Who am I that has dwelt so long in the other,
who am I that left the sunny perch,
lizard eyes circumambulating, seeking heavens,
shuttling down blind alleys, invoking bitter sweet ruminations,
was it a gift, or a curse that erased our boundaries,
too long residing in the scent of a mother,
a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend,
hop skip and jump said the skipping rope,
slicing air from beneath my feet,
scooping me like cowry on divination boards;
here jump over this and this,
high above Saturn’s gaze, all around Jupiter’s embrace,
but rooted to earth.
Why do your blues come roost in me, I never asked.
And yet today I must ask this garden that I am,
who sows the seeds, waters, weeds and prunes
this unruly sketch that I am,
who put the sparrow there, its notes dipping in my chest,
suckling honey, vanishing in a flicker?
There! The squirrels scampering on my trunk,
a reminder, fleeting whisper amidst the noise,
even as the sigh of a tree kept murmuring in my blood- mud,
in me the night owls fierce cackle, in me the aphids bloom,
I am alive, red blood swishing in the soup I served you.
So where am I who am I?
Blink, and I’ve leapt into the dungeons of a dream,
I’m Alice in a rabbit hole,
a leap of faith and I’m an ancient tree,
Its seeds sprouting in my frock pleats;
there I go weeping, into a tremulous gaze,
residing in the crease of a forehead,
in the hasty rise of an impudent termite mound,
invisible, swarming, deep under, inside me;
Now here, now there, now everywhere.
I learnt to contain myself in brass lamps fit for the gods,
oh what a waste!
Time religiously rearranges my flesh and bones,
now a pair of eyes piercing the dark,
now a lump of flesh embalmed by the dark,
now in a cuckoo’s flight, now in a dogs snarl,
It threw me into the sea when I knew not how to swim,
it broke my heart, nailed me to a cross, only I was no Christ,
lovelorn I lived in a shroud, it’s been too long, the act,
the coiled sleep, and wings pruned to fit.
So tell me…

Someone sweeps away my winter woes,

wind gods carve a clearing blue in my flesh.
A butterfly in white flits across my light—
a spell is broken.
Thank you, kindred soul for your light,
your lightness, your shades of blue.
A wayfarer looks into my eyes
as though into a rear-view mirror,
his comb flicks into place a tuft astray.
A gaze drags me back into the skin of a dream—
still, moulting like snakes in a bush,
skipping down the stair that day,
a casserole, a babe in my arms—
an oft-forgotten clearing bares itself in a split second.

Later, wiping the remains of a night’s insipid dinner,
a dinner I never served, I hear the faint knock in my flesh:
the beginning of a clearing, blue among the greys,
today let joy bloom in every heart for no reason at all,
let sons and daughters dance in enthrallment,
for theirs is the garden I have tended with love,
and theirs the mirror I have buffed with care.

So tell me—where am I, who am I?

Lend me your voice, lend me forever the intersections,
the twilight zone where lights collide.
Here my stories were forged. Here the tremor on my lips,
here the pied piper led me into the sea.
Here the rabbit hole’s curious call.

“I’m a woman,” they remind me.
“I’m the earth, mud, gross body.”
No—not I, not I.
Woman not I. Man not I.
Let me don my cloak, relish this light,

speak again from yonder world.
Nameless one, let me hear you again,
voiceless one, loud and clear, doubtless,
skipping in my veins like a pulse.
I’m the thrash of the eagle’s wing,
its hungry hovering gaze,
the rabbit and the rabbit hole.
So let us be—
the thirsty earth and the water, the fire that singes,
the air that cools, the innumerable spaces between you and me,
and the debts we share.

So tell me…
—Anuradha Nalapat