Painting India
First spread the canvas with cow dung
Wet, to shine
Now with chalk make a Rangoli border
Pattern echoing pattern in terracotta and white
Next hang garlands of jasmine and roses
Deep pinks, acid yellows that nimble fingers swiftly tied
Have jacaranda and bougainvillea spill exuberant
Oranges, shocking pinks, a million paper butterflies
Splash here a field of bright green paddy
Women in saris, bent gracefully at the waist, toiling
Before the sun grows hot.
Cast shadows from fanning branches
Under the elephant legs of coconut trees
Paint the crowded road, a slow cart lurching
The bullock pair with matching horns
Decorated for Cow Pongal
A hen fussing her tiny cream powder puffs
Scattered in the dust
While on a straw hill the flashy cock struts
Here’s a whole family on a bicycle, baby fat brown legs
Poking from mother’s sari, and a yellow auto putters by
Brave in the monstrous crush of motor lorry, bus and bike.
And now the village weekly market
Tomatoes onions brinjal plantain garlic
Spread in the fly-specked sunlight
Small round lemons and limes in heaps
Green bananas still clustered on the stem
Picture postcard shots amidst the squalor
Rubbish gathered and scattered, people and dogs scavenging a life
Crow upon crow upon crow lordly squawking.
Winding through the scene, pencil in five strange figures on bicycles
In stately procession past fat gaudy Ganesh and his puja gifts
Add the flash of white-toothed smiles, hands raised in ‘Vanicum!’
Frame upon frame snapped and stored in the mind’s eye
Precious memories held in the heart
Until we come again.
No comments:
Post a Comment