From her veena’s strings, she plucks
the pensive notes of a sad but hopeful key:
Raagam Hamsaanandi.
Listening to the mood of her music shivering in the room,
I pray that Shobana’s husband will be a good, kind man.
And that he’ll share her love of music.
SILENCE
SOUNDS
Roshan prances from the classroom, the last child to leave.
As I follow him out, I hear
Govinda say,
“How are you, Veda? How is everything?”
He looks more beautiful
and sounds more caring than ever.
I feel like I’ve stepped into a strong current of water,
pulling me toward him.
I wonder if Govinda was teased about dance, too.
He probably had to learn to stand up to other boys,
just as Roshan must.
Govinda must have a strength
I never recognized.
I want to voice my thoughts but they stay trapped in my mind.
Chained feet that can’t escape.
We fall into that unhappy place
where words are snatched away
and silence feels loud.
“See you later?”
Govinda leaves me
wishing I’d said, “Let’s meet.
Soon.”
FROM DANCER
to
DANCE
Radhika and Chandra come with me
to the evening of “transcendental dance”
for which Dhanam akka’s given us tickets
in the very front row.
On an open-air stage,
I see a dancer—a very old woman.
She wears long, loose, saffron-colored robes. No jewelry.
White locks wave wildly all about her face.
Her eyes look
at us
at me
at something beyond.
I see nothing but the darkness of the evening.
She sings, “What Your name is, I do not know or care.
Because I feel You everywhere I dance.”
Her notes rise into the air.
She follows her voice with her body,
turning slowly, her arms outstretched like beams of light
reaching upward from the earth.
Her palms carve a staircase into the sky.
I watch her skirts swirling around her ankles,
her hair flying around her face,
whirling faster than the rest of her.
She is the edge of a spinning circle.
She is the stillness at its center.
She is light as a petal rising in a spiraling breeze.
She is a petal dissolving into flower-dust.