Noon Intrusion

We sit waiting.

Waiting for lunch to be served

It is that odd hour after noon

When rumbling stomachs

And siesta yearnings make

For a heady concoction.

I am strewn sideways

On the white plastic chair

Legs crossed up high

On the concrete seat in the verandah.

While she sits huddled

Like a bundle

In her red plastic throne.

Smiles flash on her chubby face

As thoughts of  heavenly

Fish curry

Light up small happy

Light bulbs strewn on her wrinkled lines.

Like a city balcony on a Diwali night.

As lazy as the sea breeze,

Pinki snoozes beside

The tulsi katte.

Her flurry tail

Twitching in an other-worldly dream

Lucky bitch...

Has her day everyday.

So it is still twenty minutes to lunch

And this clock seems to take too long.

Mild restlessness,

Little streams of thought,

Mix with a yellow haze

Of helpless surrender

To this intruder of the noon

Who creeps in every day,

Just before lunch time

And seeps around me, you , Pinki

Oozing warm lethargy.

A paralysis of events ,

Where nothing can be finished

nor started.

Just that suspended thought,

Saved for after the meal.

Grandmother , young lady

And the bitch ,

Three variables of an equation,

Strewn in the verandah,

Paused in happy hunger,

Waiting till time ticks again.

- Gokarna, kartik hunnime, 2009

remembering dear ajji, born in June, the only girl to cycle everyday to school from Tadadi to Torke, who married into Gokarna for love, and had 32 kinds of hibiscus in her garden