Roopali Sircar Gaur (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Roopali Sircar Gaur

The Album Parent

 

 

With loving fingers the album turns its pages .

Dawn wakes up Satyajit just as the Sun touches the dark green mango leaves.

The long verandah with its Roman pillars

reminder of an elegant past, full of memories, of child laughter of teenage banter and arguments.

Now as the merry birds chirp only photographs of

Shantanu at Princeton, Shantanu on a European holiday, Shantanu at his graduation, smiling Shantanu in his office.

Sometimes the phone rings and Baba Kaymon accho? It’s Shantanu.

Each sunrise since then seems like a long time ago.

 

 

Dear Amma And Appa

 

Like a colourful kite flying in the sky their happiness soared. They read the letter again and again.

 

Singing a lullaby Amma wrapped avaakai pickle, masala papadams and sambhar powder.

 

Winging over oceans, mountains, across continents to the joyous birthing of a grandchild.

They wanted to shout and tell everybody.

 

Now silence quietly joined them.

Tennis shoes peeped from under the Kanchipuram orange and blue sari.

In Govindaswamy’s ears the harsh echo did not still .

 

Amma no sambhar or pickle! The smell will linger. Rina gets nauseous.

And Appa no incense burning here please .You should have left your God behind in Villupuram!

This is the United States of America. Why can’t you eat civilised food!

 

Six exhausted and craving babysitting months later they were returning to their many benevolent gods and the tucked away taste of home.

 

Savitri lit the diya.

Murukaṉ eṉ kuḻantaikaḷai ācīrvatippārāka!

Lord Murugan bless our children.

She whispered in Tamil.

 

 

For A Few Dollars More*

 

In the heartland of Telangana stands the ancient temple of Sri Chilkur Balaji God of Visa.

In the sanctum sanctorum lies the promise of prosperity.

A visa to the land of milk and honey

where the roads we know are paved in gold and all pockets are full of money.

Eleven times around the temple I pleaded and a 108 times when the visa was stamped.

The dreamland is the land you dream of and the Statue of Liberty is ready to embrace the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.*

How I had longed to be in that land of the brave and the free.

Now each night greets me with raucous laughter and the plaintive crooner, the clattering of plates and cutlery

the smoke from cigars and the scattered cans of beer and the reluctant tips.

 

I had left behind the ripening wheat fields and white egrets riding on Buffalo backs, the steaming rice and lentils from Amma’s kitchen only for a few dollars more.

 

*Inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty New York harbour penned by Emma Lazarus 1883.

 

*1965 Western movie starring Clint Eastwood

 

 

Prof Roopali Sircar Gaur is a published bilingual poet ,novelist, travel writer, conservationist and social justice activist. Coeditor of 14 international poetry anthologies. She is author of a novel Porridge and I: Growing Up With India and a significant compilation entitled 70 Carats and More: Memoirs of Indian Women.

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Setu, April 2025