Siddharth Dasgupta Poems
Volume 2 | Issue 6 [October 2022]

Volume 2 | Issue 6 [October 2022]

Poems by SIDDHARTH DASGUPTA

Kitchenlore

Artwork – Siddharth Dasgupta

In the distant mirage noir of a dream,
I see Grandma trading family recipes
and secret ingredients with the profound
blue evermore. The specific marination
of crabs—vinegar, mustard oil, turmeric,
garlic, red chillies, and that strange Aegean
murmur of long-ago brine. A revelation
of lobsters—deshelled, unfanged—
their flesh soaking with the irregular
affections of Andaman tides. And then
the litany of sacred techniques—
each about food, yes, but also soul—
about the body refusing stillness; about
the past being no place in which to bury
stories. In the distant mirage noir
of a dream, I see Grandma summoning
the tribal heart piquancy of a moon-licked
earth from the wombs of forgotten things
—the bark of storied mahua; cashew
shells, fragmented and  departed; carp
and barramundi, carrying starlight
as a sad, forsaken poem. In the distant
mirage noir of a dream, Grandma is
marshalling her cosmic kitchen. The stars
are alive, amorous. Spice crackles like
an ethnic storyteller. She sees me through
the diaphanous haze and softly smiles.
She has just one commandment to leave
things with—Swim, Siddharth. Swim.

Drinking Bourbon in Lost Meridians 

Artwork – Siddharth Dasgupta

In this cosmos of sweet, pleasurable
things, I’ve rarely tasted something
as sweet and pleasurable as
barramundi grilled on an open fire,
beneath the fluctuating skies
of the Andaman Capital.

It is tongue being gifted the ocean’s
myths—the tartness of lime
squeezed into veins; the legitimacy
of native red chillies and cardamom;
cloves and charisma—saturating
each bite with the naked
gratification of unknown depths.

The bursting moon is various things
—at the southern slant of Chidiya
Tapu, an idle window into
the larger universe; within
the frolicking desirous jungles
of Havelock, a portent of coming
summers, inebriated…

In these scattered home albums
of Port Blair, an almirah of love,
its nourished vampires; above
the severed outposts of Outram
and Rutland, a reminder that love
is a decanter of forgotten things.

I put my feet into the water, crush
the ephemera of brittle stars—
the wasted ruins of their
flummoxed histories. Drinking
bourbon in lost places, I examine
how some of us as are best at our
most fleeting—famished pilgrims
bearing taste and piquancy
as a lost folklore, at that mark where
each word can breathe as soliloquy…

Water. Crush. Brittle. Stars.