Alexandria
Given that I haven’t spoken with my eyes,
does it even count as speech? All these words, all these words
that I speak through bubbles oozing out of my cranial chambers
like comic strips.
I could be Tintin on adventure
Moses out of Egypt
Noah rocking his boat.And I. Here. Shutting my eyes
in blankness that is the open sea.
It is the grey green sky.
Chopin sings under atmospheric pressure
And I exhale. The ocean dries
on my canvas.
All these words, all these words, and I.
Here.
Wishing for a half-done canvas
of vanishing sea.
Asymmetrical
I have to come to see you today
if, from a distance,
if, between shoulders
I don’t have a new sari to sport
my hair is dishevelled like a yogi
you seek me out, yet.
you seek me out
as your large painted eyes
turn liquid, and spread out across
this courtyard
and I shrink to a dot.
A dot. In this glorious crowd.
Standing barefoot and barehanded
in my torn sari
which I have washed quickly and dried
away from the public gaze.
I stay barebreasted, as the sari dries.
Perched on the treetop,
you watch as if I were Radha,
barebreasted.
And I shrink to a dot.
The anthropologist wants to make me a person.
What is a person? I ask.
You laugh quietly—that stone laugh
It spreads across this courtyard.
And I say, no, I am a dot.
Scavenger
So I am a tortured writer
you are a kite
— a deadmeat-eater
who stoops in after lunch onto my windowsill
on the Thirteenth Floor.
I am trying to write this damned un-story
about a kite and a writer
held together in some Beethoven sonata.
And you are calling in your shrill tone
desperately trying to remind me
that we were lovers in a different life.
We were punished by a mad sovereign,
asked to go and eat meat off of two different wars.
We were so love-stricken
one day we stopped eating dead men of wars.
We became dissenters in this mad universe
objecting to meaningless wars.
We petitioned to gods and godmakers.
The sovereign put you to death
I watched from inside a prison-cell.
“Scavengers, scoundrels”—the minister said.
I had no heart anymore.
That no-heart has packed me today
To this Thirteenth Floor apartment.
Where you look at me in fondness
and I play the sonata over and over.
In the harsh sun outside,
you cry out love-struck.
I am numb.
It’s your turn to watch me die.
Atreyee Majumder is a poet, writer, and anthropologist based in Bangalore.