Saturday 5 August 2023

Two Poems by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca

 



Bombay Fish Market

 

Here the entire sea

Comes in with the fish

Wet, Wet, Wet,

Everything is wet

The stench, indescribable!

Bell-bottoms and flip flops

Not appropriate apparel

In a Bombay fish market.

Mother scolds me for making

Poor dress choices.

 

The fisherwomen loaded with gold ornaments

Jasmine flowers in their hair

Call out in raucous voices,

The fish wear sad expressions

Lying on stone slabs

In salt sea-water.

 

Mother bargains with her usual style

The fisherwoman says

“I’ll sell you the fish cheap

if you give your daughter’s hand in marriage to my son’’.

That was the last time

I went to the fish market with my mother.

Fish curry at home erases

The fish market experience.

Still the enjoyment of the curry

Comes tinged with a bit of guilt

Sadness for the fish

On the stone slabs, their eyes follow me.

 

Father takes me to the Aquarium

A once-in-a-while treat.

A better place to admire fish.

 

Still my preference is to go down to the sea with him

Where I dream of writing a poem

like John Masefield’s Sea Fever.

 

The fish are at home in the ocean

That travels the shores of my city.

I wish for everything Masefield desires

Unlike him, I am afraid of the sea.

 

 

Ancestral Shipwreck

(A poem about the legend of the origins of the Bene- Israel community of Indian Jews, to which I belong.)

 

I arrived on stormy seas

Flung against a rock by a shipwreck

I don’t remember who I was fleeing

Or why I boarded the ship.

The village gave me shelter

I remembered *The Shema and The Sabbath

I forgot my language

I adopted a new one

I don’t remember what I was wearing

(It was wave-drenched anyway)

I began wearing a saree

The men remembered their profession

They remained oil pressers

They didn’t work on Saturdays

The villagers called them ** Shanwartelis

We ate like the locals.

 

I thank the rock

For standing firm

Like the wise man

In the hymn we sang at school

The rock granted me life

It let me build my house.

 

I seemed more dead than alive

I stirred on the funeral pyre

The villagers built for my lifeless body

So they resuscitated me.

 

I thank the whale

For swallowing me whole,

Like Jonah

It spit me out on dry land

And my tribe increased.

 

We survived the shipwreck

Seven couples

We fulfilled the promise

God made to Abraham

We multiplied like the grains of sand

On the shore

 

Grandfather moved his family to the big city

Father fell in love with it

He wrote poems about it

I did too.

 

* The Shema - Jewish prayer: Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

** Shanwartelis- Saturday Oil pressers (Shanwar means Saturday in Marathi)

 



Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca - In a career spanning over four decades, Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca has taught English in Indian colleges, AP English in an International School nestled in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains in India, and French and Spanish in private schools in Canada. Her poems are featured in various journals and anthologies, including the Journal Of Indian Literature published by the Sahitya Akademi and the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English. Kavita has authored two collections of poetry, ‘Family Sunday and Other Poems’ and ‘Light of The Sabbath.’ Her poem ‘How To Light Up a Poem,’ was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2020. Kavita is the daughter of the late poet Nissim Ezekiel. Her name Kavita means poem in Sanskrit.  She was born and raised in Bombay, India, and currently lives in Calgary, Canada. Many of her poems celebrate the city of her birth and her Indian Jewish heritage.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Last Night - Short Story by Yuan Changming

  Last Night Short Story by Yuan Changming   Now, with your temporary elopement drawing to an end, every minute spent together was, for both...