The peacock who drives my bus

A glint escapes through khakhee
as his neck oscillates, marking
two ends of vision, he gauges
his battlefield, like a blindfolded dancer
borders the stage before a performance

blue shoes toggle clutch and brake,
he honks to jolt the world out and
accommodate all versions of
stolen half hours in his bus, a
mesh of criss crossed signals
hinted at a reluctant audience

parent pleasing veils dumped hastily
into bags, clutched hair released and
arranged on a shoulder,
the adjacent seat reserved to continue
tiffs and trace trails of apology

songs traverse decades as sunlight
forges city skylines under my right ear,
a sweeping train lulls me into oblivion;
he owns the bus with his hands cleans
the puddle on the bus floor whilst
bystanders, maintain distance.

Love, sent to a single loaded corridor

Hanging upside down, like a giant lizard
I cling to you with unblinking calm,
draw waves along your length.

I dream of ways to inhabit you again,
my Marsyas, as your voussoirs shelter me
under nine arches.

Out from under the First, I regain balance
on moss-retaining tiles, checkered red,
laid at 1:5, turn away from its faint stench.

Rants of a cutter-armed friend
ricochet off mount boards; she completes
my model, saving my ass under the Second.

A ninja jumps out from under the Third
negotiating a bush, watered from above.
A puddle forms in broken asphalt.

I witness a red-rose proposal
under the Fourth, where level differences
match heights, and hearts.

Perpendicular runs under the Fifth, midway
on steps that bite into the plinth,
stage ephemeral greetings, impromptu baithaks.

T-scales dumped under the Sixth –
the ancient bearer of unreadable results
that wears a baroque egg tiara and watches on.

Vapour swirls from tea, served in paper cups
held by Dumbledore Longbeards,
spilling out of seminars, racing to reach the Seventh.

I wade through a copy of the new Shilpasagar,
on a table, as I peep into the Principal’s cabin
under the Eighth. Sore

from an overdose of architecture,
I turn to the fine arts, a gallop away,
to contemplate an escape under the Ninth.

I don’t act on it.
Oscillating between volume bursts
You are Newton’s cradle,
I come to you, to go nowhere.

I

Gundalamma palem

I try to understand farmers’ protests standing in a field
the harsh sun makes me dizzy
the green blinds me
I don’t leave the embankment
I touch the shoots amidst still water
that leads to the paddies
This is so much more than just a pretty sight
I think walking in the wake of the farmer
Mulling over the uncertainty of rains
and whether mandis will be gobbled by corporations.

II

Flowers not for rent

Daughter-in-law of a rented-out house
Padma strips the hibiscus barren
and offers them with bananas to the kuladevata
at the temple in the shade of trees.

III

Gottam vadiyalu

Through the yellow tunnel
of my one-month pregnant womb
Ramanamma beckoned V and left
with the flick of her right nipple

she touched her lips and held up three fingers
sharing how many she had mothered and that
it was now my turn
a newlywed caught fleeing a family pooja

V is her great grandmother
sitting cross legged on the charpoy
with oiled open hair
crevices of ant trails that once
safeguarded sweets, now hide trinkets.

IV

Malli

sits under the banyan tree with V in his arms
We germinated together, he says
he hates nostalgia, it drives him to places
that have changed from memory

He holds in him a thatched house
on an island between two canals
On balmy summer nights
Nocturnal sleepy-eyed games
of counting the rumble and flash of vehicles
from the highway under mosquito nets Balls
of rice from a plate
that feed eight cousins all lined up

The canals have gone dry
the saree uyyala no longer spans the distance
between two coconut trees in the courtyard
In his head, the vaakili is larger.

V

runs down the street, greets a cow
Squats, turns her gaze to the cacca in the field
Her pink and silver bubblegummer soaks
into the muddy puddles
between embankments.

C

I can draw a C on your bum
when you stand sideways.

It was after you said this
that I started using three limp layers
to drown a C of flesh.

Extending below the waistline
slits on sides of a straight cut,
aiding locomotion, accommodating the C.

To inspire flight, one would need to cut,
rotate and hinge these fluttering flaps along
a perpendicular axis.

Now they instigate many agonising,
culture-driven, guilt-ridden, cover-ups
of the already covered.

As with anarkalis,
their spacious insides expand auras,
promise more fun,
billowing, cajoling to spin,
mirroring aunts blown up by Harry Potter.

An accessible grab in the washroom,
a swift pull ensuring friction
between cloth, skin and hair –

fabric finds function
by sucking moisture.
I savour un-dampened bliss.

I step out with wet patches
that I self-consciously move
to improbable locations,
hoping that they dry off unnoticed
for basic social acceptance.

Thathi, chill!

On a wooden stool in a new bathroom,
mugs of water poured, gently over my head
relieve me from the sweltering heat.

A wet ear held next to a cellphone.
I hear hysterical sobs,
then silence, to gain composure –

Are you OK?

Thathi, in Navi Mumbai
imagines my communal bath
in Nellore before the Nalugu.

Her innards churn,
she demands
that I stop it immediately.

She tells me how
her mother was stripped naked
on her wedding day
before being made to wear a new saree.

The cloak of protection thickens
across generations,
just as the cloak of shame thins out.

I’ve bathed naked with friends at fourteen
a drenched state isn’t mortifying anymore.

Excerpted with permission from My Home is Dissent, Pooja Ugrani, Poetrywala.