Mother don’t please don’t Don’t cut off the sunlight with your saree spread across the sky blanching life’s green leaves Don’t say : You’re seventeen already Don’t flash your sari in the street Don’t make eyes at passers-by Don’t be a tomboy riding the winds Don’t play that tune again That your mother her mother and her mother had played on the snake-charmer’s flute into the ears of nitwits like me. I’m just spreading my hood. I’ll sink my fangs into someone and lose my venom. Let go make way. Circumambulating the holy plant in the yard making rangoli designs to see heaven turning up dead without light and air for god’s sake I can’t do it. Breaking out of the dam you’ve built swelling in a thunderstorm roaring through the land let me live very different from you Mother.