Athena Kashyap

            for Leela Raut

            1.
            Independence Day
            Lalbagh gardens, Bangalore

After four days, the train spills them
into the city, these farmers,
forced to flee their barren fields,
mud still inside their nails and blood.
In the city, crowded into crannies,
they sweep other people’s dust
that needs no watering to grow,
peel and chop fruits and vegetables
cut off long since from the stalk.
Once unfenced farms joined them
to the sky and each other—
now, locks, separate plates and mugs
keep them apart. Still,
once a year, on Independence Day,
they meet up at Lalbagh,
coalescing from all over the city
to chat, eat roasted butta,
stand tall as the trees,
bare feet caressing red earth.

            2.
            boats

Leela cries softly over
her husband’s sores
from standing all night,
waiting on others.

She caresses his bruised body,
both their frailties
held together intact
by her shaking frame.

Her mistress wishes
she too could burst
into spontaneous sobs
or laughter

catch others within
her waves, carry them
over to her shore—
but her mind will not

let her body break,
lest Leela sees or hears,
holding it up
with splinters, cast and nails.

            3.
            indulgence

Leela massages her own scalp,
glistening palms working
long, black tresses
like the clothes and floors
she scrubs all day.

After, she washes out the oil
with hot water and shikakai,
sits on the floor outside—
sun splashing on her face,
open meadow of hair.

            4.
            blood bond

Busy today, Leela gives her baby to her neighbor to nurse,
a child on each breast—turn milk back to blood.

            5.
            blessings

            I.

Tail end of a whip 
her spinal cord wields—
crazed ringmaster
drumming pain.
 
Leela slaps it silent.
Final heave and her body 
cleaves open—
baby slips out.

She cuts the bleeding cord
with a kitchen knife,
cradles her crying baby
in tired, smiling arms.

            II.

I add Leela’s story to my necklace,
each bead—a birthing tale,
brought by mothers come to visit.

My own story: a cracked bead.
A hospital’s operating theatre,
my spine subdued, a sedated snake.
On the screen, I watch
gloved masked men pull out a baby—
somebody else’s body,
somebody else’s baby
but then they give the baby to me.

After—wombs of boils burgeon
on both my baby and my skin.
Doctors scalpel out pus and blood.
I want to rest but my spine
will not let me—hissing and spitting,
shooting venom. Furious—
baby taken without its blessing.

            6.
            badmash

Badmash girls In Leela’s village
are married off quickly—weighed down
with husband, house and children,
no time to breathe
their badmash ways.

One badmash wife, run away
with her Muslim lover to the city—
hunted down along with her lover
and cuckold husband,
with picket forks and knives

lives unraveled from the village fabric,
leaving broken threads.

            7.
            Ai
                        for Madhavi Parulkar

Seeing Leela suffer our own bland food,
Ai cooks her green chillies

smothered in mustard oil and turmeric
morsels of tenderness Leela relishes

bridging the distance between servant and master
vast as the crossing to reach Sita.

            8.
            lemon rice
            Bangalore 2012

In the news today:
shaken like dirt for tasting
lemon rice sprinkled with cashews,
the servant girl, scarcely fifteen,
jumps off the balcony.
Her body, smattered into mush
on the pavement below,
skew of bones like nuts.

            9.
            Leela’s song

Carry us back
on the sun’s rising rays
to our rice fields

no longer to attend
to marble floors, porcelain tubs
not ours to use

lonely no longer
steady chatter of companions
see us through the day.

City money in our pockets.
we shoo away
money lenders like crows

day after day, we needle
tufts of rice
into earth embroideries

the earth loves us
in return
reaping rich harvests.

Carry us back
on the sun’s rising rays
to our rice fields.