by Joy Goswami
The one I’m asking has no answers.
To tell the truth, neither am I saying anything.
Having opened the packet of poison and dropped the white powder into our mouths
Today our tongues are heavy and bitter.
Sin
Like a shadow, slander against one’s mother.
Once you’ve heard it, it never leaves your side.
I was ten when I heard Kakima saying
What a bad person Ma was.
Today Ma isn’t around. Neither is Kakima.
Wherever I go—imagine I’ve gone for a meeting—I’ll see
It standing under a tree right next
To the park.
I check into a hotel—look out of the window
There! It’s sitting on the main road—
Each time I come down the stairs and try to leave
It’ll come and open the door and wait silently…
A wilderness stretches towards the horizon
A flock of clouds and midfield a spot of shade
I see in that spot of shade, the paan-box next to them
Ma and Kakima sitting and chatting with each other
It never leaves me, the sin of having listened to slander against my mother
Strike
I’ve been lying right next to the snake for ages
It wets my cheek lovingly with its forked tongue
When I rise and go to the veranda it follows at my heels
Embracing both legs it strikes my breast, strikes
Above my breast
Poison-blue, poison-black, manhood spills
Skin and bones
I just don’t feel like sitting down with everyone to eat.
That one’s eating an ox tongue, repeatedly glancing
At my gravy-rice.
That one’s eating boiled pig.
On another one’s plate a frog’s upside-down legs.
Coming out of its sty the roast pig
Raises its snout to the sky and calls.
On the edge of the pond the frog walks with great difficulty
On its spindly forelegs. Naturally, its back legs have been cut off!
At the edge of the bazaar a huge legless ox lies on the ground
Its eyes open. No tongue in its mouth.
Its head torn off, the broiler chicken
Races four steps and rises into space
Blood foaming at its neck…
Cucumber fields, fields of gourd
Fields full of grain and
Green spinach leaves, papayas
Mangoes, bananas, star-apples ripening on trees
Lament loudly: Don’t eat any more don’t you eat any more
There I sit, under the tree, skin and bones
Demon
The demon comes at night and stands in front of the veranda
Lifts his hand, brings down a bird’s nest—
In which instead of eggs nine planets
Revolve, but where’s the sun?
‘Right here’—he points at his belly
In his stomach a giant sun circles in a blazing fire.
The demon says, ‘I’ll drop you in here too—
If you don’t want any trouble
Bring me some stale bread quick.’
One meal a day
I don’t eat anything at night. For almost twenty-seven years now
I’ve survived on one meal a day. I don’t find it difficult.
But when day ends, I see Night going out on the street—
Over twenty-seven years its stomach a war drum.
So hungry so hungry, it bites and gobbles houses. Crunches
The fat roots of trees.
Resting on its toes, raising its head,
It eats the waning moon one bite at a time.
No one else notices Night. Only I
See it entering the city, see it exiting the city every day
Leaving behind one desert at a time…
Late
Oh I left my house hours ago. And you
Have only just left yours. The more
I drown in the sea, get blinded by desert storms, roll down
The mountainsides, down down down, the easier you take it,
Dawdling as you ring the bell to my house. You ring the bell
And wait, as if someone will come and open up. Seeing how long it takes
You lean against the door…
Aeons go by. In the door of the house your fossil
Is all they find.
Mukunda
Mukunda would lower himself into the well. Would clear up plates, glasses, pitchers.
Mukunda could climb the coconut tree. He’d pick tender coconuts and feed
The Mahajans. Three rupees was his fee
Those days.
Mukunda was always bare-bodied. Pitch-black. His head was huge.
People called Mukunda ‘tui’.
Mukunda’s daughter-in-law drank poison after being found with Mukunda.
Mukunda’s son married again. Put up a paan-shop near the bazaar.
No one knew where Mukunda went.
Forty years later I see Mukunda today.
Going away across the fields at night
His daughter-in-law’s body slung over his shoulder.
Hot on his heels
A ring of fire chases him. The sudarshan-chakra.
Every time
It tries to cut the dead body
That wild wayfarer swiftly lowers the body to the ground
Leaps before it with a tiger’s roar.
Terrified, the sudarshan-chakra flees…
This carries on all night…
Once again
A mad storm. I’ve been in such a storm myself. Exactly
Where the wind begins I have stood
And seen waves rise sixty feet high
And lay palaces low.
Countless cars floated away like straws on the current.
Bridges bent, flyovers fell under the water’s thrust.
On the seabed, one plate sliding into another,
Said: ‘This entering is just what I need’.
I too want to enter you. Again, once again. Again -and-endless-again.
Don’t say no.
In my sleep, this rain
The sleep I’m in is absolute. In my sleep, this rain falls. In the rain
Someone crosses the field leaping over dead bodies.
Someone tries to read the fate lines on the foreheads of the dead.
Someone expresses sympathy for the villagers.
The sleep I’m in is absolute. In my sleep, it’s raining hard. In the rain
Leaping over dead bodies, the destiny of this village leaves for the next.
Chains
The delusion of being a tree. The occasional enticement of being a bird.
Now, the further every word of mine travels
Ponds dry up.
Rivers—sand-pits.
Seas jelly-mud for miles together
Thousands and thousands of dead birds, dead fish
Impaled. Blue whales. White sharks.
I sit alone in my clan. In my head, sky
Overcast with thick radioactive cloud
Civilization, before dying, had no idea what to give me—
All it left me were the chains around its feet.
Book
What fraction of my blue book will you read?
Each page tightly stuck with dry venom
The only way to open it is to lick your finger repeatedly
People will come and see a half-open book on the table.
You’re sitting next to it. You died sitting there. Who knows when!
Dust
Burnt by fever into black dust my father
Began flying—Tarapur, Ghazipur, Naupada, Mushunde, Anul—
After crossing so many villages—Ranaghat.
Arriving at Siddheswaritola at his own house,
Baba enters the kitchen along
with the tiny fragments
Of dust that ride through morning’s trellis on focused beams of sun.
His underage sons and widowed wife fail to recognize him.
On the bench in the veranda the two brothers
Place their souls full-of-grief in the middle of their books.
Their mother goes to the kitchen and puts her soul full-of-grief dripdrop on the lit stove.
In the courtyard the dog, starkers, rubs and rubs
Its soul full-of-grief on the guava tree.
In the next breeze my father flies away again
Taking with him that grief, the weight of a single grain of dust
Room
Baba’s pressure is falling. Lower, even lower. Fell through the night.
Couldn’t be raised at all in the end.
Baba’s pressure fell until it reached the lower roots of the mountain.
Just one little room there. Where Baba lives. Lights the Janata stove, makes tea,
Fries an egg.
Ma comes to see Baba. Belamashi’s with her.
Both have school holidays. In Baba’s one-room home
Baba and Belamashi don’t let Ma do anything.
After spending the whole day cooking up this and that for Ma
The three of them sit down to eat together
In that room from long before my mother’s marriage
Every day I leave behind a brief fountain of time
Cauldron
Since morning two labourers have been coming and going
In front of the veranda
Pans full of sand and stone chips on their heads.
Over the last few days an old house nearby was torn down.
Flats will come up.
It’s been so sunny since morning, I haven’t been able to step out
From the room onto the veranda.
Sweat pours continuously down their necks their backs.
At noon
I suddenly saw the pan
On one of their heads no longer held sand or stone chips—
Supernovas bursting like bubbles.
Revolving around his head umpteen-teeming suns, in the orbit of the pan
Fire-tailed comets raced.
What if he inverts the pan now like he does each time?
What if the entire universe falls from the pan?
What’ll become of this veranda then? This room?
Where will I live then with Kaberi-Bukun?
Empty room
The minute I see an empty room I imagine someone will come.
Someone, meaning you.
From the third-floor window a house visible in the distance,
Workers on the scaffold. Some people from the flat next door
Are taking a fridge down the shared backstairs, what
A ruckus!
The one whose house I’m in, his landline jangles from time to time.
I’ve been told not to answer. If the doorbell rings, let it ring,
I’ve been told
Not to open. Startled by those noises we’ve no sooner sprung apart
Than we calm down and take refuge in each other again—
The room detaches itself from this third-floor flat
And goes floating far far away on the summer breeze…
It’s been twelve years. Even now when I enter an empty room
Anywhere
Those afternoons come back.
Yaksha
I was seen making love with you—
On the walls of caves and temples. You even had
A female companion in the role of assistant. On one occasion
It was evident that she, too, was involved.
Many have seen this, people from foreign lands have come
And taken photos back with them. Have printed them in
books. Many people
Know us.
Today, just see the state I’m in! I’ve been searching, all alone
Staying up nights, for years
Wandering from village to village town to town searching for the two of you
My hair has trespassed over my shoulders, the jungle of my beard is descending to my chest.
Well and good
If I get just enough to eat each day—haven’t bathed in ages—
The scanty cloth around my waist almost entirely stripped away by rain and sun
In whose homes are you two now? How can you bear to live
Without me? Once
Just once, be brave and come out, won’t you!
Collect me, take me home
Let the three of us stay alive together again!
Ten years
I loved you from day one.
That love is ten years old today.
You’d come to interview me:
A notepad in your left hand
A gel pen in your pocket
‘Would you say a few words on this issue?’
I said a few words that day, and afterwards, so many many words
Kept saying them in my mind
Ten years since I said all that.
If you have something to say, say it one of these days.
Come
How could the rain keep you from coming? It’s hardly raining!
You call this an earthquake? The earth shook so much
Mountains toppled into the water
Even now fires burn in that giant gaping mouth.
On the other side, the sea has swept cities away…
This has happened so many times before on this earth.
Those days, nothing ever stopped you from coming
In the guise of a water-creature, in the form of a floating weed, there you were.
What happened this time? Listen, we need to meet.
We need to meet in this storm, in this hugely impossible storm
Our union is essential
Wherever you are, in whatever state, come running,
Embrace me—tighter, even tighter—
Or else the world will be wiped out again
A dream
Why the big rush?
The Bengal Lamp crossing is just twenty paces from the house.
The water begins at the crossing. The rest is all water. If you descend into the water
And walk twenty paces the ice-fields are in front of you. The aurora borealis overhead.
If you walk twenty paces on the ice the earth is over—
Now, descend into space
Weaving in and out of the twisted galaxies
You will arrive
In another solar system. No need to hustle and bustle about.
You can take your time getting there.
There’s just one problem. You can’t remember
What time you left home or when
Escape route
You finally thought your way out. Climbing
Ashore you saw you were drenched from head to toe
In the worry-water of so many days
So much of it. Swimming such a distance from midstream
You’re out of breath.
Wheeze a while here on the sand.
As you began walking on the shore you realized you recognize nothing.
Unfamiliar creepers. Poison if they brush against your skin.
Unfamiliar insects.
Poison if they bite you. Wheeling, an unknown bird descends
Pecks, rises away. That hurt. Blood drips from your forehead.
How much longer in this wood?
The wood ends. Your body’s swollen up in places. Thorns in your feet.
You’re limping. The blood trickles down your cheek to your chin. But
The wood is over. This time you’ve found the edge. Because ahead there’s neither
Water nor mountain nor plain—nothing. Beyond the edge
What?
A ditch—just a ditch. Nothing
Can be seen below. At least
You’ve found the edge.
Now
There’s j
ust one thing left to do.
Jump.
Rain
What are you doing now? Are you going to sleep? It won’t do if you feel so
Sleepy at the drop of a hat! It’s going to rain all night, won’t you watch it fall? Get up.
Sit on the veranda and watch. Before you know it
A hazy light will appear, that will mean morning—but the sun won’t rise.
The earth is now a tremendous body of water. For two or three centuries it’s been raining
And you thought it was just one night!
You never noticed, you were single-mindedly watching the rain.
Don’t bother changing what you’re wearing now, your nightclothes, come,
Take your boat and set out at once.
All the insects, all the flowers and plants and every kind of living creature
One by one, gather them into the boat and head north-east.
You’ll spot me lying on the peak of a still-sinking mountain
Half-afloat-half-drowned
Just for you. The rain of these last two or three centuries
Has swept over me. Now hold my hand and pull me
Into your boat. Your night-clothes are completely soaked.
Take them off. Hold me close to your naked body—
Raise the heat. Raise it higher. With your entire effort
Make me firm again. So that
On this floating deck
With all the plants and leaves, all the living creatures as witness
I can enter you completely once again
Olu
Olu cooks for us. In this house
If anyone loses anything, let Olu know. Taking down the pressure-cooker
She’ll say: Dada’s panjabi? The blue one? It’s hanging behind
The bathroom door. Money? Look, there’s some in that pocket.
Boudi’s sunglasses? On top of the TV. Boudi’s eye-medicine,
Bukun-di’s college books—in fact which cat
Is on which neighbour’s wall right this minute, just by hearing them call
From so far, Olu will be able to tell you. Boudi kept which sari
On which shelf in the cupboard and forgot, Dada
Put away which book on which rack and forgot, Bukun-di
Put her mobile on silent, kept it on top of the fridge and
Now can’t find it at all—all of it, everything
