By Neethu Prasanna
The toaster spat smoke, its serpent wire
plugged into a batter-licked socket.
Idlis, like run-over bodies, clung to the grills
as a mother watched them brown, puzzled.
Clouds had begun to ferment.
The day runs again,
brushing off the last grains of sand from his feet.
The kitchen’s clamor-its half-boiled instructions-
drifting away in the rain.
Curls have sleeked, knees have slit
but as his New York girlfriend undresses,
he still muses about the bras, "Are there idlis in these?"
When his uncle called, a pungent thing uncorked
after ages from his throat,
wafting from the radio’s crackle,
through the foliage slowly sliding up,
each detail a clear retrograde.
An old saree stood muffled in smoke,
as he reached,
the gossamer wisps of an era shrunk to a wieldy urn.
A variety of loaves-white, brown, oats-
scattered in the fridge, waiting.
He gave himself to
the surge; let the messages from spam
crash over the shore.
He didn’t pause until he was struck
by a profile photo with the status:
“Mum has repaired your toaster.”
After the waiter had asked many times,
he replied, “42.”
The waiter screamed in apology for missing the chutney
because they packed the idlis first,
but he had forgiven them long ago
due to a lip-sync delay in him saying,
“No chutney, please.”
In the room, he reached for a pillowcase,
stuffed all 42 idlis in it, zipped it up,
snuggled down, looking at the sparkling flats in the sky.
He closed his eyes for a while.
No, for a long while,
nestled in its arms, hands folded by his stomach, for a sleep.
Not even for a sleep,
but for the first time he sensed that tug
to spin along an infinite slope extending light years,
when zorbing from the brink of it was Earth-a huge orb-
and inside it, glued to it, was he,
its scintilla…