Editor's Note
In this set of poems by Ravneet Bawa, the ordinary of everyday life —an algebra test, a pigeon on a ledge, a lost Airbnb key— becomes a gateway to discovery, connection, and insight. I loved the quiet humour of these poems as well as the emotional breadth they capture. Read these poems for the gentle lingering in a world past identity and easy categories, a world of connection with the human and the non-human, and the empathy for which so many of us turn to poetry.
— Aditi Rao
The Bombay Literary Magazine
Loose Women
. for Alice Nolastname
It is always like this. Like glass marbles, women leave home
change inertia into momentum. And go places. In distant corners they strike
another fleeing marble, a wee magnetic moment, they slow, then they go.
In the square of St. Giles, beside a pigeon pooped Adam Smith
on the fifth floor landing, outside my rented b&b – I stand
perturbed. With bags I hauled
full of things I won’t need. I hear her
climbing climbing climbing climbing climbing.
She was smoking outside when I came through the hallway.
“No elevator. Morning yoga”, she pants. I nod.
We meet at the top of the stairs.
An approaching autumn, light as light. I tell her I can’t find
the keys; I am waiting for the host to call. She settles
on the top stair. Removes her coat. I let go of the bags.
What begins as a search for keys
unravels all our locks.
Sixty four. Renting the flat across. From Mason, Ohio. To me – “And you?”
I tell her – “From London.
Not from there, but here in Edinburgh, I had come from London.”
She smiles at my immigrant identity issues.
She bloomed-married-mothered-aged in the one town.
My peripatetic parents took their Omni sixty thousand miles and drove
each other mad.
Home is both a moving target and a study
in pitching. Belonging is business.
She votes Trump. I vote independent. We both like walls.
She says they separate. I say they hold.
We meet at the top of the stairs.
“Forty years I have been married. He will be eighty-two next Easter.
At the care home, they made me sign right over where it said
CAREGIVER. I signed up to be Wife, to this man I had loved!”
Like liquorice root marriage loses water, then
umami, then mass. Familiar but fallow. Shrivelled but shaman.
“Y’know, two years ago I slipped on the kitchen floor
new heels and all … broke my wrist. It took him an hour and thirty
to get dressed. To drive me to the ER. When we returned he called
his sister. To her he said – You know me Darlene, I was out of the door
like an arrow!”. We laugh.
“Like an arrow Alzheimers took him.”
We cry.
We meet at the top of the stairs.
On the mezzanine landing the skylight lets in the setting
sun – rays aslant at our feet. Right here, the ruby
red carpet has faded
to a simmering scarlet. She says, “This
is how we know.” I look at her. She says, “This
this is how we know
it has had its share of light.” We bring out
the wine. We kick off our shoes.
We meet at the top of the stairs.
Algebra
It is impossible to imagine Maths teachers happy, or working with grinders
in kitchens. Someone who likes quadratic equations, could not
possibly knit mittens.
When Ms. Mala joined our dusty township school, her frayed saree pleats
flopping over cobbled chappals, the boys snickered, “She is a widow”. “Look
no bindi”, whispered girls.
Every day I stared at the deep lines on her forehead, so final like a papaya
mask left on too long. Even as she laughed often, I searched her face
for grief.
How can you be happy, Ms. Mala? All you have is a dead
husband and the area of a trapezoid. My mother works from before dawn
to after light and surrenders to marital duty. But at least she teaches English.
I was sorry for her 1 BHK loneliness
. - ground floor
. - without garden
. - without attic
Where must all her rage and gloom go
after the end term papers have been marked?
My name rises through her draughty throat. I walk to her desk.
In a big red circle I see ninety-nine and a half on the hundred. My eyes
sting. She says, “Never forget – there are two square roots of 4
+2 and -2.”
Sticky Feet
This morning I pulled the curtain aside to let in the smoky mandarin dawn.
The beginning is always daunting endless
without promise of a close.
Like the life of a squab that falls out of a drainpipe nest
. onto my window ledge.
Eyes still yolky, sticky feathers
The unhurried unravelling of life without warning just out of my reach.
Twenty and four floors above the manicured grassy lawns
Was it destined for rescue or release?
To rescue from, is it not also a fettering to?
Later I returned with a bowl of water.
There was no pigeon.
Only a slick path to the edge
Between certain death and near certain death
It chose freedom.
All said and done life is you on the edge and the gumption of the free fall.
The rest is only sticky feet and wet eyes.
Author | RAVNEET BAWA
Ravneet Bawa is a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics where she is studying consumer psychology. She has previously published poetry in The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Bombay Review, Asia Writes, DWL’s magazine Papercuts, Coldnoon, Literally Literary and Eksentrika. While she reads broadly, her favoured style is narrative poem and prose. She was shortlisted for the Poetry Society of India’s All India Poetry Competition 2016. She is the host of the conversational poetry podcast ‘Ellipsis’.