In the women’s compartment
of a Bombay local
we search
for no personal epiphanies.
Like metal licked by relentless acetylene
we are welded –
dreams, disasters,
germs, destinies,
flesh and organza,
odours and ovaries.
When I descend
I could choose
to dice carrots
or dice a lover.
I postpone the latter.
Arundhathi Subramaniam has worked over the years as poetry editor, curator, and journalist on literature, classical dance, theatre, and spirituality. She divides her time between Bombay and a yoga centre in Coimbatore. She is the author of four books of poetry including When God Is a Traveller and Where I Live: New & Selected Poems. Her prose works include the bestselling biography Sadhguru: More Than a Life and the Book of Buddha. She has edited or co-edited three anthologies, Pilgrim’s India; the Sahitya Akademi anthology of post-independence Indian poetry in English, Another Country; and Confronting Love.