When I was younger, on some days, maa used to come home late. Baba always took the opportunity to dole out to me helpings of food I usually wouldn’t have if maa were home – like a certain pineapple jelly fingered out from a jar rarely opened, spread neatly on cream-cracker biscuits with sugar drizzled on them; like puffed rice, muri, soaked in yogurt and mango pulp in the summers; like maggi, not the plain way my mother would serve me it, but with fried eggs and tomatoes in it – my father had an inseparable relation with vegetables. Maa would come back, and I would throw my little fists this way and that and complain, “He makes me eat things I hate!”

The day that maa left, we called her every half an hour until the plane took off and we simply couldn’t reach her anymore. That day, I woke up from my afternoon nap smelling the incense sticks she generally kept burning at twilight, in her little thakurghor, at the far end of the house,with the bare minimum of idols in them.  But it was impossible for me to smell the incense that day – maa was gone, twilight had come and passed, and no one had burnt any incense at the far end of our house. Yet, impossibly, I woke up smelling them the strongest.

I got off my bed today and stretched my legs and arms, hungry after hours of sitting with my head bent over university work, irritated because dinner was still far away. This is where maa would scold me for being hungry at nine in the evening, and not seven, as if it was completely under my control. She would frown when I ask for maggi and leave, come back with tidbits like a piece of bread with chocolate spread on it thickly, and specific flavours of chips I was fond of – maa cared to bring things like these home regularly – my journey from being a teenager to a perpetually sleepy, hungry adult had left both of us yearning for the same junk at odd hours of the day. Baba always brought pickles made from tamarind, rare fruits that no maid in our house could ever cook a curry with, papads made from prawn and stinking clumps of bel from our old gardened house down the lane – he would bring it all home, scatter it on the table, light a cigarette and immediately start walking around the house hiding from my mother and her retorts at him not bothering to bring not a single piece of fish, spinach, meat home from the market. Today, years later, because I am hungry, my father puts together his old biscuit sandwich. The jars of pineapple jam don’t make it to our house anymore since most of it used to go awaste, he grabs cold butter from the fridge and neatly spreads it with his fingers within cream-cracker biscuits with sugar drizzled on top of them. The butter melts inside my mouth and mingles with the sugar; I don’t complain a lot this time, let my opinion know in an appreciative grunt – one of the many kinds of grunts my father and I use to communicate without maa around.

Whole of the first week, I ask my mother to let me know once she has had her dinner – I am very scared that she won’t cook for her lone self, and even she somehow does, she will never reach the task of actually eating it, fall asleep way before, complaining about her backpain and no one to listen to her. But as it turned out, she always cooked, and finished her meals even, to my surprise.

At home,  everyday after lunch and dinner, my mother ceremoniously opens the jar of ajwain and in between talking and laughing, an indicator of having a full stomach, takes ahold with her fingers, a pinch of the contents of the jar (a typical Bengali practice) – some of the ajwain reaches her mouth, some scatters allover the bed – she laughs some more at her own childish behaviour. It’s a scene to behold, her bush of curly hair undone allover her shoulders, her pastel dupatta always  unfailingly draped around her neck in messy folds, her eyes tired but glowy in a morning dew kind of way – none of this, I had inherited. I used to scowl and scour the bed looking for all the ajwain she would scatter, most of it camouflaged with the brown batique sheets we have spread on our bed on most days. This last afternoon as I was popping some of the said appetizer into my mouth, out of sheer habit, I went about scouring the sheets looking for bits of ajwain – I found some that I had scattered, but what was missing I couldn’t place at first glance. Then, sitting there, slowly chewing our so coveted appetizer, the calm yellow tint of the drawn curtains bathing my room, saving it from the angry heat even in an October afternoon in Calcutta, I realized I had been picking up maa’s innocent giggles off of the sheets all along. 

History never found hunches attractive,
But I do.
They don’t know yet, Esmeralda can be pretty ugly too,
Ugly Esmeralda and her Ugly Goat cried on the roads of Notre-Dame until we found him,
A man with a blue hunch and a cheese heart and a rainy face.
Not me, but some poets would call it love at first sight,
Some poets, but not me ― I was only learning to escape.
But did we know, that all roads of escape meandered back to my man with a chest like the Milky Way?

Beneath wildflowers, weed grows. Stems break,
That’s how the hair grows on his underarms ― like scattered yellow weed, an awfully undesirable plant growing beneath regular loveliness; and broken stems,
When I run my fingers along them, and gently curve my lips upon the hollow,
the warmth of the little grassland  where his shoulder ends and arm begins, gives me fever;
My sweetheart forgets, daisies are weeds too.

Some mornings I wake up and get the tap running first;
I stare at the mirror and my red face in it, and think of how I want to wake beside him, to start my day with not the cold water,
but the warmth of him inside me ― his hips above my hips, like
A two storey house built from our bodies,
amidst the morning sweat and grit,
rhythmic shushes of his breath jogging the back of my neck,

Then there is The Prettiest Navel In The World,
His navel is a manuscript.
It ends in a round, deep well – you can’t see the end.
I press my ear to it and listen to His Intestines summon the tip of my tongue,
it’s the festive occasion of love making, and not often has this same tongue rolled out love names for a man in Bengali dialect before.

I wonder if he will plant a tree with me.
I wonder if we will sit naked in the sun that rises only in our balcony,
feast on half burnt food and clean the brown ground off of each other’s nails later.
I wonder if he would stand in the shower with me, watch me washing my hair,
And love me even as the wet hair sticks to my scalp, now emptying as my teenage years ripen and pass,
It makes me seem almost bald.
I wonder whether the little extra droop of my left breast,
and a little more sprinkle of brown on my right nipple, are  inconsistencies he will notice.

New moles sprout on his body, like parsley on penne,
I keep count.
I keep count as if my daughter would ask me someday,
” How much did you love him?”
So many moles, this many first strands of grey, and
Hopes of growing old and wrinkled together.
That much.

― Deeghi

I think we stare at each other, because we can’t fathom this :
There’s a you, and
There’s an I,
And you and I are together. We are two people who are together, and
We can bet our night’s sleep that that has never happened in the world before.

I have infinite tenderness for all things blue,
And you are my bluest darling.
When you are in a different city, away,
It rains all the time there,
Will you hold the blue drops of rain that fall from your window sill, in clay cups, for me?
I will paint all surfaces in my room blue with all the love letters I write to you.

I want to slurp maggi with you from china bowls.
In the end, we’ll taste the cheese on each other’s lips because
You have never tasted cheese maggi before and I find myself gazing at the wonder in your tiny eyes when we kiss.

I point out how your hair sticks up in weird places allover your head,
and touch my ankles with yours.
They do not really touch, but I will really do anything to make you laugh.

I will make a long list of every blue thing in the world that my eyes point out for me, for the next time you sit at your desk, back home.
They will include, the most intimate things.
The small towel I hang by my bed for no reason at all,
the blue beady bangle I bought from the sale,
a blue saree that I tore and cried and then video called you in the middle of the night to tell you of my misery,
a blue flower I found growing in the mountains that I didn’t click a snap of,
It will include the most intimate things.

In the end, I will scribble your name :
my bluest darling.

― D.

Meerab is a village in Yemen. They name girls after it.

Why would you choose to fall in love with someone who writes poems about you?
“We don’t choose who we fall for,”.
I think you just want me to remember you after you’re gone.

Mother’s Laughter is a Distant Memory, but so is Mine and I believe the Umbilical Cord is half responsible for it.

Do you know how to make a decision?

Homes are broken but hymens are an illusion.

The Jhelum is red.

Marriages are white.

How much rain makes a puddle?

Lovers are parents but of our choice.

I have imagined you in pink, you look like a fair bride and I don’t think there’s a better way to describe love.

Did I tell you you’re the love of my life?

There are grey stains on my mirror that are like people are walking on it.

Adam and Lilith kept stabbing and awakening one another and I would like to think they bore the first fruit of toxic love.

You are like freshly picked shiuli in white. But I have a thing for this boy who wears black metal t shirts so I forget you when I kiss the mole on his finger. Together we lay under the moon and play violins with our lips.

I will propose to you on a rainy day. There will be a knee, a teapot and a man who once sold the world involved. He has promised to buy it back for us that one day,

You will hear at night for years to come,

the sound of munch-munch from the mushrooms we’ll chew at lunch that day,
Amidst the noise and the silence and the sunlight, you’ll smile like a friend, and not a lover.
Ants will eat at the remaining tomatoes and sigh at our conversation — they’ve witnessed this before.

From now on, all my love letters are to you.

– D.

Nothing makes you feel as much an imposter as a blank page.

Nothing makes you move out of character like love.

Nothing makes you cry harder than having to stand up to your father, you leave bulging forehead veins all over the pillowcase.

Nothing makes you hungrier than walking home alone.

Nothing makes you sleep like an hour of chanting “I. Am. A. Good (Bad?). Person.”

Nothing makes your puke a brighter green than an unwanted touch.

Nothing makes you gasp for air more than a saffron placard.

Nothing, if not every bone is a banner for befriending another woman.

Nothing, to make you happy.

Nothing, nothing more than the blood at the end of the months to show you that you, exist.

Nothing a red veil couldn’t hide.

Nothing a mother couldn’t fight.

Nothing other than your fat thighs, they said ‘fat’ like a cuss word. Fat. Fat. Fat. Father. Father. Father. Father.

Nothing, nothing more than fascism dolled up like democracy,

nothing if not someone to love.

Nothing, if not confusing your words and your words.

Nothing, a funeral couldn’t muster.

Maybe taking up Sociology wasn’t the issue,
maybe
the issue was
The first time I’d worn a sleeveless dress
was secretly, at my best friend’s birthday party,
hidden the pictures that were clicked,
my heart thumping away like crazy
at the thought of father would find out
maybe the issue was button poetry made me cry
now, and not
men.
Maybe the issue now, was that the shawl with the old perfume
and stories of how Shafak and I spent winter nights
wrapped up around each other
lingering on it, has been washed
and the bottle of perfume lay blue and broken
like a heartbreak;
The balcony drove sunlight away again yesterday,
maybe because the bhnar in which I had chaa
at a dhaba, on the highway,
spoke to me of
the bruises on her perfect nose crumpled
with the acid that was thrown on it;
spoke to me of Junaid whose cooking was
delicious, but Bharat refused to taste it;
spoke to me of the houseboat which leaked
blood and stained the Dal;
spoke to me of the records
that broke,

and the gifts that were returned back
in cardboard boxes taped and marked
“CAUTION: DELICATE AND EXPENSIVE”
and I discovered a no man’s land where
feminism lay numb, democracy lay infertile
and the bold blue highlights on
my hair said
“CAUTION : YOUR CLEAVAGE IS A BAIT”
and I could go on and on
and count on my fingertips
the number of times she was afraid to kiss me,
the number of times my ankle tipped her ashtray
off the table,
the number of times they fired from above the bridge, when
he was swimming.
And the fag would know, that the smoke had indeed come to
make amends with an orange ice cream in hand.