Sanctuary: Abstractions in Prose
Photo: Karan Madhok
Creative Nonfiction: ‘Rotund Japanese purple enlarged. A plushie abandoned. Soot-stained lips float past. Saliva upon the metal in the skin. Chivalry ain’t dead yet, innit? Plebians need the masala but give this to me anyway.’
1.
Finally at home, I feel at peace. The ass is beckoned to its rightful place. I wiggle myself, trying to find the remnants of lost labour. There. The comforting indent. Like dust settling down on the black pants as I ruffle my own hair, I am a soul found, Paradiso.
The laptop screen glares at me. Clumsy fingers travel across the grey-white to call upon the urja once more. Smug.
Next the gaze thriving at the border falls upon faux silver. It gleams with the dullest of greys. This is my deepest fear, is it not? Hamlay nods. I drift away once again.
The index of the left quivers. The disks of the nine turntables. Kings of this time, oligarchs in their prime, just try and fill their coffers. When did this turn into poetry? Meta-commentary. Interrupted Gangotri. Bhishma stretches upon a bed of Dodona.
What do you have to talk about if you don’t get out?
Oh, the mind is a place...
Come with me, Shobu, let’s go for a walk.
What do you think my answer was?
2.
Polished mirror, ah, mirror. Shining with shards of raven hair and fluorescent white, how you shimmer. This unreality of my body has me project outwardly, spin out of sorts, into possibilities. A maternal irkdom. Built layer by layer, will it cascade—natural calamity?
Rotund Japanese purple enlarged. A plushie abandoned. Soot-stained lips float past. Saliva upon the metal in the skin. Chivalry ain’t dead yet, innit? Plebians need the masala but give this to me anyway. I just deleted half of what I wanted to say because complexity overrides the stranger in the passenger seat. Half of what I take is from the world I consume—Sursamukh.
The end of vitriol.
3.
My teddy bear Hamlay doing a sumo bow, he’s ready to pick a fight. The Hindu Persian beckons the two Sumos simultaneously to the rug. Tatakai. Jesus the Dawg hangs stuffed with a frown. The wings of Nike adorn the cement of my baseball. The engraved flute floats and it’s magic. The facial replica swings; it’s the six.
***
Shobhita Rewal is a 'wordsmith'. She army crawls through the mundane to cherry pick and transmute morsels into abstraction. A 2006 born, she is currently pursuing an English major at the undergraduate level. She enjoys exploring research articles in her leisure time.
