By Suneeta Peres da Costa

The strap of my bag had become
worn and tattered on my travels.
Could he mend it? I asked, bending
to show him and suddenly aware
I had no word for ‘mend’ in Hindi.
He gestured for to me to put it down.
Before him, his small workshop—
old bottles filled with zippers
and hooks, spools of thread, glue
and shoe polish, brushes and tools—
open to the dust of Sanjauli, passing
traffic, people out late, shopping
and enjoying Gandhi jayantī.
He gestured that he would have
to sever the entire strap in order to
re-join it. Again, I could not say ‘cut’,
so surrendered my will to the sky,
the Deodars below and the dexterity
with which he wielded a large pair
of iron scissors (by the sound of it
as recalcitrant as the nation-state).
Snipping neatly through the fibre,
cutting on either side of the tear
(when the damaged centre piece
fell away, he let it drop into the bag
where I would find it days later).
Doubling the fresh ends of leather
to join and face each other he
pushed a needle through, before
handing it back for me to inspect:
his twenty-rupee handy-work stronger,
if a little cruder, than any kind of Kantha,
Kashmiri or Lucknow embroidery.
He wasn’t taking chances, though, and
hammered the join to keep it in place.

NB: Gandhi jayantī—Gandhi’s birthday in India is a National Holiday .

This poem first appeared in the Indian Journal of Australian Studies 2017-2018, Vol 9. UGC Centre for Australian and New Zealand Studies Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, February 2020.

Suneeta Peres da Costa is an Australia playwright, poet and writer of Goan origin. Homework (Bloomsbury, 1999) was her debut novel followed by Saudade, on the legacies of Portuguese colonialism and the Goan diaspora in Angola, published by Giramondo in 2018, shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Her literary honours include a Fulbright Scholarship, the Australia Council for the Arts BR Whiting Residency, Rome, and an Asialink Arts Creative Exchange to India. 

Shimla Street by Damiya Farhana. Downloaded from Unsplash.com