The Grey Wanderings

By Sindhu Sreekumar

1. Salted Oranges

Twenty two years is long.

The saris you gave were of two colours.

Teal for me was sea green,

Orange- rust brown for you.

Your first garments that tied the thread

between us before the lamp

and a heaped paddy grains .

Orange threads

ran through the loom and the gold wefts

through the shuttle.

Criss - cross the weaver

pulled the strings and threw the shuttle

as the silk formed layers and

the orange embers burned

to drown in an ocean of teal.

Orange was rust for you.

Rusted by the salted teal years

and the heat of the sun.

My sea green is not yet teal,

but I wore your rust brown for the wedding reception.

I looked a bride with French plaits and the thick Kancheepuram

pleated and pinned around my waist.

I decorated your side and the jasmine on my plaited hair did not bloom.

The photos in our album haven't rusted. They are orange like

Nagpur oranges, sweet, sour and petaled with pips, that tastes bitter.

2. Kaliya

A short curve around the corner

gets darker, tapering into the edges.

The slabs on the drain leaked a stench out

and the rains dripped the rust on the sheets.

The roads and the black puddles glazed in the sheen of oil.

My aunt’s cracked feet

jumped across one more puddle,

as her chiffon saree danced above her ankles

jumping with her like water drops.

She darted between people,

tugging me as a wagon.

Her hands clenching

my tiny wrists,

tighter at a turn,

dodging a crowd.

Matchbox-like shops bordered on drain slabs.

The name boards with a few initials

hung like old yellow stained calendars

and there in the glass cases,

on the blue and green velvets

the lustrous silver anklets hung

as drops of rain on a green, green leaf.

Then she finally stopped at her chosen place.

I pointed to

the one that jingles most and garlands

my feet like jasmine flowers.

Tying it around my feet,

I sat in aramandi

like a Mohinyattam dancer.

The moon and the stars in my hands

and a Kaliya gliding in my vein, as

I jingle my feet

to the talas.

I posed with the flute,

as I swayed around

wanting to be the

dancer who stomped Kaliya.

3. The Grey Wanderings

Today evening the golden sky

stretches before me

as an ocean spraying

it's hues on the road

I walk ,

I walk on the footpath,

as if I have no kitchen

and the road runs

as if it has no home.

The pillars

grow into bridges flying

in leaps to an unbounded sky.

I walk with the roads,

with the laughing rains,

that smell of dust.

The hoardings flap

like the birds do with their wings,

as if they have grown on trees.

They as the black oil on the roads,

leak a greasy smell.

And sometimes

tower above the tall buildings,

trumpeting songs saved

in the cans stored in

a freezer selling colourful fizzy liquids.

The walls look scarred,

with scratches of

postered faces

like my cat,

after a squabble of high pitched

growls and clawed bruises.

There are trees with orange flowers

and flags coloured like

flowers of tatters.

Lights of vehicles

flashing and flaming

across the roads.

I walked,

the night darkened the fringes of the day,

and the street lamps burned

like flames of a hearth.

I walked as if I have no kitchen

and the roads ran as if it had no home.

4. Summer longings

I boil water,on my gas,

looking at my gleaming glass bottles,

on my kitchen shelves

filled with coffee, sugar and tea,

resembling my grandma's

candy jars.

The toffee candies with green wrappers

the orange candies with white wrappers.

We tied the wrappers into tiny dolls

with two plaits of hair.

They rustled like dry leaves

in our hands.

I look out,

my window showed me

the mango that yellows

at the curve,

balancing at the tip of the stem

as the sun stroked

it glows in gold.

It's the month of May,

and my grandparent's home,

rained mangoes,

on breezy afternoons.

We ran like

mice out of our holes

to pick them

and bite

into the

sweet juicy fibers.

The yellow liquid seeped

and stained

the corners of our mouth.

This May, they say

the mangoes didn't

flower on the roof of my

old childhood home.

5. Vermillion

Grandma wanted us clean and dressed by six.

Kuruthi at the illam was a

family affair

happening on a Friday.

Seven at night ,

and the bulb lighted

a filament in red coils.

Electricity and voltage

travelled in sputters

through the lines

to my grandparents’ home.

The flame of the lantern

leapt out of the wicks,

smoking black stains

on the glass that fenced hurricanes.

The smell of burnt kerosene

swam into our noses.

Like the spluttering of mustard seeds,

we all popped around

in the pan of our courtyard

nestling in the darkness of the night.

The women, the children and men,

all now set

and "devaki amma" leads us with

a torch of dried coconut leaves wound

together spitting fireflies.

We walk one behind the other

in the jagged shadows of light

on a path narrowed by

walls, night and rain.

We jumped across

fat mud walls,

to reach the grounds of the illam

through the back yard.

Our voice trailed into whispers

in the home

where “Bhagwathy” dwells.

The old woman of the house

sat in a small bed,

her eyes outlined with kohel,

and the wrinkles

drawing circles

Her lips,

spread in a smile,

and eyes glowed .

She spoke of a goddess

in her small shrine

and lights blazing

in a camphor lit lamp.

We walk beside a wall

grey, like the Colosseum,

the stones, crumbling.

A mossy green

creeping up in

a sleepover with rain.

The bird window

opened

to a red silk draping the wall

and a “Bhagwathy” hidden

by the gold lights of a brass lamp.

I close my eyes

to see thousands of

red hibiscus flames

light the damp

braided wickers of

a coiled nerve ends.

6. Out

Sometimes Eliot might come back with his cruellest month.

An April we have,

burns the sky for us

and not moan all day dripping our grounds into wet green slippery patches.

April begins with a routine to be quite,

to count the sun’s rays noisily blinding my eyes,

and smell the heat of the blue sky.

This is not the time

you can bang me with

a practical guide to live.

The book stalls are full of them.

Give me a sunny rain and

a tale of the fox's wedding

in a forest where the honey hunters stray,

and a warm cottony pillow

for my head to sink in.

Home's no house you have built my dear,

the curtains would fade,

the windows would creak,

the paint would plaster out

like the heavy make-up

on wrinkled skin.

The brick’s not going to hold the walls.

I looked into his eyes

staring at his newly painted walls

and all the love he bore for it.

. 7. Imported

"To come from foreign"as you say it here

is a privilege.

For simply being away from our eyes

to drive in cars that are too perfect and roads that runs like silk

When my dad opened his boxes tagged with aeroplane stickers,

a fragrance moistened our houses.

No… not the dusty smell of the woody years as in our mouldy almirahs.

I wonder if rain doesn't rot their woods and rust their steels brown.

Must be a privilege,

And my dad opened it with toys in bubble wraps,

that run between our fingers

popping out like small crackers.

the china silk saris tumble out of his suitcase

and a doll that cried as the nipple was snatched from its mouth,

and the erasers that would be distributed among my friends.

to leave after a month

and not to swing your daughter

in your arms,

not to see her dance .

and to lose her in the construction bricks

estimated for your school.

Must be a privilege.

8. The Pyre

Then my husband said,

A good combustion doesn't leave traces of smoke.

Then will my pyre

leave traces?

Black as the soot of coal

burnt in the barbecue?

Or will it be

White as the

shroud that bundles me ?

Will you, see me,

in my nakedness then?

Run your hands over me?

My eyes holes,

My mouth- a hole.

Will you run them over my scales, flaking them

like the skin of onion,

wrenching pungent drops

from your eyes?

Run them over my stretch marks,

skim them through,

like threads

to tie my toes.

Thread them together,

cover me to my head,

and slit a mouth in the linen bundle,

like the maker did in the bundle of flesh.

Mouth is all I have

in this sack

to be carried in the plantain leaf.

Will I leave traces?

Will I burn well?

9. Backscattering

They have scrubbed me clean,

and shaved me hairless,

as if I were a kitchen shelf

on display.

Their striped apron is my body's cover,

no different from their pillow and bed cover.

A smell in the air fills my nostrils,

and sleep is injected into my veins,

my hands slip

into the west end of my grandpa's house,

where there was a corner

between the windows

that opened to the gooseberry tree playing

peekaboo with sun.

I lay beside the window on the

cold black floor.

and drop down

in a yellow sunflower field,

with their heads popping

up like bright gold puppets of sun

dancing on the strings of light.

I see the slow green leaf

curling a black worm in its veins,

weaving cocoons

to grow wings.

Worms grow wings,

mine might too.

The black blotches

behind my pupils

pinches my nerves

Coal behind my eyes,

By Sindhu Sreekumar