Leaving Yuba City by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Divakaruni, Chitra. Leaving Yuba City. New York: Doubleday Publishing Group, 1997.

1. Divakaruni’s poems are intimate explorations of various vicarious and personal experiences. In “The Nishi” (4), the persona tells of the sweet memory of her mother’s voice putting her to sleep; the sound of sex violence next room; the coldness of her mother’s whisper sending her to the closet; the longing for her mother’s voice that will make her feel well again; the love songs and the story of spirits who died of violent death; her mother hanging herself after she slept; and the deep longing to be with her mother again while calling her sweet name.

2. In “Blackout” (26), the poem captured the image of wonder at violence after going through an ordeal hiding in a bunk. The persona dreams of her sister cut by a glass on her cheek: “And in its center…the old/ moon-woman with her wheel, spin, spin, spinning/ them out/ like a long thread of blood, all tangled up,/ the stories of our deaths”.

3. In “Villagers Visiting Jodhpur Enjoy Iced Sweets” (35), Divakaruni captured the moment that when cruel men suck ice cream, they forget their being men “and are, briefly, real”.

4. In “The Babies: II” (40), the persona explores the lingering and consuming feeling of attachment to orphaned children: “They suck and suck all through my sleep so that when I awake I will carry inside my buttoned-up body the feel of their tugging mouth”.

5. In “The Lost Love Words” (76), the persona is intimate in describing what she does to retrieve the lost love words of her husband but the feeling elicited is creepy because of the surrealistic and almost psychotic act of the woman finding the lost in rotting items in her refrigerator, eating them, and imagining her husband carress her stomach to feel what is lost but is now found.

6. In “The Tourist”, Divakaruni describes a common travel scene like getting lost, fearing strangers, etc. instead of writing imagistic lines or dramatic scenes. What the poem does is to present a subtle experience, almost ordinary yet touching, the sudden transition from an expected violent encounter to a gentle slowing down of frames: the arrival of the dog, sheets drying in the sun, the smell of rain, the breeze, and then “They stand there, man and woman and dog, watching the bright purple flowers tumble over the broken bricks”.

7. In “Growing Up in Darjeeling” poems, Divakaruni touches on subtle and delicate feelings of the persona’s dormitory experience. In “The Walk” (9), the girls sing hymns while walking on the hills, realize their distance from the dormitory and the downtown, smell “real” food, and get wet in the rain while a woman watches wide-eyed “the long lines of girls, all of us / so far from home”.

8. In “Geography Lesson” (12), the persona remembers the corporal punishment while detailing the nun’s geography lesson and all throughout feels cold and uncomprehending in face of “the various properties of the heavenly bodies,/ their distance, in light years”.

9. In “The Infirmary”(14), the persona fears talking about her being able to talk to spirits and just finds refuge, comfort, and feels “like grace had called me back” from the cool voice she hears.

10. In “Learning to Dance” (18), the girls feel the drowning weight of effort to be well in dance “until Sister’s voice disappeared/ under the red roar in our ears, we whirled/ to the future on our blood-beat”.

11. In “Going Home Day” (21), the rush of memories and images that will be forever etched in the dormer’s minds: “the dormitory, squat and grey as prison” becomes “emptied of night-memories, weeping children”; the “Christ hangs/ in gilt-framed agony against a fiery sky” smiles; the hilarious image of “the nuns,/ black-robed witches who carried/ poison apples in their pockets” becomes ordinary mothers; hearing from them their mothers’ tones; the final comprehension of “those ruler cuts/ on palms and back of legs, the awkward, pained/ alphabet of their love” they had to experience “for it’s hard world/ they’re sending us into”; and the finale of wrenching feeling when these memories seeming so recent come together all at once, missing everything while taking for granted and living in fear while they were at it: “we are clean and glowing and amazed/ with it, amazed to find that we are weeping,/ wishing we were coming back”.

12. In “Indian Miniatures” poems based on a series of paintings by Francesco Clemente, Divarakuni’s unique ekphrastic style is showcased. Instead of describing what is in the painting and/or delving into the painting’s background or subtext, she paints in words what is not there and just connect the poem to the painting with a minimal reference.

13. In “The Maimed Dancing Men” (45), men compare the unseen presence of their absent limbs to the “stars/ in the blind day, like the palace minarets/ the traveler in a painting never sees/ because they are behind the mountain,/ like the flute-notes balancing/ light as dust/ on the dark air of this banquet hall/ after we have gone”.

14. In “The Bee-Keeper Discusses His Charges” (47), the persona describes his experience with bees, much like an experience with fish as one will realize later on, even if it’s far from what the painting is. The juxtaposition of experience of fishing and dealing with bees resulted to the comparison of the two even if they were not compared directly. In the last lines: It’s getting to where/ I’m about ready to step/ over the border of this painting/ into my other life, the one where/ I’m keeper of the fish.

15. The same ekphrastic style was applied to the other 5 poems.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is also the author of the following books: One Amazing Thing (2010), Shadowland (2009), The Palace of Illusions (2008), The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming (2005), Queen of Dreams (2004), California Uncovered: Stories for the 21st Century (2004), The Conch Bearer (2003), Neela: Victory Song (2002), Vine of Desire (2002), The Unknown Errors of Our Lives (2001), Sister of My Heart (1999), The Mistress of Spices (1997), Arranged Marriage (1995), Black Candle (1991), and The Reason for Nasturtiums (1990).

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