You will smile back,
A small cry of laughter in your eyes,
Underneath the hair that loves disguise
You will smile back.
They shall never know,
This is the toxin that adds flavour to our life,
Never know
That you are not my mistress nor my wife.
Epithalamium
Sultan Padamsee
LENIA: Is the night not sufficient darkness
To cover the slight defect of my limbs?
And you who have lain with me often,
Is custom not fertile enough for your embrace?
I have not taunted you in your moments,
Nor shrewed you in the hours before the sun
When my body was hot with expectation,
And yours as impotent as a sterile man.
Tell me Marius why then tonight when
I have watched the crowd surge
Into itself, so that I am in heat
For the embraces of a lover,
You are cold.
Have I suddenly lost
The beauty I am noted for?
Have I ceased to be Lenia,
More than the harlot of high places?
MARIUS: It’s not that, indeed it is not so.
LENIA: Do you find me suddenly coarse?
Am I not versed in the lore of the Hebrews?
Do I not worship the gods of Greece?
Do you find me coarse and unfaithful?
Could I not have had lovers,
Waiting for you?
Am I not a woman? And before you
Many have told me, men from Araby
And others, that the two scars on my thigh
Kindle them to a further desire,
So that they cannot resist my breasts
And must couple with me many times
Till they lie exhausted with the loss
Of their fluid: only I waited
With my wants not disposed of.
MARIUS: All this I know Lenia and I am weary—
Can you not understand that a man
Sometimes desires and sometimes not?
LENIA: Untrue, Marius, as untrue as your love—
Does it not even sateen your organ
To know that you alone in a single
Embrace completely involve me?
MARIUS: Listen Lenia, I shall explain—
Not for love of you for you are a harlot,
Even a witty harlot, but I must
Remove this heat of the sun
Of the City. Sometimes my thoughts
Take fire and as in verse
The lines turn forth. Listen then, Lenia,
My beloved of the moment, and
Take your fingers away from my pouch,
For in the moment of relief I feel cool,
And your hand is irritating,
Not enkindling, and listen—
Three walls there were
And a road along them—
A weary road along them.
The walls and the vales
Were lined with women.
Below the cross was a man of thirty,
A wasted face of much beauty,
He was made indifferently well—
But nothing to me,
A lover of women.
Three hills there were
And a crowd between them
People spitting and cheering.
The hills and the vales
Were lined with women.
On the cross they nailed
This thief and sinner,
And I felt pity.
They had taken away his garments
He was made indifferently well—
Yet nothing to me
But an object of pity
And strangely, a little love—
But nothing to me,
For I, Lenia, am a lover of women.
Three nails there were
Two were bright and one was rusty
They went into his left palm
And his two feet and his right palm.
A sweat was upon me
My skin pricked up
A lust as faint as the breeze
Of your stranger Samaria
Awoke me and left me.
Three nails there were
And the valleys below were mingled with women.
I pitied this man,
Though my blood had beat faster,
For you know Lenia
That I am a lover of women, not men.
Thrice did he cry out,
And into my belly came
The gear of desire,
But I pitied the man;
Only that they had hurt him inflamed me,
And I was a god, cruel and loving,
They raised him and he cried out
In thirst—
For pain and fear are thirsty things.
I wined a sponge as a god who is loving
And I galled it as a god who is cruel,
And gave it to him.
But he was not thirsty enough.
I grew angered, and my love
And his pain and the dark sky
Grew together, and
I knew I must enter this man
In sensuous pain.
Three hours passed—
In the vales below the women
Waited and watched him
And desired him
Till I too grew mad with their fire.
And I seized a spear
And entered his body—in my haste
Below his right side—
This cooled me
For I am a lover of women, not men.
He died crying strange things.
The women jeered him and the men
Cried out strangely,
And as he died, my mind
Grew clouded,
And I gambled with the soldiers
For his garments and won.
I seized them and in that barren
Place which you Jews call Golgotha,
Behind a rock I buried my face
In the lice-ridden cloth.
In my madness I remembered
The beauty of women, their thighs
And waists and their hair,
Their breasts . . .
LENIA: Did you not think of me?
MARIUS: They were as nothing, as the
Dust, and I was no longer
A lover of women.
I went from that place
To the Jew whom we Romans call John,
And desired him and I have
Come here defiled.
For the body of John stroked my body
And the full lips of John
Stroked my body—
I am weary of delight.
LENIA: Look on me Marius, am I not desire?
My body is creamed and desireful.
MARIUS: The full lips of
John Stroked my body,
And the red nails of John
Did vile things and made
My body soft.
LENIA: Listen Marius, you are no poet.
MARIUS: I will not remember those things,
The white disease of the body of John.
The winds come down from
The mountains and Marius slept again
In the arms of a woman.
And So to Bed
Sultan Padamsee
And so to bed,
It always ends in bed.
The fires at London to light you to bed,
And the bombs of the Germans to chop off your head.
The end of the writers of lyrics,
The popular songsters, the songs of their mothers,
The lullabies that once rocked you to sleep.
The rocking and shaking of aerial warfare,
It all ends in bed.
To be born, to couple in the way of the ancients,
Or the way of the angels,
To die and
be lain in the comforting earth,
Is to lie like the dead.
To lay back the covers, turn out the lights,
To sleep and be shaken and bred,
To make merry and slacken and wed
To live in excess and then lead,
Is the bearing, the wedding, the bedding, the dead,
It all ends in bed.
To dream in the conscious,
To wanton and flourish
Or sedulous ape the sages and martyrs,
To conceive the greatness, the godlike,
The heroes, the harlots, the poets,
Is to wait until dead,
Is to wait for the sanction of bed.
And late one night There flew overhead,
A plane that had lost its way,
So it dropped its bombs,
And passed along
And passed along its way.
And the bombs of the plane
Blew the poet from bed
And the ugly man and the harlot
Who danced and died twice,
The Keeper of inns and
The bald-headed barman, they found
Them all in the neighbouring fields,
And they covered them up
Because they were dead.
The candles that shine in the morning for light,
And the angels that stand to keep in the night,
Were waiting and longing
In vain for the fires to light them to bed,
And the merciful choppers to chop off their heads,
They waited and watched and longed to be dead.
The Jungle
Madhav G. Gawankar
Deep, dense forest. Hairy and sweaty. I met Lily at Karnala. A very safe, protected place. Green and clean. I offered him cold coffee when he wanted something ‘hot’. The sky was clear. Just like his innocent soul. He said, ‘Many guys have deceived me. They cheated me. They pretended to be gay. Now, many of them are married. Please don’t do that. Be my friend. Be my life partner. Treat me as your wife.’ . . . He touched my heart. Lily, a flower boy so soft and smooth. Silky and milky. He caressed me. He wasn’t looking careworn then. I didn’t know that he had been beaten by his dad. He had been driven away. He was a bird without shelter. He had lost his job. His colleagues had tortured him as well. He never spoke. He never uttered a single word of I sorrow. The storm lay in his heart. A deeply buried cyclone . . . He was like a sylph: merry and holy. I had never seen such beauty before. Slim, tender, fair . . . Hot like a volcano flower. We were free finches. He was very happy to know that I was a bachelor. He kissed me and whispered, ‘I will never forget you. Though I go back to Bombay, I will be with you again.’ I was not only his ‘hubby’, but his ‘babe’ too.
Lily’s green eyes were like stars. I didn’t know then that they were only shooting stars. I still remember that rainy night. He wanted my sweaty, hungry body. I enjoyed his pointed nipples, his rosy lips, girlish moonface . . . specially the fragrance of his body . . . just like sandalwood. ‘Give me a child,’ he whispered. He had an impossible dream in his pious heart: to give birth to a baby, which would look just like me. ‘God, give me that power,’ he cried. Countless drops of joy took us to heaven, a place of bliss. It was not my first experience but what Lily gave me, other boys couldn’t. When he patted me on my bare back, I felt as if my mother was with me. That wet night provided me a warm blanket of peace and true affection.
The days passed. I had to come back to Ratnagiri. Lily went to Bombay. I never received a letter; not even a small chit from him. He had not given me a phone number. I thought of him constantly. He came to me in my dreams. One day, I decided to go to Bombay on official work. I had to do an ‘on the spot’ report for my newspaper. The Chief Editor said, ‘Do come back within two days. I need to send you to Pune.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said like a truant schoolboy.
Bombay! Shining showcity. A veritable bhelpuri—tasty and risky. Before doing the ‘on the spot report’, I ran to Dharavi. I wanted to meet Lily, my fair boy . . .
A small girl opened the door.
‘Does Hrishikesh stay here?’ . . . I took his real name. She looked at me with surprise, as if I was asking about a ghost. She was Hrishi’s cousin sister. She said, ‘Don’t you know . . . he committed . . . suicide.’
I couldn’t believe it. ‘When? When and why did he do that?’ I almost screamed. An old woman who was probably Lily’s mother, came out of the house. She understood my condition. She probably guessed who I was. She used to meet Lily’s boyfriends. Lily’s father was a rude monster; he spoiled that flower. Lily’s mother told me the whole story. That old monster used to give him the worst treatment possible so that he would leave his ‘habit’. But he never listened to his father. So his father drove him away. When he was sleeping on the footpath, he was brutally raped by a beggar. What a dirty, demeaning experience! He died of shame and fear; humiliation and disappointment. They said he had killed himself three month ago. His mother gave me the exact date. But he had met me at Karnala two months earlier.
I started perspiring. A glass of water did not help. Who did I meet? Whom did I sleep with? Only a soul? A bundle of wishes? A shadow of wet dreams? Where is my Lily now? I heard his lovely words coming from the dark, ‘I will be with you again.’
I couldn’t say anything to those poor souls. I had no wish to meet Lily’s father. He . . . my Lily . . . had ended his life under ‘double fast Virar’. He is still wandering . . . waiting for a sweet little baby with my round face. While playing with the curly hair on my chest, Hrishikesh had said, ‘I love this jungle.’
Now I think, life itself is a mystic jungle, isn’t it?
The Slaves
Hoshang Merchant
I met Mazhar one spring at the gay park. We looked at each other for an hour, then another and another. He was stout and strong, stronger than I at any rate. I’d expected him to make the first move. But I had to do it.
He thought me to be a foreigner and he didn’t speak English. I did not disappoint him. I kept up my banter liberally peppered with accented Urdu.
I brought him home across the railway tracks separating Red Wills from the Public Garden. My room was bare like my heart. He took me standing up against the window. I felt suffocated as he entered me with a push. The window flew open and my curious neighbours had their curiosity satisfied.
Next day, I heard a whimpering at my window. I looked out to see a madman, hirsute like me, with long hair, long beard. He could be love-mad. He could be god-mad. He moaned for about an hour at my window. I let him groan in ecstasy or pain. When I left for work, I saw a mound of fresh deposit at my doorstep. I covered the stink with some fresh earth.
One night, Mazhar brought a Christian girl to my home. He took her on the floor of my bare living room. I slept fitfully in the bedroom next to the living room listening to every moan. The girl dressed. A cross glistened on her impossibly lean frame. She probably needed food. Mazhar paid her fifty rupees. He felt like a man. She looked like a poor girl. I felt bad for her.
Mazhar would always take me from behind and then I would take him from behind. Like good friends, we’d take turns. An older friend told me tales of machismo during the Nizam’s rule: He and his friend could not decide on the male and female roles in bed. So they frigged each other standing up all night. Equality does not mean sameness, it merely means reciprocity.
Mazhar had no father. His mother ran a boarding house. First the maternal uncle, whose ward he was, used Mazhar. Then all the male boarders started using Mazhar. When he grew up, he started using the servant girls. He felt like a master. They were his sex slaves.
Mazhar had big hands. He was an ironsmith, ‘welder’ they called him. His elder brother, now married, owned the smithy. An impossibly thin, mousy boy worked there. He loved Mazhar. Once he followed me up to my doorstep since he knew me to be Mazhar’s friend and I guessed he had a relationship with Mazhar too.
Sure enough, Mazhar broug
ht him home one day. By then, I’d moved to a Muslim home in a largely Brahmin neighbourhood, and I occupied an attic where neighbours couldn’t pry. Mazhar offered me the boy. I declined. Mazhar offered to let me watch. I accepted.
The boy undressed. Mazhar made the boy undress him. His fat body appeared from the clothes and his little penis showed from under his fat belly. The thin boy offered his lean ass standing up. Mazhar entered him from behind with force after wetting his dick with his own spit which he had spat onto his hand and rubbed onto his dick. The boy let out a groan. But I could tell he did this on cue to increase his master’s excitement.
Then Mazhar began his in-and-out strokes of the pelvis. The pelvic thrusts became fiercer and fiercer. The boy was perspiring. It was a warm August afternoon and our attic was sealed shut against any intrusion. The boy, also an ironsmith, withstood every blow.
He bent a little with each blow, groaning, perspiring, but straightened again only to bend and groan again under another thrust.
‘Leave him! He’ll die!’ I cried.
‘When will he die?’ mocked Mazhar. His dick had slipped out at my sudden interruption. He quickly re-entered him.
He came inside the boy. Once. Twice. Thrice. Then when the boy begged mercy, he let him go. I gave the boy ten rupees out of pity. The boy asked Mazhar too for an equal amount.
‘Don’t teach him bad habits,’ Mazhar admonished me.
Whenever Mazhar would visit, we’d ask each other: Whose turn?
‘Mine, mine!’ I’d unfairly clamour and mount him.
Once Mazhar wondered: ‘It is I who fucks everyone; why is it that I let you fuck me?’
Mazhar was an illiterate. He worked all day with iron. He fucked prostitutes and servants. And he let me fuck him.
One rainy night, Mazhar jumped the low wall of my walled-in ground floor apartment, for I had moved across the street from my poet’s attic to a one-bedroom flat. He asked for vaseline himself and smeared it on my dick. Then he lay on his stomach and slowly made me enter him. He was on his knees and as I ever so gently slipped into him, Mazhar spread his legs wider and wider until there was no space left between my navel and his buttocks and his stomach and the mat. As I came inside him, Mazhar too groaned and left a spot of wet semen on the mat.
Next morning, I found a limp ten-rupee note on the wet grass. Mazhar never reappeared. I asked at the Friend’s Medical Hall where he used to hang out and they told me he’d left for the Gulf. Perhaps he was striking iron or gold there; breaking stones, sifting sand.
Yaraana Page 6
