I’d make curlicues and flourishes.
It would sound aloud
quite different from English. If.
My Mum said she topped the class
in Sanskrit; showed me old notebooks
in her schoolgirl script.
Poor little Anglo-Indian girl,
she didn't want to be mixed,
liked to be thought Colonial.
Me, I look white, but I'd have liked
long black hair, dark eyes,
and a smooth brown skin.
Product of my locality and time,
I disapprove of Colonial,
and I sometimes think
I'd like to have learned to write Sanskrit
in a schoolyard under banyan trees
in Puri in Orissa, long ago …
April Poem A Day Challenge 2014, day 14: "If I Were ..."
