In which climate will you celebrate?

By Anita Nahal

In which climate will you celebrate life and festivals? Fake? Reality? Make believe? Fool’s paradise? Another planet? An artificial bubble? Or on a cleansed Earth, your home, that you chose to set, right?

Delhi, Washington DC, anywhere, climate is a far, far removed stepchild. Kind of shunned, alone and tattered, stained. Fumes, gases, plastic, paper, poop and vomit thrown and regurgitated recklessly into waters, air, ground, our home’s core. Festivals or the usual humdrum of life, the same chars and corroding in alleys of all. My eyes pinch, skin scalds, the coughing, scratching in my throat and my heartbeats pounding in my ear when all is silent. Its dark outside and inside as we roam in circles of asphyxiation. Pulling, jostling, pushing. “Where are you, mama?” I hear my son’s reassuring voice shaking me from my reverie to the sights of huge sparkles bursting in myriad colors and designs above the Washington monument. Contained, glorious, royal and safe. I believe. As I try to comfort myself, images of tiny children’s hands blistered in smoky, closed, sweat shops appear in the residue of the firecrackers. I bask in the knowledge of citizenship achieved and past discarded as I take in the ethereal reflections of fire bursts in the Potomac. Past discarded? My roots pulled and thrown askance? I still carry. I still carry. I still carry the smells, the sights, the memories. I still celebrate. I still celebrate. I still celebrate the festivals of past lives added on with a smidge of the different. There will be no end to festivities, festivals or roots. It’s intentional elongating. It’s intentional retaining. Intentional remembering. Intentional celebrating. Only Earth needs to be watered, nurtured and saved. Why do we clean our bodies and pollute the body of Earth? Why do our personal temples worship human ones if there is disparity, cruelty, hate and violence? Edifices of mortar are layered with shame.

In which climate will you celebrate life and festivals? Fake? Reality? Make believe? Fool’s paradise? Another planet? An artificial bubble? Or on a cleansed Earth, your home, that you chose to set, right?

 Potomac: Name of the river that weaves between Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland 

Anita Nahal is a professor, poet, short story writer and children’s writer. She teaches at the University of the District of Columbia, Washington DC. Nahal has two books of poetry, one book of flash fictions and three children’s books to her credit, besides an edited poetry anthology. Her writings have appeared in journals in the US, UK, Asia and Australia. Nahal is the daughter of novelist Chaman Nahal and educationist Sudarshna Nahal. More on her at: https://anitanahal.wixsite.com/anitanahal

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