ALL INDIANS LISTEN TO RAGAS by Bruce Hodder

A fat Englishman in the Indian shop
tells the ever-so-patient young woman who’s serving
that he loves Ravi Shankar.
She smiles politely.

‘And Anousha.’ Misnaming
the great Pandit’s daughter,
he gushes on, speaking of oceans of sound.
I manufacture a cough
to let him know that I’m waiting.

The girl says, ‘They play the sitar, is that right?’
She gives him the incense he’s bought,
then his change,

and with a flurry of more words
about Ravi Shankar, he exits,
missing her put-down completely

Her Sikh dad, hanging up dreamcatchers, laughs.
All Indians listen to ragas, he says.

Bruce Hodder lives with Michelle in Northampton, the most statistically average town in England. He has been published in quite a few magazines over the years, most recently ‘Academy of Heart and mind’ and ‘Winedrunk Sidewalk’.