POETRY
	Issue 03, Summer 2008
The Return
Rohan Mulgaonkar

Narrow market streets

in Bombay and the spices

still burn like acid, fine red

ginger powder or turmeric

sprinkled so thick it's

ground chalk between your teeth,

and the tip of your tongue feels

like someone took an ice pick

and went to work with it. 

 

Even now

cobbled alleyways are a

porridge of hot baked tar, sweat, and

sewage linked by wooden crates,

half-rotted interiors brimming over

with browned apples and pears—the spotted orphan children

of commerce—swarmed by listless flies,

lounging after a surfeit of sweet.

 

Sun-glazed merchants recline in the

shade of sidewalks, bickering

in Hindi tones about the latest

three-hour drama or film star,

before the tenor lowers

to a murmur and the scheming begins:

how to snare oncoming tourists in hanging

linens or shafts of light that

pierce through the awnings,

plots of pious poachers

diamond hunting in dust-drawn Africa.

 

As the day recedes

into the dreamy hours

of twilight, cafés crowd with

oil-black faces smoking hookah

and sipping Turkish coffee as though

the word 'languor' were malediction;

gossip hums softly like a

generator on low power, while the

mournful trills of a flute echo

through empty stalls,

the dying dirge of day.

                                             

To me, the coarse mélange of

fruit and dirt and smoke

will forever be

as the taste of street-sold paan—

jelled tobacco and thyme

rolled in peppermint leaves—

a bittersweet remembrance

of things past, of shouts and songs

that go on as if nothing ever happens

in the world, a time capsule

buried in my memory, my own

untouched, timeless treasure.