“the adventurist”
glorious, she peaks across
‘distant’ lands
they’re closer than I’d like to believe
but then I’d like to believe in her
that the far away is traversed
through an exploring spirit
and crisp cargo pants
with the sun fondly caressing her hair
so wondrous her stride as it divides
my shrunk-screen horizon
she smiles a freedom’s smile
and I am all 16 x 9
her hair lies in golden twists
reflected across my iris
the perfect accompaniment
to her territorial discoveries
I cringe as she looks
right into the lion’s jaws
into the heart of darkness
I thrust a fork into my plate,
smarting over domestic injuries
I believe her adventures
avenge my defeat
and place food inside
my silenced mouth
she jumps, steers, climbs
and lands on her feet
she strolls, steers, prowls,
lands on her teeth
all the while she
unfears her invisible audience
cruising along with her
noiselessly listening
as she speaks in cultures
as she trundles through forests
and sticks her tongue out
and holds it there
to taste new sap
to spar with a saap
and giggles as it lashes about
and just like that, with a flick
of the invisible camera
she’s onto another adventure
before I have swallowed my
bite coated with saliva
I wonder, as she takes a boat ride
down a spiteful river,
with a helpful local,
on day two of a one hour show,
could I ever be her?
could I be a wanderer
a taster of poisonous sap
a fearless foreigner-
foraging my way through the ancient
and alive distant lands?
just then arrives the scene
of a Bangladeshi railway station,
‘that explains the unidentified
previous scene of the angry river-
this is close to home’, I figure quietly.
she appears in khaki and dusty white
swimming against the tide
jostling for space in a sea of men
their darkness contrasted against her white
waiting for the delayed train,
clear in visible monsoon sweat.
not just another woman in a maze of men
double gazed by both the camera’s invisibility
and the more unsubtle gape of incredulity,
she is the one who can look back.
then the words fill my ears and eyes
and I become one with the incredulous eyes:
“as a Westerner, this may feel a little odd,
but they mean no harm.”
she has never been looking at me
wondrous exploration,
I am reminded with a crushing blow,
by a few English words,
is not necessarily an ability
it is a historical accident
of the colour of skin
a sign of the territory you were born in
a right to label as ‘new’ what lies ‘unknown’
to select eyes and minds who own
and distribute the tools and text of ‘discovery’
a thrilling historical mea culpa
a glorious falling
into a dark continent that redeems
anywhere in the world it could be
populated by gaping savages
in need of light, terrifying
and harmless indeed.
the adventurist is closer to home
in the lands she braves
than that sea of dark eyes
watching her on a railway station
in a nowhere town (in Bangladesh),
or mine for that matter,
an educated Indian woman, house-broken
and projecting with a lingering gaze
at the black and white scene,
before me, can ever know,
our irises catching the reflection
of distance
and fallen glow
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