By Siddharth Dasgupta
Chic Chocolate in Salvation Blues
This quarter of earth, awash
with a thousand churches,
and here I am, struck still
beneath a decorated mirage
of Chic Chocolate in salvation
blues, as he contemplates the
bar-line shift nibbling away
at his soul and the sadness
painted into the charisma
of his eyes, with my hands
congregated in the manner
of Mewlana, a prayer of jazz
on these blasphemous lips.
God is where you find him.
At times, you need to come
all the way to Aldona, with
the ghosts of wild turmeric
pecking away at your skin.
Over an ancient wooden
footbridge that groans, softly.
God resides in the Mapusa
as well, a bit jaded by the
reiteration of Sunday Mass
at the São Tomé, preferring
to affirm his faith in the lure
of river songs.
Faith is many things, yes?
It’s knowing that love never
winds via postal codes, but
allows for the soupçon of
serendipity. It’s allowing
for the fact that jazz has
a greater say in your body
than blood, coursing like
the literatures of a lovelorn
Sahara. It’s cracking open
cashews and being drenched
in the deliverance of feni.
In Chic Chocolate, I trust.
When jazz erupts, it’s truth
—it’s Bombay of the Forties,
abandoned and riotous; it’s
the Taj Mahal Hotel, risen
on the plush dialogue of the
trumpet. I stare away, hoping
for a sign, a word, anything
that can hold the secrets
of the earth. And then, the
distant howl of a madrigal.
God is where you find him.
Be it belief, or the human
wail of a faraway jazz.
An Unplumbed Depth
Across this passage of land,
there is no need for poetry.
The morning gathers a fistful
of earth, summons a roll call
of villages, and these names
blossom, like awoken lilac—
Arpora, Assonora; the strange
river breeze accosting Siolim;
the lush nonchalance of Aldona;
the crunchy entrée of Betul,
the lengthened deliciousness
of Betalbatim; Ucassaim,
Oxel; the dyslexic winds
of Socorro; the lost lullabies
of Mandrem…
What haunts me today is an
unplumbed depth. Miguel,
Silvia, and I are discussing
the arc of horizons, and how
once you’re beyond the arc,
the past tends to vanish,
like a lyric left too long in
the wind.
Trying to gather youth from
the vagaries of yesterday is
like trying to capture mackerel
in a brutal coastal storm.
Dusk seeps into the portraiture
of three people in varying
degrees of love.
Flooded with wine and
a heady vintage of marijuana,
I see Lorna Cordeiro sway
in front of me, Tuzo Mog
emblazoned in her eyes,
like a piece of provincial
providence.
How do I tell Silvia I love her?
I’m seventeen, and life laps
at a frightening clip. The lush
nonchalance of Aldona; the
strange river breeze accosting
Siolim. A wink and a kiss.
Years and years. Endings
and beginnings. Youth brought
up occasionally over drinks
and discussed with fondness,
like a scene from a film. Such
crunchy flashbacks of Betul,
the lengthened deliciousness
of Betalbatim.
Love lost—found, made,
savoured, and tasted. The wiping
away of reminiscence. But you
carry the sea with you, like
a favourite letter, its stamps,
its soul. The dyslexic winds
of Socorro; the lost lullabies
of Mandrem…
I was wrong, you know.
Every place could do with
a bit of poetry.
Family Portraits
Staring into the deep, raging heart
of the Andaman Sea, I see kinfolk
and the muffled laughter of a faraway
yesterday. You see it’s within these
waters that this story gets written,
into these waters that the stars
peered, saw their dancing reflections,
and decided to adopt a formation
to welcome this many paragraphs
of cosmic lingua.
I see my grandma, being unhooked
from the mainland, like a kite
being sent out into the wilds
of the sky, in a passage of migration
fed by the ghosts of riversongs.
I hear those riversongs, each one
anchored by the la-la-la-la-las
of freedom, nani’s breath already
held by the mysteries of
nautical desiderata.
For granddad, I need to shift
my gaze to different coordinates,
approaching the Andamans from
a separate quarter of life. Because
his story begins in Burma, and
a matriarch lavished with Burmese
and all manner of enigmatic blood.
I see thatha, then, his voyage
having to negotiate not just lands,
but a tidal shift in familial heritage.
Staring into the deep, raging heart
of the Andaman Sea, I see them
building a home—the whiff
of mahua, the glamour of virgin
sands; the lonesome sadness of
driftwood, the violent bloom
of full moons nourished by the
chimera of ravenous tides.
I see the anchors, being buried
in the depths of startling waters.
In time, the story that leads to
me. In time, the quiet startle
of starfish and the dazzling sizzle
of cod being grilled beneath
the supervision of the night.
I won’t even delve into stories
that belong to my mother and
my father, since theirs is a fable
that is still being written, dipped
in ink and beautiful chlorophyll.
I won’t talk much of Ma casting
her dreams out across lost lagoons
and secret horizons, and watching
them glisten like diamonds stolen
from maritime mythology; I won’t
delve at length into Baba fleeing
the known for the vast waters
of the unfamiliar, bearing loss
and love as pendants, because
theirs is a fable still being written.
Half of me ocean, half of me
letters, inked in Bangla, Urdu,
Telugu, and other miscreants.
I serve as an itinerant, prancing
on waters whenever I appear,
departing with a heart heavy
with monsoon tears. Look
for me, if you should ever arrive,
into the arms of a moon-drenched
coast. I’ll be the boy with
the downward gaze, eyes mired
in a deep, raging heart, lush
with summer and other words.
Siddharth Dasgupta is a writer of Poetry & Fiction; he has written three books thus far. Siddharth’s words have appeared in Kyoto Journal, Lunch Ticket, Poetry at Sangam, Spittoon, Cha, nether Quarterly, Madras Courier, Bosphorus Review, the Bombay Literary Review, and elsewhere. Off-and-on, he also dives into elements of travel and culture for a gathering of publications—Travel + Leisure, Harper’s Bazaar, and National Geographic Traveller, included. Click here to find out more about him.
Banner image of Goa is by Abhishek Pipalva and downloaded from unsplash.com