Shyamalda

Shyamalda—

you had possibly travelled

over a thousand miles

when, once,

on our way to Rishra,

pierced by hunger, you chose

to stop the car and alight

for a sweet.

Hunger impelled you to those windows

behind which, around hard sandesh

and the ooze of cham cham and the yellow

puddle of rabri a haze

of insects were hovering or swimming or climbing

as on an island without a human being.

The ants, though touched

by the mishtis’ resin, had

laboriously freed themselves

to ascend slopes; the flies,

enlarged by these environs, banged into each other.

I asked you how you brought yourself

to eat a specimen from that tray

—‘What if there’s something on it?’—

and you laughed like a girl and invoked

the Bengali imperative of hunger,

evidently more immediate than sorrow.

‘I would flick it off, and eat!’

You waved away in a gesture

the invisible living creature

as if dismissing some stupid universal decorum.