There Is No Tabula Rasa

how does one set flight and soar,

while keeping their feet lodged

in the throes of familiar soil?

with its particular textures

and pungent odours,

what parts of it do we dislodge

and outgrow?

Fraggle, the mother dolphin,

carried her dead calf

whom she lost to a respiratory disease

for eleven days.

she drifted along the coast

of Western Australia,

keeping vigil.

maybe in disbelief

that she outlived her own making.

eventually, unable to withstand

the ocean’s pull,

she leaves her calf

to be swallowed

into the recesses of the waters.

and she must go on.

Khalil Gibran, in his 1923 The Prophet,

writes of children:

they are the sons and daughters

of life’s longing for itself.

life,

and its terrifying persistence,

the sheer wherewithal,

it imbues us with.

what is moving on

but a jilt

to life?

to time?

they weather

and weather

and weather you.

the thrifty phenotype

has always unsettled me.

a body learning

to prepare itself for famine.

a body that has known scarcity

and, when abundance comes,

does not quite trust it.

it stores and anticipates

need, feared but inevitable,

a cul-de-sac.

I think of all the things

we learn to keep

when we do not trust

that they will remain.

money

memories.

grudges.

athai is driving,

and mama dozes in the back.

his snores assert his slumber.

i turn to her.

i feel the writhing in my tongue,

the familiar hesitance

of miming and planning

the stresses of a word,

trying to reserve some breath

that won’t give it away.

i tell her something

that happened to someone i knew.

i guffaw at my attempts

to be stolid.

when you kill someone,

you scrape them out.

those layers of patina.

all the times he found you in a crowd.

all the times i looked up

and saw the door open.

all the times i clamored with him

to sit beside me

and close it.

his world always big,

but all the times

i felt he was charitable

by finding little hiding spots for us.

so you scrape,

you scrape until it peels off

but some of it sticks.

stubborn and unyielding

to the truth.

and you’re left there

with jaded insides,

grimy,

always waiting to spill.

to spill the rot

and spread it

until you look to Mother Truth

for some grace,

some respite.

the so many ways

in which you contort her

and desperately stick

the peels back together.

I think of baby athai.

I imagine a small woman

in a rather heavy-set

Kancheepuram saree

gliding down a flight of stairs.

I almost hear the jingle

of the sacred thali

hailing matrimony,

and its laughable sanctity, perhaps,

in her hands.

I hear the subdued whimpers

of the little girl

who was born to a fierce father.

she approaches,

and then I hear my mother.

I remember the luxury

of a hotel suite,

and how stifling it was

to a seven-something-year-old

as she listens to Amma.

Bring the papers,

she says.

I will sign it.

Appa tells you

how sorry he is.

anyway,

she approaches

and thrusts the chain

into my mother’s hands.

hands that have been trained

to bide their time.

skin that is so callused

and insular.

insular,

to her mother-in-law

and the immutable war

they wage against the other.

a woman forgetting

to see another,

warped in grief

of a son who has outgrown her.

to her,

she is a forfeiter.

her grief finds

a safe haven.

in Amma,

to whom she forfeited.

I think of all

the spectacular ways

in which we hurt each other.

so it is Amma’s turn

to see another woman.

her sister-in-law.

I think of all the ways

we inflict.

and all the ways

we inherit.

I think of the only other girl

in my class.

the only other,

because we were so

melanin-infused.

I remember being christened

as black forest.

I didn’t know

if it really hurt as much,

or just the fact

that she thought

it would do the trick.

life has its strange ways

of redeeming the inflictor.

it tricks us inflicted,

such a cruel thing.

I look at my aunt again.

now aged

and far removed

from the gliding girl

in a saree

that drowned her out.

I see she’s been places.

she’s found

a livable life.

not so long ago,

she walked a dusty, winded path

behind Aatha’s then godown.

the godown

where my grandfather died.

she walks

and her little niece

walks along beside her.

she wears a scarf

to ward off the prickly heat.

her niece feels doomed.

she has to return

to Bombay.

a place

where she now feels

the most estranged from.

a river

she cannot jump into twice,

once the only home she knew.

my aunt tells her niece

to tell anyone

to whom the complexion

of her skin comes off

as peculiar,

that she is not

a “white pig.”

I remember wanting

to hold her hand

and tell her

how afraid I was

to go back.

and still am.

time often fails

to run its course.

my reticent aunt

who never wishes me

on my birthdays,

but never dares

to complete a word for me

as my tongue battles

with the roof of my mouth,

competing

with the speed of my thoughts.

thoughts so unfettered

that my tongue is the casualty.

on days

I wish she worked easy,

I realize

this is her language.

she repeats

and ponders

and stumbles

and wallows.

my reticent aunt

who never saw any oddity.

she never puts

a name to the face.

perhaps there are things

we do not keep

because we fear losing them.

perhaps there are things

we keep

because we have already lost them.

I think of all the ways

in which we choose

to love and belong,

and it fills me up..

all the ways

we make life livable.