Colour Poem by Shikhandin Shikhandin

Once upon a time, long, long ago, the humble
home-made papad could actually become foreign-returned
‘pepper biscuits' with a simple flick of a wrist opening
a manila envelope. Madras Checks flipped outright
into a fashion-fabric by its mere sound -
the rrrip of the envelope proclaiming the status of the visa,
the granting of sacred admission into hallowed grounds -
a Little India far, far away, from Big India.

So the pucca brown sahibs packed and un-packed and re-packed
turning up the buttons of their noses,
only just a little, for courtesy is a hallmark of sahibdom,
or so they believed in those days. But Mother remained unimpressed.

Mother did worry, though about the fates of her own burnished daughters,
especially now that their school mates were leaving
for foreign shores,
so blithely. She bathed her daughters everyday
with turmeric and milk. And, she told her daughters
many times over, that she'd had a choice of suitors
when she was young,
short-listed from a bushel of letters.

Afterwards, mother graciously sent the servant boy out
to get samosas, crisp yellow and hot, with dollops
of brown tamarind chutney - "they won't get those when they get there, "
she forecast with the prescience of a weather bulletin,
as she surveyed a pale dry fruit cake, her specialty standing proudly
on a white Victorian cake plate that once had belonged
to her mother and the precious bone-china tea things elegantly scattered
on her inherited ivory lace tablecloth…Heraquiline nose
turning slowly towards the door when it rang, at last.

Perhaps the little things sensed her disdain, then again
may be they realized as they sat there
consuming their farewell tea,
where the price of their tickets truly lay.

(First Published in Etchings, Australia)