambrani,
calmly coiling around neglected hair.
Of safety pins around a taali,
covered by a demure sari.
Of how pleats should gracefully
Contour the softened edges of my newly maternal frame.
There’s a woman who lives near me 
Alone in an old apartment.
A little run down, her and her abode.
From the shade of our quiet tree-lined street
I see her dusty balcony during my evening walks
A rickety wicker chair piled high with
a decade’s worth of newspapers.
On slow Sunday mornings
When half our street is still asleep
Her cats luxuriate in the golden sunlight
Streaming through the trees
The dust motes of the balcony
Of no consequence to them.
Every once in a while I see her on the street
To and fro on some errand
Her clothes unironed,
Her hair an afterthought.
Looking like the smell of a thousand mothballs
In forgotten trunks full of old saris.
I have to feed the cats,
she tells me as she shuffles hurriedly away.
And I thought of those cats
Happily sunning themselves
And the woman furtively lurking
in the depths of the old dusty apartment.
(NaPoWriMo2024)
A neem tree grows outside the french windows
In my bedroom.
Casting its shade and bitter fragrance
On to my desk
My books
My belongings
And me.
In the scorching summer heat
I wilt a little with the tree
When the leaves wither
And the mournful cawing of the crows
Swirls melancholy over the parched earth.
Then the tree comes back to life
The bitter green washing through me again
To renew, restore, rejuvenate
The neem tree a bright flame of green
Fragrance of life outside my window.
(NaPoWriMo 2024)
At the Madhya Pradesh Tribal Museum in Bhopal earlier this year.
In a paper I read
About the beauty of language
A famous scholar said
About Sanskrit
That it described things perfectly
Such as
Nipal asam
“As softly or silently as the falling of leaves.”
It made me think of
Leaves drifting through the softness of time
Like a sigh suspended in the softness of space
It made me think of
The soft cocoon of your heartbeat
A language of beauty
For mine.
(NaPoWriMo 2024)
