Writing Portfolio for an undergraduate course at Royal Holloway 1,149 words long

Royal Holloway requested 2 pieces of creative writing in response to: 1. "A place where you grew up" 2. A response a black and white image of a traffic jam in a large city. 1. Nest-nudged out of the orphanage, not all fledglings will fly. Rat bitten, swollen feet plunged into flaccid mud, 5000 slaps into the rancid slush of Bengal in monsoon. Lakita shivered and began to hug herself, doubled-over in the road, the moonlight polishing pearlescent bulbs on her caramel skin, remnants of insect kisses. Thick, hot tears sealed her eyes shut, until a flash of headlights in the torrential rain made her scurry into the gutter, hands clinging to cold, dark cement like starfish. The after-wave crushed her with dirty water. Drenched, Lakita peered into the moon with liquid black eyes, questioning her being there. The ache in her chest that longed for warmth solidified and dulled and she began to trek an unknown path sheltered by jungle into an alcove of lush boughs and dozing parakeets, where a dripping shack curled in the gloomy damp. She stopped by a tree that she vaguely recognized but did not know how, the roots mimicking ladders, climbing the trunk. In the stillness her ebony hair leaked rain onto matted leaves disturbing a creature in its crispy nestle. Her luminous eyes trailed the animal, or what appeared to be more akin to a moving rock, with curious whites widening. Rising above Temple trees and Strangled fig a white mansion loomed, dwarfing the shack adjacent, and within that mansion Miss Collett writhed in sticky sheets, her pristine marble piano beckoning from the sunroom below. She closed her eyes in dreamy delight, tracing her fingers down A to E and lifting her pinkie from middle C, her eyes realised a small figure in her garden. A child of four or five Miss Collett thought. Lakita was eight years old. Miss Collett stood to attend the child but stopped short before the glass door as Aahori, the family’s tiger cub, lopped towards the child and pawed at a rock by the child’s feet. Lakita lifted a wet curtain of hair and stretched for the rock which suddenly sprouted four limbs and a speckled head. Aahori clamped his little jaws over her reaching, rat-bitten mitts but, she remained still: only gums and a hot, sodden, sandpaper tongue met her blistered flesh. Lakita sank into the mulch and the cub climbed into her lap, sucking her fingers and rolling his tongue. Miss Collett’s hand hovered over the glass door, but instead of going to the child, she sat down to play Three Nocturnes, lifting her eyes every eight counts, expecting the child and cub to disappear like a mirage. Somewhere amongst the glistening trees a ghost of a memory throbbed and wailed for her little one in the night, before her cry softened and not unalike her short life, was snuffed out by the wind. Bright colours and smiles and laughter and warm, fat cradling arms swam in the rain. Lakita thought that this place would be a good place to die. Her breath drew out of her lungs and she crashed back into decaying leaf litter. Lakita’s eyes narrowed at the vault of indigo pre-dawn sky and found in its emptiness the vision of her mother’s slack, sweat-covered body on a straw bed, unmoving. The growing light illuminated objects to Lakita, sucking in all of her awareness, periphery fading to black as she twitched at the sight of a swing hanging from a lichen encrusted branch; a rusty sharp toothed rake; a silver wind chime, from which a shining, small skull was suspended, gazing emptily at her through shifting chimes. This was the place she was born in. It was hardly a realisation. It was nostalgia flavoured with lotus flower scent. No strong memories to validate what she knew in her gut. The rain started to come down, hard. A light switched on in the shack, illuminating a square glow on the ground and a shadow rose through it, reappearing in the flesh at the door as an old woman, carrying a straw basket under one arm. The old woman was 20 yards away from Lakita and did not notice Lakita and Aahori in her hurry to collect Miss Collett’s garments strung from a line in the trees. Lakita turned her attention down, resuming her crouch. When she did peer up though, she found the old woman staring at her, statuesque in grey folds of skin and white crumpled robes, the fabric in the basket deepening its colour. Their eyes locked and the moment could not have been more still and the tingling piano notes, the rain, the wind chimes, the purring parakeets more loud as though a heightened awareness of everything had broken the horizon. A certain sort of adrenalin tributaried through Lakita’s centre, water running down a stalk, pooling into her stomach, lurching her forward towards the old woman she recognised as her grandmother. The old woman dropped the clothes from her clutches and her strong gnarled bones caged Lakita’s tiny body in embrace. Her grandmother handled her face, left and right, muttering in Bengali then beaming and cooing, lifted Lakita like a doll off the ground and spun her in a circle. The images before Miss Collett sent her fingers reeling across keys in a creative frenzy of their own accord, imagining a profusion of white flowers unlocking their petals around Lakita and her grandmother: catalysis in shafts of fiery dawning light piercing the shade, searing the condensed air and waking life. “Nani,” Lakita whispered. In those seconds that Lakita was held, wanted and distinguished as a child worth holding among a labyrinthine city of lost children that share seemingly similar identities, Lakita’s heart swelled and bloomed like the escalating notes sounding from under Miss Collett’s expressive fingers: the ache that deadened her soul dissipated, warmth spreading, joy leaping in her chest. Miss Collett thought about the children on the streets of Bengal and that how for once an orphan child might be gifted with a mother. A place to grow up: to thrive in. The river that ran through the land burst its banks, the rain lifted, the parakeets squawked, Orphans still littered the streets in search of crumbs and naive tourists to sell their red rubber shoes to, but at least one child had found their way home. 2. Emerald green might have graced the portal of your kaleidoscope once, Now it is scaled, shifted, de-saturated to a bitter-fish grey – They shake the soil off their roots, these dirty criminals – With their opposable black thumbs, That defaced your masterpiece, Rolled tarmac over your lush carpets, Made the air stale with unrepentant Ego, And pathetic little metal beads that race around their heath. Pick up this never-ending necklace and rake it through rigid teeth, Let the black Mercedes snag – squish those beans of oil, Are you content at the taste? You weaken your grip and it – Flails into a gaping cement orifice, A chain of aberration, Steaming on the earth Like a dead snake skin.