BELONGING

a migrant in the country I was born
conveniently stamped Madrasi
over my protests; my last name
too tricky for cosmopolitan tongues
that could get around schadenfreude

no domicile certificates
lay in the baggage I hauled across cities
and for this my unborn children
will be refused seats in colleges
in some of the states that I lived

oftentimes those attempting
to be well-meaning
would say I did not look south Indian
a little bit Bengali perhaps
but with that short hair
so indistinguishable, just a trace
of that ridiculous Mallu accent
in my convent-educated voice
and thus I barely passed the most rigorous of
quality assurance tests

I wait today under a tree
without leaves; in a country
from where I’ve to return
before the visa expires

you ask if I miss home
the flavours, the sun, that
market selling pirated DVDs
where we misspent winter afternoons

I tell you instead of the nameless labourer
in the city where I lived for years
carrying bricks for buildings
named after things and places she would never see:
maple leaves, peach trees, oak woods,
Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills

at night she feeds her children
and imagines their futures
as non-migrants with identity cards,
safe from sniping politicians
and domiciled residents
worried about shielding their homes
from women like her
living under a plastic sheet,
in a tenement made of bricks she has to return
to the contractor

I think of her when they trip over my family name
or shudder about the hundreds of migrants
arriving everyday, like flies, like sand storms

I’m a stranger in this land
where it’s dark by four
and black ice taunts motorists on the highway
but I was also a stranger in my own country
a migrant, a fly swooping down to steal,
a lustful claimant with no moral compass

ergo, here I should feel right at home.