A storm roared over the Bay of Bengal,
a raving bull charging with its horns.
It pounded through the long night
on our side of the planet
as we children huddled together
inside our fatherless bungalow.

We watched how our tin-roof ripped off.
First from its tie beams
and then the ceiling joists, one by one.
The rest of the house disappeared
as we covered our heads with our hands.

We saw our possessions take flight
– the Koran, War and Peace,
Gitanjali, The Tempest,
the clothes in the alna, shoes and sandals,
sisters’ dolls and brothers’ cricket bats.
We children couldn’t understand
what sins we’d committed,
but we asked for God’s forgiveness.
We thought the worst was over,

then came the giant waves
one after the other snatching us
from the arms of our mother,
tossing us like cheap wood
splintered by a strange passion.

The brutal water
from the mighty Himalayas
swept us away,
from home and mother.
Who would protect us now from God’s fury?

In the shipwrecked dawn
everything was different.
Trees had fallen, showing their great roots.
Cats and cattle lay dead on the ground.

Our bodies shrivelled with water,
shuddered like old engines.
Teeth rattled to the point of rapture,
longing for a few rays of warmth from the sun.
Finding ourselves trapped in a wind-sheared tree,
we looked for a round woman in a sari.
The sun came very late that day,
spreading sticky mud and fears.
We couldn’t hear the birds singing
or the muezzin calling for prayer
in the mosque of our landscape.
Silence, the new disease,
swept across our turbulent land.