I have another nynamma, my father’s mother, a woman who died
																																before I was born. Nynamma refers to the mother of your father 
	and also to your mother’s grandmother on the paternal side. This 
	doubling conflates two people in my mind that differ, but it is 
	hard to keep them apart, to maintain their distinction. My 
	nynamma, not my mother’s, I never met, she, like the other, 
	exists in a picture, now on my father’s kitchen wall. Looking at it 
	you can see how it is colored over a constant sepia tone that they 
	have added rose to her cheeks. Behind them is a glow, an aura.



			The stories I hear from your sons and daughters 
			light your life, conceived mostly in the dark room 
			of what you have given as a legacy to my father’s 
			history. When you gave birth to Jhanse utha you 
			were reborn yourself as the mad woman, the third 
			child pushing you further apart, you never stopped 
			screaming, and your husband took you to the 
			hospital, where you lived for seven years. To 
			know that that is in all of us is what you have 
			written into your progeny, into each one of us.



		I am walking through the long hall of my home. 
		My son is at school, my daughter has grown seven 
		years without me. When I leave this hall will be 
		filled with pesticides and seeds, bags of fertilizer 
		for the farmers my husband’s customers with 
		white cloth around their hair and their loins, their 
		hands and arms wiry from the working of the 
		earth. He is with his mistress, pitche-amma, crazy 
		mother, and the hall with its blue walls that will be 
		covered with dust and years of dirt ends at the 
		well, where I will haul up today’s water like 
		yesterday and tomorrow.



			Knowing you died not by taking your own life 
			but by an accident, the misfortunate choice of where 
			you decided to put your foot, bare, exposed, on the 
			nail. The shot marks many of us have like my 
			mother on her arm is the mark of the polio 
			vaccination, or the tetanus or smallpox. If you had 
			had it you would have been safe, but the tetanus 
			grew in your foot, or is it your jaw, or your nerves, 
			lp,the spine. You died, not sane, but broken.




		Do I know my son, my daughter? What do I know 
		but the hands of these doctors? The filth on these 
		walls, the horror my family can’t speak. My cot on 
		the roof stares at the stars, the monkeys have come 
		to crouch on the walls. He is with her or he is here. 
		It is so hot, the mosquitoes hum outside the nets 
		wall, the house shakes when the last truck passes 
		by.



	We, the kids on the roof. My cousin Radhika tells me about her 
	homework for the day, in her hand is a diagram, a biological 
	illustration part by part of a dragonfly two hatch-marked eyes laid 
	flat on the page. Why would they make her memorize this? She 
	didn’t have that question. Her younger brother wants to go see 
	Podilamma. He jumps up and down frantically announcing where 
	she is. Radhika’s eyes are large, so like many in my family, like 
	nynamma, who’s round deep set eyes monopolized her face. 
	Radhika’s eyes are shaped more like squat almonds, I think, as 
	she looks towards where her brother points and says yes. She is a 
	little older and guides us. From the back of the shrine we walked 
	too, you can see two figures. One beautiful and behind her 
	another figure, the first Podilamma, made by a man who couldn’t 
	afford better than the rough hewn rock idol with the silver eyes 
	gazing at her devotees. The light in the altar reflects in such a 
	way that makes her eyes glow. Podilamma- the mother of Podili, 
	you frighten and charm your children, you are the doubled figure, 
	the two sided force. My cousins become reverent if only for a 
	few seconds before they jitter out of the small temple.



			The winter my sister called I thought of your hair. 
			In my notebooks, Radhika, I drew your ribbons in 
			orange surrounded by black hair, knowing you 
			were upset by suitors who refused you, knowing 
			you ate rat poison and died.



		My mother and father have left for business. The 
		day grows frightful am I ugly, unlovable? Why 
		have they not wanted me. No one will. I’m in the 
		blue hall with these pesticides, with this rat 
		poison. I just have to choose. I will choose. This 
		one is my bride, my love.



			Knowing it does not matter. I would love you still, 
			would marry you. If that was enough. Only if you 
			knew, I would commit incest for your life. The 
			poison made you convulse, constricted your 
			abdomen, sped your heart. I know you fought. 
			You had no idea.



				Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Pa
				Ma Pa Da Pa Da Ni Da Pa
				Ma Pa Da Pa Ma Ga Ri Sa
				Sa Sa Ni Da Ni
				Da Pa Da Pa Ma Pa Pa
				Ma Pa Da Pa Da Ni Da Pa
				Ma Pa Da Pa Ma Ga Ri Sa