There must be fire, over the touch of sandalwood.
There will be a ghat with water, corrupted, floating
through mud-swirls, carrying bodies
too poor to be burnt.
There will be the outcastes,
ashes flying on bodies from the flickering
multitudes of corpses like mine;
the darkness will gleam through the moonless night
as they poke the cinders to retrieve a ring...
perhaps a tooth, still melting like honey,
they will rake in my bones, stir my shattered skull
and find a way to live. My spirit will hover
over sons with shaven heads,
chilly in cotton dhotis, sleeping on cement;
there will be thousands of pleas
on leaf boats floating
lighting up the Ganges like a watery constellation.

Dipika Mukherjee is the editor of two collections of short stories from Malaysia and Singapore; The Merlion and Hibiscus in 2002, and Silverfish New Writing in 2006. Her poems have been published in Hong Kong, the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as broadcast over Singapore Public Radio. She currently teaches Creative Writing in Amsterdam.