Once I Was a Prince - Part Three

Part Three ...swishing away with your sunshrivelled burgundy knotty arms with broad disdainful harvesting sweeps the cobras come out to water in the sweltering heat by the thatched fly-buzzed hole your low under-the-breath warning tones a reminder of the will of your self-inflicted charge you never ate until i gorged myself like the dutiful wife given with a dowry watching me all the time through the shield of the wisp of cloud of cheroot smoke in your sentinel corner against the far wall your eyes glinting fearing that i might take exception and even before my plate was half-empty you had already darted across the kitchen floor to bring me more fried brinjals mashed greens fried and sliced plantain the steaming rice lying bare by its metal cover hanging on the lip of the open pot-mouth in a clear aluminium pot by my side now they say you are gone for some plotted and took your life in haste even before you had time to ensure an heir others say you were alone dismayed abandoned by your own prey to enchanters coveting the plot of land the house derelict forsaken by your absence they say some one else caretakes it for himself others no a forbidden son of your husband’s has raked it for himself alas would you have known how landless nationless stateless i’d be this dot of ancestral land clinging-clanging in memory did you know then you might never see me again nor probably ever hear of me or if you had how might you have taken it all did you believe the tales true and false they told or only what you wanted to hear of your precious prince you once served in silence and who had gone to slave in other lands Notes eevaa peerankal muuvaa marunthu is a take on another well-known Tamil proverb: eevaa makkal muuvaa marunthu meaning “children who obey even before the order is given are a God-send”. Here, in lieu of children, the word “grandparents” is substituted chembu: a small usually copper vessel shaped like a rounded vase with a tapering neck and open mouth, used for holding drinking water or milk kuul: thick holdall gruel which may also be highly spiced chemman: red soil Vaithi: ayurvedic doctor, practising the traditional Indian homeopathic medicine © T.Wignesan 1997 - Paris May 7, 1997 (from the Sequence/Collection: "Words for a Lost Sub-Continent")