Cerebration

THEY SAY THEY ARE DANCING IN BANGALORE: LAKSHMI KRISHNAN

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Some parts fused, others hollow


It repeats


/Sini ne sini ne yora/


/ /


The song stumbles,


They cut it up


The yo a hip-hop echo


Yo ve a deceiving piece of linguistic ambiguity


/ /


/Sini ne sini ne yo ve no/


/ /


In its presence,


something illicit


a rhythm, a thud


this nation is not supposed to feel


It sings of bodies,


and while contorted,


they surge to expand their language


an inclusive polyglot canto


International words to this, most ancient of beats


They say they are dancing in Bangalore.


with too much to waste


Incendiary sparks that should have fizzled before twenty,


hot and alit.


Rage that worksteamgrime would have steadily eroded


provoked, unsatiated, incomplete.


In Bombay, the black marble and mothballs


of Hotel Bawa International lobby,


an impromptu discotheque


Five boys and eight girls


insolently ripe.


Begrudge them their prosperity,


that their faces are still white and soft,


their bodies still nubile


Hopelessness does not stalk the corners of their irises.


What eyes lurk behind theirs?


If not the specter of duty,


some global karma.


Demanding politicization.


Lakshmi Krishnan was born in Bombay, and grew up in the UK and United States. She earned a BA in English and German from Wake Forest University, and is currently pursuing a Master's in Romantic and Victorian Literature at University of Oxford, as the 2006 Rhodes Scholar.





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