Our Booa

Our Booa

Our Booa

Our housemaid
is a tiny langur woman
with a lanky grey body.
Her face is round,
eyes are amber,
slight limbs are dark
and yet sweet like raisins.
She wears no lavender powder
or brightly coloured lipstick
unless there is a party.

Her constant laughter
tells you she was once
a langur monkey
who fed,
played and leapt
from branch to branch
in the tree tops,
making the silver-green
leaves quiver
against an azure sky
with her monkey wishes.

This small woman
thinks she is still
in the Garo Hills,
crouching behind
a lantana bush
and free to do
whatever she likes
with us children.
This is the woman
who fed me bananas
and peanuts with her hand,

let me hang
from her neck,
ride on her slim back.
She was the one
who lulled me to sleep
with her strange songs,
tapped my back
and taught me
not to have nightmares.
I used to tell her
I’d marry her
when I’d grown up.

She’d give me her
langur-monkey laugh.
I went home last summer,
looking for that small
round-faced woman,
but my mother said
my booa had gone long ago
back to her Garo Hill roots.