Gritty Surface

Page 2 of an
encased notice board at
the local office of
Ministry of Environment, 
Forest and Climate Change,
with photographs
in colour
brought to scale
and key:
Naar (Creek)
Chichu (Sea)
Chichi (backwater)
Chhari Dhand (wetland)
Cheriya (mangrove)
Gupp (swamp)
Helad (quicksand)
Looking at the page and its 
internal image
reflected:
Variety aplenty, potability?

***

Quake

Allah Bund Fault 1819, 2006

Landscape on the right

Erosion lines
through capillary action
laterally wrote
of an uprising.

Sindhu

View on the left

Memories resurface, 
appear weary of movements and flows in topography. 
To be let awash by the throes of Nature and/or 
rise, remain and rewind. 
Surrounded by the teal, 
the ochre stood its ground.

***

Networking

Madiya pumping station
There are essential commodities
and there are water committees,
in to which was nominated,
barring caste.
by the time she learnt about
the surface and beneath,
geology unearthed:
strata changes 
every ten feet.

She strained
to memorise
Village Action Plan
for tap water access,
Each now had 10%
Ownership

and knew
Abundance not scarcity
was impervious.

***

Dying belly upward

Dredging up an equivalent
of daily bread for fisherfolk,
Mahi lumbered into 
temporary bamboo wrestle ring
with his catch.
Paid respects 
by dropping a rouge, not rogue fish.
background score of buzzing flies
cheering, clearing
lay mule down 
in a teeter totter,
straightened his back.
vigorously rubbed 
aminic palms
in a vessel of water;
gobbled and 
sorted.
Flipping until traces of life
Remain.
Bhoompla trophy for
a defeated school,
well earned.

ii.

Trophy wife
fanned musicians away
for a private luncheon.
He offered coconut every fortnight
at Bukhari Durgah
ensuring abundance
whilst adding netters;
what if marine bounty depleted.

iii.

new mother enjoyed perks
of infection and impurity
in a separate jute quarter,
Chagli Cow sifted water from algae
and curled water up 
mindlessly.

***

Salting the Earth

Act I | Scene 1

Tending to her gardens of salt
navigating canals like Kanji Malam
with her khampara,
a proletarian toy of sifting
white from brown
exegesis from excess,
a quarry of monotones.
Whitened in checkerboard pans
Agariya’s await a six-figure
compensation
for tastelessly
adding taste to Nation’s
bl[ai:]ndness.
What can be flavour, grace and beauty
can it not be a Rangoli?

Act I | Scene 2

Mud walls line her house.
cooks with muddy water

left for her by sand mafia.
Her meal of coarse rice and watery dal 
is made on wood fire.
Treks for miles on parched earth,
dehydrated by Sun,
she swallows her spittle.
{Water diviner ^ Sita}
Metallic demons 
replace muscle,
blankly
offers a bowl of chhaay.

***

Karmabhoomi-rhun

housing in,
sailing out,
returning to
where we belong:
an ambling town,
a distanced city,
a defined state,
a lateral nation,
a peripheral kharek
or a central jamun tree.

***

: A symbol from the Khojki script, the contested origin of Kachchhi dialect, pronounced as ‘see’. Here it is a linguistic abrogation of ‘she’ to unsettle the readers from the English fluency and dive into Kachchh, semantically.