Madras

Madras

Madras

I was neither born nor bred here.


But I know this city


       of casuarina and tart mango slices,
       gritty with salt and chilli 
       and the truant sands of the Marina,


the powdered grey jowls of film heroes,


       my mother’s sari, hectic with moonlight,
       still crackling with the voltage 
       of an MD Ramanathan concert,


the flickering spice route of tamarind and onion
from Mylapore homes on summer evenings,


        the vast opera of the Bay of Bengal,
        flambéed with sun,


and a language as intimate as the taste
of sarsaparilla pickle, the recipe lost, 
the sour cadences as comforting
as home.


It’s no use.
Cities ratify 
their connections with you
when you’re looking the other way,


annexing you 
through summer holidays,
through osmotic memories 
of your father’s glib 
lie to a kindergarten teacher
(‘My mother is the fair one’),


and the taste of coffee one day in Lucca
suddenly awakening an old prescription –
Peabury, Plantation A 
and fifty grams of chicory 
from the fragrant shop near the Kapaleeshwara temple.


City that creeps up on me
just when I’m about to affirm
world citizenship.