Moon at Half Past Noon

[I. Kneading]

Her hands knead atta into my skin,
pressing mehndi secrets into dough-thick dawn.
“This is how worlds bend,” she murmurs,
as the tawa hisses like a censored psalm.

The chulha coughs ancestral smoke—
great-grandmother’s rotis still blister my tongue.
We inherit not just their gold nose-rings,
but the way they swallowed moonlight to feed us sun.

---

[II. Counting]

At the ration shop, our hunger wears a barcode:
twelve digits tattooed where Godhuli bled.
They sell our monsoons to silver-suited men,
while we count rice like Gayatri beads.

“One for drought, one for debt,”
the shopkeeper chants, his scales tipped with rust.
My brother’s bones are stacked in the ledger,
between a loan for seeds and a bullet’s cost.

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[III. Bowing]

We touch feet before we eat,
press foreheads to floors that know our weight.
The temple bell’s a factory whistle now,
its iron tongue swinging “late, late, late.”

Yet sometimes, when the azaan melts into dark,
I catch the Granth Sahib in the rickshaw’s radio static—
all hymns hum the same hunger,
all gods gorge on our grief.

---

[IV. Breaking]

The panchang foretold surrender,
but I am the Brahmaputra carving new silt.
No longer a shagun thread in their pallu,
I am the gulal storm at a lathi charge.

Watch how my chappal strikes sing “Lal Salaam!”
how the loom’s tak-tak weaves a red rumaal.
The patriarchy trembles when my lehenga flares—
its mirrors reflecting every torch they burned.

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[V. Rising]

The market priced my marrow at ₹37/day,
but my spine’s a struck match in the oil depot’s shadow.
Let the havaldar come with his stick and book—
I’ll read my rights in the kerosene’s glow.

For we are the chai at every protest,
the dhaba where revolution simmers on low flame.
Not your karma, not your curry,
but the chaand that rises when they douse our names.