The tone of my skin made me an alien
in the country I was born;
since my belonging there was unsure,
I packed my belongings
and sailed to where I was supposed to be,
as dictated by my parental norms.
But there, my accent put me in trouble
and in the native eyes
I stood in the line of strangers
as they were thrown to me with mistrust;
walking among the empty crowds
I reached a group of academics
with the hope that I would be taken in,
I was; but they spoke in long
and unintelligible sentences,
in order to secure their place forever.
Though not a believer,
I went to many places of worship,
since I badly wanted to belong,
but they all prayed in words not of their own,
the sense of which they did not bother about.
Then in the twilight hour,
when shadows died out in the meadows,
as the last place of refuge
in my longing for belonging
I reached back home
where I was I, and she was she,
dwelling in our two discrete cells.
I look for my own planet ever still.
***
Madras Courier originally ran as a broadsheet with a poetry section. It was a time when readers felt comfortable sharing glimpses of their lives through verse. If you have a poem you’d like to submit, do email us at [email protected].
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