Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- The Lion
- Entomological Specimens
- Practising Your Skills
- Insomniac
- Taster
- What Every Girl Should Know Before Marriage
- Bad Day in the Office
- You Are Not
- The Gold Bangles
- My Mother's Hair
- ‘Jesus Saves’
- Ticking
- On Ellington Road
- Cousin Migrant
- The Daughters
- Different Principles of Enclosure
- Day Ghost
- This Morning
- The Bird
- Almost September
- Phone Call on a Train Journey
- Small Hands
- In the Coroner's Office
- April
- 18th of November
- Notes Towards an Elegy
- The Urn
- The Rain That Began Elsewhere
- Gloves
- My Father Wants to be a Rooftop Railway Surfer
- Ghazal
- Ghazal
- Ode to a Pomegranate
- Bulbul
- Parvati Waits for the Return of Shiva, After the Slaying of Ganesh
- Lost Poem
- Large and Imprecise Baby
- Wireman
- Barbule
- The Found Thing
- Woman at Window
- Mr Beeharry's Marriage Bureau
- Mrs M Unravels
- Hummingbird
- Ballad of the Small-boned Daughter
- Acknowledgments
Parvati Waits for the Return of Shiva, After the Slaying of Ganesh
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- The Lion
- Entomological Specimens
- Practising Your Skills
- Insomniac
- Taster
- What Every Girl Should Know Before Marriage
- Bad Day in the Office
- You Are Not
- The Gold Bangles
- My Mother's Hair
- ‘Jesus Saves’
- Ticking
- On Ellington Road
- Cousin Migrant
- The Daughters
- Different Principles of Enclosure
- Day Ghost
- This Morning
- The Bird
- Almost September
- Phone Call on a Train Journey
- Small Hands
- In the Coroner's Office
- April
- 18th of November
- Notes Towards an Elegy
- The Urn
- The Rain That Began Elsewhere
- Gloves
- My Father Wants to be a Rooftop Railway Surfer
- Ghazal
- Ghazal
- Ode to a Pomegranate
- Bulbul
- Parvati Waits for the Return of Shiva, After the Slaying of Ganesh
- Lost Poem
- Large and Imprecise Baby
- Wireman
- Barbule
- The Found Thing
- Woman at Window
- Mr Beeharry's Marriage Bureau
- Mrs M Unravels
- Hummingbird
- Ballad of the Small-boned Daughter
- Acknowledgments
Summary
Parvati created Ganesh during Shiva's long absence when she grew lonely. He grew into an obedient, caring child. When Shiva returned one day he did not know or recognise Ganesh and cut off his head. When he realised his terrible mistake he was stricken with remorse and decreed that the head of the first living creature he found would be fused to the body of his son. The first creature that they came across was a baby elephant.
‘Beautiful son, your feet are still warm.
Your fleshy thumb is moist from your
little mouth. Child, who I grew not in my
belly but on my belly; each finger was rolled
and pressed in my lap, your limbs oiled
from the sweat of my lip, and the shine on
my collarbone became the mortar to bind you.
The day I announced you the sky offered
me all the birds to devour. You may stop
rehearsing stillness. You and I are the only
gleaming objects in this indecipherable
blackness, beside the plum tree. Do not
be afraid to know yourself, hold melody
in your pores, let me kiss you where your mouth
will be and leave a gold clot on your lip.
Sisters! I will refuse to see ashes today.
Why remove my gold? Who marked my wrists
with violet bangles? You must tell the ghosts.
They are leaving their stinking cages and I'm on
my knees praying they'll not come any closer.
Ghosts with measuring cups who are streaming
through the flowers, can't you see that
this season's plum tree has borne so many
and that beside it lies my son, my headless son
who glints and sings, whose blood still sings?’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Small Hands , pp. 40 - 41Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2015