Ganga

Froth struggles to breathe beneath our feet — serpent skin under noon sun. Ma’s phone rings like a temple bell — she, a stolen idol in the altar of water. We must go, we must go. Drying ourselves with dust, we leave our hunger on the bank — we the murk of ash, the ghost of requiem shark, a family who does not believe in water. Weeping with the corpse of tomorrow in our arms, away from the river eternally offering a bed to the dead, we enter the white of her hospital room. Roses in the vase, incense on the sill, sandalwood streaks on her fate lines, red dew on her teeth, a residue of what remains inside, and the ceiling isolating us from the sky, the river, then her memory of thirst. Because she is dreaming I close my eyes and am by the river once again where my father rained his father’s ashes, standing four stones into liquid, as if feeding the fish. The body is torched, offered to the river so the person's soul is no longer married to the earth. I had stolen a piece of his Atmaram, the bone where the soul resides — it still bookmarks my Bhagavad-gita. I did not want to witness another’s ashes mythologize in the Ganga, a tumult of mourners crusading her ghats. I did not want her there, fearing I’d snap another Atmaram, the bone that sits in the centre of our ribs looking like a Buddha statue, the only bone that remains unbrittled by fire. A thief can carry only so many bones. Before the rumour of dusk scared the weepers from the pyres, I conspired to burn the Ganga. But she enters me like silence and I abandon my thirst. Dida on the bed, not dead yet, death in the corner, the small rain of soot by the window, I do not dare a word in fear I will wake her shadow. The soles of our feet covered in dirt, our midnight loneliness crouching like beggars around a fire.

Back Home

reaching for a pencil I ask

for silence from the walls

the ink of need bleeds

over everything — then her voice 

a tire frozen in mud 

a motorcycle from the 70s

she pleads for exile

for a piece of the sea

I hear it as the Gayatri mantra 

box breaks to take a breath

by spring her ash-

throat began its fall 

still she can call my name

still call for nimbu paani

I leave my pencil

to reach for a glass

unaware where 

everyone’s gone

you know how peeled your cuticles

are only when you slice a lemon

I rest the water over the stove

some fires rage louder than others

a lost poem the torch of salt 

lemon on wound 

an almost

lost grandmother

deluge of lemon

on my skinned hands