Alolika Dutta

The Terrestrial Body

I. PARABLE OF THE GANGA

Along the middle of her scalp, 

Where she draws her maang 

With the pointed tip of a wooden comb, 

Is a crimson gorge that separates

Her hair into two halves.

In the morning, a stream flows through 

The gorge and emerges from the sides of

Her neck, an isthmus that opens into

Her shoulders, a ridge that separates 

The hillslopes of her breasts from her back. 

Flowing across pectoral plateaus,

Dorsal plains weathered over years, 

The stream meets tributaries that drain 

Into the bays of sweat that soak into 

Her mulmul blouse.

Her body is terrestrial: 

The shrivelling basin of the Ganga,

Which falls from the crest of Gangotri, 

Bordered by the Himalayas in the north

And the Vindhyas in the south, drinking 

From rivers across eleven states, traversing 

The sovereign lands of four countries, 

To drain into the Indian ocean. 

The water that remains in rivulets

Feeds the land beneath the asphalt

In memory of the displaced,

The scheduled, the dead.

II. KORBA

Under her eyes, black as soot, are folds 

Of loose skin. Streams of kohl pass through them. 

When she returns from the kitchen, the streams

Have reached the corners of her eyes, 

Like the disease that is claiming her body,

One cell after another.

In the afternoon, she sings Arpa Pairi Ke Dhar,

A song about two tributaries of the Mahanadi

That waters the fields of Chhattisgarh, 

Pouring into the mouths of crops 

And farmers alike. 

When the song reaches Durg and Bastar, 

A charcoal river flows down the paddies of her face, 

Across thirty-six forts, into the narrow opening 

Of her mouth; but her face is not a field.

Her face is a coal mine. 

The river is Lilagar, 

Flowing over the lips of its banks 

To flood into the Dipka mine in Korba. 

She knows Korba. Everyone knows Korba.

Korba is where the rivers have blood in them,

Where the rotis are coated in ash 

And the soil smells of tar. 

Korba is where the young sleep to the sound 

Of rocks blasting as machines scrape

The skin around their temples.

Korba is where they fractured the homes of the forest-dwellers

To steal coal from under their floors. Korba is where they killed

Her people for their land.

Her body is terrestrial: 

A sal tree in the forests of Hasdeo Arand,

Waiting to be felled by the mining company. 

Last afternoon, she left the room 

As the chairman of the company 

Spoke to a reporter. She does 

Not understand English; 

Greed shows itself.

She knows the face of greed: 

Coal leaks from his nostrils,

His ears, the corners of his mouth. 

She knows the sound of greed: 

Augers drilling into the ground,

Drilling into her flesh to reach 

Her heart as coal seeps into

His mouth and collects under 

His tongue. He cannot pronounce 

Surguja, Bijapur, or Sukma

The way her people do.

She knows the smell of greed: 

Nickel and cotton on greased palms. 

She knows, Sudha knows, the people of Chhattisgarh know

The men who stole from them and the men who will.

III. AS ONE ERODES

From her ears hang two plates of silver,

Pulling the holes in her lobes into ovals.

A broad husli sits on her collar, indenting her skin

As it restrains the flesh of her neck, and around her fingers 

Are rings with iron flowers, all of which must weigh 

Between seventy and one hundred grams.

They weigh her down, they bring her closer

To the mother. In the evening, she keeps her rings 

On the granite counter to make rotis. She sinks 

Her fingers into a parat to knead the atta into a dough 

That slips under her nails like sand on the beds of Son, 

A river that has sunk six feet since the company started mining.

Who mines?

The workers who have lost 

Their families and their forests

To eroding banks. 

Who labours? 

The farmers who have lost 

Their fields.

What for? 

The money that cannot pay,

The money that does not attempt to. 

Her body is terrestrial:

It grows, it spreads, it weathers, it bends, 

It shrinks, it burns, it thins, it slows, 

It discolours, it contorts,

It ages and it will die.

Emily Barton Altman