By – Arundhathi Subramaniam
At first
it’s nostalgia —
a downpour of kisses
under a weeping umbrella,
a euphoria
of gulmohur,
an eternity
of adrak chai,
every moment
the memory of a previous one
when the skies were crazier,
love purer,
life simpler,
when the heart turned Malabar,
the spirit Arabian,
desire Coromandel,
laughter more Gene Kelly
and words like baarish
and mazhai
were headier,
truer.
The first rains
are always
this plagiarism of yearning,
every moment
an echo of another
and then another —
the thunder the roar
of an outlawed god
whose hair is a foaming green river
through which seahorse
and minnow dart deliriously
around a crescent moon,
and every dark cloud a courier
from a classical past,
and longing
a rising fever of loam
and thirst for a man whose voice
is blue ash and oatmeal
(with a twist
of Gulzar).
It takes
a long time
to arrive
at this Tuesday at elevenness
when we open our windows
to the outrage,
the impossible nowness,
the gasp,
the rawness,
the sock in the chest,
the newness,
the raving psychosis,
the brazen never beforeness
and say the word,
our voices alight
with unguarded wonder
and a kind
of ancient terror:
‘Monsoon.’
– Arundhathi Subramaniam
Arundhathi Subramaniam is a noted Indian poet, writer, critic, Curator, and writer. She is the award-winning author of twelve books of poetry and prose. When God is a Traveller (2014) was the Season Choice of the Poetry Book Society, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
https://arundhathisubramaniam.webs.com/
This poem is from her book Love Without A Story, published by Westland
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