Excerpts from Foreign Madam and the White Yogi, a verse novel
Setting and Characters: Adelaide, Australia. Two people (Margot and Yogi) meet through a common interest in yoga-meditation groups. His name is a 'Himalayan Centre' nick-name. They soon marry and despite the complications of children from a previous marriage (hers - Margot's) they embark on a world trip that will lead them to teach in a village school in rural Northern India on the banks of the Ganges nearby Hastinapur, the ancient site of the ruling dynasty depicted in the Mahabharata.
Audio episodes
Ch 4.9
This home had its creaky floor...
a cotton futon was spread for two
to hug in darkness and adore
those loving holds like jujitsu.
She was glad to find a warrior
to wrestle with her, hand to hand,
catch and release, and then encore,
doing things that should be banned.
Love employed its own technique.
At last she'd found a paramour
not too quick, but not too weak.
Good sex is moving with one's spouse,
forgetting when the pine boards creak,
until a child cries in the house.
5.4
Leaving Adelaide on S.I.A.*
Margot sat with each young belle
on the window aisle marked HJK,
she in the middle of Paul and Adele.
Yogi sat in quarantine.
Booking late, centre aisles had gone.
The seating plan, a poker machine
had dealt three queens, while loser lemon
was souring in 40G.
Had stepfather fate waved a hard wand
against him joining the family?
Away from Papa, the girls might bond,
or so he'd hoped as the plane took off.
Now, strait-jacketed in a seat,
he swallowed and suppressed a cough,
climbing to thirty thousand feet.
He wanted to reach across the aisle,
but fierce Pauline sat guarding Mum.
Common sense thought: This is a trial.
Kowtow Yogi, to whatever may come.
*SIA. Singapore Airlines.
5.2
The Singapore Girl floated in long attire
with tongs and steaming towels wound tight as egg rolls,
shuffled to and fro in a blue kebaya
haute couture by Pierre Balmain.
While Yogi
drank tomato juice with a slice of lemon,
she did the food-tray sleight of hand, a pro
who served his meal with practised Asian meekness,
soft before the male as per four months of training.
Margot's eyebrow rose peripherally,
critical of the women’s French-twist bun:
a Chinese sweet-thing with her learned deportment
like the other lipsticked hairdos on this flight --
identical toe-nails, red in batik slippers,
rosebud lips, shaped eyebrows, blue eyeshadow,
the Asian face that launched a thousand jets
was a hot icon. She had read the piece
still spread upon her multi-tasking lap.
With feminist savvy she shot a pointed glance
as he lapped up this Oriental study
in soft sell manners ready to fetch and carry.
She saw the universal vulnerability
and all the men that she had ever known --
the way two husbands had been sirened off,
adroitly snatched by girl servility,
like this charm offensive being coyly launched
five miles above the earth.
Who recruits who?
Margot thought of the cleverness in the motto -
Singapore Girl, you're a great way to fly,
though silver birds are owned by corporate men
who print the glossy KrisWorld inflight spread
with pics of 'her' in Moscow, New York, London.
Margot played a hand from the bag of tricks,
packed in for her lapins, still wide awake.
They laughed at her, now stuck with the final card
yelling "Old Maid." Yes, she had lost the game.
Old maid, indeed, she smiled. Young maids are danger.
5.3
A chase of taxis around a tough metropolis,
twenty five thousand, twenty four hours, week after week
they zip down expressway paradise, flecked with purple orchids,
and flame trees fronting apartments to the CBD,
through incense lanes detouring, tight by Rochor Road,
Kollywood-Bollywood blaring through rainbow shopfronts
peddling elephant brass chunks of the Sub-continent.
Yogi is budgeting a bite of Little India,
training his spice girls for Big India coming.
King of the melodrama, three queens there in the back,
leaning into a corner he apprehends blue neon
flashing Madraas Hotel on the bitumen street.
"This is the one? he asks.
“Corr-ect,” says the driver.
6.1
The family touched down
in Motor City, wheels scudding
on the ice-swept tarmac.
Detroit. In-laws. Christmas.
Two nieces from the red continent.
Back seat. Big eyes. First snow.
Yogi helped Aunt Miriam
stow luggage in the SUV. Slam
of doors. Turn of ignition.
They heard Aunt Miriam
on the cell phone with Cousin
Dalby, "Where are you...
...MacDonalds? Ok. Make sure
you're home by seven. Aunt
Margaret and all are here."
The eyes of the girls lit up.
Nosh is big time love or hate,
junk food, their kid taboo.
The shiny SUV roared on
through the inner city: shops
derelict, schools all smashed,
crack houses, drunks in overcoats
hunchbacked in slush. The girls
had never seen the New World.
Devil’s Night riots were here,
frozen in time. Margot reflected,
"Things haven't changed. It's still
a zombie zone." Miriam slammed
her automatic foot. The girls gasped,
bracing themselves, necks jerking
like cloth dollies. Shock and silence.
They peer through a port-hole of mist
at a three-man kicking dance,
booting one more black man
into Kingdom Come. The girls
are scared. What is next?
7.1
an Atlantic crossing by air
a touch down at Gatwick
a cockney Indian giving directions
a chrome train south to Sussex
a mess of bags kids passengers
a red brick city going green
a journey winding toward sunset
a pulling in at Chichester Station
a ticking taxi to a country cottage
an old brass key beneath the mat
a hill of bags dumped in the hall
a welcome note under the fruit bowl
a rag-doll child carried upstairs
another sleepwalked to her bed
a ceramic lamp left on between them
a creaky, slow descent downstairs
a fire built up from the woodbox
a cup of tomato soup with rye
a quiet relax in front of the fire
a slowing down to red coals
a chiming clock, its after-silence
a glowing stick of Nag Champa
a nestling into forgetting
two souls asleep on a velvet sofa
7.9
Lunch and double ice-cream. A signpost walk
to museums, pubs, a flower show, cream tea,
an hour's walk around the Roman wall
that's been five metres tall two thousand years.
The girls were not adventurers - just bored
and scuffed their sneaker heels upon the path,
this history stroll far from Adelaide,
talking about Papa.
"Can we call later?
I'm tired, Mummy," moaned Pauline. "Let's go!"
while Adele played Glass Eyes. Poor Margaret
knew the game was up. It was time to get
a sleepy cab at the Square.
Away they went.
Ms Walkman hardly saw the languid river.
Ms Glass Eyes paid no heed to the bumpy bridge,
stone-masoned, where those haloes of black gnats
were fish-food hour upon the village slime.
A man was casting a fly beyond the midges.
"Stop the cab," said Yogi.
"Do we have to?"
The girls complained.
"For a second," he said.
The driver slowed. Yogi wound down his window
to see the line whiplash -- a leaping fish
was making its escape across the river.
The fisherman worked his line. Soon all heard
the scream of the reel as tussle then took place.
The fish lunged to the right, until the angler
checked him. Then he dived, causing the rod
to dip, but the spring of it was strong.
He had to rise, shattering the plate-glass
surface, its back smacking like a hand,
then plunged down deep, grappling with coated line
taut against its body. The fish fought on,
diving to gain leverage with its tail
as if to ram the enemy. But it grew tired.
Soon all was over. The fisherman reeled in
and scooped up shining silver in the net.
"He caught it, Mummy!" said the fierce Pauline.
Adele was silent. She was ever thoughtful,
while Yogi was remembering his father ––
the fisherman with an outdoors sporty ego
so deft and quick, unlike inadequate Yogi.
They once went fishing up the Shoalhaven River.
Yogi caught nothing, while the Expert coaxed
a big brown trout from its hide-hole with a spinner
cast out and dropped below the spitting falls.
The fish was himself thrashing again against
superior Dad.
He flinched, winding the window.
"Let's go, Mate," he said, and soon the cabbie
puttered homebound into Dimple Lane.
8.10
Le Château de Faisan was there,
between a hydrant and a lamp light.
"You sure I won't get in your hair?
My presence might be impolite."
She started to laugh. "That goes for me.
They think I did some devil dance
and sirened their son across the sea
away from their beloved France."
The girls were waiting. "Mummy, here!"
A long oak table in the corner.
Pheasants were flying everywhere,
framed against the red wallpaper.
"Bonjour Monsieur, Madame, Marie."
(She was so ready to skip town.)
"C'est mon mari - Yogi. He
n'a pas de français." Five frown.
The bonjour ritual continues:
the French are French: no one is rude -
they kiss each cheek and hands effuse.
Nearby, America sounds crude.
He felt left out and let eyes ascend
to the fat pheasant in each frame.
Banished to the non-French end,
the family played the dining game.
Bouillabaisse, boeuf Bourguignon;
but what's for Margaret and her Yogi?
Now it comes: un tarte d'oignon.
The waiter said “Bon appetit!”
Margaret on the Left Bank, flanked
by worn-out girls was dying to leave;
but opposite the Giroux had yanked
talk back to Pierre. She must deceive
them - hiding how they pulled apart:
the smash-years of his heavy hand,
the dried up sea-sponge of her heart,
the boat of her body left un-manned.
She could not sprinkle salt and pepper,
or spill old bitterness like brown sauce
and sat there feeling like a leper,
seen as the cause of a son's divorce.
She couldn't defend old kiss and tell
in front of daughters in love with Dad.
How so - Giroux - Paul and Adele
both seemed. She felt both glad and sad.
Margot had done what a mum should do -
borne the slur from Pierre's proud clan
so that her girls made their debut
with where their faces half began.
This was the last time they would meet,
sensed Giroux and Margaret.
Her Paris years were now complete.
She wouldn't be back, but the girls were set.
She signalled to her Yogi, who
returned a gentle nudge below.
"Au revoir." They were almost through.
They hit the street and flakes of snow.
9.1
the flights are on the tarmacs
the hostesses are in their saris
the namastes are in the palms
the sea of heads is in the halls
the chewing hours are in the queues
the ennui is sour in the armpits
the bags are returning on the belts
the beckoning is in the fingers
the official chop is in the passports
The airport is half-way between the lokas
the steel corrals are channelling the herds
the sharks swim in the taxi hoards
inside is comfort
outside is chaos
Bazaar Time, New Delhi with SLR
Batter squirted, flipped and flapped, then scooped on a grill to drip dry.
Hot plates of epic work ethic, and boiling cauldrons of ground-nut oil. Yes, click.
Dosas, samosas, kachoris, pakoras and jalebi coils orange in syrup. “See?"
"Round-round stop,” says the deep-fry wallah. Try one hot, Madam!" Click.
Follow the sweet dhoop trail of smoke that leads to the peanut-mountain,
pyramids of oranges, apples and guavas pink-salted with masala. Quick, click.
Try a corn-cob charcoal barbeque rained down on by juice of the lime tree.
Choose a green coconut, and after trepanning suck soul-whey through a blue straw.
Let loose all your vampire lust upon the pomegranate’s purple blood.
Allow your hand to stray among gold breasts of the mangoes blessed by the rose.
Pity pouting daughters now lamb-happy bleaters in the street of sacred cows.
“Mummy, look a McDonalds!” These Big Macs are all McVeggie inside. Click. Click.
Audio episodes
Ch 4.9
This home had its creaky floor...
a cotton futon was spread for two
to hug in darkness and adore
those loving holds like jujitsu.
She was glad to find a warrior
to wrestle with her, hand to hand,
catch and release, and then encore,
doing things that should be banned.
Love employed its own technique.
At last she'd found a paramour
not too quick, but not too weak.
Good sex is moving with one's spouse,
forgetting when the pine boards creak,
until a child cries in the house.
5.4
Leaving Adelaide on S.I.A.*
Margot sat with each young belle
on the window aisle marked HJK,
she in the middle of Paul and Adele.
Yogi sat in quarantine.
Booking late, centre aisles had gone.
The seating plan, a poker machine
had dealt three queens, while loser lemon
was souring in 40G.
Had stepfather fate waved a hard wand
against him joining the family?
Away from Papa, the girls might bond,
or so he'd hoped as the plane took off.
Now, strait-jacketed in a seat,
he swallowed and suppressed a cough,
climbing to thirty thousand feet.
He wanted to reach across the aisle,
but fierce Pauline sat guarding Mum.
Common sense thought: This is a trial.
Kowtow Yogi, to whatever may come.
*SIA. Singapore Airlines.
5.2
The Singapore Girl floated in long attire
with tongs and steaming towels wound tight as egg rolls,
shuffled to and fro in a blue kebaya
haute couture by Pierre Balmain.
While Yogi
drank tomato juice with a slice of lemon,
she did the food-tray sleight of hand, a pro
who served his meal with practised Asian meekness,
soft before the male as per four months of training.
Margot's eyebrow rose peripherally,
critical of the women’s French-twist bun:
a Chinese sweet-thing with her learned deportment
like the other lipsticked hairdos on this flight --
identical toe-nails, red in batik slippers,
rosebud lips, shaped eyebrows, blue eyeshadow,
the Asian face that launched a thousand jets
was a hot icon. She had read the piece
still spread upon her multi-tasking lap.
With feminist savvy she shot a pointed glance
as he lapped up this Oriental study
in soft sell manners ready to fetch and carry.
She saw the universal vulnerability
and all the men that she had ever known --
the way two husbands had been sirened off,
adroitly snatched by girl servility,
like this charm offensive being coyly launched
five miles above the earth.
Who recruits who?
Margot thought of the cleverness in the motto -
Singapore Girl, you're a great way to fly,
though silver birds are owned by corporate men
who print the glossy KrisWorld inflight spread
with pics of 'her' in Moscow, New York, London.
Margot played a hand from the bag of tricks,
packed in for her lapins, still wide awake.
They laughed at her, now stuck with the final card
yelling "Old Maid." Yes, she had lost the game.
Old maid, indeed, she smiled. Young maids are danger.
5.3
A chase of taxis around a tough metropolis,
twenty five thousand, twenty four hours, week after week
they zip down expressway paradise, flecked with purple orchids,
and flame trees fronting apartments to the CBD,
through incense lanes detouring, tight by Rochor Road,
Kollywood-Bollywood blaring through rainbow shopfronts
peddling elephant brass chunks of the Sub-continent.
Yogi is budgeting a bite of Little India,
training his spice girls for Big India coming.
King of the melodrama, three queens there in the back,
leaning into a corner he apprehends blue neon
flashing Madraas Hotel on the bitumen street.
"This is the one? he asks.
“Corr-ect,” says the driver.
6.1
The family touched down
in Motor City, wheels scudding
on the ice-swept tarmac.
Detroit. In-laws. Christmas.
Two nieces from the red continent.
Back seat. Big eyes. First snow.
Yogi helped Aunt Miriam
stow luggage in the SUV. Slam
of doors. Turn of ignition.
They heard Aunt Miriam
on the cell phone with Cousin
Dalby, "Where are you...
...MacDonalds? Ok. Make sure
you're home by seven. Aunt
Margaret and all are here."
The eyes of the girls lit up.
Nosh is big time love or hate,
junk food, their kid taboo.
The shiny SUV roared on
through the inner city: shops
derelict, schools all smashed,
crack houses, drunks in overcoats
hunchbacked in slush. The girls
had never seen the New World.
Devil’s Night riots were here,
frozen in time. Margot reflected,
"Things haven't changed. It's still
a zombie zone." Miriam slammed
her automatic foot. The girls gasped,
bracing themselves, necks jerking
like cloth dollies. Shock and silence.
They peer through a port-hole of mist
at a three-man kicking dance,
booting one more black man
into Kingdom Come. The girls
are scared. What is next?
7.1
an Atlantic crossing by air
a touch down at Gatwick
a cockney Indian giving directions
a chrome train south to Sussex
a mess of bags kids passengers
a red brick city going green
a journey winding toward sunset
a pulling in at Chichester Station
a ticking taxi to a country cottage
an old brass key beneath the mat
a hill of bags dumped in the hall
a welcome note under the fruit bowl
a rag-doll child carried upstairs
another sleepwalked to her bed
a ceramic lamp left on between them
a creaky, slow descent downstairs
a fire built up from the woodbox
a cup of tomato soup with rye
a quiet relax in front of the fire
a slowing down to red coals
a chiming clock, its after-silence
a glowing stick of Nag Champa
a nestling into forgetting
two souls asleep on a velvet sofa
7.9
Lunch and double ice-cream. A signpost walk
to museums, pubs, a flower show, cream tea,
an hour's walk around the Roman wall
that's been five metres tall two thousand years.
The girls were not adventurers - just bored
and scuffed their sneaker heels upon the path,
this history stroll far from Adelaide,
talking about Papa.
"Can we call later?
I'm tired, Mummy," moaned Pauline. "Let's go!"
while Adele played Glass Eyes. Poor Margaret
knew the game was up. It was time to get
a sleepy cab at the Square.
Away they went.
Ms Walkman hardly saw the languid river.
Ms Glass Eyes paid no heed to the bumpy bridge,
stone-masoned, where those haloes of black gnats
were fish-food hour upon the village slime.
A man was casting a fly beyond the midges.
"Stop the cab," said Yogi.
"Do we have to?"
The girls complained.
"For a second," he said.
The driver slowed. Yogi wound down his window
to see the line whiplash -- a leaping fish
was making its escape across the river.
The fisherman worked his line. Soon all heard
the scream of the reel as tussle then took place.
The fish lunged to the right, until the angler
checked him. Then he dived, causing the rod
to dip, but the spring of it was strong.
He had to rise, shattering the plate-glass
surface, its back smacking like a hand,
then plunged down deep, grappling with coated line
taut against its body. The fish fought on,
diving to gain leverage with its tail
as if to ram the enemy. But it grew tired.
Soon all was over. The fisherman reeled in
and scooped up shining silver in the net.
"He caught it, Mummy!" said the fierce Pauline.
Adele was silent. She was ever thoughtful,
while Yogi was remembering his father ––
the fisherman with an outdoors sporty ego
so deft and quick, unlike inadequate Yogi.
They once went fishing up the Shoalhaven River.
Yogi caught nothing, while the Expert coaxed
a big brown trout from its hide-hole with a spinner
cast out and dropped below the spitting falls.
The fish was himself thrashing again against
superior Dad.
He flinched, winding the window.
"Let's go, Mate," he said, and soon the cabbie
puttered homebound into Dimple Lane.
8.10
Le Château de Faisan was there,
between a hydrant and a lamp light.
"You sure I won't get in your hair?
My presence might be impolite."
She started to laugh. "That goes for me.
They think I did some devil dance
and sirened their son across the sea
away from their beloved France."
The girls were waiting. "Mummy, here!"
A long oak table in the corner.
Pheasants were flying everywhere,
framed against the red wallpaper.
"Bonjour Monsieur, Madame, Marie."
(She was so ready to skip town.)
"C'est mon mari - Yogi. He
n'a pas de français." Five frown.
The bonjour ritual continues:
the French are French: no one is rude -
they kiss each cheek and hands effuse.
Nearby, America sounds crude.
He felt left out and let eyes ascend
to the fat pheasant in each frame.
Banished to the non-French end,
the family played the dining game.
Bouillabaisse, boeuf Bourguignon;
but what's for Margaret and her Yogi?
Now it comes: un tarte d'oignon.
The waiter said “Bon appetit!”
Margaret on the Left Bank, flanked
by worn-out girls was dying to leave;
but opposite the Giroux had yanked
talk back to Pierre. She must deceive
them - hiding how they pulled apart:
the smash-years of his heavy hand,
the dried up sea-sponge of her heart,
the boat of her body left un-manned.
She could not sprinkle salt and pepper,
or spill old bitterness like brown sauce
and sat there feeling like a leper,
seen as the cause of a son's divorce.
She couldn't defend old kiss and tell
in front of daughters in love with Dad.
How so - Giroux - Paul and Adele
both seemed. She felt both glad and sad.
Margot had done what a mum should do -
borne the slur from Pierre's proud clan
so that her girls made their debut
with where their faces half began.
This was the last time they would meet,
sensed Giroux and Margaret.
Her Paris years were now complete.
She wouldn't be back, but the girls were set.
She signalled to her Yogi, who
returned a gentle nudge below.
"Au revoir." They were almost through.
They hit the street and flakes of snow.
9.1
the flights are on the tarmacs
the hostesses are in their saris
the namastes are in the palms
the sea of heads is in the halls
the chewing hours are in the queues
the ennui is sour in the armpits
the bags are returning on the belts
the beckoning is in the fingers
the official chop is in the passports
The airport is half-way between the lokas
the steel corrals are channelling the herds
the sharks swim in the taxi hoards
inside is comfort
outside is chaos
Bazaar Time, New Delhi with SLR
Batter squirted, flipped and flapped, then scooped on a grill to drip dry.
Hot plates of epic work ethic, and boiling cauldrons of ground-nut oil. Yes, click.
Dosas, samosas, kachoris, pakoras and jalebi coils orange in syrup. “See?"
"Round-round stop,” says the deep-fry wallah. Try one hot, Madam!" Click.
Follow the sweet dhoop trail of smoke that leads to the peanut-mountain,
pyramids of oranges, apples and guavas pink-salted with masala. Quick, click.
Try a corn-cob charcoal barbeque rained down on by juice of the lime tree.
Choose a green coconut, and after trepanning suck soul-whey through a blue straw.
Let loose all your vampire lust upon the pomegranate’s purple blood.
Allow your hand to stray among gold breasts of the mangoes blessed by the rose.
Pity pouting daughters now lamb-happy bleaters in the street of sacred cows.
“Mummy, look a McDonalds!” These Big Macs are all McVeggie inside. Click. Click.