A Strange Partition and other poems by Ridhi Bhutani

A prolonged narrow border.
Positioned neatly
between two flattened, prostrated playfields of black hair, oiled.
A strange partition
Mother’s parted hair
Colorless sun-dried skin, skimmed thoroughly on the maternal chulha

The aesthetic spectare of impassive orange coals descending into nothingness,
The urgent comfort of passengers travelling in the northern winds of Punjab, granted.

Mother's parting has been prolonged, long.
Extending to the back of her neck
Negotiating her spine to bending
Negotiating.
Bending.

The dichotomy of unnoticed partings, bloodless partitions running deep inside my blood
Mother's partition, the no woman's land
I wonder if she remembers undirected directions.
I wonder if she remembers at all,

Her sepia-tinted pictures of Sadhna Cut

Her birthday, March 28, 1974
I was born 6 days before my mother
The days, they pass, but the years.
The years speak,
The years decay,
Mother is mostly silent, placid, old.

My hair speaks in blue dried waves, verses
My parting is a canvas, I paint it with this poem. But mother has made a life out of it, a portrait on the canvas.

The Permanency of the colour red (vermilion)
2021-1974= 47 | 1947
The dichotomy of unnoticed partings, a million partitions, partitions; bloodless, ceremonial & regular.

Nothing turns mouth-watering without boiling so never mind the flames.
Boiling is the prefix to pleasure.
Boil the cold tea until it loses the last drop of the exotic dew that fell on it.
Boil the tea until it loses its original colour.
Soft milky brown, wheatish next, dark brown opaque, aged at last.

Serve the tea, flaming hot and neat.
Don't spill the tea, never spill the tea.
Handsome strangers returning from stormy lands abhor the sight of
spilled tea, tea all over the place, tea too hot to drink, tea too cold to give warmth, tea too sweet to taste and tea not sweet enough.
Master the art of being a regular tea, everyone's cup of tea.
Strangers like regular tea, regular women.

All tea leaves once smitten with dew drops die boiling in the water of a land unknown to give pleasure to a man unknown.
The ingredients of your being too shall boil and boil, tumble and toil alone to give warmth to a stranger from a land unknown.
And just like that you too shall become what you serve and what is served to you
a regular tea, a regular woman.

A child brain cake goes into the baking
the making of a deserted desert.
Chimney gulps the smoke of cigarettes.
Baby milk exploding, falling and failing.
A sudden downfall left, unattended.
The kitchen rebels this custom.
20 years of heating a brain, makes a decorated cake.
But this cake smells like smoke, tastes like scorching milk—violated violence
Who baked the cake?
Leave a fresh, pulpy brain in a traditional oven too soon, for too long,
there will be a fire inside the oven.
In custom,
They call this fire a rebellion.
That's what happens when you bring home a bad quality brain, clean it.
Present the cake on the dining table, decorate it with neat normalcy, hide the burning, unattended aged burning—slow

Saga of underage cigarettes, sad bubble pills, unchecked for decades,
the crafty collective ignorance of calling burning an accident.

Make a man out of the cake, a wife out of the cake, a teen criminal?

Make something out of everything.

Spread it, spill it, make a meal out of it, two square cake meals,
the art of being digested.
Serve yourself and serve the purpose—serve

The custom spares none, the custom is called a piece of cake