Inaugural visit: snapshots – by Lesh Karan
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I’ve been here before…
but that’s another story, another dream.
– Roy Kiyooka
1. Winter Sunrise
Fifty years and four generations to arrive.
The smell of coffee mingled with diesel
disorients. A train rumbles in the distance.
The morning is 11 degrees and a chorus
of barks. Countless strays wander these streets.
2. Rolling Pin
Somewhere a radio blooms Mohammed Rafi
tunes. Like a queen I sit waiting to be served
charred discs with chilli-green chutney, curd.
The soft thwack of dough syncs to a rhythm
within. Suddenly I am eight on an island home.
3. Golgappa
New tastes and textures on the street-eats tour,
vaguely familiar. It’s just the guide, me and two
white folk, also Aussies. I eat not knowing
whether I’ll get sick. I’m offered samples higher up
on the chilli scale. It is assumed I can handle it.
4. Night Sky, NYE
Forbidden pattaakas in Delhi. I think of ships,
how their captains chart silent histories, turn
people into forbidden citizens. I stay in, watch
Bollywood – a remake of an oldie – laugh
at the absurdity, my eruptions like pattaakas.
5. Checkpoint
The lines merge and the crowd behaves
as if there’s an entrance only they can see. I look
like everyone, except my clothes say winter
in Melbourne. The surge turns queasy. Rusty
paan stains on the pavement like dried blood.
6. Taj Mahal
I’m sent back to buy tickets again, ones
that cost five times more. My Moleskine gets
confiscated. The officer writes my diminutive
on the leather cover. Uses a permanent texta.
When I see her: helium’s buoyancy, then deflation.
7. Dilli Haat Market
An Aussie would say Dilli like dilly, haat like heart.
Like transliteration, I become my own language,
speak it shamelessly, pretend my tongue is official,
pretend she didn’t scoff I can’t understand you
when I asked about her dupatta’s origin story.
8. Rajasthani Farmhouse
I overorder because I want it all. Her cooking
reminds me of my mother’s khadi, dhal, bone-in
chicken curry. No proof exists so I make it a game
of tongue and recognition, send pics to mum.
Now she wants to taste her mother’s food too.
9. Chand Bali
The earrings open a recess somewhere impossible
to locate. I haggle for an oxidised pair. He thinks
I am from Delhi. My heart does a little jig
while I don’t correct him. I can only count up to twenty
in Hindi, so I pay the price, buy another three pieces.
10. Rooftop View
The faint twang of classical music – Carnatic –
not cathartic, having lost even the loss, to echo
Solmaz. I look up from page to Pichola Lake, sip
cardamom-flecked lassi, thick with real pulp. The waves
are like a gif, the wake of a boat ruptures the loop.
11. En Route
The driver’s music sounds like my Spotify. I sing
along mera joota hai japani…the song an anthem
for many like me, though in my tune-less voice
I switch Hindustani to insaani. It’s a syllable
short, so I stretch out the sibilant, make it work.
12. Banyan
The first time I saw one was in a high-budget movie:
the real thing made digital and ethereal. At what cost
is a tree not a tree? Like a boorish tourist, I take
photos of a wayside mandir umbrellaed by India’s
national tree: currency for future’s memory. I was here.
___
Notes and translations
Epigraph is from Zhang, B (2000) ‘Identity in Diaspora and Diaspora in Writing: The Poetics of Cultural Transrelation’ Journal of Intercultural Studies, 21(2), 125–142
paan – crushed betel nuts and spices wrapped in a betel leaf (for chewing)
pattaakas – firecrackers
golgappa – also known as panipuri; a common snack and street food in India
dupatta – scarf
chand bali – a type of intricate Rajasthani earring shaped like the moon’s crescent
insaani – human
To read the poetry of Solmaz Sharif, visit www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/solmaz-sharif
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Image: Ali Al-Sheiba - Unsplash
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