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NITOO DAS // Padmamma Stories
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Padmamma Stories
(i) Padmamma rides a wheelbarrow horse and turns the day around with big circles. She gallops with leaves and sticks and dirt. She pushes her curls back with one hand, trains the metal reins with the other. With my noon eyes, I see her pant a story through the gaps in her teeth. They are as large as her arms. She was born in this sari the colour of wilting leaves. It will die with her. (ii) Padmamma sits in the jacaranda tree waiting for my stare. I shift her between the crosshair flowers and try to catch her eye. She looks away and hops onto another branch. Come to ma, Padmamma. Come to ma, I tell her. She veils herself with her dead-leaf sari, glances coyly through the cloud of mauve, and flies away. I watch the flap of her wings, see the cracks in her departing heels and feel cheated. (iii) Padmamma splits the leather of her face. She comes thundering a good morning near the dying pods. She rushes in with the sun. The seeds rise up to run when her bicycle rattles a tung-tang- tring-tring-tung. That bicycle sings beneath her love. A curve, a pedal, a kick of love. Earth-mother, wrestler Padmamma will soon return with her red soil shirt to pick up the truant seeds. (iv) Padmamma bathes the trinity of dogs. Gurumoorthy, Swaminathan, Tamilselvan snivel in shame. They are soaped and ready for tears. Padmamma, let us be. The cats and squirrels will see us unclothed, Padmamma. They will laugh at us like they laugh at you. In our dreams, we never bathe, Padmamma. We tear flesh with our teeth and smell like we know our hells. We want neither love nor water. Padmamma holds various careless hind legs and scrubs till the day draws to a close. (v) Padmamma computes the tricks of presence. She plucks a number from the kitchen, another from her bicycle. These add up to attendance and absence, she says. You were either here or there, she says. She blows a digit sternly through her teeth. When it rains, I will bring some totals for you. Conjure them into figures for you. You will know whether you live. (vi) Padmamma picks jasmines for her no-hair hair. We are told no one ever kissed her. Nobody walked with her through streets of Tabebuia. We are told she doesn’t bathe, she doesn’t change. She’s strange and has no hair. Why would she wear flowers in her hair? I pursue her without finish. See through her fake pants, her two saris piled with leaves. I see her picking jasmines. There’s a world now after the red soil ends. She carries her diamond bag and waits by the stone grinder for her betel-spewing friends. (vii) Padmamma whistles on the back of a red soil storm. She comes rustling, swirling, dancing from the plateau beyond. She rolls up her sleeves, tucks in her sari, plants her feet apart and wails a song. She stuns me with her voice. It’s as soft as newborn silk; it has the gratitude of pink. She spins the wind about with her arms, leaves the leaves on her waist, stuffs the dirt within her pleats and stifles everything. (viii) Padmamma sweeps away a Mohiniattam ghost. The ghost is shaped as geometry on the floor and brings fever to new recruits. Don’t go there, the workforce says. There’s a ghost who strikes poses in white and dissolves into pod forms on red tiles. A distant story-maker crafted these forms of flower, twig and bone. No, a spirit-dealer did it. Moulded them into mean things. Padmamma points a finger heavenwards, chants a severe note, says: Begone, ghost. I’m not afraid. And sweeps him away with her broom. |
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Nitoo Das is a birder, caricaturist and poet. She teaches English at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. Her first collection of poetry, Boki, was published in 2008.
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