Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- The Lion
- Entomological Specimens
- Practising Your Skills
- Insomniac
- Taster
- What Every Girl Should Know Before Marriage
- Bad Day in the Office
- You Are Not
- The Gold Bangles
- My Mother's Hair
- ‘Jesus Saves’
- Ticking
- On Ellington Road
- Cousin Migrant
- The Daughters
- Different Principles of Enclosure
- Day Ghost
- This Morning
- The Bird
- Almost September
- Phone Call on a Train Journey
- Small Hands
- In the Coroner's Office
- April
- 18th of November
- Notes Towards an Elegy
- The Urn
- The Rain That Began Elsewhere
- Gloves
- My Father Wants to be a Rooftop Railway Surfer
- Ghazal
- Ghazal
- Ode to a Pomegranate
- Bulbul
- Parvati Waits for the Return of Shiva, After the Slaying of Ganesh
- Lost Poem
- Large and Imprecise Baby
- Wireman
- Barbule
- The Found Thing
- Woman at Window
- Mr Beeharry's Marriage Bureau
- Mrs M Unravels
- Hummingbird
- Ballad of the Small-boned Daughter
- Acknowledgments
On Ellington Road
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- The Lion
- Entomological Specimens
- Practising Your Skills
- Insomniac
- Taster
- What Every Girl Should Know Before Marriage
- Bad Day in the Office
- You Are Not
- The Gold Bangles
- My Mother's Hair
- ‘Jesus Saves’
- Ticking
- On Ellington Road
- Cousin Migrant
- The Daughters
- Different Principles of Enclosure
- Day Ghost
- This Morning
- The Bird
- Almost September
- Phone Call on a Train Journey
- Small Hands
- In the Coroner's Office
- April
- 18th of November
- Notes Towards an Elegy
- The Urn
- The Rain That Began Elsewhere
- Gloves
- My Father Wants to be a Rooftop Railway Surfer
- Ghazal
- Ghazal
- Ode to a Pomegranate
- Bulbul
- Parvati Waits for the Return of Shiva, After the Slaying of Ganesh
- Lost Poem
- Large and Imprecise Baby
- Wireman
- Barbule
- The Found Thing
- Woman at Window
- Mr Beeharry's Marriage Bureau
- Mrs M Unravels
- Hummingbird
- Ballad of the Small-boned Daughter
- Acknowledgments
Summary
Old man Harvey, with his thick specs and polished shoes shouting trespassers, yet offering us a penny for collecting his waspy pears.
“Biji”, looking old in widow-white, whose soft hands were always stained with turmeric.
The achingly cool white brothers, who lived opposite with their Mum and spent days fixing their motor-bikes.
Aunty Kamel, knocking on our door, with her black plait undone, begging us to keep her for the night.
The Aroras, who had a real football pitch at the back of their garden (Hounslow FC).
Cunny, Pummy, Bally, and Kully (all boys).
The girl next door stealing her dad's razor and showing me how to shave my legs with baby oil.
The white-haired lady we called ‘Mum’ at number 4, roaming the fenceless gardens, until they brought her back in.
Dave, our young lodger, with his paisley cravat, smelling of Brut and he had a car.
The boys in the gardens interrupting cricket games to scream at the sky while Concorde flew by. The girls being told off for climbing trees because ‘it was dangerous for girls’.
Meeting Renu, the new bride for my mum's cousin, and being scared for her as I'd heard about what had happened in the launderette the year before.
Manjit, aged 9, left in India as a baby arriving back to her parents, her eyes black with kajal.
Several men from along the road setting up in our garden and building the extension in just one day.
My dad, insomniac shift-worker, blood-eyed, nursing his head in our tiny kitchen.
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- Small Hands , pp. 16 - 17Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2015