Walking the white flag over the water

May  2009:  Nanthikadal Lagoon:   An old child of Indian Ocean.
  

Yesterday, we made our safe zone by hanging saris around us. Being blind to the outside is a moment of secure feeling. Today, we have to | walk straight | and stand still when needed. Is it true that crows fly straight?

The bridge is lower than before. Under are people, floating like dead. The war has made crows into vultures. A brown calf circles around the mother. Shelling is not a lullaby…

This water is murky. Smell of the air is unbearable even for an ape like me. Living’s breath and dead’s subsiding warmth have made water unreal. Can the word surplus be an adjective for people? If we are dumped to the water, we will walk on it. We are weightless.

Death is nothing, but the wounds… We need somebody who is not wounded. Making  a white flag is not  that   difficult | one out of our own flesh | under the skin, flesh must be paled into white now.


2014

© Subhadra Jayasundara

I would photograph scars

I would photograph scars.

If only I had my old Nikon,

and a lion’s marigold skin,

I would camouflage there

to photograph scarred silence,

the silence of war.

A woman’s breast: Nipples

surrounded by dark circles

were exposed.

Her hair’s matted, bangles crushed.

This death had no witness.

This death required no explanation.

Beneath the half burnt cradle

Mother was sleeping her deepest sleep.

If there had been no railing,

baby could’ve escaped.

No.

No new born walks.

Only Siddhartha Gautama did.

A young man was paralyzed: Spine was shot.

I would photograph his death.

When wounds are deep inside bones,

death is as calm as a dead saint.

My shutter blinked. Aimed.

Then shot the focus,

Shot the scar-like bullet

holes in school walls.

Children would rest in peace

That was the peace, literally.

I would photograph their scarred tiny feet

which were not allowed to rise up

in homeland’s soil.

But even hunter – gatherers

had had a moment

to root in where they wanted to.

In monsoons, gutters were full.

Then burst.

I would photograph water.

Why wouldn’t it burn when shelled?

People under legitimate barbarism:

some without limbs, some without eyes,

some without skin.

Some still breathing,

squatted motionlessly beside those resting bodies

as though keeping vigils.

When they kept the last one,

knowing that there would be nobody left

to keep vigils

for them, I would photograph the absence.

The end page of a poetry book. Abandoned, uncooked rice.

A fragment of spectacles. An empty sparrow cage.

Bits and pieces of love. Shattered clay pots. 

Smoke.

I would photograph blindness.

In blind sun,

scattered, scarred petals,

in every colour and shape,

would make new  undefined

colours and shapes.

2014 

© Subhadra Jayasundara