After the Mutiny of 1857 we were the rotten curio,
ungrateful, badly-behaved, no one wanted
an Anglo-Indian painting or photo.
Dealers advised buying Gainsborough
or Reynolds (while prices climbed).
The Anglo-Indian school of artists was done for
as we were (the clever people juggling).

He bolted out of bed full of ideas and impatience.
Bathed and groomed he snapped at his chauffeur.
At the Clinic he hammered at his desk
and out came surgical implements he designed,
patents pending if there were time to file.
He dashed off case studies, the strange abscess
     on the cheek of a child.
Urging prevention, he drained it expertly.
The child died a year later of malnutrition,
and the mother paid the bill with eggs and roti.
What a village! He dreamt up a national autoclave
and vast greenhouses on the lips of the lazy gods.
He was a minnow in a tank the size of Asia.
To persist in that place he dreamt of emigration,
less dust on better roads,
where crops smelled like the cash of forgetting,
and you led your wife in an elegant fox-trot,
and saw yourself in the ads for tuxedos.

CHANEL LIPSTICK

                  Washington, D.C., 1958

Daddy always cautioned me
how many rupees it took to get
a dollar; and when I bought my first
Chanel lipstick, it was as if
I might have bought a cow in India.
It was always like that-what I
could have had were we in Delhi.
So that on holiday at Reno Road
he'd hint that Washington was not
like home. That's why he didn't want
me window-shopping downtown,
block after block, but I went
anyway-I took the bus and walked
over to Woodward & Lothrop or Lord
& Taylor, to the glass cases
of perfume and powder. When you
are twenty, you cannot explain
the fragrance of talc to your father,
or the need to color your lips.
It changes you-and there's Cairo,
Hong Kong, Bombay, Buenos Aires;
you can see them under the careful
light when the assistant tilts
the mirror for your ease.
     This summer vacation I buy
my second red in a cocoa base.
Walking home I have to hide it,
but while it was on me
I could feel its darkness on my skin,
the wet coating between me
and the city, the way it changed
me to myself, and the steady rubbing
off brought another color to my lips.
I've been a girl for twenty years,
Chanel was another changing France.
I sailed halfway round the world
wearing saris and summer shoes,
taking one suitcase, my passport photo
lipsticked like this. I kept browsing,
spending dollars like my love
for places I've lived-they come
back again on these beautiful streets.

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Poetry, Part II

Poetry, Part II