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.
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