‘Aai lost her navel to me and my brother’: This book of poems talks of the home a mother embodies

Load Shedding

Aai brings back Geeta Dutt to life tonight,
As she admonishes her lover (Ja Ja Ja Bewafa),
In a game of antakshari she can never lose

Every time she pokes a needle into her stomach
Her insulin resistance breaks through her skin
And cracks in her voice grow branches.

In a cement tank overflowing with sand
Where a lonely dog sits every morning. I take his
Place in this night of government supplied darkness.

When Aai fans me with events of yesterday –
Death, decay, destruction, the usual –
An ant colony takes a stroll on my dress.

And abandons me mid-sentence.
By the time We are returned to the light, our faces have
Been altered, for the sake of belonging.

Aai grates her fingers to fit into her new body
And we follow her footsteps. And our grated fingers
Are turned into wall hangings, with pretty tassels.

I slip into the sand with ease now.
My breasts have been chiselled,
They gouge through palms.

These hands won’t close your eyes anymore.
Thereafter, with our grated fingers, we return to life,
With hopes of forgetting the people we once used to be.

The Dahlias of My Garden

Baba refuses to grow vegetables,
He only likes flowers.
He waters them every day.
He talks to them. Removes dead
Leaves saying they take his resources.
He grows them on his stomach.

His stomach is hard as the piece of
Earth on which his flowers grow.
The flowers that grow on his stomach
Are dahlias. I water them for him,
When it becomes difficult.

A baby is fed through the mother’s
Navel, old wisdom informs us.
Say Aai lost her navel to me and my brother,
Baba lost his to the dahlias.
We are a family that turned a man into a plant,
Because they told us, men don’t give birth.

Scenes at a Dermatology Clinic

The skin is the body’s largest organ, Aai informs me like she used to when she was still my favourite teacher. She once taught me how to spell the word “thoroughly” and I aced my dictation test. The teacher counted my friends’ collective failures on her fingers, and when she ran out of them, she declared, I am thoroughly surprised that most of you couldn’t spell “thoroughly”.

You must take care of your skin, Aai declares. I nod in agreement and dial the dermatologist’s number. I am given an appointment but I have to wait for a month. As I wait, the rot on my skin grows. Ever since I lost my sanity, I cannot breathe without inflating my lungs. Every time I breathe, my lungs leave imprints on my chin. And now I have dark lunglike patches growing on my skin. My second pair of lungs look cancerous. You are a hopeless case, says Aai and I concede.

Stop tugging on those hairs, you will rip open your flesh someday, and words will fall off and desert you, she warns me. But I keep tugging. I collect hair like people collect trophies. At the dermatologist’s clinic, a little girl is growing warts on her skin. I ask her how she feels about removing them and she looks scared. Why will I remove them, she enquires, They belong to me.

And sadness grows in me. Because I know I rid myself of what is mine every minute of every day. I chip little parts of me and brush them off. The dermatologist is only going to fill in the cavities I leave behind. He makes me touch his hand, and assures me he will take care of the mess I have created. My skin will be as nourished as his. The little girl with warts stands on the weighing scale. Seventeen kilos, says the dermatologist. Warts and all, I mumble. She looks worriedly in my direction, and says, Exactly.

Growing

Aai once told me, if I swallowed seeds of fruits, a tree might grow inside me. And its branches might come out of my nose and my mouth. I always wondered how the seeds would survive the hostile environment. My stomach isn’t like Aai’s. It doesn’t have the tenderness and the adaptability of motherhood. If I could become a tree though, I’d be an orange tree.

All my fruit memories are salty. A friend who I once was close to, out of obligation, taught me the difference between a kinnow and an orange. And I feigned understanding. She carefully peeled the kinnow, sprinkled some salt over the slices, took out two forks and handed me an expensive china plate that her mother had brought from Japan. I went home the next day, and began craving for the china and the fork. When I couldn’t find either, I ate an orange, misplacing its identity, perhaps forever.

In the days of summer holidays and childish bets I was asked to eat a spoonful of salt. The future of a group of green guavas depended on my salt absorption abilities. I ate that salt, won those guavas, and lost my childhood to them. After that day, I ate everything with a pinch of salt. I take that back. Since that day, I have been eating everything with a pinch of extra salt.

If a tree could grow inside me, I know it would be a guava tree. Even though I wouldn’t want to smell like a guava, I would, because of all the seeds I have swallowed. It’s hard to spit out guava seeds. I would say the same thing about strawberries. But strawberries are small town aspirations. They would be served on expensive china bought in Japan. When Aai bought guavas she chose the green, hard ones for me. On a steel plate she would put a spoonful of salt, and unknowingly ascribe a taste and smell to my tragedies, and expect me to thank her for the trouble. It’s not easy to slice hard green guavas. I know.

Excerpted with permission from Origami Aai, Manjiri Indurkar, Tranquebar/Westland.