BEGINNINGS
“In my beginning is my end”
–T. S. Eliot
Naya Paltan – two trochees –
is where I was born
and grew up barefoot
in streets of fine dust
and clean mud
with the monsoon drumming
on tin roofs
thin-shanked
in floppy shorts
bare-bodied in summer
and scrawny as strays
that ran alongside
playing their own game of survival
in a city growing like scrub
the Raj had vanished
leaving behind no statues
at crossroads for crows to crap on
only a club for the crapulous
a varsity handing out
hand-me-down degrees
and a racecourse where on weekdays
men with sickles cropped grass
to feed Sunday racers
of dubious pedigree
the Mughal gun called Bibi Mariam –
Mother Mary – painted pitch-black
squatted facing a new cinema
named after Shaykh Saadi’s epic
Hindu women on auspicious days
smeared Mother Mary
with vermilion and sandalwood paste
taking her for a Shiva Lingam
a bar reeked of Carew’s gin
scissors snipped and snapped
at a men’s hairdressing saloon
whose name spelt F-E-M-M-E
was pronounced not Femme
as in French but fay-me
as in no known tongue
my first school Don’s Kindergarten
housed Hotel Airline & Bar on the top floor
and aroused curiosity and wonder
and my second St. Gregory’s High
gave me a secret fascination
for Jesus on the cross
our leather football at afternoon play
was sutured till it looked like the face
of a veteran of epic knife-fights
for cricket we could afford
only rubber or tennis balls
until someone found a lost golf ball
we hammered with a vengeance
till it went missing in the dense weeds
edging three terraced fields
the last of them where mists
were the first to gather
was our underworld
strewn with bones from dead cows
picked clean by vultures
around a grave enclosed
by latticed bamboo
visited every Thursday evening
by a woman from neighbouring Fakirapool
who lit a candle mumbling prayers
and vanished in the mists as we made
our way back to tin and bamboo houses
washed and watched as hurricane
lanterns were carefully wiped
filled with kerosene and lit
amidst a sacramental hush
Radiant Reading leapt to the eyes
in mellow amber light
now fast forward
through discontent
and demonstrations
and war and coups
and varieties of misrule
and people and more people
and I am elsewhere looking back
on a locality that’s only a name
but if by chance I were to come upon
a few terraced fields and bamboo
and tin houses and children playing
and opening Radiant Reading
amidst a sacramental hush
in the amber light of hurricane lanterns
while fireflies and stars lit up
a world of wonderful possibilities
I’d name the place Naya Paltan – two
trochees – and say I do not wish to die
I’ve found my paradise