Now I know where the water in the well goes in summer.
Like my mother who, when school closes,
used to go to her house, reachable only by walking
seven miles after alighting from the bus,
with my sister our toys our dead brother and me,
leaving the goats hens cows the pumpkin climbers in the kitchen yard                                                                                             
the goddess of  the household and father’s rheumatics
that might irk her any time, to their own destiny,

the water also is coming to its native place and house
abandoning its favourite fish frogs and
its-own-shadow-like water weeds.

By a field was mother’s house
reaching there she turned ten years younger.

The water’s house is on the hill-slope  
and the water is ageless here
lies supine in its birthday suit below neermarudu
dances with the light
dreams of travelling in the aircraft of clouds
and landing in unknown places in the wind’s parachute

Sitting legs-down on the stony steps
a grandma-water combs the hair of its
pregnant grandchild.
A mother-water collapses head broken
on the tomb of its daughter
who’d returned long after
having been allured by the desert.
A poor water, married to some distant city
tells her mother granny and aunts her hardships
in the cement well, cries
and wakes up jarred by memories of infernal hooks
penetrating chest navel and vagina
and engine-tongues gulping dry.

An orphan-water at the hilltop prays:
Oh God, like you, we too don’t have a republic.
From darkness to darkness
from depth to depth
our exodus.
You don’t have temples to pray
And for us no water to quench our thirst.

Which among these transparent sisters
hopping at the perilous edge is the water of my well?
And amid these rocky creeks where is its house?

Once, even after the school re-opened
and father summoned,
my sister our toys our dead brother and I cried though
mother didn’t come back to our house.
Won’t the water too ever return to my well anymore?

* The border of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu where a number of rivulets join spurting through rocky creeks to form the river Kaveri. A well known tourist spot in South India.