I take a train

 into my brain
   and there I find
mango orchards

round hay stacks
    in stepped paddy fields

narrow tarred roads
  winding around black-soiled fields
lush with fresh saplings of a ground-cover crop
    probably peanuts

i am surprised to find
on a plateau
   deep in my brain
a tree with pink flowers
sending petals to a cellphone tower

(but who’s making calls in my brain?)

large tracts of my brain
are given over to yellowing bulrushes
     stretching out to the horizon
dotted with short prickly trees
growing on small earth mounds

there are fields in my brain
being worked on by broken women
with magical, healing vaginas
   and large herds of nilgai
sit in the shade of babul trees
  watching the women

bright mustard fields
   grow at the feet of gnarled rocky cliffs
on the edges of small, sleepy towns
  with names like ‘Dumariya’

There are deep gullies filled with weeds
 and clear water running in shallow streams
and on the forested banks of the vast river
  running though my brain
lives a woman made of two syllables

she suddenly gets up
   lifts her shirt and rubs her breasts
against the smoothened bark of the ancient tree
  that grows deep inside my brain. 


__
Salil Chaturvedi
salilwheels@gmail.com