metamorphosis; three sections
By Hrishit Chaudhuri
i
New York began with a sheaf of Brodsky. Some lime smelling papers, stacked in one hand, the receipts in the other. In Hastings’ warm leather pouch,
where the keys were kept, a jangling bunch, the conquest of India napping. Glass bottles.
The Coca-Cola company has their grimy hands, murky, coal-dusted, train-station bound, philosophising on the tracks between Howrah and Liluah.
The line —
leading nowhere, grunting, screeching, the twin shrieks of protest, of communism in the universities, Ho Chi Minh and all his silk-screen Warhol brothers, his big Basquiat-loving sisters, his half-crazed
brother-in-law who clerks for the Banque and eats a weekly dinner at Trincas are all dead soon.
Time,
not passing. The slow overarching verandah strains without a new coat of Mukherjee Paints. I was with Manik at Cannes — that almighty progenitor, the Big Hindu himself, from whose groaning prints croaked out Ravi Shankar, croaked out Ginsberg, saint of the Viet Nam, saint of the California prophets, the Great Rebel, the One Who Says No, the bare-ngered, stung rice into his mouth, savage, oriental,
hated-by-Truaut race cataclysmic in this hemisphere. Radha Binod, anti-Patton as it gets, anti-McDonalds, sh-and-rice on Sundays, “Joy Khudiram!” chanting,
Naxal before it was Naxal, in whose name Kawabata stutters — their statues all melting in the rain. Although,
later there was the seventies and they carted them all o. The
Minars died. My uncle’s bootlegs — Lou Reed and the Monkees — are lost now ever since they “disappeared” him under the bridge.
ii
Deep in the garden — old Hanoverian ache, ancient plant gripping on adoring earth,
the Dutch settlement disperses. A timeless soil beneath
erupts. With roots, with tubers. With carrot-grass and wilderness, petals of churches and monasteries growing where their footsteps fell,
noiseless cuckoo and peasant women,
the indigo plants. Fragments of terra-cotta sit calmly in your palms, gathering monsoon and gathered history. The rumbling moon
on fallow land.
Dangerous hyacinth. Hibiscus. The blue-eyed weed. Finch and thrush and ornaments.
A look at the moon: the silver stripes descend upon Fort William. Deep in the garden — temple bells sound and noiselessly sound.
iii.
Post-war. Sounds are declining. “You haven’t been here in a while, maybe you’re forgetting”. I know that lie — I’ve remembered everything.
If the road was curving before, it is curving now. If the
rain only watered the grass twice a year, it waters them every week now. I know how the seasons change — I watched them change every week since last November. I know you don’t talk. You’ve planted cardamom, cloves, fennel. Below are bodies and the trees grow on top.
Everything is declining. The last monsoon was vicious and closed the axles on every truck since Bombay. Neon lights could only glow and you could see purple when it rained.
But I want to leave now. I don’t like the China rose, or the carrot-grass that grows everywhere. Your gardens are taxing you, they run with bric-a-brac.
No word means itself. Everything is asylum and all the people are leaving. Manchester was a dream once; now, the trains ferry for us.
We are declining. Close o the garden one last time, cordon it with velvet. Place the TO-LET sign on the door and this time we can leave in the same taxi.