views from a village

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Asmabi

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Your gold bangles chime against the bristle of the leaves, tender By the blooming verges of the winding river, your anklets sing.   Asma did not have to race against time to scribble the words on her worn out state bank of India 2005 diary this once. She knew what was coming.   Beneath the pale moonlit sky, your gentle smile shimmers Your silken drape quivers in the soft midnight breeze.   Thaamasamenthe varuvaan praanasakhi ente munnil What keeps you from my side, O companion of my breath! The words were clear against the yellowing pages of the 2005 diary; unlike the last song. A broken ente swapnathin in one line, a neelathamara in the next. Perhaps the blind singer who sits by the beach will sing it another day. Or Asma will ask her to. She can fill the missing words then like an old class test. For Iqbal doctor, Asma’s race against the blind singer’s old Malayalam songs was a class test in memory. She’s been losing it. Last Monday, Iqbal doctor ...
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  ummumma's steel mug of chai was always more sugar than chai. like my words that are always more pauses than words. i carry their weight in me; a slouch from silence. Bismillah, ummumma mutters audibly when she gets to her chai. i swallow bismillahs along with mine. the embarassment of words minces with my bismillahs and alhamdulillahs. ummumma taught me to sweeten what I detested. the occasional milk, the chutney the shade of my skin colour crayon, the cough syrups thick and pink. and i, like the copious amounts of sugar ummumma compensated my distaste with, use pauses to sweeten the bitterness of words. on days the old oats container runs out of sugar, ummumma's steel mug sits in a corner of our kitchen, desired but untouched. When the silence in my sounds run out, I hope my words catch dust, dying slow deaths of unfulfilled longings - desired, but untouched.
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