Maitreyi Karnoor
Waiting for the Haripriya Express
The train connecting the god of creation
To his consort, the goddess of wealth
Is late by a half hour;
Men who shed their manes
In utter devotion
Utter curses under their breaths;
I read a story about two men
Afflicted with eloquence
Over their disgust for each other
When shut in together for a long time;
My destination is neither wealth nor creation
And my nonchalance knows only brevity;
One worship-bound traveller tries not to spill
The over-sweetened train tea
He rushes to his consort, the goddess of wait
A group of freshly shorn men
Boisterously picks on the smallest
Of their freshly shorn companions
To pass the time in a sporting manner;
The disembodied feminine voice
Of railway service
Regrets the delay.
The Daffodil Estimator
The airlines crew hurried past
The economy waiting lounge
Where I sat recovering from a panic;
They were of the aircraft I would have boarded
Had they not insisted on a transit visa
To step into the airport of their country
On my way to another,
And I had bought the cheapest ticket
On the next flight on a different airline
Passing through a more hospitable one.
The tall and ramrod straight men and women
Marched past in pairs:
two, four, six, eight….
I lost count!
But unlike the daffodil estimator
I did not call them ten thousand
Even though I had never seen
So many blonde people at once before.
Honeymoon Animals
The cat comes pat
At breakfast-time everyday
And is fed an egg – his
Which he is only too happy to give up;
We sit at the window and write poems:
He about mythical animals
And I about real ones
While minding the open window
For monkeys;
A country where the bats are big
And glide gracefully and not flap
Their featherless leather wings
Is a good country, we agree,
And that a bird in the bush
Is worth two in two bushes;
We eat dal and rice
And tell each other this is what we had always wanted
Over and over again;
We take motorboat rides costing
Two thousand and five hundred
Sri Lankan rupees and discuss what would be
An appropriate tip for the boatman to quell the guilt
He forces upon us with his stories of want
While pointing at duck, heron, cormorant, pelican
Turtle and water monitor arranged as if on display
Around the lake;
We visit the museum of things
And make appreciative noises;
We drink in the same bar everyday
– alternating between Lion and Tiger beers –
We are expats we tell ourselves
And not tourists.
