Poetry – An American in Kerala

A Red Umbrella in the Sun

I got a manicure in a nice salon for my birthday. I’d promised myself I’d quit a 41-year-old habit. Then I glanced out the window.

Red Umbrella

The technician submerges
my hands in the lavender
water to soften my chewed-on skin.
My fingers flex, the water stings the wounds.
Each sore a metronome of the hum inside.
Too ashamed to relax, I do everything
but close my eyes.
Count towels.
Searching for pores, maybe a frizzy tendril
on the model’s giant face beside me.
I crane my neck to look out the window,
and I see a red umbrella, swaying like a
heartbeat in the brutal sun.
The umbrella tips, and I see him, his sign,
a small board cupped in his left hand:
MEALS.
The sunlight shifts, and
my own reflection hovers in the glass.
The technician massages chamomile lotion
into my skin.
“For relaxation.”
“Is the AC temperature okay, ma’am?”
I stare at the man and his red umbrella
until he walks out of sight.
I ask for red polish
on my fingertips.
I ask the technician if she gets to visit
her family, so far away.
I murmur another apology about my fingers.
The red polish, cured under light.

The Woman in White: A Sight During a Morning Walk

A brief poem from today’s walk.

A Woman in White
floats through the decayed
leaves and branches,
catching the eye of a weary wanderer.

Drawn to her glasslike tendrils,
her ghostly fingers wrapping around
the fallen tree,
the traveler leans down:
almost touching finger to filament.

But a whisper reaches the ear:
nothing truly dies in the forest;
it merely changes shape.

The light searches for her,
and for a moment, rot
looks holy.

Dragonflies: A Reflection on Nature and Survival

Dragonflies

A dragonfly shimmering in the morning light,
bright hues of red across its body,
paused in front of me on the footpath.
And then another stopped by.
They didn’t stay long,
enough to appreciate their precision
and to notice several dragonflies
soaring overhead and around me.

Dragonflies rest in tall grass.
And when there isn’t any,
they cannot rest and frantically fly overhead
in droves, searching for a place to land
their worn bodies.
I learned this the last time the grass was cut short
and there were hordes of dragonflies in the air.
Here I thought I was witnessing
a miracle of nature.
But it was only that their beds were destroyed.

I don’t want to compare insects to humans
who have lost their homes
to war or savagery from their fellow man.
But when entire cities are flattened,
razed like the tall grass,
I can see why people behave like these dragonflies.
Circling, swirling, racing
to find a new place to rest.
Except the shimmers are their tears,
and the bright red hues are
streaks of
blood.

A Touch of Humanity: The Man and His Dogs

On my way home one day, I saw a man stop his cycle to feed some street dogs. The scene felt simple, but not quite.

A Few Coins

A man stopped on his cycle
along a road not yet
flooded with traffic.
Thin, well-worn legs.
Hands all hard labour:
callouses, thick veins, and scars.
Yet he cradled a plastic bag,
looped around the handlebar.

His guests bounded,
all tails and tongues.
A welcome only they could give.
With a rare tender palm,
he patted each head.
No rush to the next.
From the bag came
folded banana leaves,
patiently unwrapped.
Tails thrashing so wildly,
I thought they might lift off
toward the mountains.

Then a lantern lit from within.
His fingertips shone like
torches through dark trees.
His eyes burned with
a glow that made the world shimmer.
A glow I wanted to hold.
Here was a parted veil,
allowing me a glimpse
of what it means to be human.
But then I blinked,
and he was just a man again,
gently portioning a meal
for his loyal friends.
It wasn’t much
but it was all.

Image from Pexels.

Lessons from a Scorpion Encounter

Sometimes life’s smallest moments can carry the biggest lessons. On a routine evening walk a few years ago, a simple run-in with a scorpion taught me about restraint, mercy, and the power of choosing kindness over retaliation.

This poem reflects on that moment, and the ripple effect that can follow when we hold back our sharpest stings.

Dear Scorpion

Evening is the best time to walk,
the sun retires from scorching;
my shirt feels a little less sticky.
My dog scuffs along, sniffing,
his own form of social media.
I scuff along in my well-worn chappals,
not the wisest choice,
scrolling through my phone.

The evening in question
melted over the sky, hardening
into oranges, purples, and blues.
Scuff, scuff.
Sniff sniff, scroll.
When something cold and hard rolled over
the soft, sensitive flesh of my foot.

My brain tried to place the feeling:
A beetle? A plastic toy? A bottle?
I looked down.
My heart melted,
warm liquid,
draining to my toes.

A scorpion
stood with its stinger raised.
Ready to
duel if it met my foot again,
in the dead leaves covering our path.
Do I run or stand my ground?
Both felt wrong.

So we stood for hours,
seconds, really.
The harder I stared,
the more it looked offended
than armed.

I chose
to back away, my eyes on
the insulted creature,
shrinking as I retreated
until it vanished.

It had every right to
strike me with its poison.
I felt that path
was my own.

But it chose not to sting me.
The opportunity was easy.
Maybe it was luck,
or maybe it sensed my fear like its own.
Or maybe it wasn’t in the mood.

Dear scorpion,
I learned something
on that evening walk.
I can choose
not to sting another.
Swallow the bitterness that would
rush through blue capillaries, red arteries,
straight to another’s heart.

I can fade into the twilight,
but still stand guard.
Maybe their venom will return
to where it began,
softening the next hardened heart,
one restrained sting at a time.

Dear scorpion,
if mercy flows this way,
through veins and capillaries,
into oranges, purples, and blues,
maybe this world
needn’t sting so deep.

A Note:
I hope this poem encourages you to pause and choose mercy in your own daily encounters, softening hardened hearts one restrained sting at a time.

Between Two Worlds: A Switch

Somewhere between arrival and departure, I’ve learned to speak in two voices and carry two selves. This is about what happens when neither feels entirely mine.

A Switch | സ്വിച്ച്

This plane window is a signaller.
Ready to help me
choose myself
before we fall to the earth.
I am sinking and floating at once, but
I look out the window anyway
to see
which personality to wear after landing.

Grey bypasses, skyscrapers, concrete
squares:
all holding their breath.
The switch flips to
America.

A quilt of coconut palms,
low white buildings,
the switch flips to
India.
My head wobbles before the plane
touches down.

Later, I learned there’s a word for this.
I protested: I don’t do this.
Not me.
And the man I spoke to replied,
“Oh, but I think you do.”

In India,
I’m more reserved,
yet I speak more.
Slowly. Enunciating.
I use words like:
lift – boot – lorry – brinjal – petrol.
I say Ruh-vi, not Raaah-vi.
I roll my Rs and
move na – nja – nna
through my tongue and lips.
I clench my fists in frustration
when the word is right there,
drifting, italicized, in my mind,
tucked under my tongue
when I try to speak.

And then in America,
when I’m with people
who knew me once,
but not quite.
When nostalgia rolls in
as thick as the fleece blanket
that keeps me warm in
stark Pennsylvania winds,
I’m more open,
but speak less.
I speak quickly, slurring my words:
“Didja eat yet?”
I smile hellos and how are yous to
perfect strangers, but
never pushing beneath:
“Friend, how is your heart?” or
“Is your father doing okay?”

“You kinda have an accent now,”
so I flatten my As again.
My voice shifts north
into my nose
and the words roll out:
elevator – trunk – truck – eggplant – gas.

I don’t have to worry
about chechis and chettans.
Americans like first names,
giving us a pretend closeness,
like a handshake without eye contact.

Here’s the thing:
neither one feels quite right.
In India,
I wear a mask.
I smile when I don’t want to;
swallow questions and
bite back criticisms
because my face marks me a visitor
even though I’ve rooted my hands
deep in the soil.
In America,
I wear a wool sweater
two sizes too small.
I tug at the sleeves,
sweating, itchy, chafed
but never take it off.

So, who am I?
Am I the words spoken to others,
what they see:
a woman in love,
a fool,
a brave soul?
Or am I
something deeper?
Or am I none of these?

Am I just a middle-aged woman
afraid she will always be brushing the edges,
never quite let inside?
Am I just afraid
that someday I’ll be a stranger
in a strange land
where I borrowed books
from the library
and licked ice cream
as I walked to the park?

Now, the only home
is my daughter’s voice
when she tells me
the song she and her friends made up;
when my husband and I walk
into the hovering emerald canopies.

If my skin were peeled away
and my chest cracked open:
The hush of the monsoon rain
washing through the ghats,
the whisper of the snow
covering the evergreens—

Would you recognize
the language of my pulse,

the accent
of my blood,

forever stuttering
switching tracks
until I break the lever.

Even So, I Don’t Deserve My Mattress

I don’t deserve the soft
mattress I sprawl across each morning.
Letting my 40-year joints stitch themselves back together.
But most nights,
it’s what I’ve said wrong that keeps me awake.

In fact, I would say
none of us who have
soft mattresses deserve them.
We didn’t earn them.
Just luck.

We are born lucky.
A devoted family, a country not
torn to shreds by war.
Food in the kitchen;
no bloated bellies except when
we eat too much junk.
So why does sorrow still
creep in?

I find the wrong in small, small things,
and they sour like curd left to set too
long in the heat.
They blister my nerves.
I become a pulsing mass,
pushing past the ammoomma
parked sideways in the cereal aisle.
Why didn’t I give her any grace?

Why am I so weary all the time?
I doomscroll on my phone;
cracked tempered glass like
everything else I don’t take care of.
Doomscroll, what a word.
Cakes. Vacations. Drunk weddings.
A mother holding her child.

But the child wears black plastic
for a diaper.
I wonder why I am so weary, weary.
The child is all bones and angles, and the face—
that same look the Somali children had in the ads
on TV when I was small.

And there is nothing more in that moment
that I want than to trade places
or scream or sledgehammer a car or
anything, but not nothing. I want to hold this mother.

Her child will soon die.

And who will comfort her in
Gaza, where
soft mattresses and full bellies write,
“But October 7th, what about that?”
“She doesn’t look as starved as her kid?”
“Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

Even so,
mercy is a funny thing.
We want it for ourselves but not others.
I wish my chest didn’t feel like it can no longer
cage my heart.
Growing, stretching, pulling until it bursts,
and I vanish into the rains that
flow down the mountains.

But then I blink:
back in my living room.
My daughter dances,
her belly full.
Her wobbly arabesque cuts
through the thickness in my throat.
I don’t deserve this.
Even so.
I tell her it’s time for bed.

A Note

I’ve been having a love/hate relationship with social media. Mostly hate.

Yet I still find myself checking each app; the colonization of algorithms digging deeper in my brain.

Yesterday, I saw the photo that I believe will be looked at 50 years from now, and people will ask, “Why didn’t anyone do anything?”

And while there are many out there on the front lines doing the right things and the hard things, just as many, if not more, of us are just too comfortable.

Myself included.

Unfortunately, I made the universal mistake of checking the comments on the photo.

The absolute least I can do as a human being right now is not leave comments whatabouting a woman whose child is near death. Or questioning her appearance. Or praying for the end of the world.

When I saw the photo, I immediately thought of La Pietà.

A lamentation of an innocent.
A mother mourning alone.

I don’t have any answers or advice other than to say this:

There is no justification for starving and bombing children.

For Further Reading

The Guardian
CNN
Unicef
International Rescue Committee
World Food Programme