Digital Delhi: Six Snapshots

1.

I give you truth, says the film-maker
At forty-four frames per second

The man on the pavement ignores him
It is not truth he is after — it is eternity

His delicate parrot steps across lines
Geometric patterns and numbers

In an abrupt flash, it finds the future
And hands it over to the film-maker

His face grows dark . . .


II.

On the next street, assiduous carpenters
Construct an elaborate cabinet of ebony

They work in the garden of a rich house
In the shade of a barren banana plant

A photograph of Rekha adorns the tree
The young men look up from time to time

At the fluttering actress and they know
It is not eternity they are after — it is love

The film-maker grins . . .


III.

When he goes back to Paris, he will buy
Brie and tangerines at the Arab store

He will bring a bottle up from the cellar
And after he has made a mess on the table

He will go down to the studio and call
Bernadette and as he hears her light voice

He will put his head down and cry
Because it is not love he wants — it is India

Her nakedness haunts him . . .

IV.

Most things happen in the open in India
Even if a professor chooses to tell you

About his project to calculate the weight
Of our galaxy, he does so walking through

Gardens where synthetic trouser-legs piss on
Kings, and the sky curves like a Lodi tomb

1044K is only the roughest estimate, he says
The dream of the perfect digit still lives on

In India, home of the zero . . .


V.

Nothing is hidden here — a woman bends
Over other people's clothing, exercising her

Breakable brown arms beside the solid bulk
Of a Maruti-Suzuki van whose golden sticker

Proclaims — Proud to be a Silicon Valley Indian!
Her antique steam-iron smooths every crease

As if her life depended on it — but it is not
The sheen of silk this woman craves — it is

A wide, wide, television set . . .


VI.

Just forty-fours hours in the threshold city 1
And the film-maker jettisons his camera

Because the truth flies in his face
Like that damned parrot! — Bernadette

Is no different from the woman armed
With a hot iron, and images collapse like

Galaxies in the urchin dust of Delhi's exposed
Alleyways — and it is not India that he has found

It is home . . .

1 The etymology of 'Delhi' is said to derive from the
Hindustani dehri or dehali meaning 'threshold'.