PS_Winter_2015_PS Summer 12/2/14 9:33 PM Page 6
a l y s s a
s h a r r o c k
BRAHMAPUTRA RIVER
Pippin’s Unpeaceable Kingdom by Paul Gorka © 2014 he Brahmaputra River has trash that floats by like alligators and music notes. I never stop to watch it sing. Even traffic has the attitude of moving quickly. I feel like I am always driving over the Saraighat Bridge in the early morning to go home to my family. Most don’t cross the river this early in the morning so I have the job of waking up the dust and dogs only to have them chase me across. There are stains on my car seats from the tea I drank when a cow stopped in the middle of the road. It is very expensive to hit a cow so I allow my tea to spill instead. Every Indian man knows to drive behind a cow in the street. Most things in nature don’t have the ability to go back; they are always moving forward. This is why you drive behind a cow in the street. I work at a food cart in the city of
T
6
Guwahati; it is much busier there than my home village. To get to my family’s house I must leave the main city of Guwahati and cross the north bank of the river over the Saraighat bridge. I drive only a little way until I see my mother’s orange and purple kameez drying in the wind. My childhood home has a powder blue paint job 30 years old. My sister has matching blue eyes. Father says her eyes are a mistake; mother says they are a gift. My sister must marry soon because my father is getting old. My father’s face is greasy and he has the hands of an older man. My mother has the smile lines of an aged servant who doesn’t know better, but she has the wisdom of Goddess Kamakhya. My father has told me he will not be able to dance when she dies but he will make temples over the soft spots on her head. He worries that it won’t be good enough.
It is April fourteenth and I am taking the drive back to my home village very early in the morning for the Bihu. We celebrate the New Year with the cleaning of the house and thoughts; it is bad luck to be without family when the calendar starts over again. It is slow going to the bridge because many go home for the Bihu including cows, chickens, children, and elephants all crossing the river. Ahead of me are two elephants and a trainer who sits on the big one’s neck. The trainer has a bald head and equally bald mouth with rotted teeth. It is normal for elephants to cross the bridge in the sunrise; elephants must cross rivers too. Although I am sure they can play an Ekkalam longer than their trunks to sing with the music notes and alligators in the river, it is easier for the trainer to nap on the elephant’s back as they cross the bridge. Sometimes he will bring his son
