1. Arun al-Rashid
(Mannheim, 2017)
This clean-shouldered bottle of baby oil,
the smell of jasmine
with the child-proof cap came
for three euros. For another three and a half
a warm döner
from a Turkish döner shop
to halt the grumble of an empty stomach.
The day’s weariness —
The carping of the empty pocket doused
with the cheap charred meat. When the shop girl
of Netto asked my name.
When I was only killing time.
Oh, but I’m only killing time.
Yes, yes, lady, I'm only killing time.
Wait, how much this oil?
Thereon the smell of baby on me.
This year’s winter is dim —
infectious.
Dry meat is boiling
in the kitchen
in an unfragrant
night of plague.
Making me feel unloved,
like an imp, who’s aching
to burn
down
this city
after repeating his name:
Arun al-Rashid, Arun al-Rashid,
you are in a jasmine dream.
2. The Cobra Eaters
(Hanoi, 2022)
When it's cut from the body
with one chop,
in Hang Ha Noi restaurant,
the king cobra's
severed head yawns.
In the death dream, the fangs come
out to bite, then hide
inside the sleeping jaws.
The headless body
leaps
high from the metal pan,
gets tangled
with the wiggling tail.
Minutes later, it’s skinned,
slit with kitchen
knife, dripping blood
into a plastic cup.
It's still alive. In a way
we're alive when we recuse
the body
to sleep, tuck
our fangs in
in a helpless yawn,
poison hid
in the nook of the heart.
The sleeping torsos jerk
at the thud of a chop,
thump the ground
with a fuming tail:
when we cobra eaters crawl
in the hollow
of the night
slowly serpentine
between dream and death.
(Credit: Heartwood Literary Magazine)
3. The Boy Who Rode a C-17
(Kabul, 2021)
I am flying, I am falling,
as some go to behesht,
some to dozakh,
I am in limbo, watching
the plane to paradise
flying above.
The engines growling.
Two pale wings
from one sky to another –
its fat belly – a slippery slope –
too wide to embrace –
To tie myself
to it with a turban cloth
failed – made me topple.
Unlike the embrace
a brother gives, a mashooka –
a flying boat is impossible
to hold on to.
With the nervousness of a refugee
and in a tearing hurry,
it’s going up, up
above the mountains,
indifferent to my plight.
Leaving me where I am:
midair,
flying and falling at the same time:
like the autumn’s whirling dust,
an orphan kite
from Friday’s kite war, the flying chaff
of the wheat-thrashing season.
A farishte
cast out of jannat, hurtling back —
As my brothers
are egging me on,
on the tarmac.
They will carry my laash home.
When my insides will be out
of my stomach cavity,
blood will seep out of my body
as latex seeps
out of the stabbed poppy stem.
Even though I will remain
in Kabul,
reposed till qayamat,
they will tell each other
I have escaped the city.
4. Tokyo
(Pune, 2020)
She shaves her underarms
else a cactus garden.
With a blue pint of Riband
he waters
the plants.
Mops the floor
with an 'I LOVE YOU' T-shirt.
Ironing, she notices
her panties have rips.
Notices her skin is pale
under nails,
with fungus,
while he burpees,
squat-jumps
in front of the wall.
Let him fall,
let him fall,
the obstinate boy: she prays.
For his ears are
full of wax.
He takes out the ukulele
in the evening. Just like that.
Strokes and strums.
She sees a bunch
of babies floating
and a branch
of Chrysanthemum,
in the sky.
Is it safe
to go
to Tokyo? She asks.
Tokyo? He snorts.
At this time
it's not safe to go
anywhere.
I know, I know,
I am just curious
about Tokyo,
she says
before yawning.
In the night, in a dream,
a sweet gourd moon.
A dark car whooshes
by, a man in Irezumi-
tattoo screams
and he points a gun at her.
Going some place, sweetheart?
He barks.
I don't know. She smiles,
Tokyo.
I am going to Tokyo. But,
my face is blistered,
my soul is red beet black.
My heart is trudging
along the indifferent
alley of love.
Where are you going? She asks.
The man laughs,
says,
I am going with you.
A rainbow cat
above the stars –
suddenly a dragon dancing.
An ash-clad girl flaunts
a heart and wants a vicious man
in sobriety.
Tempting
in his
temporariness.
Her body is trembling
against the hint
of a pagoda-full of love.
Where a soft stream has
ceased to be to an ocean,
at the brim,
under a bridge
of bamboo stems.
She is laughing:
Tokyo,
here I come.
(Credit: Anthropocene)
5. A Gambol in a Paris Tram
(Paris, 2018)
In Paris, a Chinese woman lost her way. Looking at a French woman in a Paris tram, who sat cross-legged beside her in a white blouse and beige skirt, she laughed.
Thee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee
Thee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee
Just like that. Then she held up before her a Paris map.
It took a while for the French woman to get the joke. The wall between two strangers now suddenly broken — her indifference, too, which a city dweller saves for a tourist, was quietly gone. For she imagined if she resisted the laugh, the joke would be on her.
She said,
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
Hick, hick, he, he
Like an unfettered girl who finds levity everywhere. Taking the map from the Chinese woman, placing it on her lap, she smoothed it with an impatient hand and pointed at some place distant. In an extravagant show of mirth, she blew her nose, laughed, and laughed. The Chinese woman, too, with impunity, poked her new friend’s arm.
Thus, without exchanging a word, these two had made such a gambol that the RATP called the day, the Day of Paris’s Babelesque Blur.
(Arun Paria is a poet and fiction writer. He lives in Pune. He is also the founder of the Pune Writers’ Group, a creative community, serving over 2000 writers.)
