hipsync blog

every move is a message

a tilt is an affirmation

a lift is an invitation

the syntax of gesture is dense

I have coloured in a path

between my heart and my third eye

and it expresses itself up my arm in henna

India is taking me apart and moving through me

I am inhaling the cremated

injesting trails of kin and caste

coated in a dust that’s carrying:
this crumbing temple,
that tilled earth,
hair of camel, defecation of cow, saree sweat, spit, urine, incense, sugar, spice…

it’s all a mixing vapour, moving osmotically through me—

the holy and the horrific

the putrid and the magnificent.

the pilgrims are parading to their pooja
and I’m standing to one side
keeping clear of their faith
side-stepping the decorated corpses
dodging the difficult question—”Why not married?”

the city of Shivas up my spine
om-chanting me into submission,
beaten with bindis, roped by rakhis,
the floral garland a noose around my lonely neck
(to be thrown in the ganga or fed to a cow)

all the hippy foreigners have the sideways head nod and the namaste
a hash pipe in their pocket and the lonely planet in their backpack
my camera is my shield, bouncing back their stares
at this ghostly apparition—the single white woman