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| Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla |
Paper
Tiger
Don’t
hug me too tight saudade
you
dance to the aromas of the mango chutney,
like a
gypsy woman
sangria-coloured
salvation.
It has
taken me half a lifetime
to
accept the truth,
a home
abridged with bereft voices
solemn
as if it never existed.
How
does one make believe history?
when it
sits like a mynah,
every
day on your window sill
singing
songs of yore.
In
another life I will be a bird
a
one-legged crane,
flying
across man-made borders
to my
village of Manjhu.
I have
blood on my hands saudade
crimson
stains on my restless soul
crucifying
the cursed fate
You the
dervish
spinning like a
wooden top
I the
seeker taming the inner paper tiger.
Unifier
Somewhere far over the gleaming horizon
a star is pinned in the clouds above
where earth and skies merge as one
carrying reflections of each other.
Who paints the dividing line in charcoal grey?
the one who gives wings to birds flying home.
The songs of the boatman
echoes with the radiance of waters of the Ganga
breaking the silence of early dusk.
He sings in a language I cannot decipher,
my migrant heart is brimming over
it speaks of a love that is rancid
those supposed spring times withered into winter
like leaf-shedding of our bodies,
leaf by leaf,
little by little
memories disown you
or you them.
Who guides the Aghori up the steep slopes of Panchgani?
the one who gives us the breath of life
I stop to process the beauty around me
its efficacy crystallizes
in the crescent of the moon.
Love Spell
Burn brightly,
Upend your fragile heart’s contents,
run far away into jade wilderness
tatoo your lover’s name in Kreol or Korean if you please,
someone once told me
if you ever fall in transcendent love
you must be fierce,
feisty,
fawn, like the trusting shade of brown
of the love that makes you weep
not languish in vain
for the risk of love is loss.
Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla is an award-winning poet, translator, healer and French teacher from Mumbai. Her poems are featured in the anthology Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians published by Sahitya Akademi, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English and The Kali Project. She is the author of three poetry collections – Borders and Broken Hearts, shortlisted for the PVLF Author Excellence Awards 2023 . Invisible Eye longlisted for Cochin Lit Fest Poetry Prize 2018, and The Empress winner of the 2018 US National Poetry Contest by R├жd Leaf Foundation for Poetry & Allied Arts. She is the author of ‘Healing Elixir’ The Hawakal Handbook of Angel Therapy, Numerology & Remedies. She is recipient of the Rahi Kadam Inspiration Award 2021.
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