Jaani…

by Maithreyi Karnoor

…as a favourite aunt
Called you—she took it upon herself to fawn over you the most
Even as you occupied your mother’s midriff 
As little more than a short longing
For she knew your father wanted girls
To not ride bicycles or wear silver anklets
Like unsubtle whores— 
Shortening a vedic marker to an endearment in a more poetic tongue, 
You, the gulab jamoon of her eyes’
Saccharine mist for a feminine child she never had, 
Took to food 
When lack of masculine predilections 
Left you undernourished. 

Languishing heavily on a stripped jamkhaana 
One hot, postprandial afternoon
You lumbered on through laboured breath
Of a drunk uncle who had read
Eighty five years
—eighty three clear and two blurred— 
On your palm  
Sending me into a panic. 

I have caught yours
And gathered my own manly let-downs in whisky glasses
And beer mugs and wine goblets,
Jugs, tumblers, bowls, cupped hands,
Eyes, lies, skies
Until age ceased to be a number.
While I trust my eyes 
To peer into yours, my sight may shake 
With the affliction 
Of the ever-shrinking nineteen years you have over me;
When you push his
Clear prediction—and two more in ‘coma splice’— 
The idiom of reciprocal tenderness may be worn
Out on the tongues I would have reaped by then.  
So, jaani, most beloved of aunts, 
You must defy uncles
Who are but mere men – 
More men.

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Maithreyi Karnoor is a writer and translator from India. This is the second time in a row that she is shortlisted for this prize. She was also shortlisted for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, and has won the Kuvempu Bhasha Bharati prize for translation. Her debut novel, Sylvia, will be published in 2021. She lives on a mango orchard in a village in her native state of Karnataka with her “family and other animals.”