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GADAPA (THRESHOLD)   Pedavva cried her last words, ‘Gadapa duram, khaadee deggera’   Gadapa is the site of our experience – always nearing almost touching like a wish It is where you will find our land, which we neither own, nor belong in   Women slapped against walls nailed with frames of ancestors and blessing gods, sit at the gadapa talking with the neighbouring women Hanumavva with more than tobacco-packet in her bosom waits at the gate for more than a bus to the next village Nagaraju traded his body for some touch at the bank where the stillborn are let in the river that Mogulappa cried   The women who raised me accuse me of appropriating and violating their carework of loving I love like it’s the only skill needed to survive in this country   I can’t love like your men Body full of violence, fascist to the teeth, logically invalid by bones A blind bull tricked, shot and sold in the crowded Monday bazaar   Pedavva cried like the waves of the flood that transgressed our thresholds with all its laborious force on 26th July, 2005 She entered life like the waves to collapse a home built to bury her body   Like gutter flood she broke in through the roof, occupied from the cracks, claimed from the toilet drain just to belong   Now squatting across the line, skilfully sifting the city sludge in sieves, we strained no gold Only a wasteful amount of soil, soggy cooked rice and plastic   Just like our dreams of breaking the world and the Mithi River streaming with flamingos     BORN AND RAISED IN BAMBAI 17 for Nishant   At the mouth of the world I ache for nothing but the feeling of being swallowed In the slow, changing colours of the twilight I saw God from the local train passing over the bridge They were tailoring curtains No third eye or big hands Just crow wings & burnt skin spread across the sky I prayed to them for their seeping light in my veins and my pericardium They sang to the drumbeats Come find me at jaatara where pioneers meet their death where you last confided in Begum’s eyes where all your brothers descend where the hearts turn as soft as entrails under the knife Through