Sarala Estruch
Sarala Estruch is a London-based writer, poet and critic. She holds degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing from Goldsmiths College and Birkbeck College, University of London. Her poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Wasafiri, The North, and The White Review, among others. Her work has been commended for the Wasafiri New Writing Prize and the PBS National Student Poetry Competition. In 2017, Sarala was selected for the Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critics initiative, a mentorship programme designed to redress the diversity imbalance in UK poetry reviewing culture.
England: A Love Story, or The English Dream
London, 1978
do you remember / love / that day at the student hostel on Cross Street / the way the light tilted in / at the window to settle / on two Ă©migrĂ©s / as we waited for our keys / except now weâd arrived / we were Ă©migrĂ©s no longer but immigrants / carrying a larger suitcase of connotations / me pale-skinned in 70s flares / European features and freshly bobbed hair / you brown-skinned in new polished oxfords / and your unequivocal Indian nose / that day the sunlight illuminated us equally / and we thought nothing of difference / only of novelty / we were in love / with a country gleaned / from school textbooks and the photographs / your mother kept in the album of her childhood / gardens with rosebushes and hedgerows / cherry-cheeked men and women chirping good morning / from behind the garden gate / neighbourly / it was not neighbourly / the way they looked at you / when you stepped onto a bus / or the names you were christened / at the restaurant where you worked / in the kitchen / suds up to biceps / hands deep / in the crud of this country / washing and washing / fingers still aching the next morning / as you took notes in law school / while back in the country of your birth / you dined with nabobs / had already received a bachelorâs degree / these days as we walk arm-in-arm down London streets / turning our eyes and ears inside-out / to deflect the stares and the curses / (Paki! Wog-lover!) / I recall the school textbooks / manicured lawns fences and gates / cherry-cheeked persons with neighbourly faces / and think yes / the English are neighbourly / as long as you stay / on your side of their gate
Kesh
When one too many crane-necked
buttoned-up Englishwomen crosses
to the opposite pavement, when he
grows tired of the mutterings that
trail him like the British clouds,
when the job interviews become
predictable and his landlord raises
the rent on his damp-infested flat
for the second time in six months
he sharpens his blade, approaches
the mirror above the sink, the stink
of bleach and mildew rioting
in his nostrils, making his eyes smart
as he unravels the skeins of navy-
blue cotton, cloth falling away
from his head as if from the body
of a woman to reveal the black
glistening ocean beneath.
As he lifts his hand, closes his fist
around the rope, he tries not to think
of Biji or her fingers washing,
combing, plaiting in the evenings
of his childhood or his father
who taught him, on the dawn of man-
hood, how to knot a patka and tie
a pagh so that if ever a person
were in trouble they would see
the turban and know to approach
not turn their head in repulsion
as they did here in London in 1973.
A prayer is lost somewhere between
tongue and teeth as he pulls the strands
taut as...