Class beneath the Clouds
A poem written by one of his students an excerpt is given below:
“This way, everybody! Follow me.
And just carry a pencil and notebook along”
Spoke the tall gentleman with a partly visible smile
Beneath a frowning zodiac mustache.
Leading them to the open playground beneath the cottony sky;
In a group, and not in a long winding line.
He left the kids wondering if that period was for PT or Geography.
“Look up, now. Take out the pencil
And sketch what you see up there in your book”
Echoed his voice. Someone sketched a toupee. Another, sheets of linen.
While one drew a wincing whale, the other a drowsy dragon;
While the curious started that very instant.
The sceptics and the conformists followed suit
Watching others, they herded, after a few squandered minutes.
“Now, one by one show me your sketches.
Let’s unmask those creations and creatures”
He said. Thus, began the lesson on different forms of clouds.
From cirrus, cumulus and stratus; and their combinations
Like cirrostratus, stratocumulus and nimbus, they were totally ten.
The class was now on cloud number nine, to be precise, cumulonimbus
As they all knew every cloud by their name.
“We’ll meet again tomorrow, same time; At the park near the Chapel.
----Anonymous
Abba, Father, Magi
Abba
Father
I knew one who was father God on earth
Every line on his blackened, wrinkled dry hands
A measure of his life
Hands that lifted rich, great swabs of paint
And stunned the canvas of life with
Such dramatic, brilliant strokes
Everyone a kind of magic
A celestial scurrying of starlight
Across ancient dark caravans of matter
My father, the magi
Traveling deserts looking for
the face of a child to be born
Following a star that pointed the way
He walked, not walked, he skipped,
Two steps at a time
Up the stairways of heaven
And I can see him now
A cache of jokes in one hand
A sprinkle of ragas in another
joined by a chorus of laughing spirits
energising the celestial realms
leaving a trail of guffaws and smiles
as he busies on his way
fearlessly
never desiring more than needed
If the Gods had exotic traveling machines
yours was the lifelong journey on
your TVS 50
we have all been lucky to hop onto
and be taken for a ride with you
you would have smiled at the pun
rider of the deep, the dark, the mystery
Abba, my father
There was and is none who compares
To the beauty of the love you gave
The heart you welcomed us into
The joy we learnt of there
And the pain you freely cried with
Your tears, your laughter, your knowledge
Your compassion
Who can compare to you?
I often wonder if you have come again
As rain, as wind, as fire, as some kind of magi
as a tree for sure
Giving and responding
Breathing once more freely
Because you loved this earth
Your joy:
The plants that healed
The water that quenched
The sunlight that danced
And how you danced
With Ma on every anniversary morning
On Christmas eve at church
At family gatherings
You knew everyone around you
tiny or aged
there wasn’t a soul
who knew you
who you did not touch
like the hand of God
Abba, my Father…
--Amitha Santiago
Miracle-watcher
I remember my father always showing me the miracle of the earth
Sitting sideways, the slant of an isosceles waiting for a base line to complete him
He talked to me of the anjimani poove, bright magenta and tendrilly
Of how if you have a sore or a boil that hurts and oozes unforgivingly
You take this petal and lay it on your affront of a sore tying it down with its tendrils
And sleep with it on you, doing what it was born to do:
Heal you.
And then he’d scrunch his eyes up to the cable wire overhead, dark and makeshift and callous
And point to what I would not know because I didn’t see them at first
Me with my 40-year old eyes, he with his eyes of two cataract operations
And then he’d say,
“look at them, how they walk the line to their home,
not flinching, not shoving, not gaining over the one ahead,
simply flowing like a beaded black river of purpose.”
And then I’d see them, ants moving with the spinular solace of discipline…
One look at deceptively blue skies, and he’d say, “it will rain in thirty minutes”, and wait
And when we gasped at his accuracy, he’d laugh and say,
“It’s not me… it is they who are precise,
these rain mongering winds, traders with distant clouds…
They never miss!”
He was a miracle-watcher, capturing every evidence to wrap himself with
So that when the doctors said they’d give him two days in intensive care and pack him up
He came home laughing to us in 21
He said it’s that same miracle, that heals, that disciplines,
that trades you up and about
that brings you home
that lifts you like a magenta ant in a raincloud
speaking to a peacock of the smell off the wet earth after the rains
Now every time the peacock calls
He calls your name
Answer him Pa
He knows you will.
- Amitha Santiago
Stilt-Walker, Snake-Dancer: My Father
Like a snake
I’m moulting, he says
and I see the shiny pinkish skin
peeping through the old skin
like a flaky lace curtain
wisping away
The old skin goes where all things old go
into the sky, the earth, into non matter
to give place and space and form and matter
to some unnamed new
I see you and wonder
where your body went
so strong and firm
so agile and unbreakable
It went to your mind
to give it comfort
in its loneliness
because alone, it grew weak and mangy
and the disease of it brought your body to its knees
Those same knees that you would use at eighty to climb stairs
two at time, so people asked if you were sixty-seven
they stick out now, the size of a tennis ball, round, inordinate
I remember the carnival at Brazil and the stilt walker,
flowing cloth draped over a stick framed body he’d ride the skies
and how it set our breath on edge
creating the apparatus of the unknown
with his unearthly parade of another meaning
And I scream my anguish at you……………..
that you would rise on those stilts you have for legs
To characterize your journey in this land of form and shape
Build galleons of hope as we watch you on your stiltedness, I say
Rise and tower over our puny frames that know no frustration or despair
Tower over us that walk with confidence and surety
Tower over us so we can see only you
Walking to live,
walking to show us the shape of a longing we name courage
You who know now how to search through the pain,
have listened to the secrets that endurance confided
And looked upon the shadow of your soul that will not die
You have dared,
reached out
and touched
the hem of such truth
As we cheerleaders cartwheel beside you
You have reached inside and
touched the skin of something akin to beauty
the bone of something akin to a miracle
the pulsing of something like a love…
there in the promise of moulting skin
dance one more time my defiant stilt-walker father
this time as a sturdy, banded king cobra of sparkling intent.
AmithaSantiago