From all tiled corners they eye me.
They are still, very still with ceramic poses
And values. I round them and gaze

At the jaundiced and sea-coloured beings.
Their silky clothes and gold ornaments
Shawl them rich, like an afterbath of milk.

These godfolk are a myriad: elephant-headed,
Lotus-chaired and the crescent-haired one that
Stands bluely with a coiled cobra necking him.

They annihilate me with their icy stares.
They almost know the refusal
Of my belief system.

A ring of fire-dews burns in front of me,
I bless myself. a little vermillion eye finds itself
Deathly in between my brows.

The bell is being whipped in fatal threes.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

It whispers to me everyday, wide and deathly.
The heartbeat of it never fades.
The garland grows rounder and vague.

It’s like a warning, only you cannot avoid.
Where it will descend: on the dandruffed hair
Moping the pimpled cheeks? or on the

Origin of the thumps itself, losing the will to beat?
They do not speak, but their act volumes like nothing else.
The black magnolias bloom and bleed

Odours of life. Do not believe their
Scented breath. It is almost beautiful
Like ten minutes of peace.

I’m no longer afraid, my flowery enemy.
The buds sleep while monoecious parents
Mother a silent death.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

The candy-cane stripes mingle freely among the
Saffron-clothed C moon and fourteen-handed star.
They swim navy-like in the blue.

The reds and whites alternate
Till the states are properly represented.
They ask of nothing more, nothing more.

What does it hold? What does it teach us?
The wild history of it roars and thunders
Like a hurricane that never stops.

But it did. How did we overthrow
Something so mighty, so white
As an unstoppable hurricane?

And the purpose of it all? Freedom.
Freedom and independence. Two righteous
Morals so hard to obtain.

At what cost did we attain them?
Bloodshed, shrieks, lies, torment and tears.
It was all worth it, love, all of it.

When Jack finally crawled down the beanstalk,
We never flew higher, braver or breezier
With such dignity and unfaltering spirit.

We have come so far to this place, this place
Where hatred shreds to little warm hearts and people
Are just people no matter how colourful they are.

We’re a rare hybrid of ethics: the sarong-laden man milking the rubber tree
Is no different than the blackened faces down in the tin mines
And the ones that hand-built the train tracks, woody and sturdy.

Seven chants of it that fateful afternoon
And we cried knowing, knowing we have made it.
Toiled sweat never tasted sweeter. Merdeka!

Most of us laughed and rejoiced.
Some were heard wailing and flying off to where
They rightfully belong. We don’t want you here. We never did.

The dove’s free now,
Free of thick metal bars
That caged it for centuries and

It flies now, wings spread into
A feathery horizon, windily flapping back and forth
Into a new world, a new promise called Malaysia.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

The meat stinks of sticky blood.
Ants fear the red flood, they flee;
Abandoning their mountainous
Playground-cones.

The gazelle stares, shooting blanks after blanks
Blindly and stupidly.
Its stained teeth grins and screams
But it is voiceless like the desert itself.

Lazily, a lion paws the earth.
His mane bloom a hairy sun,
Illuminates the scarce ground to bits of gold.
He sniffs, and turns away yawning.

He is used to this plate death serves him.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

My skin goes up in flames
Incinerating the fine fibers

That hold too much history.
Too much pain!

The water rushes down like a modest waterfall
By the rocks, cleansing the shiny soapy edges.

The rocks hold their breath
Until bubbles germinate.

Those dews of contradicting virtues
Flow off my burning skin, gently crossing each other out.

Like warships in full reign,
They torpedo ragingly, missing their marks,

Bombing themselves. The ash suffocates the sea.
The fishes gossip and their ryes burn, burn, burn.

Oh, the agony of a misfire: incineration, gossip, untimely death.
Too much pain!

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

Another four legs and a tail fall prey.
The pink tablets are too believable.

The family does not contemplate.
They only eat and eat and eat: disemboweling.

They run along the white
Tubes, filled with grey straws

That spawns red, yellow and black.
But do not drink from them.

Their ears rise up like antennas
Picking up signals they worry to decipher.

They only run and run and run.
Hear those patters. Hear them chasing death down the stairs.

Their buckteeth carves through the pills,
Lulling them into dehydration. Death craves for thirst.

And when their stench bleeds itself across the room,
It ferments electronics and shuts noses.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002

The moon cracks and blooms.
Its grey nowhere to be seen,
It shawls itself with a bleak cloud.

The floating pearl biscuit
Busily dictates orions and dippers.
One travels, and people start wishing.

They are hopeless: the people and their pretentious wishes.

The jackfruit tree bears only death: dead leaves, thorned fruits.

Under the nocturnal skies,
It is the great witch.
Silent and black. It is voiceless.

Shalini Nayar
© 2002