for us this, city.

This city we live in, it is a city for us. 

This anger insolence violence

and the khushhh of khhwaish, how does this all fit together? 

I walked with a girl down winding lanes of green silk and gold tinsel lit with yellow light bulbs once and a man stopped to lick his lips infront of her face, thrusting his groin up at her. And all I could summon up was tameez badtameez! intoxicated with the sound of the words. Then his brotherfromanothermother, the one eyed man with a clubfoot fanned us for two rupees as we sat down to drown in coarse singing erupting out of paan stained mouths. Then a white tourist behind me told me to shut up, I'm trying to listen here! His female companion had not covered her head. 

Today a dazzlingly beautiful girl with black black black hair and eyebrows, she and I counted down a hundred steps to a dried up sulphurous baoli. This was our arena. Twenty men surrounded us and banged their dholaks, celebrating the power they held over the incongruous white skin of my compatriots and the fragile vaginas in our nylon pants.  

Akbar killed his stepbrother because he had killed his stepfather. But they were not step anything at all, just all linked by anonymous breastmilk. The bodies of the poor are sold cold, easily bartered. 

Preeti wants to get her cords cut. I sit outside her house, unlacing my obscene Pumas while her children play with my hair, passing their lice onto me. Pappu tries on my cheap sunglasses, snot bubbling as he cackles with amusement. We sit sipping lal chai, my hair tingles as a rat runs past. 

My territory has been marked, I peed in the dark 

white bum flashed at the men behind me. She said it did not matter. 

While I was sitting on the jaali bench I saw a woman squatting infront of her house, coughing coughing, rasping, vomiting vomiting vomiting. Her name is also Preeti, she has no children. 

Vikas,

  6 years old, squint eyed with a bloodcurdling propensity for violence (he hits his mother on her breasts, she is strong and capable and looks me in the eye but she does not blink just a shark inatke of breath that we both ignore)

tells me she vomits everynight, I hear the glee in his voice, I look away. 

 He waves his mothers pink nailpolish at me, he has painted his large toenail and now he wants to paint mine. I point at my shoes. 

Preeti walks by me in the dark, carrying two plastic buckets they used to hold paint now they hold water I take one from her the woman behind me whoop with laughter, naukar rakh liya? I say phir tankha dena padega, atleast I am equally awkward in every language I try to live in

atleast Preeti lets me sit on her bed while she breastfeeds her nameless baby 

 

She asks me to ask my mother if the operation hurts  

The nights smell of raat ki raani, there is this choking haze, it makes our vision blurry.  

Akira has eaten her bed, now she wants to sleep on mine. I push her off. She pees in protest and curls up on the cold tiled floor.