Sweet Danger | Prabakar Thyagarajan

This morning is bellicose with flame...
he thought, surveying the arid landscape.
Small wonder that Babur the Mongol hated this....
 
The Metro rail streaked its hungry lope
through prickly thickets, its belly’s churn of bodies
bovine and dangle-necked. Scrawny straggles of beefwood
groves sped by, reclaiming the land
like transplanted hair on flaking scalp. He glimpsed
distant thunderheads mastiff the horizon
and thought of his own southern valley
deep in the western ghats, emerald
with paddy fields and tufted cane.
Just the place to scold a river
and plant sons....
 
He touched his starched white cap self
consciously, and quelled a little bud-
burst of pride remembering
his leader speak those well loved lines.
Not when the rain falls
on the leaves, but 
when it suckles
the earth. That’s when
boughs fructify....
 
My lines... he thought,
He speaks my lines...
What an elegant way to say
that growth must be nurtured
not imposed.... He looked around at all
the talcumed faces birthed through sleeves
of morning suds. Me...he shouted silently,
I ascend the stage today
beside the leader....
 
He saw an old woman lurch, then clutch her daughter’s sleeve
for succor, while straddling a sack of rattling pans. He jumped
up to offer his seat. ‘Please’, he said, with a stiff nod
at her tired smile as the woman, sitting, brushed
a strand of hair from the corner of her mouth. ‘My grandson’,
she said in simple introduction, and he saw with a start
that it wasn’t a girl, but a pale young man standing by
her, his long hair sliding into brown eyes that smiled
and looked away. ‘You’re going to the political meeting
at the Maidan,’ observed the old woman, glancing
at his cap. ‘I’m speaking at it,’ he said, smiling, and saw
a few heads turn. He caught a sharp glance from the grandson.
 
The train was approaching the city. The dryad agonies
of crow-shat neem trees gnarled the sullen scrub
of empty lots. Fresh omelettes of trash steamed
a new swept lane. I break my hair upon a stone
gray day...ah, I wish I could mouth soft tufts of hair...no squirrel
in the crotch is as greedy.... He shook his head vigorously
clear. What on earth were these sudden
thoughts jarring his composure? He twisted
his focus back onto his speech, and resumed cudding
the rounded gongs of phrases marbling his palate. The train
shot underground, and all was roaring darkness between stops.
 
Each station stuffed the train with yet more torsos. Someone
knocked over his cap, and stooping to retrieve it, he straightened
to find he was thrust right against the young man, who was
cradling his tired head in the crook of his elbow. He could see
the glaze of a earlobe, and a hungry pulse above the collar bone.
He could see a wisp of fluff adorn a curl behind the earlobe.
And slow, drowse-fanned lashes. He smelled the steam
of fevered youth. The young man raised his head to a gust of air
from closing doors and a stray strand of his hair, lifting, sailed
a fleeting wafer of a smile.
 
Abruptly he backed away from the young man, clawing
his way through the crowd till he came to a stop
at a corner of the compartment. He felt a stampede
of tenderness tighten his chest, a gouty pachyderm
fumbling. He felt a thrashing thirst. The train roared on.
 
Lines from his favorite lyricist floated in to rescue him.
...what bridge of buttons threadbares
the musk near bony hips...what wheeling
stars dolphin the ink of sky-dark eyes....
Pretending to stretch a crick in his neck he turned,
his greedy eyes brushing
the soft hair and bony shoulders
again. His temples pounded.
 
His heart was huge and heavy, yet bucked
like a whale flipping. Was this joy, this
sword of rain in his chest, this shrillness
of silent falling needles? How deaf
was he to the crowds swirling about him?
 
...we’re sightless fish in the slipstream
of dark rills snaking threads of ore,
thrashing crimson-gilled, on sudden
morning hillsides....
 
What were these motes of dust that struck his chest? He saw
sunlight again, glistening on the rippling mahogany
of a passing labourer’s back, at a brick kiln belching.
And congreves of laughter churning nymphs sloshing
pots of water from a well. Rippling wheat fields...
Wheat fields?!....
 
He leapt as if lashed by eels. Oh, dear God!...
He’d traveled right through the city
to the suburbs on the other side!
He’d missed his stop for the Maidan!
His speech! The meeting!... Nauseous and dizzy he stumbled
towards the doors just as the train slowed along
a deserted platform. As he emerged, dazed,
he heard a banging din behind him, and turning,
 
he saw the old woman, alone, struggling with her sack of pans.
She mirrored his surprise. “Hello!” she exclaimed.
“What are you doing here? I thought...”, she paused,
frowning with concern at his stricken face.
He felt a mangled sob rip him
like a coat-hanger in the throat.
“... your grandson?” he blurted, pointing stupidly
at the train.
 
“Oh, he got off at the Maidan”, she said, setting down her sack.
“He’s going with friends to hear your leader speak. Could you
help me with these....”