Untitled by Anuje Farhung. Image Courtesy the Artist
The balloon man’s balloons will burst in the heat,
The ice hawker’s cart will seep water,
Streetside fruit will rot in a matter of hours,
Flies will feast on slices of coconut,
Maggots will devour luscious mangoes,
Wreathes of jasmine will wilt by midday,
Papur will become soggy and lose its crispiness,
Spicy corn will start to split from the cob,
Bottles of perfumed oils will evaporate in the heat,
Today’s newspaper will become yesterday’s paper,
Samosas will become coal if fried for a second more,
Jalebis will hiss and contort and become unverifiable
Cars will hurtle forward even before
soapy liquid is applied onto their windscreens,
by a pair of bone-thin hands, the pregnant woman at the wheel
may lose interest in the whispered duas of a hijra,
Schoolchildren may settle for popsicles,
if the salted peanuts take too long to roast,
the woman applying henna may
botch the elegant paisley motif, while imprinting it
onto a child’s palm, the rangrez
may soak a duppata a second too long—
and make it — neela — instead of — ferozi,
on Lakshmi Chowk, the sharp
quiver of the minute hand,
is the difference
between reprieve and ruin,
So hurry, dye those duppatas, dot those elegant paisleys,
So place those fraying jasmine wreathes
round delicate wrists, so kiss your children—
and hold them close, remember the scent of their skin,
the lilt of their voice, commit to memory,
the colour of their eyes,
A bullet in a loaded gun may go off, the landlord’s temper may go off,
A bomb may go off, fruit may go off,
Jasmine may go off, the dye may go off,
So, quickly, kiss your children, hold them close,
and work, work yourself to dust—
and hurry.
~ Rakhshan Rizwan
Rakhshan Rizwan was born in Lahore, Pakistan and then moved to Germany where she studied Literature and New Media. She is currently a PhD candidate at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. As well as previously appearing in The Missing Slate, her poems have appeared in Papercuts, Cerebration, Muse India, Postcolonial Text and elsewhere.
