The poems selected here are from my next collection, which is perhaps a series of questions about language, gender and belonging. I say ‘perhaps’ because uncertainty, even suspicion, is at the heart of these poems. Over the last few years my writing has become wary about answers;I find more satisfaction in arriving at the right questions. 

When cable TV first came to India and cartoons replaced grandmothers as babysitters, I grew up watching Tom chase Jerry. I remember a scene where Tom is chasing Jerry on a roof and gets distracted. Not realizing that the roof has ended, Tom continues running. Soon he senses something is different. Still looking around, Tom pats the air with his paws. Once. Twice. It doesn’t feel right. Tom looks down, and zoop! He falls through the air. While writing, I often return to the epiphany of that moment. The cat does not fall off when the roof ends; he falls off when he realizes the roof has ended. My poems are moments of walking off the roof. I want to examine the spaces where the ground under our feet — social, geographical, political, linguistic — opens up. The moment of recognising we’re walking on air. 

In some ways, the poems are in conversation with the very things that made them: ancestors, history, gods and language. But it took a while to get there. I was initially distracted by the noisier versions of these poems. Through various drafts, I found that my work does not want to fit into complex identities but, more difficultly, to transcend them. To transcend not just labels and histories but even the subtler trappings of language and time. 

It might be a while before we get there. Meanwhile, I must let the poems say the rest. 

are ancient 

               pillars rooted in histories

               of revived gods and forgotten 

               godliness, of owning, fragmenting 

                lineage and language

are stories

       distilled into letters

        some bent, some proud, with bindis

                on their heads, all waiting to burst 

                through their seams of ink

are sensual

         like aafreen or silhouette

                 the double t of butter

                 melting, sizzling, dissolving

                 in the bed of a warm mouth

are counterfeit  

                 like rice, containing ice  

                 but none of the soft, gelatinous 

                 nourishment of a pulao

                 garnished with the banter of cousins

are borders 

                 past which I seek

                 that nounless language 

                 where north is to find

                 where leg is to walk

where even god is a verb

 

After my own Wordsworthian walk

I will leave the flowers unplucked

by syntax. So much 

of so much is prismed by language, 

refracting into seven shades of something 

half-endearing, half-flawed that

it must be human. After all, the daffodils 

aren’t golden to the kitten

who can only see blue and green,

the clouds aren’t lonely to the birds 

who know to make friends midsky. 

And I’m convinced when cats 

consent to create a grammar

it will be full of possessives, these creatures 

who graciously adopt the world.

So as I throw the ball to my niece

I tell her why the elephant isn’t big

— it’s the normal size of an elephant — 

just as the ant isn’t small and the giraffe 

isn’t tall. Everything, she asks, breathless,

is its own normal? I shrug so she may 

learn to mistrust what adults believe. Mean

while what can anyone honestly say?

The cloud is. The flower is. She is. 

Anything after that is not them. 

It’s me. 

 

My skin is transparent

as the wind. Come, 

look closer,

look better.

And chant, as you approach – 

One: not another woman

Two: not another other woman

Three: not woman, not man, not anything third 

          Four: not flower, not goddess, not homemaker, 

not home-breaker, not reformer, 

not cheerleader, not temptress, 

not sorceress, not bud, not thorn, 

not the name for breath or death,

not sister, not bhabhi, not word-slinger, 

not middle-finger, not girl-next-door, 

not woman-on-top, not womb, 

not barren.

Five: not roots, not country, not language 

Six: not metaphor

          Seven: not, not, not.

And if you wade past

this cacophony of labels

pinned to my skin,

watch yourself in my eyes.

Reborn. 

 

They insisted the tree was aging

but to our child-eyes

the world appeared vintage anyway,

framed by fading yellow 

boughs. So when the tree fell

to the wind 

(perpetual enemy of the old)

we gaped at the pulsing web

of roots that held

surprised species together. 

Moles and worms blinked 

their blindness at the sparrows

that had once nested 

on higher floors. 

After the crash, everything fell

silent. And cacophonous. 

Like the world

had ended, but no one

had sent the memo. 

They spoke of how the tree 

bore flower and fruit 

but I now only remember 

how it held a tickle 

in its leaves,

an almost-trembling, 

like the beards

of a certain generation of men. 

We poked through the holes 

in its brown skeleton, 

thrilled and terrified by death 

sprawled around our feet. 

Yellow is the colour

of shock. 

They did not notice us enough

to explain that our confused 

grief was wasted.

The tree simply continued

after the women

took away its arms

to light their fires.

Once home to butterflies,

now to caterpillars, 

leaf turning to mulch

flower to fossil

nectar to oil. 

For the rest of the week

we ran through

its once-spot

as if we were entering

a hologram,

the tree as present as breath,

a great-grandmother 

whispering in our ears

the story of how death  

is yet another kind 

of life. 

 

And the seed stands in promise

of the tree within it,

the egg stands in promise

of feathers, flight and skies,

the mud, of clay and cup.

We exist not only as manifest 

but as maybe.

Refrigerators borrow their hum

from waterfalls, deafening

chutes of molten current.

And in the sand bordering

the oceans, we draw 

blueprints of silicon chips.

My skin, hair and sweat

bear the DNA that make their way 

into water and weed, returning

as takeaway meals that sculpt 

my skin, hair and sweat.

Sometimes when the world is ablur

and nothing knows

its place anymore, I like to imagine

I’m weaving my way 

in and out of every pulse 

on this blue button, 

looking under rocks 

for the last place 

I left myself.