Poem: 'Girl'

When I look back there is nothing but sun: the welcome oppression of a Bombay noon, its beating rays angling in, and I, foetal-curled dreaming seamless through a post-prandial nap.

These are the words I give to it now.

I still remember the summer’s merciful fruitfulness, and how I would laugh, twelve or thirteen, as I sank my teeth into ripe mangoes, bursting indecent with thick amber juice, and how it rolled down my adolescent chin to sweat-prickled thighs.

I was not separate from the world, a body that housed a restful mind, which when strayed, could be contained, like the rain falling into the Arabian sea.

I can still feel the warmth of a maternal embrace, recall the ceaseless beating of a yet-unbroken heart, swelling silent, under un-bloomed breasts.

These are the words I give to it now.

I still can remember the exuberant heat of night, in a too-hard, moonlit childhood bed, moved by a passage I’d just read, in a book that told of far away.

And there were dogs that would bark out on the street, amidst the straying, wayward cars, punctuating my thoughts like monsoon rain.

And dreams would come to me in restful sleep, visions of beauty, surreal and bright.

All that has changed of course, the rain is cold and the sea far.

In exchange for those days, for those enchanted, measured hours, I have nightmares and an unsettled gaze.

And only words to give to it now.