Poems: The Many Facets Of Home

Home Is Memory

My home is more of dreams
than of warmth
I taste my home with a sudden bite
of a slice of jackfruit
in a place far away from my birth

I find a home on a passing street
when someone sautés
red chillies in hot oil
for some exotic dish

I catch home in the glimpse
of the women sitting in her courtyard
and messaging parachute oil
on the hair of her daughter

I feel at home in the smell
of Navratna oil
of my co-passenger

I search home in sticky, greasy
Boro Calendula cream
that the manufacturer has
stopped making

My home fleets
and pops up suddenly
and then vanishes again.

My home lies
in my pursuit of
another object to be flashed on
in the memory of my home

Home Is His Arms

The water was seeping through
a newly cracked hole
the cicadas were buzzing on the ears
the hornets were warm with eggs

His nose was in her armpit
his hands on her heart
the newly whitewashed wall
was the only witness
it wore on its body
the contour of two mad lovers
ending their search for a home.

A Distraught Childhood Dream

All the walls are moth-eaten
echoing my childhood sobbing

When you all say of the
warmth of home
I find the dead cuticles
of my rapist's skin in the corner of my nails
I rub again and again
on my white frock which still haunts me
in my mid-forties

I run away from home
home is my distraught 
childhood dream.

Home Is A Song

Home is the fragrance of
my mother's hair
and the impending night
enveloped in the smell of the bluebells,
raw tea leaves and the scent of pulav.

Home is the lazy noons
I sleep soaked in my childhood dreams
while my daughter's novice artistic hands smear 
watercolour in the white pages.
I faintly hear a small chat between the milkman
and my mother about his gaons* 
my mother's half-baked Hindi doesn't stand
as a hindrance to the emotional sharing
of joys and longings.

Home is the melodious evening.
The cricket begins the song
and the fireflies dance in rhythmic sparkles in
the bamboo plants.
The continuous dipping morning rains from the
bamboo culm set the falling song,
the day dies in the womb of night

Home is the radio
my father listens and tries to visualise
the horrors of war and the rising prices
with his blind eyes
And the mooing calf prompts
the milkman to leave the conversation midway
and he rushes to milk the cow.

*gaons: it's a Hindi word which means villages.

Ghar(Home)

My lover used to kiss me
And taking close to his chest
Often whispered in my ears
Love you sweetheart!
I only had a sentence in reply -
"Give me a Ghar
Give me a Ghar"
He got furious
And shouted out -
This is your house, your bedroom, 
Modular kitchen
And your imported divan!

I woke up from his side
And broke the mirror into sherds
He began to wail from behind -
You, mad woman
This was a costly glass
You ruined my dressing table.
I moved further
And plucked out the tap handle.
He was enraged 
He grabbed my hair and threw me out
From 'our' house
And slammed the door behind me.

I spat on the nameplate
And began to walk.

Home Is My Mother

Maa
I will return home tomorrow
my home in Sarat lane,
heaven apartment, room number 25/100
I have an aquarium where many
fishes live
I have a dog that sleeps on the costly sofa
I have many white designer plates
I have planted two trees in a tub on my balcony.
Maa, I will return home tomorrow.

I pause looking at my mother's
cold eyes
she senses my choked voice
she knows like fish in the aquarium,
trees in the tub
and dog in the chain
I too am incarcerated in the room
which I call home

I say in difficulty
I will return one day to you, Maa.