I don’t speak Konkani too well
Just a smattering
To get by, for example, vhodlo Goldflake
To let the shopkeeper
Know my preference
He looks at the number plate of my car
And asks about U.P.
I don’t know what to say—It’s a vhodlo state, I mumble
Pretty dry, and gets unbearably hot in the summers
The winters are intense too
The forests around the river where my parents live
have disappeared and no one really knows who
took them
On some days, you find teenage
Girls hanging from trees like large ripe
bottle gourds. And on other days
you find a woman in a field
lying like a bleeding melon.
I never visit the shop again.
In Konkani vhodlo means big.
