Mandakini Bhattacherya

DIFFERENT BIRTHS, SAME LIFE

(a) A Man

Pitch-black in a burst of crickets
is when I wake up,
trying to find the familiar folds
of loose nightwear around me.
Instead I am sitting by the flame
of a glass-encased lamp,
wearing crumpled white kurta-pyjama.
On the balcony, I watch the full
moon, kissing stubbled, dappled fields.
Lust stirs, as I imagine the
blackness of a Santhali woman
and her moon-like silver ornaments.
I stare in the mirror, longing
to be back in the folds of a sari,
with a big dot on my forehead.
Reclaiming needs only a stone’s grip
to shatter the glass; yet I am
loathe to sink into powerlessness.

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* The Santhals are a tribe of India

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(b) A Sharecropper

All that we mother and son
have shared in this thatched
broken hut are servings of
hurriedly cooked coarse bread
and tasteless sloppy curries
in cracked bowls that I cooked
for you after a day of endless
labour and before I tiptoed
off to the nightly assault
of the zamindar on my cavernous body.

Till the night I hanged myself
with an old sari.

Now I remain in the corner
of your eye like a shining tear
when the distant thunder
makes the parched earth hope,
and the red ants swirl around
the pumpkin vine planted by me —
Living today; food tomorrow.

_____________________________
* zamindar - landlord

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