Koottupurikam1

It would certainly seem so...
The vision before it spreads
To its own stretch
It’s a carefully raised
Black, magnified fence stakes

It’s untouched
Being above the eyes
By slightly tepid tears
Which lay on
A salty taste on tongue.

At a former time
I too have drawn
With a tip of a pencil
On the space
Between two crescent shaped marks.

“Howsoever you make yourself up
Your can’t be,
An Afsath, a Jameela or a Laila”
A boy in class four
Howled in derision.

Those trapped from birth in its fence
As they lay their head down
At the gloaming,
Wished if it gets at all
Withered down.

2
However much at logger heads
The eyes
Never chanced upon each other
The right iris
Never did even make a peek
At the left one

Though spaced parallel
The flight of eye – line
Disperse in contrary course.
For marking her a “sindhurapottu”2
I was given a good thrashing


How does P K Afsal’s initials
Become my own?
Even then
The two that remain
Kissing each other above the eyes
Inside the black masks
Spied on me desirously.


3
Desire does hardly ever raise
A huge wall called “Koottupurikam”
Damming the vision up
Holding back the breath
Or, even when someone’s initials
Become mere alphabets
And stand for another,
Reminding that heritage
Might even be probed.

Not even a hair of the eyebrow
Sprouted above the nose
Even after you took
Your eyes off knowledge.


4
She came yesterday
With her tresses and the eye-brows
All withered down;
Masks taken off;
In a dream –
To narrate the story of infants
Who perished on streets.

Those eyes have become wells
Into which of them had I got sunk?
It had made me cry aloud...
Silence now prevails.



1. Koottupurikam : The hair in the space between two eye-brows

2. Sindhurapottu : Decorative round vermilion mark work on the forehead.