Rising at dawn, Suchitra

scales every passing hour,

panting for breath.

8:10

If she waits at the

Happy Wedding Palace

bus-stop, she can reach

her office on time.

One night,

when her husband asked for another

helping of vegetable on his plate,

she abused him, mouthing

a couple of swear-words.

8:10

Daily,

she wants to break

at least one of the two

hands that loom close

between eight and two

in the sprawl of numbers –

at three, four,

five, six

and seven –

to wring her neck.

translated from Tamil by N. Kalyan Raman

For Kandasamy and Latha,

this is their 68th parting.

The first two times

they had individually

considered

attempting suicide.

The next eight times

they said goodbye to each other

with lots of good wishes.

Once, as he was looking on,

Latha cut her palm with a blade.

Once Kandasamy smashed and broke

the TV set when a song they had used

as their private code came on.

Once Latha did not wipe

a treasured trace of their parting:

her glasses wet with tears.

Once Kandasamy burnt to ashes

the shirt to which she had glued

herself during their first kiss.

Latha (four times) and Kandasamy (once)

had also sobbed and wept during their long-distance liaison,

drenching and damaging their laptops.

Without meeting her at all, Kandasamy

only sent her emails – that was one half.

Latha failed to see him while

she was looking at him –

that was another half.

They had each parted from the other, suspecting

the other’s fidelity to their mutual love:

Latha thrice and Kandasamy thrice.

(These include the time

Anushka appeared in his dreams half-naked,

a scene that Latha witnessed

in its entirety).

Because Latha blurted out her suspicion

without keeping it in her heart,

Kandasamy got one chance to part.

Because he left her in that fashion,

Latha got one chance to start a fight.

Even when they were together,

Kandasamy had stayed away

from her seven times.

Latha was not so bad, after all.

Because another man had wooed her

once,

that woman of exemplary virtue left  twice on her own,

to punish Kandasamy.

They parted in their hearts too –

once because Latha wrote poetry

and eight times because Kandasamy

did not read her poems.

One day, to get rid of her nuisance once and for all,

Kandasamy stood before god and complained.

That very night, dancing possessed,

Latha won him back.

When their relationship went from gross

to subtle, he closed his Yahoo! account

(opened especially for her sake) seven times.

To compete, Latha deleted him from her list

and cut him off six times.

A few more partings elude

even their own memories.

“68 is a lucky number for partings” –

Kandasamy is trying hard to retain

these words of the astrologer, renowned for

picking lucky gemstones from planetary positions,

in his memory. This time, Latha does not look for

even a worm or an insect

to be her emissary.

 

 

69th, 77th and 88th

partings await them

patiently.

May death, slated

for their 90th parting,

be not in a hurry

to jump the queue.

translated from Tamil by N. Kalyan Raman

Though fleeting moments lie

hidden, always, within

eternity, let us not

know eternity as a collection

of moments when we

found the treasure,

heard of the accident or

first tasted the saliva of a kiss.

While blessing us with its one hand

of lifespan, with its other hand

life

drags us forward

roughly.

After losing us amid festive celebrations

of goodwill, it retrieves us later

as sick or unwanted persons,

as refugees in flight from

nations, classes and genders.

 

Innocent specks of time nod off to sleep every now and then; and

whenever that happens, just as Gilgamesh who sought

the boon of immortality lost it

in uncontrollable sleep, we lose all.

Eternity, though, never blinks.

It reckons our every step

as pieces of bread offered daily

at the feet of sleeping Gilgamesh.

 

With some sharp and deadly point

of cruelty, charity, betrayal or love,

this tiny speck of time tries

to draw us inside ourselves.

With eternity, though,

we lost the battle

right when we were born.

translated from Tamil by N. Kalyan Raman