1
That old story: Devdas, the stunning man, haunted
by Paro since childhood, the girl from the lower-caste family,
whose heart wobbles in her eyes, and the scheming mother,
who can only watch as her son loses his mind, then his life,
to alcohol, after ensuring the impossibility of their marriage –
the key that unlocks a world of pain between the lovers,
unravelling through a constellation of songs about love
lost, or permanently withheld, its symptoms, and its hold
even on the gods. Long before his end, he meets Chandramukhi,
the courtesan who dances for him through innumerable nights
of drunken distraction; hostility segues, in time, into respect,
even affection, although Paro runs loose in the dark of him.
And I long to be her, not Paro. I long to be Chandramukhi
lingering at the door after her advances have been declined,
her profession disparaged. I would enter her regal capacity
to accept, even defend, all that she may not hope to change
in this life, a poised dignity, shock, admiration and longing
crowding into her face. She does not turn away until Devdas
disappears into a night wet with stars, a consolatory
breeze stealing into her shimmering veil to waver there.
2
It is that moment in the film -
a tabla creeps in from the corners of the scene.
The courtesan’s fingers enter a dance,
enacting, in rhythm, a scarf
sliding off the head of a woman
upon meeting her god.
Devdas is in the audience, his gaze
burning her sari to bright vermillion.
A whore’s capacity to seduce
is like a eunuch’s influence in the Ming dynasty,
that strategic diversion from prejudice,
which shields them, even as they remain tethered,
love everywhere beyond the widening circles of their lives.
3
Devdas has her hair in his hand. The word
has been spoken, its meaning
coursing from his fingers to enter her skull
like an electric charge.
For a moment, it is my hair
sliding across his palm. The weightlessness
welling in my chest
is the joy of the marginalised, upon the spade
of a word striking home. What we were once
buried like treasure, and, without warning,
