Sita's Song

I watched the raindrops gather
at the centre of the mottled ash-pink and purple hibiscus
bought from the local nursery.
Words wove themselves into a verse of bounteous grace.
Strange, how a tiny six by six feet box terrace of an apartment flat
in a remote corner of a small city is unforgotten !
Nothing goes unnoticed or untouched.
I was listening to the unfolding poem in my head.
Last nights rain, thunderstorm and lightening,
now transformed into three beads of water
winking in the early morning light.
I took a sip of tea-and picked up the grocer’s bill and a scratchy pencil.
After all poems are whimsical creatures
-unless caught and committed to paper -
they vanish, as suddenly as they appear!
Just as I was finishing, the doorbell rang
- I looked up.
It was Sita -our cheerful Nepali maid.
Her sari end dripped but her spirit was not dampened.
Sita, as patient as the earth itself ,
had three energetic boys, endless chores in 11 households.
From 6 in the morning she stood in the corporation water line
and then walked 3 miles to our housing cooperative to save on auto-fare.
“Late again, Sita?” I asked with a smile and teasing banter.
“What to do, Didi? The boys had to went to school without tiffin.
Our roof was leaking. The papaya tree has fallen -it was a good tree. Bore fruits.
And the last two houses in our line -nearest to the big nullah?
The one the children have to cross to go to school?
Those houses got swept away! Baap re, what a deluge last night!
Didn’t you read in the newspaper?” she asked innocently, our Sita did.
Sita couldn’t read. She was lucky.
How could I tell her that the two shacks near her nullah
were not important enough to feature in the English dailies we subscribed to?
Neither were the drops of rain which had evaporated from the crinkly petals of the hibiscus! These were smalls things!
To be documented on the backs of old bills and used bus tickets.
There was a sudden gust of breeze. It lifted the poem off my lap! Too late.
“Didi! Shall I run and get it? Oh watchman!” Sita shouted.
The watchman -Ramesh -Sita's husband, big, bluff and simple
looked up quizzically and tipped his cap.
We teased her sometimes- calling her SitaRam!
I stopped her.“Never mind, Sita! Let it go!”
Sita waved off Ramesh, smiled widely at me and picked up her broom.
I saw our song, Sita's and mine, twirling like a dervish in the parking lot
where the the bougainvillea grew
whirling with the dusty pink petals.

Requiem for a Lost Hat

I’ve lost my hat- just that!
Some might say I still haven’t lost my hair
or teeth yet!
And I still have a head on my shoulders .
Sure, I lose it once in a while on family and friends
but the truth is, my head is still firmly fixed
- not rolling on a gory battlefield
– anonymous , unclaimed, with no one to mourn it.
I have much to be thankful for- yet,
I mourn the loss of my hat! Is it silly or strange?
I am so used to absentmindedly reaching within the folds of my bag
and feeling its familiar jute weave that it was a shock today,
when I realised there was no hat!
I turned my workday bag upside down, then inside out!
It had acquired an ink stain in this one year of use and
a tanned sheen from soaking in the afternoon sun,
the occasional drizzle and the ever growing pollution.
It kept my hair from going crazy after a bike ride
- no yards of duppatta orfussy scarves for me.
It also gave me an edge over the world!
I could look through it’s woven mesh, but no one could see me.
I was at once invisible and invincible in my hat!
I remember the warm smiling Tibetan girl who sold it to me.
The one who added a sweet smelling box of incense for free.
Since then it had travelled with me through forests, farms, parks
and busy streets of several cities, small towns and villages
in buses and trains- both commuter and intercity, cars,
bikes, scooters, and auto rickshaw journeys
both shared and singly undertaken.
Is it gathering dirt from the feet of careless commuters
crushed on a bus floor? Oh no!
Has it fallen under a rain-tree tree gradually turning into fertiliser-
and becoming part of it’s sap and leaves? That’s a happier thought.
And though I still mourn my hat no longer mine, I’d be happiest
if I knew that the boy selling bamboo flutes in the rai,
at the four road crossing has found it on his way home
and now wears it as he plays a merry tune!
(A Song)