Calcuta: August 1982 a work in progres

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FranklyDire
Posts: 13
Joined: 30 May 2014, 13:23

Calcuta: August 1982 a work in progres

#1 Post by FranklyDire » 02 Jun 2014, 00:42

A colonial Ghost hung round my changed hotel
kaki puttees smiled me through each door
Nondescript frontage - palm tree leaning as they do
Turmoil, tourists shouting at a driver
Could I be as brave with that Sikh taxi

Jogappas accosted me but, settled for one hundred rupees
Aravan, apparently is not greedy
oh that the Sikh would become her devotee
No, I spawned fellatio
glad they showed not
agape holes

Personnel fawned,
how brave to ignore the riots.. to change hotel
He wagged his head, a broken puppet
when I spoke of the shooting
The Continental is so impersonal,
expensive and crooked

A Ghurkha officer pointed his baton,
like god shooting his bow
despatching death
As the crowd fled he turned to my tiny Fiat,
pointing the way and we sped
Through, crunching over broken glass

Herman, our German boss, had raved, ‘Liar!’
My calmness highlighted his own fear – c’est la vie
He had lain in a ditch for an hour, not familiar with India or British ways,
he had resented the crowd that grabbed him.
Luckily, he was not a woman police constable
Strange that the Gurkha officer stayed with me that day,
how smart in his starched shorts, his dark skin and black mustache,
his precise automaton movements.

Later that month we left Bombay for Calcutta on a recruitment drive
After five days we were pleased to leave
in haste not wanting to meet more communists
stoking braziers at the bridge heads
applying hot pokers to the nether regions of Kali priests

Newspapers reported brides being fired, at first I thought
termination of employment
not the literal burning of a young wife.

The day we left the hotel I gave the beggar woman a coin that
she promptly returned, indicating a note was preferred.

On the pavement I stopped to have
my sandal repaired, hand-sewn for one rupee
graciously accepted with a gentle smile.

India seduced me, its Kipling pealing bells,
rich aromas from spices and perfumed pyres.
I jollied to the taxi music as we traversed the river road
where the washing hung in coloured miles.
Slowing for holy cows that stepped daintily
and whom knew no fear of man.

Like the Gurkha officer, one scene stayed with me all my life.
The picture of a young girl, beautiful in her cotton lemon frock
playing on a dung heap.
I too had stepped over the gutter beggars
munching my warm pasty,
deadened to their plight and they to mine.

p.s. Raza Academy apologised later that week, explaining that Muslims could not have been responsible for the molestation of the women police constables as that would be contrary to Islam.

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