Diaspora Makes for an Unlikable Narrator, and: Shahrukh Says It’s The Time To Disco

Diaspora Makes for an Unlikable Narrator, and: Shahrukh Says It’s The Time To Disco Sreshtha Sen (bio) Keywords poetry, Sreshtha Sen, diaspora, Hindi, Indian writer, love, debt, fear, government, films, Shah Rukh, dancing, love, romance, marriage, family DIASPORA MAKES FOR AN UNLIKABLE NARRATOR I have never desired to be cruelbut of late, something so bittercurls inside me—loose-knottedbile—with no place to go. Likewith everything, I name reasonsto blame: my sadness. my PMS.my horniness. the uncertain ebbof the future. I don’t knowwhen I’ll see my mother again soevery son who can, growsinto a menace in my eyes. Their joymy blight. I am difficult to love & desperateto prove this as truth to anyonewho contests it. The neighborhoodbarista’s fondness for my tastein hindi films was harmless but nowI find myself irked. Intruded upon.My roommate runs hot. Every morningI turn the heat to 76 & scurry intothe dark like an impish rat upto no-good chaos. Generositymakes me retch. A visa extensionis just another debt. All I wantto do is write better poems& who has the time for that pluspaperwork. My dad says we’re justgetting too old to not need help & I don’tcall again for ten days. Too afraid.Do you want to hear more? Ifyou say no, I’ll want to keepgoing. If you say yes, I mightcry. [End Page 177] SHAHRUKH SAYS IT’S THE TIME TO DISCO Except I am Shah Rukh. The waythese hips sway. On tabletops.In Ricardo’s living room. That oneclub downtown we swore we wouldnever visit again but somehow once morewe did. Everywhere I go, I am choreographedto be romantic. Everywhere, it is time.Sahar says heropanti is necessary for living.Something like how, in Bride & Prejudice,Kohli says “No life withoutwife” so I spend all summer beingA Lover. A [sc]amour. I marketfor a marriage—the kind of jobthat would have me a v*sa.I am looking to know howI will live in the future even asthe future itself begins to turn impossible.By which I mean I just want to seemy mother. Or that I don’t have it in meto chart a route or return. I mostly meanI am crying on the bus a lot. Let me not.Let me boogie—my heart a village—this seasona yoke how I stoke my hopes back into survivingbreathing things. Here, the sky. Here, it is timeto disco. Khisko. & when my grandmothercalls to tell me her brother died I—sweat-swung, music-thrummed—these arms splitopen to embrace mere air—Reader?I confess I danced. [End Page 178] Sreshtha Sen sreshtha sen is a poet from Delhi. They studied literatures in English from Delhi University and completed their MFA at Sarah Lawrence College and their PhD at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Their work can be found published or forthcoming in Apogee, bitch media, Hyperallergic, Hyphen Magazine, The Margins, McSweeney’s, Rumpus and elsewhere. She was previously the 2017-18 readings/workshops fellow at Poets & Writers, an assistant poetry editor at The Believer, a visiting assistant professor in interdisciplinary, gender, and ethnic studies at UNLV, and currently lives and teaches in New York. Copyright © 2023 The Massachusetts Review, Inc