Poetry Reads: Bhang Diary by Snehith Kumbla

Bhang Diary 

by Snehith Kumbla

when I laugh,

the whole body,

one big mouth

of laughter

when I sing,

words emit

like a

seismograph

If I squat, drowsy,

all my teeth are

melting down

a whirlpool

walk, look back

and wonder,

whose vanishing

footsteps

are they,

meanwhile,

my as-lost-as-me

friends, frantic for

shade in the sun,

and can't find it

together, like a

splash of colours,

we lie in the garden

for the madness to pass

later, at home they ask

about the blood red

eyes, I say, it was

some colour, some holi

^^

(Bhang Diary was first published in the Mar-Apr 2012 issue of Reading Hour magazine.)

Drinking bhang, a delicious beverage made from the leaves of the cannabis plant, is an adventurous, boisterous tradition on Holi, the festival of colours in India. 

I was slurring through the first three lines of a song after my first glass of bhang a decade and a half ago. My well-meaning friends kept persuading me to eat sweets after that first glass, assuring me that it helps lessen the effect. I remember thinking these are really good friends, who were ensuring that I don't get drowsy. But I was the evening entertainment an hour later, slurring through Kabhi Kabhi Aditi Zindagi Mein Yuh Hi under a tree at the city university grounds, and the friends laughing away like hyenas on the National Geographic Africa special. 

Thandai is an unsuspecting, delicious milk-based beverage that makes up bhang, and since that first slurring through the song year, it became kind of a tradition every holi to provide entertainment and get through the entire day in the attentive, immediate present.

Nothing usually occurs during the initial hours, it is at a moment when you least expect that the bhang kicks in. I have had friends view the universe and the solar system, look at overgrown garden grass for hours and have other slow-moving delusions. 

Here's to that time of the time again! Cheers!   

(Poetry, article, photography and art by Snehith Kumbla)