The
Phonetics of My Boyhood
Mother taught me the phonetics of hexagonal
topology
and the prosody of serene phoneme
with the pulse of sensibility
she made me memorise the tables
of a banyan tree’s innocence oftentimes
promising a reward for every answer
she helped me practice the formulae
asking to surf the galaxy of truth alongside
even pain might be your apple-red beloved
of your heart, she reiterated.
I accompanied her to the park and cinema;
like a ghost in her sari drape or a shadow in precision
of course I wasn’t a boy with boy IQ
she drove as usual very grave to reprimand
some of the gods of small things
in the market she would sip a cup of cinnamon tea
with Udupi uttapam;
when I said that I loved the Lee
brand
and Reebok’s
tawdriness
mother would gift just a cowboy’s hat
and a pair of South Korean T-shirts
or hardly some mediocre goggles
the Nivia
store always remained an illusion.
Mother was obviously not poor at mathematics
but exceptionally good
even at the theory of diminishing marginal utility
she fumigated the seeds of economic conundrums
coinciding the art of pole-vaulting
and the nuances of Newton’s formulae with it.
Often she chased me to dare skydiving like eagles
and snow surfing like penguins
she sounded the phonetics—pain might either be the
replica
of Abraham Lincoln’s laughter
or an antique love letter of Cleopatra
otherwise the joy of Uncle Tom’s redemption!
