‘Yellow with the droppings of the sun’: Three poems by Mukul Kesavan for the season

Local Warming

The amaltas, mad trumpeter of summer,
yellow with the droppings of the sun,
leans into the north end of his balcony
to rattle old pods. April hasn’t yet begun;
a Celsius spike has worked its alchemy,
set twigs on fire, turned this green-topped mummer
blond, so it can rustle-tell in rooted mime
the doom of icebergs calving further north.
He stares unmoved; old and out of time,
hereafter presses harder than henceforth.

Fateh’s Chaat

The crunch of kachauris by School’s front gate,
the squish of chana, sonth’s sulphuric ooze,
live in your mind but they don’t translate.
See, khasta is crisp and not; when you lose

stiff/brittle you’re down to paapad which
misdescribes that deep-fried shell exploding
in your mouth. The sour, fart-sweet, eldritch
goo swamping your tongue, overloading

your receptors, nuking both taste and taste
like a dirty bomb, needs tailor-made terms
your readers don’t know which are a waste
of writing time. Salute those antique germs

from Fateh’s nails, toast your palate’s history,
but know some memories can’t be named.
That stuffed kachauri is a mystery
that waits upon its Word and lives unclaimed.

Give chaat this day its logos, Swami,
beyond bitter, sweet, sour, salt, umami.

Garg in Goa

He read Marquez
In hot Bardez
when Delhi’s mania
for Lusitania
had him in its grip.

The red balcao
(thanks realtor Rao!)
with hingeless doors
and Staffordshire floors
was his bookship

to fiction’s mondo,
which sailed to Macondo.
Whitewashed churches,
rues in his searches,
made life Latin and hip.

Estado da Ind,
was part of his pind,
yet its laterite sod,
was his near abroad,
home, but also a trip.