Antipode

Up the escalator from the underground for a walk along streets on the banks of the Rochor Canal. Little India, says the map. Tekka to those at home. Past the hawker stands and fresh fruit, past the mangos, cut and cubed, past coconuts split open for a drink, and into an alley that doubles as a market, where twenty cents gets a handful of amla, grown on a Malacca tree

and which later I will rinse at my hotel,
learning this sour fruit needs steeping,
turmeric, red pepper

Then past the butcher stalls, where a knife comes down like a guillotine at work, past the kingfish and tiger prawns, whose South China Sea air lasts long after a turn at the corner. A hum of Tamil where the street opens, and the sun, clear after an afternoon shower, puts a misted white light above the road that steams like an open pot amongst murals and walls the color of flowers, then the floating sound of mantras, chanted

Om Gum Ganapataye Namaha, I recall

sounds from Shree Lakshminarayan Temple. A sidewalk where there’s a tailor like the captain of a fishing boat, pierced to the helm of his sewing machine, one long thread incising a man’s trousers while the man stands over the tailor, advising. Meanwhile a woman leans toward her cart, weaving

a garland of flowers

carnations yellow as lemons and orange as fruit picked in Nagpur. Honeybees swing against jasmine and rose, on garlands to be carried past the fabric shops and toy shops and placed at the foot of Ganesh, remover of obstacles.

Every few years, on a business trip,
I come through this crowd to take
a seat criss-cross

against a far wall of a temple, witness to other people’s rituals. Now a man no younger than I am enters and presses his body to the ground, prostrate, with a belief I wish I could have

If I have faith, my faith is in other people’s faith

and a hope they will continue believing. I carry nothing. I offer nothing. Others carry milk, cucumbers, carnation garlands—those flower garlands—

which, I admit, I want to take home,
whatever the cost.

If I could give anything to any god and get something in return, I would ask for more place like Tekka, where once, every few years, I am unburdened. Carefree. If, starting here, I bore a long tunnel through this earth, I would surface deep in a rainforest in the Amazon. Yasuní, it is called. Like Tekka, a place on the map where I can walk alone

and nobody owns my name.