Malashri Lal (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Malashri Lal

Home Is A Canvas Bag

 

Memories are stuffed into this frayed bag and

I’ve run out of space.

One pocket carries dried stalks of wheat from the field my father sold

that I could travel abroad.

I had promised to earn dollars and buy those lands back

but never seemed to have any spare money to send home.

Another flap, tucked deep within, has remnants of sacred cloth from the family shrine.

My mother had extracted a promise that I will bow before it every day,

I couldn’t, fearing the derision of roommates.

One photo frame atop the memorabilia has fading portraits of pyo amd maa;

I surreptitiously touch it morning and night

Honouring my home in a canvas bag

 

 

Migrant Birds

 

December, and the Siberian Cranes flock to Bharatpur

And tourists train their binoculars in ecstasy.

 

December, and the diaspora Indians flock to the metropolis

And the souvenir shops pitch their sales talk in hyperboles.

 

December and itinerant adults lug suitcases to their childhood homes

Annual rituals of “checking in” on ageing parents with stacks of medicines

 

December and its festival time for the pretence of togetherness

Burying loneliness, emotions, sorrow, in the gaps of formulaic utterances.

 

 

In Transit

 

In my widowhood my son offered me love and compassion, but in the US.

Weakened by the trauma of a death unforeseen, I let him lead the way.

My home of sixty decades of spousal life was easily sold

A lifetime of memories packed into six large suitcases

My friends treated to a luxurious farewell party.

“How lucky” they said in unison, “Such devotion and care”.

Fourteen hours I wept during the flight leaving my homeland,

The loving, crazy, crowded city that was my outer skin.

 

America’s manicured streets and gardens were soothing to my eyes

But my soul was starved for company,

seeking some neighbour who would bask in the sun with me,

gossip across the fence, compare grocery prices, exchange home cooked food.

 

Six months, and I had retreated into a silent shell

Like a shrivelled pearl which didn’t want to leave its darkness.

My son said he knew what I needed,

One day he drove me far into the suburbs to a landscaped estate with many old people.

He left me in a hotel-like room saying, “Ma, you’ll be happy here with so many like you.”

I waved good bye to a parting figure that I never saw again.

 

 

Malashri Lal, writer and academic, with twenty four books, retired as Professor, English Department, University of Delhi. Publications include Tagore and the Feminine, and The Law of the Threshold: Women Writers in Indian English. Co-edited with Namita Gokhale is the ‘goddess trilogy’, and also Betrayed by Hope: A Play on the Life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt which received the Kalinga Fiction Award. Lal’s poems Mandalas of Time has recently been translated into Hindi as Mandal Dhwani. She is currently Convener, English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi. Honours include the prestigious ‘Maharani Gayatri Devi Award for Women’s Excellence’.

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Setu, April 2025