Swallowed whole by a kohl-rimmed eyed beast

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I have been swallowed in a gulp of heavy air saturated with spicy traffic jams and musky jasmine scents. I have been deafened by a cacophony of full-blaze car radios, full arms covered with banging glass and silver bracelets, klaxons and bell anklets. I have been engulfed in a world where listening to the silence between sounds has an even deeper sense than anywhere else. I have been kissed, bitten and swallowed whole by bright smiles, infectious laughs, and shouting and singing mouths. I have been stared out and enraptured by three billion kohl-rimmed eyes.

I have been run over by trucks, buses, taxis, rickshaws, bikes, chariots and wheelbarrows. I have been walked over by men, women and children, monkeys, cows, stray-dogs, rats and out of scale cockroaches. I have been plagued by polio, leprosy and elephantiasis, and afflicted with all possible and impossible body deformities. I have been amputated of my limbs and abandoned to my fate on a piece of wood on wheels, lost in a jungle of legs along children barely old enough to talk or walk, but old enough for panhandling. I have slipped headfirst into the bodily wastes of cows, stray-dogs, birds, humans and monkeys. I have been touched by the hands of the blind. I have been freed of my boundaries, disembodied, relieved of my personal space. I have been fully erased, absorbed, annexed, integrated, my ashes scattered in city dust.

I have been redrawn, reshaped, and recoloured with rainbows of scarlet reds, saffron oranges, neon yellows, emerald greens, jodhpur blues, electric purples and shocking pinks. I have been jewelled and embroidered with all shades of gold, copper and silver. I have grown new legs, multiple arms, and a third eye – and learned to fight and dance like a goddess. I have been bathed in rose water, my long honey blond hair braided with fresh jasmine flowers by women’s hands and turned into gold, my neck and wrists adorned with floral garlands and bracelets of lotus, carnations, lilies, hibiscus and marigolds. I have been fashioned into a living embodiment of beauty. My heart has exploded, its trillion cells dispersed between cacophonies and silences, sparkling like diamond dust into the heavy air.

I have been bitten, chewed and swallowed whole by a beast with three billion kohl-rimmed eyes. I have been spat out by animal-headed gods onto the pavement, among spats of saliva stained with blood-like betel and swarming with out of scale cockroaches. And reborn in a burst of unforeseen, unfathomable and nearly unbearable love.