K. Srilata

Very briefly then,
I am middle class
and very Madras.

Born and raised in
West Mambalam -
the other side of the railway tracks
where fabled mosquitoes turn people into
elephants.

Went to college in
Khushboo sarees stripped
right off the absurdly voluptuous mannequins at
Saravana stores T.Nagar Chennai 17.

To weddings I wore,
in deference to my mother,
silk kanjeevarams with temple borders.
Every other girl
was a designer-sequined shimmer.

I thought nothing of
throwing away
my dreaming hours on
MTC's 47 A,
sitting beside women who ruined my
view,

leaning casually across to
spit or
chuck
through the grime of windows
spinach stems they didn't fancy
in their evening Kuzambu,
hurling motherly advice at
young men who dared death by
swinging,
two-fingered,
from other women's windows.

My idea of a holiday
was rolling down the hillsides
of Ooty,
dressed in white
like Sridevi.

Objects of love-hate:
the auto annas.

And of course it is coffee that defines
the limits of my imagination.
I never could think of it as
cappuccino or mocha or
anything other than
decoction coffee,
deep brown like my own Dravidian skin.

Lunch:
10.30 sharp: sambhar rasam curry

Tiffin:
5 sharp: idli dosa vada

My idea of arctic winter:
twenty-six degree centigrade.

And so on and so forth
as they don't say in Tamil.

Never mind this new upstart Chennai.
Madras, my dear, here I come!
About me, rest assured,
there is
no Bombay, no Delhi, no London
and certainly no New York.
I am all yours,
Madras, my dear,
wrap and filling!
...

When amma came
to New York City,
she wore unfashionably cut
salwar kurtas,
mostly in beige,
so as to blend in,
her body
a puzzle that was missing a piece -
the many sarees
she had left behind:
that peacock blue
Kanjeevaram,
that nondescript nylon in which she had raised
and survived me,
the stiff chikan saree
that had once held her up at work.

When amma came to
New York City,
an Indian friend
who swore by black
and leather,
remarked in a stage whisper,

"This is New York, you know -
not Madras.
Does she realise?"

Ten years later,
transiting through L.A. airport
I find amma
all over again
in the uncles and aunties
who shuffle past the Air India counter
in their uneasily worn, unisex Bata sneakers,
suddenly brown in a white space,
louder than ever in their linguistic unease
as they look for quarters and payphones.
I catch the edge of amma's saree
sticking out
like a malnourished fox's tail
from underneath
some other woman's sweater
meant really for Madras' gentle Decembers.
...

There is no milk in the house
And everything is bare.
I drink black tea
in the early morning light,
and idly hope that the day's beauty will remain,
that I will write a line like Sheenagh Pugh's:
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen;
may it happen for you.
Pugh meant snow
but her keyboard came up with sorrow.
May my keyboard play such tricks on me!

Outside the small ambit of such hopes,
the day is creeping up
like a large bug
with questions in its poetry-killing eyes.

I close my eyes and think of lines to write.
I drink black tea in the early morning light.
...

Black birds scatter,
slide off the tresses
of a rain tree
sunset lit.
Something returns to my heart,
past rib-cage, blood and bone,
something I don't have a word for.
Somewhere a skylight opens.

In the cupped hands of the ocean
lie many rivers.
Not a drop spills out the sides of the earth.
Something returns to my heart,
past rib-cage, blood and bone,
something I don't have a word for.
Somewhere a skylight opens.
On looking, I find this thing
for which I don't have a word.
It is a simple thing without frames.
A thing I want to sing of
even when the skylight only shows
black bits of night.
...