THEY SAY THEY ARE DANCING IN BANGALORE: LAKSHMI KRISHNAN Next Poem:....................................................................................................................................... Back to Poetry Index

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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