To The Welsh Critic Who Doesn'T Find Me Identifiably Indian Poem by Arundhathi Subramaniam

To The Welsh Critic Who Doesn'T Find Me Identifiably Indian

Rating: 5.0


You believe you know me,
wide-eyed Eng Lit type
from a sun-scalded colony,
reading my Keats – or is it yours –
while my country detonates
on your television screen.

You imagine you’ve cracked
my deepest fantasy –
oh, to be in an Edwardian vicarage,
living out my dharma
with every sip of dandelion tea
and dreams of the weekend jumble sale…

You may have a point.
I know nothing about silly mid-offs,
I stammer through my Tamil,
and I long for a nirvana
that is hermetic,
odour-free,
bottled in Switzerland,
money-back-guaranteed.

This business about language,
how much of it is mine,
how much yours,
how much from the mind,
how much from the gut,
how much is too little,
how much too much,
how much from the salon,
how much from the slum,
how I say verisimilitude,
how I say Brihadaranyaka,
how I say vaazhapazham –
it’s all yours to measure,
the pathology of my breath,
the halitosis of gender,
my homogenised plosives
about as rustic
as a mouth-freshened global village.

Arbiter of identity,
remake me as you will.
Write me a new alphabet of danger,
a new patois to match
the Chola bronze of my skin.
Teach me how to come of age
in a literature you’ve bark-scratched
into scripture.
Smear my consonants
with cow-dung and turmeric and godhuli.
Pity me, sweating,
rancid, on the other side of the counter.
Stamp my papers,
lease me a new anxiety,
grant me a visa
to the country of my birth.
Teach me how to belong,
the way you do,
on every page of world history.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM

Cow-dung and turmeric and godhuli. Wonderful lines.

0 0 Reply
Gareth Westacott 29 August 2015

I'd be interested to know who this 'Welsh' critic was. I myself am Welsh, and I can say that there are plenty of (so-called) Welsh people who are not 'identifiably' Welsh.

1 1 Reply
Lokendra Singh 23 April 2015

I just loved this poem

2 1 Reply
Richard Beevor 04 July 2014

I love your anger and wit, so good to see the critic taken down in a hail of your blazing guns, thank you for this great work.

4 0 Reply
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