Syam Sudhakar [India]

 

Murrel
 
A monsoon afternoon.
I was coming back home
shouldering hunger and my bag.
 
Beside the road
the sun glimmered
in the open drain
and there bloomed a dream
in a flash of lightning.
Unfazed by the rain or sun
with head high
a slick arrow
alone in its trajectory
darted with its tail
against the current.
 
Never had I seen
such frenzied motions
to claim a mate.
No shooting star
could outshine its charm.
No warship could boast
such feral grace.
Swift and agile,
gills throbbing with lust,
a finger of the night
dropped into the heart of noon,
the rhythm of water,
an ecstasy.
 
I never encountered
anyone like him, ever again.
 
But after the rains,
in the field
I saw
with a constellation of a thousand spawns
a radiant she-murrel. 
 
 
Habitat
 
A friend gifted
an indoor plant
when a PhD was
awarded in our family.
 
Pretending to be a tree
the plant
stood tall on our dining table
spreading its roots
into our appetites.
 
After dinner
my grandmother,
abandoned by
her seven children,
got an idea of
making a nest
on the tree.
 
We all laughed.
She withdrew
from her plan.
 
But from then on
every evening
the plant laid
a white dream;
grandmother
brooded on them,
silent. 
 
 
Due
 
Gandhi’s statue
posted a five-rupee cover
to Jesus’ statue:
‘If you have atoned
for all sins
by bearing the Cross
don’t wither in the sun
between two thieves.
Leave the churches
and come here;
my people will protect you.’
 
Jesus replied:
‘The sun is not a problem for you
because of your cool head;
rioters won’t attack you
because you carry a stick.
You are secure.
I’m unarmed.
If I come out
your people will attack me.’
 
The postman
who stole stamps off letters
franked ‘Insufficient Postage’
on the correspondence between
two eras.
 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Syam Sudhakar: Winner of the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2022, Syam Sudhakar is a bilingual poet who grew up in the Palakkad district of Kerala, India. Writing in both English and his native tongue, Malayalam, Syam has been widely published in a number of other languages, including Chinese, Hebrew, French, Italian, German, Hindi, Tamil and Bengali. “Earpam” (Damp), “Avasanathe Kollimeen” (The Last Meteor) and “Kadalinte Kavalkkaran” (Keeper of the Sea) in Malayalam, “Drenched by the Sun” and “Cat in the City” in English, “Slicing the Moon” (a bilingual video rendering), “Syam Sudhakar Kavithaikal” (Poems of Syam Sudhakar) in Tamil and “Samudrer Prahari” in Bengali, are his major poetry collections. Other works have been published both online and offline, and he has also edited and translated several works from English to Malayalam. His forthcoming books include “Muziris”, an English poetry collection, and “Malu the Astronaut”, a work of children’s fiction. He is the editor of the academic journal titled “Conspectus: A Journal of English Studies”. He is also one of the founder members of the centre for Performance Research and Cultural Studies in South Asia and the Poetry Advisor of Sydney School of Arts and Humanities. He has participated in numerous poetry readings, both at home and abroad, including the Athens World Poetry Festival in Greece, Larnaka’s World Poetry Festival in Cyprus and the Brisbane Poetry Festival in Sydney, Australia, and was a Writer-in-Residence at The International Writers’ and Translators’ House, Ventspils, Latvia. Holding a PhD in English Literature from the University of Madras, Syam is presently based in Kerala, researching and teaching English Literature at St. Thomas College, Thrissur, Kerala.