Leela
1.
“Are you in Chennai? Can you come?
Leela Samson is dancing.
I’ll send the invitation. I’ll send the directions.
Will you find your way? Come.”
Drawn, I went. Following directions
to a small lane. An unexpected November turkey strutting
in no fear of giving thanks, an uruli of roses, incense,
chappals stacked outside, we wait bare feet.
Inside the blackbox theatre, but for the floor
cool to the touch of my feet, it could be New York City,
off-off-off-Broadway- I joke with my friend.
My mind and body split in places, my life a distracted trance.
2.
Then,
darkness, spotlight, and leela of body as breath.
As Ardhanarishwar not two bodies but one,
her body a line of words, a figure of speech
transcending paradox.
How do you endure the betrayal of the body? Its
unwieldy weight, it’s keenly felt anguish of bones?
How do you own up to grief? In a thumri to temper death.
The loss of every beloved consoled in a weaving embrace,
in the clutching of that once-body-draping shawl.
Afterwards what is left to pick up is always life,
always love, lust and stances of war.
And how she stirred up life!
A pot of broth to her ladle, she dipped her small finger,
and we, beckoned to her bed, tasted salt.
Artless lovers schooled, jealous sakhi reprimanded,
Radha, Krishna, Shiva, she strung in sinews and dressed
in ornaments of flesh. In those two hours she made us
better off as flawed mortal than flawless divine.
3.
My bare feet on the same ground of her sure step,
my bare breath plucked, made exquisite in her fingers,
it was her eyes, really but her eyes, that took
my scattering and gathered them as an uruli of flowers.
“Where is the humour in Bharatanatyam?” she asked,
after measuring the cosmos in purusha in the elaborating
generosity of dancers – all women. Hooked to that line
of part-jest-all-heart, I rose to the surface to be let go again-
spared to plumb the mangalam of her keeping art.
***
Why sorrow is like the moon
Some sorrows you can’t share.
There is only one portion and
it is yours like the full moon
that even when there is only
half of, there is only one half.
If you only wait, it will quarter,
come to a sliver and disappear.
***
What I said
My skies tonight are overcast hold me close I said
Silken to the skin are similes, spin me those I said.
Like rainwater in a drop, poised on a blade of grass
Our moment too will pass, for the wind blows I said.
Garlanded in fairy lights my house meets the daily
dark, held close to you even despair mellows I said.
The ventilator shaft is home to owls of late, why
the doves abandoned the perch who knows I said.
Pay up demands the ghazal, how Unique is this debt
The demanding creditor is the one who owes I said.
***
Barrier of Language
In response to an
assignment set in class,
I have before me a piece
of writing. Typed-up letters
of the English alphabet
clustered to make up words
in not-quite-sentences
of not-quite-paragraphs.
I scan it for meaning,
stumbling over word choice,
missing articles, syntax assigning
action to what cannot act.
I have stepped barefoot
on lego blocks.
Assigned and received
in the black-box of an online class
I can barely place the face
of the writer. I imagine it
scrunched-up over the homework.
Writing, trying to break down
a wall, a sledgehammer in the
hands of a butterfly.
I look again, and I find meaning.
Highlight in yellow, red and green –
phrases, parts of sentences
that could be rearranged, restrung.
Twinkling fairy-lights to hang
on the barrier of language.
***
