My great grandmother stopped each day
at the St Alphonsa shrine
on Brodie’s Road in Madras.
Just in case
saints were a bit like
local goddesses –
extravagant and moody.
Just in case
the miracle healer
of an infant’s club foot
would pardon
her unruly children’s trespasses.
Just in case
a saint with a strange name
was better at blessing
a family that kept spilling
over definitions,
over borders.
Just in case
Alphonsamma felt left out
when others surged
around the Murugan shrine.
Just in case
the elders were right.
Just in case
the elders were wrong.
And then we lost our great grandmothers.
And we lost just in case.
* * *
That Girl from Karaikkal Her husband, Paramadattan, speaks*
She wasn’t exactly the girl
you took home to mum,
that agate-eyed child-woman of Karaikkal.
There was something about
the way she hardly ever blinked.
Something about the lightning quiver
of sinew in her arm.
But I took her home anyway
and I wasn’t disappointed.
I mean, she did the right things at first –
stirred the rasam,
laughed at my jokes,
wrote pretty songs
about the family gods,
wove jasmine into her evening braid.
But then,
I began to smell the ash
in her hair, heard her grind
her teeth in her sleep, caught
a whiff of something like flesh
in her kitchen, and once
when she peeled off
her sari, I could have sworn
I glimpsed the hideous shock
of bone.
The day she gave me a mango, reeking
of foreignness, of orchards
far beyond the zip code
of this planet,
the kind of mango
that would drip
yellowly,
maniacally,
down your chin,
the kind no good woman
would be seen dead eating,
I knew it was time.
I did the right thing by her –
touched her feet,
anointed her a goddess,
got myself another wife.
They tell me about her sometimes –
the fisherwoman by the beach,
the parrot-seller from Kashi, the trader
from the wind-scoured whiteness of Tibet.
They say she’s walked
from this coastal town
with its gold and tamarind sun
all the way to a Himalayan winter
on sinewy, blue-veined hands,
legs splayed obscenely
in the wind.
They say she sings songs
to outcaste gods, stirs tsunamis
into her rasam, shares mangoes
with the ghouls, laughs
in charnel grounds by night.
And when folk from distant lands
come to seek her blessing,
she offers them the same counsel:
‘No need to flee to the forest, seeker.
Stay right here in the madcap town.
Do exactly what you’ve always done.
Just do it upside down.’
* Karaikkal Ammaiyar, 6th-century Tamil mystic, known for her skeletal demonic form and ecstatic poems to Shiva.
* * *
When Two Women Drink Chai Together
All’s well in the world
when two women drink chai together.
Time holds its breath,
star anise glitters,
ginger gives up the ghost,
lemon grass grows rogue,
cinnamon is less cinned against
than cinning. Bodhidharma awakens
when two women drink chai together.
Aeolian harps trill, kettle drums roll,
mind meets heart, part becomes whole,
apothecaries smile and sommeliers sing,
Lao Tzu intones the Tao Te Ching,
Nilgiri meets Darjeeling
when two women drink chai together.
Froth of jade, jewel dew,
ancient cauldron, friendship brew.
One’s a hermit, ten’s a jamboree.
The perfect number is always three –
a cackling duo and a pot of tea.
Two women drinking chai together.
There will be time to love our men
but not when caffeine meets estrogen.
The defence budget and the state of AI
must stand aside as earth meets sky.
Ours is not to question why
teaspoons tango and hippos fly
when two women drink chai together.
There will be a time when both god and beast
are included in our cosmic feast,
and one day it won’t be out of line
to quaff a martini or a bottle of wine.
But right now, friend, it’s been too long,
oolong, oolong, oo-bloody-long,
since two women drank chai together.
* * *
Contents List
9 Author’s note
Cycling Hands Free on Air
15 The World Takes a Breath
17 Staying Unnamed
19 The Marketplace of Poets
21 The Breaking News Lullaby
24 Masks Off
26 The Great Mother
28 Grant a Woman Her Fifties
30 This Fruit
32 The Hand
34 The World Breaks
36 And Suddenly It’s Evening
38 The Tailor
40 The Women No Longer Wait
43 Another Way to Stop Waiting
45 What Stories are Left
47 Patachara Awakens
The Gallery of Upside Down Women
53 That Girl from Karaikkal
56 The Truth-speaker’s Word Doesn’t Change
59 Where the Yoginis Wear No Heads
62 Questions for Akka Mahadevi
64 Unstained by White
68 The Maker of Indigo Poems
God’s Forgotten Nickname
75 The Idol Worshipper’s Song
76 The Idolater’s Way
78 God’s Forgotten Nickname
81 Nothing Is Singular
83 What Do You Do with the Moon in Urdu Poetry?
86 Just in Case
87 Forgiving Teachers
89 Some Names Take Time
92 The Dog in the Manhattan Elevator
94 Some Said He Looked Like James Dean
96 When Two Women Drink Chai Together
98 Consecration
100 Tips for Growing Up
104 The Crone
106 Creation Story
