Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca's Poems
Those Bombay Sundays
(Inspired by Robert Hayden’s poem ‘Those Winter Sundays.’)
Those Bombay Sundays
My father woke up his usual ‘early.’
‘Seize the day’, he would say.
He gave the Carpe Diem call
On other days too.
Oh, that rising reluctance
On those Bombay Sundays,
Resisting his poetic exhortations.
The crows and pigeons followed the rhythm.
Of early rising, no matter the day of the week.
Did he want me to turn into a bird?
Then the Black and White TV arrived,
A loan from the National newspaper,
Brought the entire neighborhood with it,
Mostly children, and all those related to them.
Grandmothers needed a helping hand,
to climb the old creaking, wooden staircase
But come. they must, to watch the Sunday Hindi movie.
Father watched the six o’ clock Hindi movie,
To write his TV column,
The children sat on the stone floor,
Like groundlings at a Shakespeare play,
My aunt sat on the large bed, watching intently
With a grandmother or two,
Begged the husband not to beat his wife,
‘It’s wrong,’ she would say in Marathi.
Calling out the villain to repent of his evil deeds.
Smiling widely when the hero chased the heroine
Around the tree, singing romantic songs.
Shifting her weight to the edge of the bed,
When the tension was palpable.
Father wanted to know why the female singers had such high voices.
He had a bemused look on his face
Throughout, and with steady stoicism
Watched all three hours of the movie,
Took notes on a lined note pad,
Smiled at the children from time to time.
During the intermission
The children stood up, dusted themselves,
And sat down again to watch.
In true Shakespearean groundling style,
They called out different ‘endings’
to scenes, each according to their tastes.
Those Bombay Sundays
Of the Black and White TV,
When loneliness was unknown,
and no silent snow was falling.
I hear the voices of the children
“Thank you, Uncle, thank you, Uncle,
See you next Sunday.”
Daddy loved the children,
kept a few handkerchiefs ready,
for the ones with the runny noses.
“Please come again”, he responded to their thanks,
A true Indian-English phrase!
When I say it here, I see the surprise
on the faces of my visitors
and I have to explain, it means
they are welcome to visit
again.
We say it in India,
Even when exasperated
by some in the constant stream
Of visitors!
Copyright Kavita 2021
Sixth Floor
Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca
Mother was the last flower
plucked from the garden
of our ground floor flat.
Transplanted to the sixth floor
of a seven-storey building,
She could no longer see the stars
or smell the sea and hear the waves,
Sitting on the chairs
with father and us children
Late into the night
under the heavens.
In a place not of her choosing,
her roots didn’t take hold.
The building sat at the top
of a steep slope.
Her flower, though watered frequently,
Began to wilt on the sixth floor,
Trapped in a jungle of concrete.
There were more flowers like her,
in the buildings
she could see from the windows.
Little consolation.
Where once she had walked
With the cool grass beneath her feet,
Now, she held onto a chair.
Lifted one knee up to touch her waist,
then put it down.
Lifted the next knee up, then down,
‘I’ve done my exercise’, she said.
The elephants in the Yamini Roy painting
That hung above the dining table
seemed to wear a puzzled look!
Father offered a solution,
As he always did.
‘I’ll hold your hand tightly
Up and down the slope.
We’ll walk to the sea,
It will still be the same.
It hasn’t moved, like us,
We’ll go after dinner
The stars will be out.’
Mother wanted to go back
To the garden
To be a flower in that flower bed,
She promised to bloom
As she had once done
Where the soil was fertile
For her dreams.
When she talked about it
The sixth floor wore
An air of nostalgia
And smelled of the sea.
I looked out at the sky
I thought I saw
The same stars twinkling.
The elephants in the Yamini Roy painting
That hung above the dining table
Returned to their original expression.
They looked serene, just like before
When the painting hung above the red curtain
In our ground floor flat.
They seemed to know
she was talking about
Their first home, and hers
And mine, and ours.
They had watched her
Sitting in the garden
Smelling the sea
Gazing at the stars.
Not aging and with no knee problems.
They lifted their trunks slightly
Perhaps they smelled the perfume of flowers
Filling the air.
The garden was her healer
The elephants knew the secret.
Copyright Kavita 2021
2020
(Poem to a year bound indoors)
Between bouts of hibernation
Surfacing for mouthfuls of air
I become the gills of a fish.
The year wore a crown of thorns.
The roses were still there
You just had to bend a little lower
To see them.
Remember you packed them down
With old newspaper, woodchips and burlap
To survive the winter.
If pricked by a thorn
You could choose to be Sleeping Beauty,
Wait for the kiss of a handsome prince
Or stay awake, breathing deeply
Through it all, to live a little.
Copyright Kavita 2021
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