There are somethings I am nostalgic about,
and other things that I am not! They say,
the immensity and intensity of India can never
be forgotten, even if foregone. There is something
indefinitive about being Indian, that cuts you out as
Brown, right from toe to crown! Remember, those old
school notebook covers? How brown they were?
I search the stars of the night-skies and wonder how
they may seem in the pollution-cloud nights of Mumbai?
Do I remember the lucid skies of the late sixties and
early seventies, when it all seemed like an expansive
Kaleidoscope; never opaque. And even when it rained,
it never deluged! Would I desire to go back to Mumbai now?
No, I wouldn’t! Even if Australia isn’t exactly home!
I know how Mumbai is like a burgeoning seaside!
But I don’t feel any affinity to its dwindling fisherfolk!
Dad, I know how our little Varca is so enraptured by sea!
But why do I feel a kind of repulsion to the sea, like misogyny!
Perhaps, I am certain it is not my womb, unlike men do?
Mother, would you think I am to blame for such distaste?
I feel I am more like a caricature of soil; eternal as flamed wings
and ether-soul! I believe, Mum, Dad and me are more than the
rudiments of fire and earth; as much ether from the original source.
The reminder and remainder of its effusion! Dad, am I not the
blood of your own Dad? What is nostalgia, then?
Is it a deeper sickness than homesickness?!
For all my predilections or reservations, would I
want to visit that land, that has not any more
my Mum, Dad or True Love? And, in fact, has
very scant mirror-sticker reminders of them?!
montes-musings.blog 