Saturday, June 14, 2014

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

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