There he is.
On Monday mornings he won't contemplate anything between 7:30 and 9:30.
It's rahu kalam.
The time when demons eclipse the sun.
His bath in the courtyard has begun,
the cross belt of pure cotton thread -
delineating his boundaries of knowledge above all else -
is left dry.
His scalp is shaven
save a long lock of hair at the base of his head,
a recycled Mohican lost between continents.
He rubs his diamond earrings until they are two
blazing suns.
Three stripes of Shiva's ashes
smeared symmetrically on forehead, biceps, and chest -
A sergeant major who oversees life's rites of passage.
He slurps his tiffin ar 10:00
and then
kickstarting his Harley Davidson
climbs aboard -
a Hells angel in tropical white cotton
whizzing and throbbing past cars, bullock carts, cyclists, vendors, trucks,
and policeman -
The privilege of caste making him transcend all these stages of
evolutionary births -
till he arrives at Computer Point.
The electricity has failed, but the generator is on.
It is a good time now
He chants a mantra, the screen clicks
a horoscope unfurls
latitudes, longitudes -
conversions from ancestral minuflections
to match a bridgroom in Oklahoma to a bride in Madurai.
Technology submits as his tool.
His civilisation gives him a place -
the ultimate Visa Authority
to navigate lives
thorugh ports of arrivals and departures.
copyright Vayu Naidu
(Note: Iyer - A brahamin from south India of the saivite - of Shiva - sect.)
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