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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Khan Singh Kumar

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Jaskuswinder’s Changed His Bag:

I can see us now
Fixed to the screen. You
Secretly laugh at the pictures
While I blush at the words
And when Barbara Windsor’s bra comes off
You stare at the ceiling
Until I’ve turned over
Or put on a video
Of Bobby or Sholay or Pakeezah
Just after the days
When our triumvirate of cinemas
Along the King street and South road
Were Cinema Paradiso’d
Almost overnight.
“Teto homework ha ni gi?
Koi English ja Maths?”
With a foreign waving of the hands
You inspire me that I shouldn’t stop until
I’ve reached the top.
After all, that’s what we came here for.
To embarrass the past, I assume....

Now that I’m at your aspiration point
With all the mod cons you can boast about
To your friends in the Gurdwara
You call on me. You’ve been meaning
For some time to let me know, that
I left behind my suitcase;
You know, the one with green vowels
From which I was once fed
On days you felt nostalgia
Plague its sad assonance
Weeping on your tongue
That if my mother had survived
We would not be here.
Like some hawker singing ‘gharam chai’
With tea tins across a pole
On a sleepy train
To Delhi International
You place it at my feet
With Air India sticker and identity tag:
Give me a sample of those musical treats

But it does nothing for me;
Before you say another word
From your fusty brim
All I can do is zip it;
Point to the lap top, quietly
Where my son scans the web sites.

 

Page(s) 89-90

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