The Parrot Fortune-Teller

On the streets of Delhi, in my childhood,
I came across parrot fortune-tellers.
Their miserable keepers did not count,
in drab poverty served, but hardly owned
the treasures toiling in their dingy midst.
You gave a meagre coin, though such knowledge
cannot be bought – so some eke a living.

With coaxing words the prophet would strut out
of its cage, bobbing green head and flicking
disdainful tail, pecking at alphabets
which spelt out the customer’s destiny.
Something impersonal in its eye, this
captive creature’s beak and claws contained clues
to catapult you. While you contemplate

marriage, children, jobs, examinations,
robberies and suicide, how dare it
dream of raw chillies and chick peas? It needs
to fly, you need to fly from silly games.
But that’s why you go to the parrot
fortune-teller, isn’t it? It revolves
and slowly waddles back through the trap-door.

[This poem won a Peterloo Poets Prize and was published in The Guardian newspaper and in I Was That Woman by Debjani Chatterjee (Hippopotamus Press, 1989)]


The Geisha

Gliding soft on tatami mats,
she was silent, invisible,
like a paper screen pulled across.
Yet the blank room had a precise
ikebana that bore her touch.
Her laugh was an apology,
hidden by a delicate fan;
her eyes were careful to avoid
stares at her butterfly beauty.
Ordered teatimes saw her preside
with a quiet formality.
Each morning she removed the beds
and effaced herself from the day.


Notes
tatami: straw matting used on Japanese floors.
ikebana: Japanese art of flower arrangement.

[This poem was published in Albino Gecko by Debjani Chatterjee (University of Salzburg Press, 1998)]


Dancing Ganapati

Dancing Ganapati, trunk in the air,
we loved you and fed you on milk and sweets,
smeared sandal paste on your marble brow,
decked your pachyderm neck with fresh marigold,
beat on our drums and danced while you stared
with ears fanned out, for we hailed you in joy.
We waved oil lamps and swayed as we sang:
‘Dancing Ganapati, trunk in the air,
bless us who worship with milk and sweets.’

We slipped away, ate and drank in your name.
Life was as always: flesh-stoned together,
you were our friend, we knew where you stood.
Dancing Ganapati, trunk in the air,
we drank your milk and savoured your sweets
till the day you chose to take our treats –
we wondered where all the milk had gone,
and stared in disbelief at our old playmate:
dancing Ganapati, trunk in the milk!

[Published in Animal Antics by Debjani Chatterjee (Pennine Pens, 2000)]