An ephemeral throbbing sensation
in the heartland of my heritage
from unbelonging
I move to belonging

The temple's dazzling gopurams glitter
Shiva Vishnu Muruga Ganesha
are displayed in harlequin silken robes
gesturing me to kneel in obeisance
a bare-chested priest intones mantras
kindling the golden sacrificial Agni
an angelus to his rites

Outside
the tight gnarled dense seedy arterial streets
are clotted with gaudy bazaars
boasting their stench of bilious manure
a waxen woman seeks the shade of a trishaw
her bulk emaciating the Alzheimer-struck slave
toiling rustics stagger with their bane of blighted harvests
bewailing their decrepitude
consumptive mothers crawl out of their cramped mud-huts
their withered breasts
unbeckoning to the parched throats of dehydrated infants
the seared jaundiced skin of a naked child festering with pustules
burns under the sun's despotic rays
distempered boars and rabid dogs
ungainly in their distended abdomens
partake in the revelry

leprous syphilitic
cads vagabond roughnecks hoods delinquents
all bear the angst of destitution
their hearts carved out of gall

these then are the deranged faces
of the Land's inglorious philistines

the heart-wrenching sights
through which my blood flows