Shikha Malaviya considers herself a morpher, having been born in the U.K. and raised in the U.S. and India. She is founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Project, an initiative to document, preserve and promote the legacy of modern Indian poetry. Her book of poems, Geography of Tongues, was launched in December 2013. Shikha is deeply involved in the poetry community through events/initiatives such as organizing ‘100 Thousand Poets for Change—Bangalore’ in 2012 and 2013; co-founding ‘Poetry in Public India,’ a movement to bring powerful verse by Indian women to public places across India; and giving a TEDx talk on ‘Poetry in Daily Life’ at TEDx Golf Links Park, Bangalore, 2013. Shikha’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She also founded Monsoon Magazine, the first South Asian literary magazine on the web. Shikha graduated from the University of Minnesota with BA and MA degrees in creative writing, mass communications and liberal studies. Read a few poems from the collection below. Read her complete interview here.
LINGUA FRANCA
1.
The voice of a little girl saying
‘Papa’s got big legs,
Papa’s got big teeth’
in a crisp British accent
and from behind her shoulder
a little boy with
a little-boy accent
insisting he wants
to say hello
hello, helloooooo
and doesn’t realize
he already has
The tape recorder has caught it all
2.
Dadi speaks to us in Hindi so that
we will learn, simple things like
come here—yahaanaao
go there—wahaanjao
eat food—khaanakhao
bring that book—pustaklao
and we do
The Devnagari script
enclosed
with a straight roof
and a wall to support the sides
each alphabet leaning in
turning
phonetic tricks
uh-aa, e-ee, oo-ooo
ka, kha, ga, gha, na
our tongues performing
calisthenics
all of us partaking
in this linguistic
Olympics
going for the gold
3.
I remember Uncle Tom’s Cabin
not because it was a sad story
not because Uncle Tom dies
but because I read it
in Hindi
Tom Kaka kiKutiya
I would repeat the title
over and over again
because it sounded funny
and because kutiya mispronounced
meant bitch
and it all sounded
onomatopoeic
though it was only
alliteration
I graduated from picture alphabet books
where the Hindi vowel ‘uh’
had a round red pomegranate next to it
and ‘aa’ had a giant orange-colored mango
with a small green leaf on its stem
hungry for all the vowels
the fruit within them
tangy and sour
I plucked them off the page
and into my mouth
Nominated for the Pushcart Prize:
LIKE ANY GOOD INDIAN
After Brynn Saito’s ‘Like Any Good American’
I turn my face with acute awareness not giving them
even an eyelash I give my phone unwanted attention
scanning numbers friends who don’t matter
I count down the traffic light 59-58-57 seconds then feign sleep
knuckles wrap against tinted glass sometimes they call out
mother sometimes sister hair matted mussed up on purpose
at intersections if I should look they’ll pull out my corneas
with a grimace push their scent on my tinted car window
make me clutch my purse tighter half opened palm
the size of my heart beating like a silver coin
that I won’t give because it spoils them
THIS JUST IN
In News of the Weird, a thirty-year-old woman was hospitalized in Sunnyvale, California, this week, when her tongue froze in the process of switching accents. No word yet on which languages she was switching between. Witnesses at the scene say it was a challenging transition between talking with an ethnic shopkeeper, the woman’s child, and a friend, who all spoke in different tongues. This is the first case of what doctors refer to as ‘Lingua Gelatio,’ in the state of California, after three cases were reported in New York earlier this year. Bi-lingual and tri-lingual people are urged to exercise caution, as there is no known cure for Lingua Gelatio. The hospitalized woman is currently undergoing rehabilitation and communicates via written messages, hand gestures and grunts.