Marketplace
Kashmir, 1999
The clattering horse-drawn carriages, the horns,
the hawkers all fall silent in the flash,
then chaos rises, shattering paradise.
My loss is trivial: a childhood home
to which return would be a senseless risk
just to confirm that paradise was real.
True, even as a child I understood
that bitterness had bled into the earth
beneath the dahlias, leeched into the roots
of zinnias, marigolds, to murky lakes
where lotus lay, flat-leaved, blooming in bright
profusions out of quiet pools. I knew
that past the ridge we climbed that August day
to find a hidden lake one might mistake
for sky itself, beyond this, nestled down
between the peaks were border guards, two bands
of men who, facing off, kept peace: the peace
men fought for, not the other peace—the one
we found that day along the mountain ridge,
the air distilled, the silence cooled by clouds;
the peace that let the glaciers age unmoved,
and painted Himalayan peaks in grays
that shifted off the setting sun to blue;
the peace that marked the end of evening prayer,
the ancient song drawn down to whispering
Om shanti, shanti, shanti, om.
We'll move again. Though the borders haven't changed
for more than fifty years, we can't forget
the train cars burned—a body for a body.
On either side, the only truth is loss,
and blame is strewn like wreckage or debris,
the storylines, disputed maps, redrawn.
Muharram at 203 Jor Bagh
New Delhi, April 2001
I see now why they call them floats—they glide
and hover just above the swarm of men
filling my street tonight, a rising sea
of bodies, torch-fires, smoke, song, drumbeats—high
above them ride the painted cardboard frames,
the portrait hidden under jasmine garlands
and Mylar ribbons glittering gold and green.
I stand inside our gate and watch them turn
into Karbalah Nursery, an open field
they say was once a Moslem cemetery.
I wonder how it happened, how no one saw
the gravestones disappearing, turning to trees.
Even the sacred changes. I've been told,
in years past, on Muharram, celebrants
would lash themselves with branches until they bled.
But not tonight, not yet. They sing and dance
holding aloft the image of the saint
who once was buried—or was it martyred?—there.
I'm not sure of the story, but I've heard
they come each year to dig a giant pit
and toss the floats in, burying him again.
I try to concentrate, to understand
a holiday of lashings, martyrs, graves.
Instead, I find I'm thinking more of them
than us, and noticing how thin the lone
policeman is. As if for the first time,
I see the picture windows of our house,
my children fast asleep inside. The lights
announce we're here alone! Beneath my hand,
the wrought iron gate is rusted where it latches.
The drumbeats amplify as darkness falls.
I'm not sure any more which way the stream
of men is flowing, or if they'll ever leave.
What sparks a crowd to riot? Suddenly,
a man comes closer, lurches into focus,
gesturing towards my house, excited, shouting—
I try to translate quickly, but I shake
my head, push him back, before I comprehend:
Madam, my daughter needs to use a bathroom—
He's gone before I see, or don't see, her
or know which way to look—
a deafening crash
startles the crowd—the current turns to eddies—
screams pitch up, then dissolve—
it's nothing, just
a bank of thunderclouds, months out of season.
The black sky turns pale green and pellets us
with cartoon raindrops round as cannonballs.
The music dies. The crowd evaporates.
By nine, the street is calm, and ours again.
The sweepers come first, landing here to purge
all trace of festival—the bits of gold,
chewed pan, sticks from kebabs—leaving the dust
in soft, groomed spirals flecked with moon-yellowed leaves.
Before I fall asleep, a bullhorn's call
disrupts the midnight quiet, floating past
to tell us that a seven-year-old girl
was lost in all that.
Only one? I think.
In all that, how was only one swept under?
The Story of the Palace
Fatehpur Sikri, April 2001
Although the palace and city
of Fatehpur are remarkably well preserved,
the design and decoration
present a problem of interpretation.
*
I've been here twice before. Still, their attack
is more than I can stand. Even the book
on Agra says the peddlers here are worse
than anywhere. I grab my girls and curse
my way through outstretched hands—men shouting, "Look!
Look! Lovely bangles!"
" Madam likes the black?
This white one? Every color!"
"This for hair?"
"Need film?"
"Need toy for baby?"
Deftly, he's
unveiled a brass wire globe that he untwists—
"See? Ball... flower... butterfly... snake... bird...!" He lists
a dozen other shapes. "Just five rupees!"
My daughter is transfixed. She makes me swear:
"We'll get one back in Delhi. Every store
on Janpath has them. Sweetie, one of these
won't last ten minutes."
"Mama, please—"
"Look, baby, we don't know these men—you know—"
She turns on one heel and pushes past to go
in through the sandstone gates.
What I expect
inside—lithe minarets, carved deities
watching from every nook, their faces flecked
and scarred by time—seem to have vanished. All
we're looking at is one closed door, a wall,
a single archway. There's no plaque or sign.
"Like Alice," I think, stooping to get through,
only to find another mud-walled room.
*
Its parts are better than the whole:
it lacks, for instance,
an orienting spine.
Flattening the guidebook out, I turn, compare,
and turn. The fine schematic is, at last,
no help: this winding palace is beyond
reduction to a single half-page map.
That's when I hear a voice:
"You need a guide?
I'm outraged (once again), sure I've been spied
on looking lost and fallen in some trap
laid by the hawkers. I look up.
A fond
old man in white, with specs of inch-thick glass,
expressionless, almost, is standing there—
where he was not before—as if to say
"You know you need a guide."
Though in my book
it says the guides themselves make up the stories,
that no one knows the purpose of each room—
...a granary, or else a tomb,
explains the lack of windows—
The girls are waiting. They don't really care
if what this lovely man says is a lie.
He takes us through a tiny doorway I
had overlooked, and there's the open plaza,
the archways framing cantilevered halls
that telescope like mirrors tunneling back....
*
The most intriguing building is Panch Mahal,
a five-storied pavilion of winds
used by the women of the royal household
and ladies of the harem...
Ruqayya, Mariam, Salima, Jodh Bai...
The Christian queen, the Muslim queen, the Hindu...
*
"This courtyard is where the king and queen played chess."
"Parcheesi!" I correct him.
"Of course, yes,
the king sat here and moved the slaves around—
live pieces for his game...."
But here's the thing:
A dozen years ago, when I was here,
I climbed up Panch Mahal. The stairs are closed
now. Then, the story was he sat up there.
Half-listening, half-nose-down in the pages,
half-watching my two girls, who've run to play
Parcheesi with themselves, posing as pawns,
I hear him say (quite certainly), "The school
was over there, and there, the ministers
gave counsel to the king."
Off to my right,
two laborers are carting hunks of stone
from underneath a dry reflecting pool.
*
...an excavation was undertaken
for which no rationale was given.
The findings were so announced
to give the impression that the Jain
images discovered were destroyed
by Muslim rulers like Akbar...
"Anup Talao—the government believes
this site was built on by the Jains, before
Akbar arrived." I watch the pool unfill
wondering what, next time we visit, he'll
proclaim as we regard the watery blurs
that are ourselves.
My young pawn turns and shouts,
"What happens to the slave girls at the end?"
"Good question," I reply, then, winging it,
"This king is good. He lets them play again."
*
...The underlying structure is Hindu post-and-beams,
in many cases roofed with Muslim vaults and domes...
The noon sun's hot, and there's no wind.
I call the girls and step inside
a darkened room I don't recall
from last time. Lining every wall,
red sandstone's carved in complex shapes—
stars, diamonds, swastikas—arranged
in some sure scheme. I need the guide.
"Akbar's great vision. He believed
the world's religions all held truth.
That centerpiece is for King Solomon—
And there! The stars of David—
swastikas for the Hindu faith—
Shiaz, four pointed stars, and there—
Shi'ite, Jain, Christian, everything.
'Din-I-Elahi'—he conceived
a new religion, the best parts
of each joined on one path..."
Beneath the jali-work are scenes
of animals and birds, wild flowers, trees.
"Akbar knew that when faith began,
flora and fauna were, to man,
the most, most holy."
But the faces
have all been scraped away, and in their places
black smudges mark where hands have looked for them.
"Akbar's great-grandson, Aurangzeb.
He ordered that the faces be removed
in keeping with the principles of Islam."
There never would have been carved deities.
We touch the spaces too, as if compelled,
then move along.
*
"And here is where the son
Akbar had prayed so long for, for an heir,
was born—"
The girls pipe up. "A baby? Where?"
"For years his wives had all been barren. Then,
with one saint's blessing, Jahangir was born
and Akbar built this city to celebrate
the son who'd carry out what he had started."
A cloud of parrots smokes up from the shadow
of a lone cypress bent by long-lost winds.
*
"This city flourished fourteen years, and then....
Akbar left to defend the western borders—
It turned out that the ground here held no water—
The book says one thing. Our man says another.
He checks his watch, and so I pay the guide
a little extra too, though I'm not sure
I trust a word he said. He disappears
into the swarm of peddlers whose bright spheres
keep magically transforming in their hands.
I pull ten rupees from my bag, "For two."
At least the girls are quiet, satisfied
they know who-ate-what-where and when and who-
killed-so-and-so—
"Mom, look what I can do!"
She's turned the wire into a golden crown.
"I'll be the queen..." and she begins her tale.
*
As it recedes, the palace takes the pale
cast of the picture on the guidebook cover.
The plains are dry as ever, but the land's
dotted with cypress, neem, and tufts of green—
just like in Indian miniatures I've seen
where gods come down to chase a mortal lover.