What if I have got my wars wrong? In the middle of last nights sleepless dark A thought came to me, sudden and uninvited What if all the wars I have been fighting have in vain I have been pitting blood against blood plasma against plasma, cell against cell What if there is a tenth of Jew in me, a fourteenth of Palestinian three fourths Dravidian, a few drops of Aryan, one glass of Chinese? Horror upon horror, what if in a century past, a Hindu man seized upon a tree worshipper, a Shia made off with an Ahmadi, a Santhal with a Gond? After all, I have the thalassemia gene that came with Alexanders armies The wavy hair of a great grandmother, a hundred things that I owe my past. I am comfortable in my own Indian skin, left to my own devices mostly The students have always understood why I wear Indian clothes Or that I am still me, no matter where I came from and how long ago But then one day when we talk about the situation of Afghan refugees someone, blurts out how India, my India, is a nation grabbing their jobs And how Indians drive cabs, clean the malls and stare at girls on Hindley Street I feel like I have been branded with an ember, one part of me wants to scrap Take that back you little so and so! while the other part freezes, calm and calculating We talk back and forth, a million things, none of which are about me call centres, Indian accents, curry-munchers, each a spark that threatens to eat me up. Then I see that she does not remember the first Kaminsky that came fresh out of Warsaw, the old man bent from the weight of the yellow star aged before his time by the collective apology by his kind for being hardworking, for keeping the Shabbat on Fridays, for having money in times of need, for killing the Christ, so long ago in Palestine. And I then think of the little girl who once smiled, not understanding the contempt of girls who chanted at her in the bathroom in fourth grade, Pointing at the colour of her striped dress: Blue, blue, you’re a Jew, but she never got it — she thought they were saying jewel. (Last three lines: something I read)
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 05:04:42 +0000
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