Two Poems: Signs and Remains
No thrill of speed here
Signs
Delhi.
Three summers ago.
I try to say padhai -
the stoic excuse for when I grew and grew and
outgrew,
wrapped my arms around this home
and finally made the fingertips graze
an unhurried second or two.
So vast for that icy town that I fit it in the hollow of my palm.
It lay there solidly certain
until the spring of thaw.
The eaves of this house, they droop beyond,
still the pesky intruder
as I spell them out
brink after brick.
The distant spaces allow for ease in control:
play second fiddle and fix up for the greater show.
All this while the English newspaper ambles into town
bearing yesterday's date –
hauled from the city, mild-mannered, r's rolled,
always fashionably late.
The surprises, though,
bursting only in the pesky vernacular.
All this while the languid haat bazaar watches the toy train snail in
from Darjeeling to Ghum
"using six zig zags and five loops".
Fingers snap at the illicit yawn.
No thrill of speed here.
I try to say this word,
and my east-Indian tongue can only utter parai –
foreign, living off borrowed time,
belonging anywhere for a dime.
Striking resemblances,
similar enough to not be the same.
Connecting the dots while the dots keep shifting,
for the wink of a fool's gold tipping
over this city's chime.
I, having boarded two wrong metros earlier that day,
wonder
if it is all a sign.
safe splintering of one sharp memory into many
Remains
After all,
what hopefully remains
is a jumble of pictures
in places
with people,
scattered with an abandon
that can only come out of just-enough.
The homely sprawling of contentment –
shoddy for its flightiness, necessary for our keep.
An archive of everydays which begins to blur,
as we let ourselves muddle the details.
I enjoy it,
this safe splintering of one sharp memory into many,
when I needn’t remember, when I can let myself forget.
After all,
what remains
is what must.
What remains
is what will not yield to dust.
We rejoice in the many memories of a starkly simple afternoon,
where nothing happened.
We go about our business,
as nostalgia tries to match our olden shine.
Dipanjali Singh is currently pursuing an M.Phil. degree at the Department of English, University of Delhi.
Images courtesy of the author.
