India, I have never even tried to write to you before. Thirty years exactly have passed since I ran my fingers through your hair, sweetly oiled, dreamed of your tangled history transforming itself into one brilliant braid of diversity.
My Burmese ayah sang to me of love between a rani and her rajah, taught me how to pull a long twist of her ebony hair into a tight bun, image of perfection without one single pin.
She walked out on her eleven brown-eyed children, her scandalous husband, and me to search for some hard pressed truth in a country that wouldn't yet look a woman in the eye.
When I go to you now, only at night, I wander past cow patties steaming like bowls of hot rice, past ancient crumbling temples, rivers of people, past the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, the Ganges, each richly spiced in pungent fields of memory.
Your daughters disrupt the air as they pass by me in compliant rows, dark eyes lined heavily in kohl, still climbing out of the rut of Mohammed's conversion. I can still feel the weight of their blind obedience, to Brahma, to Buddha, to centuries of rules.
In the cloying sweetness of gardenia's breath, of banana tree shade, there still stands the inimitable Saturday morning bazaar. Glimmering silk saris stacked upon tables like giant hibiscus simmer in the heat of the stalls, unearthed jewels just dying to be bought.
Row after glittering row of glass bangles, abundant silver and gold to adorn the body, I find the bejeweled wooden elephants still standing silent guard over the hope for salvation, for prosperity, and for peace.
And though I still dream of you in startling detail, I am never closer to an understanding of you than when I lean into the sun, eyes fixed on some distant planet and sing my ayah's love song to myself. |