sassavisha

[sassavisha]

Under the weed strung bricked walls, on red limestone floors, the orchid tucked behind the pink earlobe, bamboo reeds weaved into a sandals strapped on your feet, undershirts peeking from white kurta embroidered with peonies, clamdiggers donned on white sandy beach. The cattle jingling through rows of green paddy fields, tawny women with bandaged saris upholding baskets of marigold laden wreaths, walking through a soft drizzle, perhaps craning their necks to see you suckling the dry spire of grass, their noses pinned with tiny metal studs, earlobes pierced with dry neem twigs, teeth stained with tobacco leaves, spit tainted with dredges of its juices, tread pattering on unpaved roads to huts with mud leavened doorways, walls slapped with caked dung, lentils smeared as flimsy tuiles drying out on sun baked courtyards.

And waiting for you to seek forgiveness....

Freshwater shrimps writhe in the flames lapping it, on basted grills of an outdoor barbecue, the whiff of booze wafting over thimble glasses with sparkling tequila, in emerald dresses twisted into flimsy sarongs, draped on coy angles, underneath the batik dyed bikinis waiting to be unsheathed by men in kalamkari prints. Unbuttoned, unabashed, bated and savoured, then scrubbed dry of your sins, wrung like dirty water, and then spread on clotheslines, teasing, taunting the stripped, naked, tousled hair, knotted with lice, the dirt mangled whorehouses split open with retching and screaming, and brutal lashing...

But yet not forgiven....

Your flaxen hair, slicked or permed, the hum of chants, lilting plumes of incense wavering over orbs of enlightenment which encased in leather bound covers of Hindu salvation, all reeled into spools of chakras, caught in a vortex of energies, in the end wasted over granite rocks by the poolside, skinnydipping with tanned limbs, soaked dry in Egyptian cotton linen, in beds perfumed with musk.

And still at night, you will toss in bed, reproach quelling that never soothed at the sight of shiny quenelles of coconut ice cream. Care to think of the lanterns dangling, the coirs burning, the rattling roofs over seven year olds as they shiver in willowy mudhouses. Is it appeasement, to see them cry, to be entranced by their rustic ways of life, as you watch amidst the cinders burning, cigarillos curling, from behind handpainted madhubani tapestries.

To rub the temple floors with rags cut from used loincloths, is it catharsis, curiosity, dollhouses carved out of heaving breaths, that wheeze and cough in asbestos factories, is it not ruthless to twirl green glass bangles on your luscious wrists, as adolescents churn out bracelets, in blinding light, with adled minds and pigeon breasted bodies, are these artifacts of others' miseries.

Gap toothed grandfathers with knotted veshtis, barebodied or clad in singlets, scooping rice from banana leaves, seventeen year olds nursing babies, kneading dough and slicing fish, is it enthralling to partake the same poverty, to sit and write poetry, consoling your twitching egos to be spared such fatalities.

Is this your forgiveness...

To walk into the sunset, drinking chianti with poppy seeds, crystalline laughter popping from painted lips. To stroll through flea markets, fingering beads, rosaries hooked with coral pendants or claws of beasts, the turbaned men sporting beedis, your vans drenched in mud, streaked with dung of a thousand cows, your pretense unnerving while you sip cold coffee laced with chicory.

Lathe turned pillars wrought in history, floors swept with sandstorms many, and though chikankari sarees adorned too many, your minds still waiting for humanity.