Storyteller of the Week

Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca 

 

 

 Kavita and her father

 

Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca was born and raised in an Indian-Jewish family in Bombay. She is the daughter of the late poet Nissim Ezekiel. Her name means poem, and has its origins in Sanskrit, which is an ancient Indian language.

She currently lives in Calgary, Canada, and moved here from teaching in an international school nestled in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains in the North of India. Many of her poems are about the city of her birth, her Indian-Jewish heritage, and poems dedicated to her father.

She holds a Master’s Degree in English and French from the University of Bombay, and a Master’s Degree in Education from Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, England.

Her first book of poems, 'Family Sunday and other Poems', was published in 1989. Her poem ‘How to Light up a Poem', was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. ‘Light of The Sabbath’ is her recently published chapbook (2020). She has taught English, French and Spanish, in private schools in India and overseas, for over four decades.

Her poems have been published in several anthologies, including the Journal of Indian Literature published by The Sahitya Akademi, and the three issues of the Yearbooks of Indian Poetry.

 

 Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Ever since I read her poem, “Give Me Oil in My Lamp” on Verse-Virtual in June 2021, I was mesmerized by the poetry of Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca. It is clear she was born to write poetry and to enlighten us about her culture and her family. I am proud to publish her powerful poems that show who she is as a person.

  Loss 

Dedicated to my father who sadly passed away from Alzheimer’s in 2004

 

My father could not talk to me 

 Before he died

 Could not reach me in a distant land

 Twinned in spirit, separated by geography,

 I heard he remembered me

 Said he could never forget me

 Memory without a memory

 Not able to remember

 Not able to forget

 Trapped in a maze of loss.

 Two losses

 

 Thankfully,

He could not remember

What he had lost.

 

Homesick

The pandemic has changed nothing

It’s the norm to work from home.

 

The day begins in classic fashion.

 I hear pleasantries from

 His south-of-the-border colleagues, on a conference call.

 Headphones are uncomfortable

 I can’t move my desk to another space in the house

 It’s heavy with poetry and photographs, so I can’t help over-hearing.

 

 “Are you ok?”

 “Yes’’, he says,” couldn’t be better!’’

 We’ve learnt to say that

 Even if we feel terrible,

 That’s how they do it here.

 He continues…  

 “The trees are laden with mangoes

 Jackfruit hang perilously low

 Threatening to drag the branch down.

 The air is redolent with cardamom and pepper,

 Cashews dangle voluptuously in red, green and yellow,

 Surely it was the forbidden fruit of lore

 And not the staid apple.

 What more could I ask for?”

 

They laugh

 Knowing that here, only icicles dangle from trees and eaves troughs.

 He must be homesick

 Or he’s having an identity crisis

 No Garden of Eden here.

 He masks his longings for the fruit of a distant, bygone home

 With a bittersweet attempt at humour.

We are Indo-Canadians,

The Canadian part has still to kick in,

 It’s been twenty-two years.

 We cannot drop the hyphen

 We are proudly Indo-Canadians.

 

Please Sir No More

 An Australian Bush fire rages

 A Koala barely escapes the flames

 Bewildered, hot and thirsty.

 I watch the video from the safety of my home

 A compassionate firefighter feeds him water from his water bottle

 Then withdraws the bottle believing

 the koala’s thirst was quenched.

 I imagine the koala saying (reaching out again for the bottle with his paws)

“Please sir, I want some more,” like Oliver Twist, 

 

Meanwhile the trees burned, the sky turned to ash

Homes collapsed, people fled, the earth wept

 Oxygen turned to Carbon dioxide.

 We closed our windows and our minds

 To keep out the smoke.

I’m certain I heard the koala say

 “Please sir, no more.” He didn’t mean water.

Paper Boats
(After Rabindranath Tagore)

The falling rain fills my paper boat
It bobs on the flooded waters
To the left and to the right

Proud as a big ship on stormy seas,

 There are other boats too

  Metal boats with lighted candles

Some children can buy these,
Moonbeams dance on the water by night
The boat becomes a grand palace
With chandeliers and sparkling wine.

I have to go to work in a saree
The next day, the flood waters linger
I hoist six yards of material up to my waist
It's not considered elegant.
To wear a saree gracefully
You must cover your ankles,
The bus arrives splashing muddy water
My white saree turns brown.

The barely-clad urchins remain
Pushing the stalled cars for a few coins
The scene would be incomplete without the lads     
To hear their laughter, see them having fun
Is to give thanks for the simple joys in life

The paper boat has sunk
A moment’s pleasure filled my heart
When it sailed tall and high
It’s all I needed to brighten my world
I give thanks to my home
In a low lying area
Where the rain water floated the boat
Along with my imagination.

I don’t make paper boats anymore
I no longer wear sarees
Once, the car I was riding in here
Rumbled through a flash flood
I clung to hope and got home safely
Home was not in a low-lying area
I thought I saw the street urchins smiling.

A Lemon Tree Grows in India
(In celebration of 75 years of Indian Independence)

To remember is to preserve the lemon tree
outside my grandmother’s house
exactly as it was in childhood.
The large tree, contrast of green leafiness
with yellow lemons on every branch
Graced the window like a painting.
At night the cats fighting under the tree
sounded like crying children.
The darkness changed the yellow lemons black
Moonlight turned them back to yellow.

The lemon tree shares the beauty of the land
with the Mango, the Banyan, the Orange,
The Gulmohar, the Peepal and the Neem trees.
As the trees celebrate their treeness, so…

I ate food in the common thal with my Muslim neighbours
Fish in white sauce on banana leaves at Parsi weddings
Spicy Vindaloo in my East Indian friend’s home
Red Mutton curry at Jewish wedding celebrations
Idlis and Sambhar at my South Indian colleague’s

I want to grow a lemon tree here in a Northern clime
My neighbor tells me it might just
grow in my sunroom.
In the backyard it probably will
not take root.
For the winters are bitterly cold.

When the pine tree on my front lawn
Drops pine cones
I see lemons
It’s the only way to be back
Home in India.
Celebrating Diwali, Eid, Passover, Ganesh Chaturthi
The train journeys through the spectacular Indian landscape
The colours of home, the flavor of India.
 
I grew up in the India of one world.
When I return, it is to that world
I wish to retrace my footsteps.

“Homesick” was published in The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, ) “Loss” in the Poetry India, “Please Sir No More” in  Climate At Crosswords from Writers international Network, Canada,  "Paper Boats" was featured in a special section of Poetry in SETU magazine, (out of Pittsburg) dedicated to the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore and  "A Lemon Tree Grows in India" was published in the Rhetorica Journal, brought out by the University of Lucknow in India.

To read Kavita’s poem about her grandmother on Storyteller Review:

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2023/11/special-edition.html