Animal City, a poem sequence about Bombay by Siddhartha Bose

Animal City is a poem in seven numbered parts by Siddhartha Bose, published in The Wolf, issue 19. The city it addresses is Bombay, called a twin-bride and a multiverse. The English is mixed with Hindi and Urdu words, slang and local place names, and the speaker calls himself the city's bastard and a traitor.

Part one says the speaker would like to write the city an epic worthy of its ancient tales but will make do with short bites for now. Part two gives his time with the city as close on nine years and describes it chopping and changing him. Part three is a catalogue of places and tastes: the airport named after Chatrapati Shivaji, Marine Drive, the mosque at Hajiali, the Siddhi-Vinayak temple, Bandra, Juhu, Colaba, pav bhaji, pani-puri and vada pao. In each line the city acts upon the speaker.

Part four calls the city his crude health and the crass in his conscience, and repeats the words of a statue saint at Mahim: life is an echo, and you get back what you give. Part five goes back to school, with a bus to Versova, a maths teacher talking about Goan sausages, and a first love named Aditi, whose school stood near Amitabh Bachchan's house. Part six is set on Linking Road in the 1980s, where a six-foot sadhu with a python round his torso reaches for the car window, and the child inside screams while a hijra on the street divider claps.

The last part calls the surrealists hacks who never knew the city, which holds a thousand gods crowding like commuters on the doors of late suburban trains. It mentions the name Mayanagri and ends with the city as slick oil and steel breath in a seething century.

Poems in this selection

• Animal City