Vahni Capildeo

It was necessary to move, and at this exit the beggar, cross-legged at the fork of the tunnel, calls out Love! A welcome, of sorts. The night light fucks the suburb into nightmare familiarity — not like a shrammed nerd touting guided walks and histories that contract imagination for demolition work, levelling today's housing, restoring common greens, lingering at sites orphaned of their fever hospitals — by no means that hyperliterate, poor entrepreneur — It is the view, the barbed wire roaring into view round and round the playground walltop. It is the warehouse, warehouse windows blank of occupation. It is lives, lives supplied in great number, fulfilment of numbers. It is the sense of something shared — the tailor scissors razoring open fishmouth stitches, the sewn-up pocket of the new suit, and finding something — But it is new, all new, even the gangs who graffiti chimneys scrubbed and lovely, deleted like the railways delete repeatedly the head, the occasionally payrolled head, the feet of the quartered commuters, of the vertebral week.

for Vivek Narayanan it isn't matter isn't doesn't matter does it compared with what shan't have known your lines are all lines of approach this dog's eyelids this delhi dog's intentional eyelids, this doorway dog, this dog fellating beggars delhi exuding matter nictitation cannot extrude America to england the third nictitating poetry is over eyelid cannot eject America to england large foreign bodies poetry is over over and out surgery rarely happens over and ours dogs aren't loved over here, here! sufficiently foreign bodies remain requiring incision mind yourself it happened before you as you go you're nothing cold sunshine practised apprehension

INSIDE THE GATEWAY: 1970S RED CLOGS WITH SIDE BUCKLE The forever shoe,  which  points  homewards,  belongs to  my  mother. When our house was  being built, she stepped onto the  driveway while the tarmac was still wet, still setting. Ever since that step, the driveway, which slants upwards,  bears an imprint of her 1971 footwear. Her foot- print says,Climb!  Come with me. Whoever steps into that impression becomes,  for a moment, the leggy wearer of a fire-red clog with a pirat- ical silver buckle on the side. OUTSIDE THE TEMPLE: GOLD AND SILVER SANDALS The  sandals  which  will  make  a  female of me belong to many women. The   front  of  the  temple  entrance  hides itself behind shoe-racks. Vis- itors   enter  barefooted,  leaving   behind  the  dung,  dried frogs, spilled petrol  and  ketchup  traces  of  the  streets.  Hundreds  of  pairs  of  gold and  silver  sandals wait  here  for  the  women  who will re-emerge from the  vigil  with  the  taste of  basil  leaf and sugar in  their deep-breathing mouths  and  carpet  fibres between  their  toes.   The  sandals,  gold  and silver,  seem all alike.  How  can the women tell them apart? They do tell them apart. It  is  as if  each  pair  sings an  intimate mantra to its  owner, audible  only to  her. One day I too shall return to expectant slippers that stack  up  like the  moon  and  the  stars  outside a  marble  building;  one day I shall not have to wear child's shoes. SUNDAY BEFORE SCHOOL: WHITE SNEAKERS Seven  years  of these shoes are a chemical memory.  The Convent ruled that  pupils' shoes  must  be white: absolutely white.  Who  can  imagine a  1980s  shoe  that  was  absolutely  white,  without  any  logo,  with  no swoosh,  not  a  single slogan?  Sunday evenings, before the school week, I  crouched  down  on  the  pink  bathroom  tiles  and  painted  my  shoes into  the  absolute  of  whiteness;  like  the  Alice  in Wonderland garden- ers  repainting  roses.  This  task  was  performed  with a  toothbrush and with  special  paste that annihilated so many design features.  Purity was attained  by  the application  of  a whitener  that  stank  of scientific poly- syllables.  Convent-girl  identity.  Tabula rasa.  Toxicity  and intoxication: with  good  intentions,  getting  high on paste. BAD MARRIAGE SHOES: SILVER BALLET SLIPPERS When I met my ex, I was  already  committed to heels: black ankle  boots  with  four-inch  stacks for  walking through snow;  French  cream curved suede  stilettos for scaling fire-escape  ladders  on to  rooftops  to  admire the  winter  sky;  even after I  left him,  scarlet satin  bedroom-only  spiky mules  to  amuse myself.  Early  on, my ex  said that the way women walk in  heels  looks ugly.  And my  nails  made  unnatural  social appearances: emerald  lacquer;  cobalt;  incarnadine. Sign of a  bad  marriage:  I  began to  wear  flats. The penitential  mermaid shoes,  worn once and once only, were  a Gabor creation: distressed  silver  ballet  slippers  with netted and criss-cross side  details  which  would  make  the material  seem  to  swish with  the changes  of  light on feet that go walking.  Cool  as  moonlight on a  tourist  coastline. But the  inner  stitching  hooked  the  softness  of  my skin, which  has  always  been  too  soft;  but  I could not turn back, for we had  tickets  to an evening  of  Mozart;  but the paper tissues that I stuffed into  my  shoes  failed to act as  a  protective   lining.   Paper  tissue  snow- flecks  teardropped  with crimson  blood created  a  trail  behind  me  as  I ascended  the  many  tiers  of  the  wedding-cake concert hall. BAREFOOT: PEARL PINK POLISH Sitting  next  to someone  can  make  my  feet  curl:  shy,  self-destructive and  oyster-like, they want to  shuck  their cases,  to  present  themselves, little undersea pinks; their skin  still  is  too  soft, their  toes still too long, their  ankles still too slender, for a modern fit. But he  is not modern;  he sits like stone, and my bare feet are cool, they will not have to bleed.

for Geraldine Monk 'I love you,' he wouldn't say: it was against his philosophy; I-love-you didn't mean what it meant, plus the verray construction of the phrase caused bad-old-concrete-lawman-vandal-verbal-mildew-upon-the-grape- harvest-and-war-for-rare-minerals-required-to-manufacture-commu- nications-devices damage; saying I-love-you damaged love, subject and object; plus he could prove this in two dense and delphic languages suitable for philosophy, opera, cursing, and racking the nerves of arti- ficial intelligence machines that perhaps could love but would be hard-wired giammai to dare say so. So what moved him to not-say I-love-you? What wake-up-and-spoil-the-coffee ashtray-licking djinn? I have to start to agree. The verbness of it impropriety (eyes glob up the syringe when you're giving blood: semisolid spiralling); perhaps too active... I-love-you, I sand you, I drill you, I honey and set you for wasps, crimson you like a stolen toga, add value applying dye, fight owner- ship, I cite you to justify skilled outrage, put your name as guarantor on an astronomical mortgage, I admit desertification comes as a relief, from I to O, O my oasis, O my mirage. Maybe the verb is a tending-to- wards? A tightrope? A tropism? A station? But that's meeting him on his own ground; plus I can't disprove entire languages; plus those three little words aren't meant as saying. An icy drink in stormlight. A looked-at leaf left to transpire its own way until... And sans I-love-you the centuried moon rose above dinnermint stone; many men contin- ued  talking; a woman lifted her sarsenet skirt, peed on green lilies and, utterly gracious, walked through the archway to join the mixed group delighting in — word! believe it! — fresh air.