THEN, my fingers were very pudgy
little pellets, succulent and red
And a lot softer like them tomatoes
Mom brought home holding like a prayer,
One fell off, a dissonant syllable,
“Take it” she said putting away, the
rest for “my baby’s curry for later”,
pudgy pellets folded over the taut
rotundity’s gleaming skin, like
my mother’s nose tip, where in the
evening a sun would emerge as we sat
on the veranda, as the one in the trees
went down leaving smoke and gold

That was long before dad went walking towards
the attic-looking cop car with tarpaulin top, as
his ‘I do no harm to nobody’ lost to a ‘shut up’,
the car took him to a place, where he would stay
for months, never seeing ours, and then her
nose tip got dark like a rotten tomato. That was
long afterwards when one petulant yell raided
all corners of our nation; then silence fell, and
one knife came dwelling deep into him; his
flesh was an upended can of tomato ketchup.
Then, lots of tomatoes exploded in our streets.


Sitting by the oil lamp, painting on the wall
hideous ogres that worst nightmare couldn’t, I sank
pudgy pellets into the tomato’s bulbous softness
Yes, just for fun, just for fun; mom called
from across the kitchen, “eat it, don’t play with it’
her voice again,“ don’t spill its belly on the bed”
I dug and dug, the skin wouldn’t come off first,
then all poured out bleeding, like stabbed, like
my father’s friend did after being stabbed,
whose belly my dad said burst like a tomato,
dad wouldn’t want them any more in his curry, then
I thought I wouldn’t want them either, until my
wife, whose dad had seen many bursting tomatoes
and one nearly blinding him, cut them open,
for our first cooking together; her okras held
One, like a long unrelieved sigh—and we sighed.
:Vk Sreelesh