alongside my body. There, in a corner of the living room, the essence of words like lavender is born. There is no reason why God isn’t lurking somewhere here. The implication is duality, at once both singing particle and dancing wave, guilty of violating laws of motion, the oddball iris sucked into a black hole of the world’s daily believe-it-or-not moments. Among things God is responsible for : in Bangalore, the municipality bans plantation of flower saplings—you’d think this is a joke. But some say it’s the right step; the meteoric rise in pollen allergies has led to people sneezing all day long. Others after some Whatsapp research point out, the casuarina trees lining the busy roads are the main culprits. Next to them on the street are anxious automobiles, blaring salaried horns, distinct hum of human hearts inside engine hearts inside the city’s sooty heart—a neat Russian doll arrangement. Inside a cab, morning coffee wears off in my bagpipe veins. I haven’t slept in two days; my watery eyes crave tears. In the day’s most clinical performance so far, a cloud on the overcast matte-rouged sky holds a door open for a strand of sunlight to hop through. In the back of the cab, my co-passengers pooling in the ride—a little girl tells her mother, her exams didn’t go well as some questions were out of syllabus. She says she wants to be a teacher someday, so she can set questions too. It’s hard not to smile. My jaw aches. Pedagogy polished. A shine impossible to preach. What does it take to scrub parable? Before I change my mind— I need some coffee.
Satya Dash is the recipient of the 2020 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Waxwing, Wildness, Redivider, Passages North, The Boiler, The Florida Review, Prelude, The Cortland Review and The Journal among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator too. He has been nominated previously for Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best New Poets. He grew up in Cuttack and now lives in Bangalore, India. He tweets at: @satya04.