The only dream worth having...

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"The only dream worth having,... is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead." - Arundhati Roy

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Counting down to dusk...

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Image
The attached picture is one of Mumbai's many famous landmarks. A neo-gothic wonder that rivalled anything the empire had back home- the Rajabai Clock Tower on the Bombay University campus. Rumour has it that they closed it off a few decades ago when it turned into a suicide magnet for students who did not fare that well in their exams. The maidan (field) in the foreground, now cricket central, was once the vast open areas the Brits cultivated around their forts to have clear firing range on any attackers. Ironically the university was built on the footprint of the fort's walls, and the expanse of open space, once Bombay's lungs and emerald jewels, has been whittled into irrelevance by generations of land grabs, corruption and negligence. Behind where I stand and take this picture stood a row of fine Art Deco apartments, now renovated into nouveau riche hell. I decided to let my legs take me around the City today and walked and walked for a few hours along familiar ...
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Ageing in situ

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In another week I'll be back at work, testing my ability to resume where I left off, but I know things will have changed and I'm not going back to where I was, literally or metaphorically. As Heraclitus said many centuries ago, “You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you” - I may step back into the same river, but the water in the river would have flowed on and will be different, and so will I. I can sense my relationship with my synthetic thyroid hormones will not be an easy one. Yes, I was warned about it, but that doesn't make it easier. Differences from the datum either mean inadequacy or excess. As the artificial substance replaces my natural store, a process that will be near complete in another week, I can feel its impact. I sense it is lower than what I need- my skin is dry and tight, even when lavished with moisturisers; my infamous stubble takes days to surface (it used to just take hours); and most of all is my ene...
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Naturalization

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His tongue shorn, father confuses snacks for snakes, kitchen for chicken. It is 1992. Weekends, we paw at cheap silverware at yard sales. I am told by mother to keep our telephone number close, my beaded coin purse closer. I do this. The years are slow to pass, heavy-footed. Because the visits are frequent, we memorize shame’s numbing stench. I nurse nosebleeds, run up and down stairways, chew the wind. Such were the times. All of us nearsighted. Grandmother prays for fortune to keep us around and on a short leash. The new country is ill-fitting, lined with cheap polyester, soiled at the sleeves. by Jenny Xie https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/naturalization
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