Digital Delhi: Six Snapshots
1.
I give you truth, says the film-maker
At forty-four frames per second
The man on the pavement ignores him
It is not truth he is after -- it is eternity
His delicate parrot steps across lines
Geometric patterns and numbers
In an abrupt flash, it finds the future
And hands it over to the film-maker
His face grows dark . . .
II.
On the next street, assiduous carpenters
Construct an elaborate cabinet of ebony
They work in the garden of a rich house
In the shade of a barren banana plant
A photograph of Rekha adorns the tree
The young men look up from time to time
At the fluttering actress and they know
It is not eternity they are after -- it is love
The film-maker grins . . .
III.
When he goes back to Paris, he will buy
Brie and tangerines at the Arab store
He will bring a bottle up from the cellar
And after he has made a mess on the table
He will go down to the studio and call
Bernadette and as he hears her light voice
He will put his head down and cry
Because it is not love he wants -- it is India
Her nakedness haunts him . . .
IV.
Most things happen in the open in India
Even if a professor chooses to tell you
About his project to calculate the weight
Of our galaxy, he does so walking through
Gardens where synthetic trouser-legs piss on
Kings, and the sky curves like a Lodi tomb
1044K is only the roughest estimate, he says
The dream of the perfect digit still lives on
In India, home of the zero . . .
V.
Nothing is hidden here -- a woman bends
Over other people's clothing, exercising her
Breakable brown arms beside the solid bulk
Of a Maruti-Suzuki van whose golden sticker
Proclaims -- Proud to be a Silicon Valley Indian!
Her antique steam-iron smooths every crease
As if her life depended on it -- but it is not
The sheen of silk this woman craves -- it is
A wide, wide, television set . . .
VI.
Just forty-fours hours in the threshold city(1)
And the film-maker jettisons his camera
Because the truth flies in his face
Like that damned parrot! -- Bernadette
Is no different from the woman armed
With a hot iron, and images collapse like
Galaxies in the urchin dust of Delhi's exposed
Alleyways -- and it is not India that he has found
It is home . . .
----------------------------------
(1) The etymology of 'Delhi' is said to derive from the
Hindustani dehri or dehali meaning 'threshold'.
- by Rukmini Bhaya Nair, at http://www.poems.com/digitnai.htm
--
http://insmallpieces.blogspot.com
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