Tiger Dancing

by Rishitha Shetty

There are painted feet, hiding tales between their toes,
of river Netravati’s tryst with the Arabian Sea.
Feet that leave footprints
in the wetness of the brackish river that
tames the sea with covert caresses.

Striped in brown, polished in white
To match tiger printed shorts, sandal wood scented forearms and
eyelashes that reflect a vermillion brow.
Fists clenched, hips bent,
twelve men beat down on ochre-chested skin.

Camouflaged in spotted cheeks
and purple fingertips, they
hide their  mud-stained toes behind an attacking tiger’s footsteps.
They dance to the song of falling branches of wilted coconut trees,
that hide the river’s illicit whispers to the sea.

They dance to drum-beats, mirroring
the sound of anklet-clad calves.
The colour of their palm merges with sweat
as they dance on silver-backed embankments,
with growls in-between slurs, and the dream of a hunt.

The weight of the river and sea’s lovemaking carried on feline legs,
the men roar with fingernails,
sigh with eyes and sing of a
stoned stranger, whose story has started to find its way

out of betel-nut red tongues – bound in cloth,
bound in the taste of other tongues,
beaded in an endless garland of
syllables of the language of the waters.

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