Once I Was A Prince
Once i was a prince in your highbeamed palm-thatched house
timber and stone
of hardened mud and cold green shiny cement
in your village ribbed with drying splintering palmleaf fences
buttressed by ferns
palmyra jackfruit mango trees standing solitary sentinel in compound
corners
then just for a month
i was a prince in your eyes
i hazarded the Bay of Bengal on a lolling steamer
and watched in unbelief naked children dive for coins in the Nagapattinam offshore anchorage
just to be with you
still a teeny dreamy youth
and there you were
afraid that your village ways might irk me
make me want to go back before time
the day i arrived a double murder in the island
a day or two earlier another
vendetta vengeance wreaked in blood for slights of caste contraventions
other threats other life-taking threats for mere unintended insults
innuendoes injuries
to the state of one's birth
to the validity of one's finance one's moral upstandingness one's looks one's genealogy
a longdrawnout court case for the plucking of a ripe mango from an overhanging branch in the neighbour's compound
sitting squat on your two firm broiled scarred feet
your coarse borderless demure saree stretched to its apparent tatters
your stalwart all-bearing sturdiness masked in that humble crouching
posture
your rough-rolled cheroot smouldering on the edge of the kitchen-patio
cemented mudfloor
and rolling off the corner of the wallbacked seat from where you listened to the swish swish of my coming down the fine sand-filled path rising swiftly furtively only to prepare the ceremonial washing of my feet hands face with the natural coolness from your own ancestral well the chembu as you reverently tilted it giving off just that much of thrashing water into my upturned cupped hands
your meloncholy dreamy gaze riveted on my face my hands my hair my feet recalling perhaps the husband you moaned and whom I had never seen not even in a word-picture
your eyes those bee's full trusting warm honey-coloured ensconced within sharply falling epicanthic folds watching without imposing but who knows how nostalgically
your fear of touching me with those toil-knotted fingers lest I recoil worn yet tender frail still strong from serving two husbands over half a century lest I inadvertently even make a gesture that might make you feel unlike someone of your highborn bridal glory
Once i was a prince in your eyes
my every wish granted
even before I could wish it
eevaa peerankal muuvaa maruntu
the hot kuul boiling complaining in the chemman earthenpot
your apparent fear that the nextdoor neighbour woman might begin her daily chant of your ancestors' drawbacks failings mishaps for fear that my still sheltered ears might tire of your village ways tire of the lack of other comforts running water showers toilets for fear that your native untutored tongue might sound too outlandish to my ears
your pain perpetually shrivelled between your brows notching your fine
flanking nose
Once you touched me
for I had not risen at the appointed hour for my ritual bath
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poem by T. Wignesan
Added by Poetry Lover
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