Grown used to it | Ramanujam Parthasarathy

It was a malformed face
with a twisted mouth,
made worse by 
a fixed smirk on it.
It was not a genetic disorder,
the man was sporting it,
just the way he sported a shirt
with large brightly-coloured checks
and curls that flopped into his eyes.
A yesteryear version of today's vulgarity.

A big man with heavy features,
tiny hands and shiny skin,
he often stretched his smirk
when he looked at me
and held it, baring his teeth
and lifting his face,
reminding me of that buffalo 
in the backyard of grandma's house
which she sold some years ago
to make ends meet.

I felt sick to my stomach
and turned my face away.
'No, how can I live with this man? 
Just his face turns my stomach.'
'But he likes you,' he intoned,
as he often did to earn his living.
'And he doesn't want anything;
he earns well,
and he is the only one in years...'
His voice trailed away
as he struggled to hold back his tears.

Even now, he lifts his face
baring his teeth
and stretches the smirk
that holds on to his lips
and sniffs a buffalolike sniff.
I no longer feel sick;
fondling and caressing
the baby on my hip,
the dead spit of his father,
I have grown used to it.

Ramanujam Parthasarathy is a creative writer and translator whose works in English and Tamil have been published in Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Span, The Hindu (Sunday Magazine & Literary Review), The Indian Express (Magazine), Readomania, Kanaiyazhi, Ananda Vikatan, Solvanam, and Thinnai. He has been a newspaper columnist as well. In a career in higher education spanning forty years of teaching, teacher training, researching, research reviewing, and materials writing, he has worked as Director, Loyola ELT Centre, at Andhra Loyola College; Director (Training) at Vignan University; and Director, ELT Centre at SR Gudlavalleru Engineering College. He lives in Vijayawada.