From just below the tree line
We descend, past bald
Escarpments, free-wheeling
To the plains. Open padis,
terracotta – topped women
Slice ochre silhouettes into
The green.
Hot springs caged in a temple.
Square pool of warmth,
Gurgling jet.
His torso, sleek and sated
As he splays black hair
Beneath fountain.
Propped in the corners of the pool,
Men in boxers of cotton,
I, shy, in salwar kameez,
Swoops and seas of fabric.
No spare clothes, I explain,
No swimsuit.
Israelis arrive in bikinis.
Smooth and slightly abashed.
Gazes do not stray long
From gossip between men:
Holiest of human exchanges.
Envy dissolves shame and I slide into
Salwar, its billows, its delighted exhale.
Cotton suspended in water
Lighter than thought,
Freedom bound in fine weft.
I spin, feel fabric swirl out
To the rim of the pool
Plunge my head beneath water
Submerge my hair
Release its scent and sun-trapped heat.
I feel their eyes on nipples
Now shining through my kurti
And find that I do not mind.
Erupted from the pool,
Cotton clings to my legs
Swathes them in rippled sinew.
Heavy as monsoon, my
Body cool and cloistered
against the heat of the padis
Their impossible green
Home of tigers, swallows, boars.
They are fragment, they are hue,
Glimpsed and imagined
From the rush and breeze of his bike.
I will dry, one may assume,
Before we enter Masroor.
Eloise Stevens is a Brit washed up on the shores of Bombay. She enjoys writing and walking and the resounding dissonance that inspires her to live so far from her birthplace. These two poems are from ‘Excerpts from The Shatabdi Diaries’.