Bandra 1973

the aroma of street garbage

in the dank and sooty Indian air

it's the earliest relic of all I can remember

please let me never forget

because the city smelled that way

(still does probably)

this far from the bay in Bandra

children's shouts and further off taxi horns

me flip-flopping along bumpity pavements with my father

home to the apartment courtyard

flowering with bicycles and bajaj scooters

the dusty bottom of it like

the bottom of a deep, terribly deep well

whose apartment-floor walls loomed up 4 sides

where high above

friends and I would launch paper airplanes

to watch them sail round and round

speckling the yard far below with white buds

home to the small flat with the lightbulb and the cot for jumping

up and down, imitating moviescreen fistfights

then on to my truest love: spinning tops

you wound them tight with rope, flung them to the floor

to dance like dust devils

and the more madly they spun, the more the top-spinning champion

it made you to the other boys

near the door, me sitting on the kitchen floor

my mother shovel-spooning the rice-and-yogurt from a steel plate

telling me this spoonful's for dada and this one's for dadi

I couldn't wait to finish

before my uncle would show up in evenings

and we all--my mother and father, me, my uncle--

would walk down to the Neptune

for the latest Dharmendra or Hemma Malini

strange and precious how the aroma of

discarded spices, vegetables, sewery water

doesn't hold much, but it must be enough

It is enough.

 

* * *

Awake to America

Potsdam 1977

 

We got into Potsdam late one October night

dragging our suitcases up a narrow staircase

to the apartment my father had found us

(in America already a year, he'd staked out a spot of ground)

the carpeted stairs creaked as we climbed

suitcases thumping, carried up by me and my father

my younger brother thumb-sucking dozing

in my mother's arms

the fresh-cold air laced with cigarette butts

filling my nostrils

inflecting future's memory

me tired, sure, and sleepless too

from the cross-continental passage

on the 747 from Bombay

to Baghdad to London, then La Guardia, to Syracuse on up

in a car, a more silent car I never knew

into the wild dark of upstate

past farm country, woods, and white-lit towns

me nodding to my father's gujarati inquiries

with my mother:

how was on our journey

how the family was doing, an uncle or an aunt, his own mother

people all left behind

next thing I know I’m sniffing fresh-cold air

and cigarette butts and through staircase walls

hearing the pulse and thump of the music

of America:

its bullying energy made me wonder if to our Indian ears

was it meant to sound vulgar?

too much to marvel at as I entered the room:

windows draped gold and carpet

like gold grasses, armchairs, lamps softer, brighter than I imagined

the markers of America, of a new life

fear, joy…what a mix!

father showed us the kitchen with the lovely square of frosted white light

and the fridge that he opened to the sounds of tinkling cola bottles

pillowy white bread nested in there

bigger than my palms

best of all, what I'd dreamed of

the fabled prize of the west

sat on a stand against the far wall

the Television

its screen like a shiny onion

both alladin's cave and all the treasures inside

while mother put my brother to bed

I stared at its knobs, numbers, a silver-gray transporting machine

father appeared, switched it on, and instantly ghosts leaped against walls in the dark

he settled next to me and pointed out the tall suited hero pursuing a man in black

across girders, dark corners, an open field

then gunshots, a few words, and a fadeout

"that’s clint eastwood," my father pointed out, "America noe Amitabh Bhachan"

America's Amitabh? I marveled, a screen hero second to none

and my favorite

as the credits rolled, he switch off the set, turned to me

told me it was getting late

so late

I better try to sleep

no chance of sleep though

this far in the wild dark of discovery

come this far from home

 

* * *

Summer/Fairgrounds

Ahmedabad 1976

1.

Ice Cone

watch the vendor scoop crushed ice

into a paper cone and pour rosewater from a bottle

onto, into

saturating it

take it from his hands while your uncle

pays the man 50 paise

and you eye it reddening

this paper-ice-and-sherbet miracle flower

but the enormousness really hits you

when lips & tongue touch ice

and draw in the sweet-blood flavor and you're

knocked back on your flip-flops

and in your mind

though you don't know enough to know it

you really should embrace your uncle, thank the cone-wallah

and even kiss the 50 paise

for this March hot-day jolt of ice-heaven rosewater

as all the planets within you and their moons realign

to this never-forgotten unexpectation

 

2.

Centrifuge

smoke from pinwheel sparkler spokes

curtained the fairgrounds

lit them up like star-clouds pricked by the nebulous

electric and oil lamps above us

children in Sunday shorts, office-clerk fathers, mothers in saris

dhoti wearers in from villages

women too in swirly desert-flower skirts and cholis 

the air tang-ed with sweat, dust, and throbbing to the beatings of dhols

and the snaking curls of gourd-sound

we stood at the lip of the wide bowl

crowded shoulder to shoulder around the rim

and the excited angles of noise

we waited (I was told to) and munched

on roasted peanuts powdered red with masala

tossed with diced onions

out of newspaper wrapping in my uncle's hands

in the middle of the dirt-packed arena below

slouched an animal, an Enfield

waiting

either the agent or the receiver of

some fabulous act of terror and sensation

"what's that doing there?" I tried

but in reply got nothing but a nod of the head

and a just-you-wait smirk

out he strode then

a Hercules, a Hanuman

broad-shouldered, thick-booted

mustached, his neck knotted by a thin scarf

an undershirt baring muscled arms that took grip

of the handlebars

knocked the Enfield off its kickstand.

he took the worn seat, and with a downward

stab of one heel woke the thing up

its headlamp winking bright-open

the rider rode in a slow circle at first

revving up the bike around the bowl's bottom edge

accelerating as steadily and as knowingly

as a temple priest at his evening rites

faster and faster he rose

began to tilt along the curvature

the roaring filled our ears

churned up a funnel of noise

but nevermind

because our eyes held only

on the blink-of-an-eye

suspension of the rider, his storming wheels

close enough to touch

as petrol fumes thickened the over-heated air

the rider hung like that. still does.

a spectral dynamo worthy of Rama