Page 31 - Poems

of the big white unkillable whale, four hundred passengers from Bori
not the singer named after the whale, Bunder to Thhaney at three-thirty-five
but an entire estate, Melville Estate, in the afternoon on the sixteenth day
right behind the whirring ceiling fan of April. Not even part of Bombay yet,
on the empty platfor¬m stirring emptily Bhandup, until nineteen hundred
the air, while on my right, a train seems and fifty. And here I am, two thousand
left behind, waiting patiently for passengers seventeen, buzzed on nothing but now,
who never come. Deity of Waiting, noticing with the clarity of the drunk
you know I never understood you at all. that Shopper Lady with her multiple
A doodle of the Langours of Vikhroli, bags has a tattoo on her right hand
dreaming of the Conquerors of Irkutsk, all over the mound of Venus. Deity
Deity of Inscrutable Scribbling, live on. of Mounds, let there always be
The coin-clinker returns without removable tattoos and undying love.
the begging voice. Shades hugs a girl- On my right, a purple blur of speed,
friend with floatey aboriginal hair. Hail on my left, a dense outgrowth of rusty
to Aboriginal Hair. At Kanjurmarg barbed wire, who are they keeping out
a heavy concrete pillar marked 1A, now? At Nahur, I see that the handles,
a playing field glimpsed beyond, while empty of hands, are more like stirrups
people casually use our compartment awaiting feet, boots, galloper’s toes
to cross from right to left, saving themselves and that Tai’s bag has been clamped
time, effort and untimely deaths. Deity tight under her right arm all along.
of Shortcuts, may we never run out On my right, a mauve-man eats lunch
of ingenuity and sheer good luck. covertly out of his dabba, on my left
On my right, a lady in kaftan and turban the road is at eyelevel, empty of shoes
and a man in lungi and banian walking, like the view from a basement
stare fiercely in opposing directions. flat. Deity of Shoes, of Flats, of
At Bhandup bhandupeshwar Walking, let there always be light.
home in 1881 to eight hundred At Mulund a dark girl with skin
and eighty-four souls sold by like honey-roast enters, filling her
the alderman Ashburner along body to crackling. Harassed?
with a contract for supplying Look wistful and gazelle-eyed.
the government with rum for A mother and child looking for Pappa
the grand old sum of fifty thousand get in and out as the train pulls out,
pounds, where are you now, divine so perilous to life and limb. Deity
imbiber, where that temple to of Fools, protect us all. On my left,
intemperance where the grand old a cheerful wall. On my right, the first
high was brewed until it trickled truly-crowded platform in ages.
away? Place of epiphany, this, It’s Thane, at fourteen-o-three.
struck-by-lightning-idea, here is Deity of Safe Arrivals, I’m home.
where it happened, brainwave
to connect Bombay to Thane, circa
1843. Ten years later, lo and behold,
the first train pulled by Sahib, Sindh
and Sultan, baptised locomotives
who took, in fourteen carriages,

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