This week, ACM is posting poetry every weekday.
American Brand Shop at Connaught Place
I just googled American brand shop at Connaught Place, and landed on a webpage that lists Ancient America, clothing store, open now, closes ten at night, pray why you ask, well because my sister’s here from NH, a cousin I don’t mind that much, except she is trailed by two nasty toddlers, born in the States, and what they speak is beyond the English we comprehend, so we leave it to the mother to translate, anyway because she’s here, I would like to show her around, brands that she’s familiar with, rather than places that’ll make her nostalgic — who wants to unearth an old lover we shared when we were schoolgirls, and a street food vendor who once peeped into our living quarters while we were asleep, was caught and thrashed, besides this cousin’s a subject of local gossip at our old Chandni Chowk neighborhood where the house is, though we’ve now rented it out, pray why you ask, because she married a German secretly while still on education loan in the US, and that’s sixteen percent on her parents here, for six years to go yet, in any case I’m glad Ancient America is in CP, the poshest place I know, and is neighbours with Benetton and Van Huesen, and I can already picture her flashing her husband’s credit card at the checkout and carrying shopping bags while I drag the toddlers, one babbling and the other bawling, and the webpage shows me I can sneak into a close-by lingerie shop where prices start at rupees two-hundred-and-twenty, and a shoe shop where the range starts at rupees seven hundred, super affordable to me, so my sister doesn’t feel strange shopping alone while I’m just awkwardly looking on, and would make her wonder that it’d be better we never came shopping, and that’d be so sad because that’s not gracious, not how you treat your guests, showing them your real life, or how you go by, and before she guesses what you eat on an evening out, you’ll lead her to Sakura at the Metropolitan Hotel, for Edamame and some sausage Itame flavored with miso sauce, just three five-hundred bills plus taxes, and she is bound to be impressed by how international we’ve gone since the last time she visited, and we will talk about babies and husbands and how she enrolled in yoga class, paints canvasses and puts the house we lived-in in its midst, also landscapes of hills we went to picnics on, that’s whenever her toddlers allow her, and how she misses a rohu-curry because fish is not fresh enough, and perhaps she’ll hope I can cook her some next time she’s here, and suddenly the Japanese food wouldn’t taste as good, certainly not worth the price I will have paid for.
Hey, Sister in Columbia, Calling Out from Connaught Place
Did you just tell me across the TV that you can’t be brow-beaten, because as it is there’s enough happening in America that you’re sick of—mass shootings and random disappearances (latest one who vanished was fellow from Andhra, student, and working at a gas station, just an addition to stats), uni strikes and protests, and bandied fakery, and yes, layoffs and payoffs, and here, to be honest, we have those, plus politics and religion, and mindless road rage, and corruption (but also, like for real, once-in-a-while, a skyful of rain just when I’m stressed and am looking at the heavens), and do I say this and expect you to actually have the verve to hear me — some random Indian, taking her six-year-old niece to her first visit to a new KFC outlet at Connaught Place — and yes, the six-year-old has never tasted the distilled essence of Americana, while they say these MNCs are chasing away chaat stalls and panipuri vendors, oh but well first let me say thanks to Americana, for the smartest of gadgets and computers and the internet, and sleek cars (wow, mighty impressive—we own a Ford, by the way, and it’s served us fab), AND telling us how to be, how-to guides on EVERYTHING that’s silly and secret, like kissing in public (it is catching like a fever by the way), and earlier, when we were kids really, because we’d seen that movie, posing inside some dark, shabby photo studios like Leo and Kate on Titanic: legs spread just so far, hair billowing, our secret rendezvous with a lover forever freeze-framed, and I’m reminded because we just came by a couple, obviously impressed with the scene, kissing on the kerb, girl my cousin’s age before she flew to NH, biggy wedding to a prospective Green Card (best case scenario it was, for her and others, unless one finds ‘true love’ in a German or Aussie and in time too), and makes me recall times many years before when that cousin wanted to marry Brad Pitt, and when we sat together and gaped at so-and-so Shahrukh-movies filmed at Times Square, crazy place to us, and again, all about Americana, and before that, when we hardly knew what burgers were, or burritos, or Pepsi, our world just unwrapped from pre-globalisation, and still before, when we needed to learn English to have any footing at all, plus a degree — result of cramming-up mighty textbooks of Chemical-or-this-or-that Engineering (in any case we were going to do software in America), but again, best chance to escape the muddied streets and muddled realities, and still still before, in the 70s, when a brother made it across, like some conqueror, better call him Columbus, who then called long distance, once only so he could explain what July the Fourth meant (No idea, said granny), or boast that he had a new swimming pool at home (wow! great, chimed we kids sticking our ears to the oldy phone receiver while granny talked), and while we had a pond sixty steps away from the house, where, knickers hiding our shame, we bathed in public, and sent black and white photographs to America. Here’s what I think as I see you, things I thought I’d forgotten, but well, things so common to you and me. Now the allure does fade (alas!) and the gloss has lost its sheen (could be videos and internet? We watch Azerbaijan and Monaco and St. Louis on the same day), and we do prefer these days to stay back than fly (homeland is always precious), and so this evening, niece and I can order the exact same food here, as in whenever we have a thoughtless craving for some fusion Indian-American stuff on the menu (Rs 359; at half-cost on Wednesdays) or something called a Deal Meal (Rs 209 – we are always price-sensitive), especially since it’s a minute’s walk around the corner from home. See? I’ve been frank, while the TV keeps beaming images–you yelling at the cop dragging you away: Don’t take me away yet; but the cops keep manhandling you, smash your spectacles, your black skin shines with sweat.
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Mandira Pattnaik’s work appears in The Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, Emerson Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, McNeese Review, Penn Review, Quarterly West, Passages North, Timber, Contrary, Quarter After Eight, AAWW, Best Small Fictions Anthology (2021 & 2024) and Best Microfiction Anthology (2024), among others. Her writing has been recognized by listing in Wigleaf Top50 List of Very Small Fictions (2023), longlisting in Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2025), Second Place Bacopa Literary Contest 2024, Honorable Mention in CRAFT 2021 and Litro 2022 contests. Mandira is the author of the poetry and prose collections including Anatomy of a Storm-Weathered Quaint Townspeople (2022), Girls Who Don’t Cry (2023), Where We Set Our Easel (2023), Glass/Fire (2024) and White Hot Moon (forthcoming). She serves as assistant editor, Best Small Fictions Anthology 2025; associate editor, Iron Horse Literary Review; contributing editor, Vestal Review; and columnist, trampset.
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Michael Singh is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Southern California. He works across painting, printmaking, illustration, and collage. He taught drawing and painting in Los Angeles before relocating to New York in 2017. In 2021 he briefly studied painting at The New York Art Students League and The 92nd St Y. He now works and resides in upstate New York.
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