Salman, Bombay by Karan Kapoor - Rattle: Poetry (original) (raw)

I do think of Bombay as my hometown. Those are the streets I walked when I was learning to walk. And it’s the place that my imagination has returned to more than anywhere else. —Salman Rushdie

I have spent almost a month in Bombay with

Midnight’s Children on my bookstack, taunting

me. Each time I think let me open the first page,

I remember another place I have to be. You called

it your love letter to India. Being from Delhi, I don’t

understand why anyone would write a love letter

to India. Sky, a tarpit of cancer. Yamuna, more

akin to a block of frozen sewage than waving black

water. Each small street bloated with buildings

and people like a starving child’s belly

sick with kwashiorkor. Bombay is more

polluted than Delhi but it boasts an ocean.

Is Bombay rain different from Delhi rain?

It is a question of lily or acid. The sun appears

here like answered prayers—unpredictable,

infrequent, and always more beautiful falling

on your face through a veil than stitched into skin.

Outside my window, above your book, the clouds are

compliant, smoothening through the grayblue sky

like children off to school. Wind bulldozes through

a banyan’s dreadlocks. Isn’t it funny how telling

the truth often feels the most like lying, like doing

something wrong? Here, it is midnight and I am

awake because in New York you have been stabbed

they-aren’t-sure-how-many times. I glance again

outside the window and think of water think

of thirst think of opening my mouth think

of moths think how could anything

as birdlight as music make one a criminal.

A child, blue beneath half-aglow streetlight

is trying to stretch a blanket over his body

in the hopes that it might become fire, engulf

his cold. His father snores nearby. No mother

in sight. I refresh my screen. Ghost a hand

into the sticky air, feel pinpricks of light salt rain.

Wonder, are you allowed back in India?

Please, come back with your eyes open.