From: Mandar Kulkarni <mandar@acenetworks.com>
To: mandar01@geocities.com <mandar01@geocities.com>
Subject: Fw: tara
Date: Saturday, April 10, 1999 10:15 PM


-----Original Message-----
From: TARA DESHPANDE <beetle@bom5.vsnl.net.in>
To: mandar@acenetworks.com <mandar@acenetworks.com>
Date: Thursday, April 08, 1999 4:16 PM
Subject: tara


>dear mandar
>
>this passage should be on the front lapel of the jacket.
>
>
>Stroll in the Woods
>
>Swollen tracks
>Well fed with spring rain
>Bounce back
>In burps and yawns.
>My shadow on your feet
>I follow,
>Seeing life between your knees.
>Homeward bound,
>You lead me.
>Protector of little hands
>And stockinged feet.
>Past the tigers,
>To the light,
>To the oaken house
>On the other side.
>The moon drops of her eyelashes,
>One, two,
>Into my field of dreams.
>If I had known
>I would have made a wish
>To see you again.
>
>Ranthambhor 1995
>
>Now there would be no more waiting, no more secret love making the smell
>of cigarettes in his hair, the soft fullness of his mouth and the
>gurgling feel of his neck on her breast as he laughed into her. She
>wondered what his wife must be like, the side of Rafiq that remained
>unacceptable till the end, burkha clad, passive and chosen. Did she know
>of his trysts with a jaded chain smoker over pernicious salami
>sandwiches and smuggled beer. There was nothing, not a sock in the
>laundry, a shirt left to hang on the cupboard, a letter with tell tale
>words, a birthday gift or an accidental photograph. Maybe there were
>some cigarette butts hidden in the recesses of the room or some words he
>had randomly scrawled on her telephone directory or a strand of hair on
>the pillow. Something to tell the world he had been a part of her life.
>The loss was beginning to hurt, creeping at her from the depths of her
>innards, crushing her with its inevitability. 
>
>Excerpt from Helen Eleven
