For A K Ramanujan-1 Poem by Prathibha Nandakumar

I was all that and suddenly

She appeared at the backyard,
where he spoke his mother’s tongue.

Who are you, I asked

I am his, she said,
sitting cross legged
on the grass mat.

Was she the one he mentioned,
who does not wash between her legs?

Perhaps, her pan-chewed red lips will now
start speaking the unspeakable obscenities?

Was she the one who turned her back
to him, peeling off her cloths, waiting for him
to undo her bra, making him sweat and shudder?

Was she the one
who watched sparrows, on the park bench,
like him, not knowing what to say?

Or, wait a minute, the one he took,
shaking a little, as commandments crumbled,
behind the laws of his land?

Or the one they found dead
sitting on the toilet seat, naked, in the living room,
whose numbers vanished to appear in his poems?

Or the one for whom he waited,
as always, to arrive from
some where and take him some where?

I watch her breasts to detect any signs
of poison smeared, to offer him,
to suck her dry, to renew his breath.

But had she killed him,
the mother turned demon,
or had she kissed away his pain,
as she had always done?

In a rage, I slapped her

and she disappeared
into his absent presence.