the neighbour’s kitchen. I can smell the
familiar monsoon fug and feel the discomfort
of air conditioners. The heat rots everything
and the fridge is never big enough.
Uncomfortable city, bigger than life itself.
I dream between continents.
Work can wait, lunch can wait.
For now I simply want to knit moment to
moment, city to city, the two halves of my life.
English
Basudev Sunani (b. 1962)
Satyabhama
Satyabhama
Chuckled on the window seat
Of the bus, and then
Hid her face
In her hands
Was she shy?
Satyabhama
Faint, dark, like a slate,
Forgotten.
How could she
Have been otherwise?
It’s two decades since
She was in class five
And I in two
In our village school.
On her cheek
The flush of self-confidence
To have learnt by rote
The alphabet.
Married to a dhoti-clad gentleman,
She is now in search
Of a suitable girl
For her son;
Persuaded by the villagers
She is now a candidate
In the local body election;
She said all this
Pressing her face
To the window-sill.
Satyabhama
Gives the feeling
Of someone intimate
Like the torn pages
Of an old book
From childhood
When eating porridge together
She taught me the art
Of sewing sal-leaf bowls.
There was nothing more
To share with Satyabhama.
By the time I was in class five
And she in class two
The bus had left.
I do not know
If I will meet her again.
If only I had had
A fleeting glimpse
Of her face.
Translated from the Oriya by Rabindra K. Swain
R. Parthasarathy (b. 1934)
Taj Mahal
Children on their way to school
barely notice it as it squats
on the river like a humped bull
swishing its tail occasionally
at the swarms of barefoot
tourists. They have been gone now,
the emperor and his favourite queen,
for some three-hundred-odd
years. But this marble flame,
Earth’s other moon, how
it rubs expensive delicate salt
in the wound of unrequited love!
English
Shanmuga Subbiah (b. 1924)
Salutations
Yes! Oh yes!
Indeed I’m blessed!
By God’s grace
I have two children.
It’s rather strange,
But both
Are boys.
So?
I’m rheumatic,
My wife’s consumptive.
The first boy,
Poor chap,
Is quite sickly.
The younger one,
So far,
Is okay.
But later on—
Who knows?
I’m a clerk.
Will this do?
Or would you like to have
More details?
Translated from the Tamil by T.K. Doraiswamy
Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1890-1937)
In Bedlam
They call me crazed, for I console the moon,
I know the hour when she began to weep—
It was when the poets were slain that night.
Lo, how they lie:
Those who were more restless than the sea
And more serene
Than the height-humbling eagle in his flight—
They are gone, gods and singers;
Only the moon remains,
Vainly carrying her silver lyre;
They call me crazed, for I console the moon.
English
Manohar Shetty (b. 1953)
Rumour
Hissed out by a salivating tongue,
I’m the nagging, unfinished whole.
A hint, a slack jaw, eyes rankling,
I’m the whisper growing harsher
With each passing ear; twisted
Around to suit my sly plotters,
I’m the invisible flame setting
Fire to dome, minaret, spire.
I’m fuel stored for the retreating
Mob, my bait greed, hatred and rage.
Only a few see through me
As rootless seed, poisonous weed.
But scotch me and another
Is born, a handmaiden made
Hungrier, more bitter, eyes
Streaked with smoke and fire.
English
Attoor Ravi Varma (b. 1931)
Sitting
At one sitting, I do all sorts of things
Like a multi-purpose machine
That grinds and churns and pounds.
With my one and only tongue
I speak many tongues
Like a hotel-plate that serves
Hot and sweet and sour things one by one.
Like a fan’s reeling in steady speed,
Like a bulb’s burning with the same glow
Above people who arrive, are ushered in and exit,
I’m ever vigilant.
My sitting, my looks, my gestures—
All, all are precise, measured
Like those of a Kathakali cast.
Colourless, tasteless, odourless,
Changing shape with the vessel—
That unique purity: That’s me.
Translated from the Malayalam by R. Viswanathan
A.K. Ramanujan (1929-93)
Anxiety
Not branchless as the fear tree,
it has naked roots and secret twigs.
Not geometric as the parabolas
of hope, it has loose ends
with a knot at the top
that’s me.
Not wakeful in its white-snake
glassy ways like the eloping gaiety of waters,
it drowses, viscous and fibered as pitch.
Flames have only lungs. Water is all eyes.
The earth has bone for muscle. And the air
is a flock of invisible pigeons.
But anxiety
can find no metaphor to end it.
English
Aziz Bano Darab (1934-2005)
Ghazals
So that I may meet myself
From a river I must turn into a waterfall
When I was growing up some well-meaning relatives
Gave me several masks and a tongue of stone.
Thoughtlessly, he turns the pages
When my face becomes a book.
Why would he take me out of myself,
Why should anyone put his hands in someone else’s fire?
He keeps probing in the ashes of my past
He’ll burn his fingers, if I’m not careful.
He’s a weary traveler
I, a locked caravanserai
Even if he reaches me,
What will he find?
Translated from the Urdu by Qurratulain Hyder and Arlene Zide
Kunwar Narain (b. 1927)
Day by Day
I’ve a strange problem these days—
my ability to hate with passion
is failing me day by day.
I want to hate the English
(who ruled us for two centuries)
but Shakespeare gets in the way
He’s done so much for me!
I try to hate the
Muslims
but Ghalib intervenes
You tell me—can anyone
disregard him?
I want to hate the Sikhs
but Guru Nanak appears
and my head bows of its own accord.
And these Kamban, Tyagaraja, Muttusvami . . .
I keep telling myself—
They are not mine,
they are of the far South
But my heart doesn’t listen
and makes them its own.
And that woman I once loved
who deceived me . . .
I could kill her if I met her!
We do meet, but then
the friend in her,
or the mother, or the sister
nourishes me with love.
All the time
I wander like a madman
looking for someone
I could hate to my heart’s content
and feel light!
But the opposite happens
sometime, somewhere
I always meet someone
Whom I cannot but love!
Day by day this love sickness is growing
And suspicion has gripped me
That one day this love
Will send me to heaven . . .
Translated from the Hindi by Lucy Rosenstein
Bal Sitaram Mardhekar (1909-56)
This Is the Order
This is the order
Of a dark world:
A wick of soot
In the heart of darkness.
A black plane
Zooms into darkness
Through black air.
There are no signals
Not red, nor green;
One cannot get lost
In the invisible.
Wherever I go
I am my own partner:
My eyes have turned
Into such walls.
Translated from the Marathi by Dilip Chitre
Tishani Doshi (b. 1975)
Homecoming
I forgot how Madras loves noise—
loves neighbours and pregnant women
and Gods and babies
and Brahmins who rise
like fire hymns to sear the air
with habitual earthquakes.
How funeral processions clatter
down streets with drums and rose-petals,
dancing death into deafness.
How vendors and cats make noises
of love on bedroom walls and alleyways
of night, operatic and dark.
How cars in reverse sing Jingle Bells
and scooters have larynxes of lorries.
How even colour can never be quiet.
How fisherwomen in screaming red—
with skirts and incandescent third eyes
and bangles like rasping planets
and Tamil women on their morning walks
in saris and jasmine and trainers
can shred the day and all its skinny silences.
I forgot how a man dying under the body
of a tattered boat can ask for promises;
how they can be as soundless as the sea
on a wounded day, altering the ground
of the earth as simply as the sun filtering through—
the monsoon rain dividing everything.
English
Padma Sachdev (b. 1940)
Sun
Sun, do not rise today.
Take away your light.
Light is sin’s enemy
And sin
This moment
Is my desire.
To tread
With eyes closed
Those paths
Which vanished
Long ago.
To recall
Faces
Wiped away
By time.
To ask him,
To tell me again,
Who is stone
Who is old peepal
Who is cobra guarding a treasure
And to walk with me
as of old.
Translated from the Dogri by Shivanath
Jerry Pinto (b. 1966)
Window
What can you do with a window?
It will always remain four-cornered
Always be a savagery to the sky
Always offer enough room for only one head
Or one cloud
There’s nothing open about a window
English
The Empress Nur Jahan (1577-1645)
On the Tomb of Us Poor People
On the tomb of us poor people
there will be neither a light
nor a flower, nor the wings of a moth, nor the voice
of a nightingale.
Translated from the Persian by Barakat Ullah
Kutti Revathi (b. 1974)
Breasts
Breasts are bubbles, rising
in wet marshlands.
I watched in awe—and guarded—
their gradual swell and blooming
at the edges of my season of youth.
Saying nothing to anyone else,
they sing along
with me alone, always—of
love,
rapture,
heartbreak
To the nurseries of my turning seasons,
they never once forgot or failed
to bring arousal.
In penance, they swell, as if straining
to break free; and in the fierce tug of lust,
they rise with the harmony of music.
From the crush of embrace, they distill
the essence of love; and in the tremor
of childbirth, milk from coursing blood.
Like two teardrops from an unfulfilled love
that cannot ever be wiped away,
they well up, as if in grief, and spill over.
Translated from the Tamil by N. Kalyan Raman
Jyotsna Karmakar (b. 1950)
To Grandmother, Long After
Long ago, grandmother gave me an amulet and said:
Your heart will be drawn back to your home
I left the paper spread out on the three-legged table
and unable to find the stairs of the search for the secret of the
people of the lost island
lifting my hands in the darkness I said: Grandmother, you too!
Translated from the Bangla by Marian Maddern
Ranjit Hoskote (b. 1969)
Fern
This feathered leaf must have fallen from the hand
of the woman who turned around to see
if her child had strayed too close to the slope
of the fuming mountain or the hunting birds,
and left her footprint in ash that hardened
to rock. A spray of seeds released that noon
remains in the thick air, and this gift:
a leaf trapped between layers of mud
that volcanic fire baked into stone.
Drained of light and green, long spasm,
breath dusted with pollen:
a net of veins splayed on an altar
where the river turns in its sleep
and an old woman lights a lamp.
English
Adil Mansuri (1936-2008)
The City
The city at play on the river’s sandbed
may vanish and never flash on memory’s screen.
Let me breathe in deeply this sea of scents,
the smell of this fresh, wet mud.
Who knows if I will ever see again
these familiar faces, this glance, this glancing smile.
This window, this street, this wall, this house,
these lanes—eyes, have your fill of the city.
Embrace these loved ones. Who knows
what final partings lie in the years ahead.
O you who bid us goodbye, you live in our eyes;
what matter then
if we find no fellow-travellers.
Touch this country’s dust to your head, O Adil,
you may never ever tread this dust again.
Translated from the Gujarati by Suguna Ramanathan and Rita Kothari
Sitakant Mahapatra (b. 1937)
Time Does Not Fly
It is not time that flies.
It is men, all creatures
everywhere.
The cloud in brown coat flies away
waving goodbye to my father
as he sits like a portrait,
his head propped against the wall
of the front verandah of our house.
Next day, his back towards us,
father flies away and sinks
below the horizon
along with the setting sun.
Leaves fall
waving goodbye to the weeping tree.
And then the woodcutters come and fell the tree
and it waves goodbye
to the ancient soil on which it stood.
Suddenly one sees
houses, rivers, forests, paddy fields
swamps, wife and children, friends, relatives
the endless images, crafted by time:
everything rushing forward
into the darkness.
That darkness
is your only shadow.
Surely you should know
why we fly away, helpless,
and where.
Translated from the Oriya by the poet
Balachandran Chullikkad (b. 1957)
A Labourer’s Laughter II
I searched in many books
for the truth concerning you
and I learnt that
cities and sagas
were made by you.
And I learnt that
all banners were starched
in your life-blood.
And I learnt that you
are the lord and master
of the spring to come.
I waited, at dusk, many a time
to chat with you,
feigning acquaintance.
Translated from the Malayalam by A.J. Thomas
Jeet Thayil (b. 1959)
Spiritus Mundi
I was born in the Christian South
of a subcontinent mad for religion.
Warriors and zealots tried to rule it.
A minor disciple carried his doubt
like a torch to temple and shrine.
I longed for vision and couldn’t tell it.
The cities I grew up in were landlocked.
One, a capital, buff with architecture,
These My Words Page 11
