Tropics

I

Once, in those mirrors of Indian sunlight,Talking mythologies, Arjuna in his fieldOn the distant edge of my experience.

A blue-hot, companionable windHeated the land. It does what tropics couldn’t.

I took what I was entitled to—Comic book abstractions of the epics,Its vivid illustrations. Reading was when we feltMost deeply, princes returning from a warTo children raised in the wild woods.

We took our destiny with common sense.A child was just a child and not some future thing.Love was closer to a pastime: cricket, tag, a swim.

And yet the slower pitch of what we knewBack then was too enraptured, barely true.

II

In ex-colonial hills, we rode the tired horsesAnd chased down Fords beaming to a halt.Lights like fireflies in sticky evergreens.

Ooty: between the commerce of the RajAnd slopes scented with tea and eucalyptus.

Roads sewn like perfect little seamsInto the green Nilgiri mountains.Azure trains cross ancient wooden bridges.The way to India is on the haunchesOf what the British built: rose gardens and bonsai,Diesel locomotives, St. Stephen’s church.

We looked for pebbles on the hills,Tiny silver sequins on the vast, unfettered growthThat held its leaves up to infinity.

And never were so proud. Mountains like charms.Blue smoke slept with us through sunrise.

III

Pretty swastikas embroidered into textiles.For your doorway, they said.(Not a charm for Jews.) And then she left.

In truth, they were right angles, arms bentBack to antiquity. Tantric force and good health.

The marks of our spirit-lives, say ancient scribes,Wealth if you want it.Above a door, auspicious entry—Symbols to live by: a cross, a hamsa amulet.The search for Jewish time was keenly felt.

Still, you remembered the math. The grid, the hardCalculations of philosophy at home among tiny prayersAngled to God in Jewish pews.

A synagogue with Indian smells, songs liltingInto ceremony and Hebrew blessings.

IV

Blue as a peacock’s chest, my bicycle had three speeds.Down the paved path from the canteenI pedaled up the hill toward the susurrating sea. The air was riven by unidentifiable bird calls.Green-feathered trees argued with bougainvillea.

On a rope tied to a life buoy and attached to a servantWithout one, I bobbed deliriously on icy wavesImagining unicorns or sprites, all tugging the tether—Magic beyond, dangerous mermaidsWith iridescent tails living second and third lives.

We held on tight against the possibilities—Berserk tears, breaking sun, summers not gold-glazed.Expressions of Japan beckoned with watery, salt-black syllables.

The West was purple-blue, the sun brimmed over—Our parents’ eyes were soulful; they watched us swim.

V

The country was rife with prayer.Slokas, chants, a muezzin’s call, an offering.Stacks of avatar-sating coconuts, the excitement of garlands.

We worshipped in sunlight or synagogues,Peeked in tiny altars, saw effigies of Ganesh get sea-swept.

Faith was what you celebrated, not ideas themselvesAs if belief were just a proof, an everyday calculationOf rightness and karma, good deeds that riseFrom acts. We put them on, our love in contracts,Our Pentateuch, Bible, Koran. Mahabharata with each god’s all.

Yet what we listened to was underneath drunk loveOf gods or god, above the ritual that gives it structure.It hummed between the spaces in our words and what was left.

I don’t know anything about god. I believe what is authorizedBy parents. Prayer is in our hands, it just shows up.

VI

We were sunlight in 24 karat, ears needle-punched.Blue afternoons in the pools of Breach Candy—Oceanside-designed, peopled with foreigners and half-whites.

Yet we loved it; the terrifying high diveFrom which we flung ourselves like temporary angels.

Women slid by in strange bikinis, men in lounge chairsListened to the sea. A fuller education than philosophiesSwarming in temples, shrines marigold-brightened.We untangle our desires among the Jain backbeat of total denial.Nirvana, to child-eyes, was the...