My Birth to Death is a four-week training programme — Poems by Sanchari Dasgupta

When the doctors cut open my mother's womb -
human resources hired me; for a promising resume.

In the first week, they trained me in
the language of the government - feeding me Pepsi,
and Starbucks when I was hungry.

In the second week I learned how to attend seminars -
how to steal VIP cards from the trash, and
raise questions about rising GDP and wealth.

In the third week, they conducted a viva,
passing meant a permanent job, I really wanted to pass.
They asked me about the trials of being a man and
I said it was the dilemma of not wanting to be one -
and they thanked me for my service.

I think my training period was over after the fourth week,
when they handed me a certificate of participation,
and shook my hand,

and an apology -
signed sincerely with a blue stamp.

On some days, I sit with the expired medicines of my grandmother
that I had fished out of the bin years ago and wonder about how
her bronchitis was the only physical affection she had left for me.

On some black-and-white days, I get reminded of my hair, my
poor liver functions, and the morning my father coloured his hair
for the first time at thirty.

On the days I miss my grandfather, I brush my teeth freakishly
after every meal, the leftover crumbs that stuck to his corroded tooth
never really left him, nor me.

On those days when I read letters and numbers through a glass plate,
regretting the long hours of television as a child, my mother
calls up my aunt and jokes about the curse of genetics, as if I take on my aunt more than my mother, as if,
I am a compiled DVD of their heritage gone wrong.

On every family occasion, I thread out a map of possibilities, by
reviewing each member as a potential suspect of my fallacies only
to realise by their conversations and equated banters, by their
back pains, sore knees and migraines, that
I am an unhealthy amalgamation of my ancestors.

I have mastered the art of shared loneliness, the
silence after a smile. Back home, I used to search for
dents in my bed, dents in my teeth, dents under my eyes.
When she told me to smile, I grew conscious of
not showing my smile or crinkling my eyes too much.
But she had laughed with her charcoal teeth and
held my dented hand with hers. I still do not know why
the dark undertones of her skin decided to spread around,
I forgot the exact time I held hands with my shadow.