Suraja Menon Roychowdhury
A Tale of Longing
ivory towers
beloved guardians
of our beliefs
When I was a little girl we would go to Thrissur in Kerala, also known as God’s Own Country, my “native place” … and see the majestic elephants that belong to the temples. Skirting carefully around their massive piles of dung, we’d get closer to their mammoth bodies to touch their leathery skins.
tiptoeing in
my heartbeat larger
than the beast
My mom (and aunts, and cousins) would tell me that stepping in elephant dung would make your hair grow long, black, wavy and lustrous, an impossible goal for an unfortunate Indian girl with brownish, curly, flyaway hair (when I was young we all aspired to LBWL hair).
wide-eyed
I take
one step forward
Today, many years later, I still have curly brown flyaway hair … and most of my beliefs are intact.
all grown up
at the temple
the elephant and I
look eye to eye
I’m still standing in her s**t.
About the Author
Suraja Roychowdhury is originally from India, now living in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is a Chinese Medicine practitioner who loves writing haiku, tanka, haibun, haiga, and other Oriental poetic forms.