Page 6 - Poems

MAHIM TO GOREGAON

he mirth in both sets of eyes wants, teasing, being teased. This was the route
Tis killing me. Who is this “mohawked” from Out to In. Through their hearts, their ready,
girl, that word as alien to their steadying hands leaping into compartments meant
vocabulary as “kasa kai” to Mick Jagger’s for men, not a single nasty grope to poison
(and mine). Has she no mother, no shame! my love for this, the city, the boys and all
No shame in shaving your head for fun the fisherwomen slopping water everywhere,
in Mumbai, the local ladies look and look saris tucked around their hefty thighs, bejewelled
away, more urgent questions pressing creatures of my deep-sea dive into this throng
their fingers into peapods as they shell so close so strong it felt, all of it, like me.
baskets in readiness to alight. Outsider, leaning in, learning to pass my bag
A light shines past their elbows from hand to hand, head over head, tilting
through the crush and the seats leave sideways, learning slowly, swiftly, right or
ridges on my thighs, bare and sweaty left, and so waiting on right or left, standing
in shorts, pressed between two boys near but not too near the open doors through
in the men’s compartment, my friends, which the sky the stench the heat the sea
two Mumbai local lads who took me came rushing in and nearly drowned us all.
under their bent batwings. We only flew But never, not quite, engulfed, except
at night, radaring each other’s unsaid at Mahim Creek where I exposed my innermost
outsiderness by clapping hands to nose in reeling shock,
the reek no one noticed but I. But aye, that, too,
passed. Past Mahim I rode unflinchingly, immersed
in The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, my body tuned
to the secret syncopation of page and station,
lurching, leafing, closing in time to rise and leave
unflusteredly at Goregaon, where the boys
had called me home, where,
in the not-too distant future,
the man I loved would meet me
on a set in a film in a city, Film City,
Jail, School, Court,
cavernous locations teeming with
shots of shampooed hair tossed
from side to side so outrageously
it could only be an ad, and I, a copywriter,
and each lad, an art director with Black Books
and Golden Pencils on his mind. Remind me,
sweet, of that time we sat together,
three delinquents singing and sprawling
on the hot and dirty floor of an empty coach,
the whole train ours, and the world we rushed towards
as if it, too, were ours,
all ours for the taking.

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