A low temple keeps its gods in the dark. You lend a matchbox to the priest. One by one the gods come to light. Amused bronze. Smiling stone. Unsurprised. For a moment the length of a matchstick gesture after gesture revives and dies. Stance after lost stance is found and lost again. Who was that, you ask. The eight arm goddess, the priest replies. A sceptic match coughs. You can count. But she has eighteen, you protest. All the same she is still an eight arm goddess to the priest. You come out in the sun and light a charminar. Children play on the back of the twenty foot tortoise.

Are you looking for a god? I know a good one. His name is Yeshwant Rao and he's one of the best. look him up when you are in Jejuri next. Of course he's only a second class god and his place is just outside the main temple. Outside even of the outer wall. As if he belonged among the tradesmen and the lepers. I've known gods prettier faced or straighter laced. Gods who soak you for your gold. Gods who soak you for your soul. Gods who make you walk on a bed of burning coal. Gods who put a child inside your wife. Or a knife inside your enemy. Gods who tell you how to live your life, double your money or triple your land holdings. Gods who can barely suppress a smile as you crawl a mile for them. Gods who will see you drown if you won't buy them a new crown. And although I'm sure they're all to be praised, they're either too symmetrical or too theatrical for my taste. Yeshwant Rao, mass of basalt, bright as any post box, the shape of protoplasm or king size lava pie thrown against the wall, without an arm, a leg or even a single head. Yeshwant Rao. He's the god you've got to meet. If you're short of a limb, Yeshwant Rao will lend you a hand and get you back on your feet. Yeshwant Rao Does nothing spectacular. He doesn't promise you the earth Or book your seat on the next rocket to heaven. But if any bones are broken, you know he'll mend them. He'll make you whole in your body and hope your spirit will look after itself. He is merely a kind of a bone-setter. The only thing is, as he himself has no heads, hands and feet, he happens to understand you a little better. Picture Death of Krishna and Other Poems

I don't know politics but I know the names Of those in power, and can repeat them like Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru. I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar, I speak three languages, write in Two, dream in one. Don't write in English, they said, English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins, Every one of you? Why not let me speak in Any language I like? The language I speak Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest, It is as human as I am human, don't You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the Incoherent mutterings of the blazing Funeral pyre. I was child, and later they Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair. When I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the Bedroom and closed the door. He did not beat me But my sad woman-body felt so beaten. The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me. I shrank Pitifully. Then I wore a shirt and my Brother's trousers, cut my hair short and ignored My womanliness. Dress in sarees, be girl, Be wife, they said. Be embroiderer, be cook, Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in. Oh, Belong, cried the categorizers. Don't sit On walls or peep in through our' lace-draped windows. Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to Choose a name, a role. Don't play pretending games. Don't play at schizophrenia or be a Nympho. Don't cry embarrassingly loud when Jilted in love, I met a man, loved him. Call Him not by any name, he is every man Who wants a woman, just as I am every Woman who seeks love. In him the hungry haste Of rivers, in me the ocean's tireless Waiting. Who are you, I ask each and everyone, The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself I; in this world, he is tightly packed like the Sword in its sheath. It is I who drink lonely Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns, It is I who laugh, it is I who make love And then feel shame, it is I, dying With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner, I am saint. I am the beloved and the Betrayed. I have no joys which are not yours, no Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.