Calcutta/Bangalore
The conductor looks away as I come
closer to his moving ground, ribbed with wood
very few are remaining in this bus now
for instance, the driver, and him and I
he presses the beedi en route to his chest
and stifles a story I do not ask
we must behave as strangers in this poem
otherwise what are zebra crossings for?
This is a road that steels recognition
maybe it is too recognizable
that I cannot ever tell where it belongs
to this or that city, this or that home
sometimes ease and familiarity
quietly preserved in the sunshine colour
are found not in language but price of things
you just need to buy them from time to time.
In buses here they use metal flooring
bigger wheels, also, a no smoking board;
the conductor stares at me as I come
closer to loving this scrutiny, and
trying to smuggle fragments of his speech
into memory of a sea of voices.
I pretend I am not a stranger here,
as he pretends to be stranger than is.
…plus, I do not mind the names on these shops
even in my language they were just arrows,
unpronounceable signs to where I willed,
wherever at all for thoughts to wander
so, I just created my own meanings
both, for names I understood, or did not
until someone said that my meanings were
pointlessly wrestling in his dizzy head.
“Electronic City, saar,” I get down
like ten years ago, but in a different city;
ten years ago there was nothing new
in this act of skidding up and down,
like words dawdling in a traffic jam…
At the zebra crossing there was someone like me,
I should have helped in my mother tongue,
but, I went my way without interfering
the revenge of a language on another.
