NANSI, Pooja

Poem for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Ending in a Beginning

Yours is the music of quiet 4am, of solitary afternoons that seem

unending. Yours the music of desire, the exhale of the Urdu

word for 'want', like the sound of a lung first learning breath.

Yours the shape of my father's mouth turning into song. Yours

the voice of sandpaper and husk, like the call for God coming

out of a garbage truck throat. Yours the voice of surrender,

surrender, surrender to the longing of the living, to all

bottomless need to be filled, to find another, to be whole. Yours

the poet's knowledge of how to moan a word, yours the low

humming of all the world's restless stirring. Yours the yearning,

the always and forever yearning, yours the trembling lips of a

muted string waiting to burst into passion. Yours the hunger of a

fakir who has forsaken begging to shout from the rooftops. Yours

the sweet wine of grief, the unbridled intoxication which you

deliver like a lover's return. Yours the lust. Yours the notes that

land like a hand tapping on the tight drumskin of my heart, then

the strum of the harmonica which struggles to keep up with

your voice soaring into the sky. Yours the utterance of devotion,

yours the prophet's chant, yours the treacherous winding road

harmony, yours the fevered ecstasy. Yours a wild animal wail

from before words, the sound of the soul freed of the ribcage,

from some ancient deep forgotten history, yours every exuberant

end, yours every troubled beginning.


Listening to Mukesh

Driving to your block,

I slide in my father’s cassette

of old Hindi songs and

I am humming in twilight

to the legendary

playback singer’s baritone

releasing those sounds in that

language that makes me feel like I am

home. In the back of my throat,

I can taste my grandmother’s

translucent thin chappatis

that as children we would

hold up

to the light,

the dough so evenly rolled out

by her hands that not

one lump would show.

I never appreciated them till her hands

shook so much,

she could no longer grip

the rolling pin.

I hear the children from the slum

that emerged behind my grandparents small

two-storey apartment block.

They are swearing

in that deliciously punctuated rhythm

only the born-and-bred tongue

can dance to.

I am home for a while.

I can smell dust and kerosene

in the air and hear

high-pitched devotions to the gods

blending without objection

into the stone thud bass

of the latest film song.

Jamming my brakes at a traffic light,

I realise home is supposed to be these

dustless streets and the smells

are alien culinary concoctions,

like pigs’ knuckles and chicken anatomy,

that my migrant tastebuds

cannot migrate towards.

I have taught my tongue

to like the garlic sting

of Hainanese chili paste

and form some Hokkien curse words.

It even enjoys the harsh bite of it,

but it is not

a taste, a language

that makes my heart sing

like these notes on my

car stereo.

Jaoon kaha batayen dil,

Duniya badi hain sangdil

Chandini Aiyen Ghar Jalane

Sujhe Na Koyi Manzil.

Tell me where I should go

in a world filled with indifference.

The moonlight filters into my house,

but I do not belong,

neither can I think of a destination.