“Kamatipura” -By Namdeo Dhasal

(translated from the Marathi by Dilip Chitre)

The nocturnal porcupine reclines here
Like an alluring grey bouquet
Wearing the syphilitic sores of centuries
Pushing the calendar away
Forever lost in its own dreams

Man’s lost his speech
His god’s a shitting skeleton
Will this void ever find a voice, become a voice?

If you wish, keep an iron eye on it to watch
If there’s a tear in it, freeze it and save it too
Just looking at its alluring form, one goes berserk
The porcupine wakes up with a start
Attacks you with its sharp aroused bristles
Wounds you all over, through and through
As the night gets ready for its bridegroom, wounds begin to blossom
Unending oceans of flowers roll out
Peacocks continually dance and mate

This is hell
This is a swirling vortex
This is an ugly agony
This is pain wearing a dancer’s anklets

Shed your skin, shed your skin from its very roots
Skin yourself
Let these poisoned everlasting wombs become disembodied.
Let not this numbed ball of flesh sprout limbs
Taste this
Potassium cyanide!
As you die at the infinitesimal fraction of a second,
Write down the small ‘s’ that’s being forever lowered.

Here queue up they who want to taste
Poison’s sweet or salt flavour
Death gathers here, as do words,
In just a minute, it will start pouring here.

O Kamatipura,
Tucking all seasons under your armpit
You squat in the mud here
I go beyond all the pleasures and pains of whoring and wait
For your lotus to bloom.
— A lotus in the mud.

http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=10554

A very disturbing poem about the world of Mumbai’s whoreland. Filled with intense pathos, the poem does not even try to underplay the emotions but rather plays up the ugliness and squalor of the lives of the unfortunate women perhaps, carried away by the horror of the scene. The imagery is extremely evocative. “As the night gets ready for its bridegroom, wounds begin to blossom “-perhaps a reference to the flowers the women wear to deck themselves up for the night’s customers. This is pain wearing a dancer’s anklet recalls the horrors of the mujra dance with which the customers are entertained.

“Let these poisoned everlasting wombs become disembodied.
Let not this numbed ball of flesh sprout limbs”

We may recall the “sprout” image used by T.S.Eliot in the Waste Land:

Stetson, you who were with me in Mylae,
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Did it sprout? Will it bloom this year?

The horror continues with the death of the unborn kids, who are for ever being lowered into holes in the earth:

As you die at the infinitesimal fraction of a second,
Write down the small ‘s’ that’s being forever lowered

The poem’s end is surprisingly tender and on a note of hope.

O Kamatipura,
Tucking all seasons under your armpit
You squat in the mud here
I go beyond all the pleasures and pains of whoring and wait
For your lotus to bloom.

“Uncle Mohan Singh “by Amarjit Chandan

1930. The people of Nakodar are wonderstruck tonight.
In the tent a silent film is being shown
and my chacha uncle Mohan Singh plays the harmonium.
A window is illumined in the wall of darkness.
The actors move their lips, voiceless.
A flower blossoms, silently.
In the film when they walk it seems they are running.
People watch their dream and laugh to their heart’s content.
Uncle Mohan Singh is accompanying them with his harmonium
and making the flowers blossom.
Tonight the people of Nakodar are dreaming together
awake.
http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=10514

Simple imagery but very evocative. “A window is illumined in the wall of darkness”-imagine people sitting huddled in the tent to watch the silent movie,the screen appearing luminous in the sea of darkness. “The actors move their lips ,voiceless”-strange cinema where you have to imagine what the characters are saying by their lip movements.Even the flower here blossoms silently but Uncle Mohan Singh is actively making the flowers blossom through his harmonium music.Tonight the people of Nakodar are dreaming together their joint dreams and perhaps,their separate dreams as well.

” An Old Woman” -By Arun Kolatkar

An old woman grabs
hold of your sleeve
and tags along. .

She wants a fifty paise coin.
She says she will take you
to the horseshoe shrine.

You’ve seen it already.
She hobbles along anyway
and tightens her grip on your shirt

She won’t let you go.
You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.

You turn around and face her
with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.

When you hear her say,
‘What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?’

You look right at the sky.
Clear through the bullet holes
she has for her eyes.

And as you look on,
the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.

And the hills crack.
And the temples crack.
And the sky falls

With a plate-glass clatter
Around the shatterproof crone
who stands alone

And you are reduced
to so much small change
in her hand


http://www.geocities.com/kavitayan/arun_kolatkar.html

You look right at the sky
Clear through the bullet-holes
She has for eyes.

The old woman’s eyes are just two gaping holes filled with empty air,with the hills and the sky.Then the cracks begin around her eyes ,spreading beyond her skin and then the hills crack, the temples crack and the sky cracks and the the sky finally shatters and falls like plate-glass. The old woman herself is shatter-proof and nothing happens to her .Only you get instantly reduced to small change in her hand .It is you who shatter because her eyes are already bullet-holes which are formed with  cracks around the holes.

“On the death of a poem” -by A.K.Ramanujan

Images consult
one
another,
a conscience-
stricken
jury,
and come
slowly
to a sentence.

http://www.geocities.com/varnamala/ramanujan.html

I love the economy of words and the playful pun on the word “sentence” .The poetic process ,if one may call it that,is such that the poem dies still-born at times leaving the poet disgruntled .Some times the sentence may come out after all which will produce a semblance of a poem .At other times the verse describing the process is itself a lovely poem as this one is.

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“The Wheel” by Vinda Karandikar

 

Someone is about to come but doesn’t. Is about
to turn on the stairs but doesn’t.
I button my shirt
come from the laundry with all its dazzling blots,
like one’s peculiar fate.
I shut the door, sit quietly.
The fan begins to whirl
and turn the air into a whirlpool of fire,
making a noise bigger than the house.
Someone is about to come and doesn’t.
It doesn’t matter.
Calmly I lean against the wall,
become a wall.
A wounded bird on my shoulder laughs raucously,
laughs at the shoulder it perches on!
My soul of flesh and blood puts a long thread in the needle’s eye.
I stitch a patch on my son’s umbrella.
I pick his nose and name the pickings:
I call one “Elephant” and another “Lion.”
Someone is about to come and doesn’t. Is about
to turn on the stairs and doesn’t.
I tickle my children,
they tickle me in turn; I laugh,
with a will; for I do not feel tickled.
It doesn’t matter.
I scan their fingers for signs:
Nine conches and one wheel.

Note: “Nine conches and one wheel” are formations of lines on the tips of fingers which, in Indian palmistry, foretell a happy life        :

Translated from the Marathi by the author

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0907/poem_180011.html

“Some one is about to come but doesn’t/Is about to turn on the stairs but doesn’t.” A possibility with a certainty of the event not happening,ab initio. This is how despair reveals itself.”I button my shirt come from the laundry with all its dazzling blots” I am leaving the room but do not. Like those blots on the shirt I have my peculiar fate to enact.I shut the door and sit quietly as the fan whirs and makes a noise bigger than the house.

“makes the noise bigger than the house” is a pretty image. The meaning works both ways.The whirring noise is higher in volume than what the house contain.At another level the noise of the house rises above the noise level of the house itself.The house creaks in decrepitude and its doors rattle. The whirring fan makes the air into a whirlpool of fire.In the blazing heat of mid-summer the concrete roof sends down shafts of heat through the air stirred by the whirring of the fan.Calmly I lean against the wall and become the wall.”become the wall” is to become immobile against the wall merging into its staticity. “A wounded bird on my shoulder laughs raucously/Laughs at the very shoulder it perches on”-the laughter of rejection,of apathy and of the hopelessness of unreturned love.

I stitch my son’s umbrella ,mending its patches ,like the patches which dazzled on my shirt like my fate.I pick my son’s nose and give funny names to the pickings.I get tickled by children but cannot laugh.Because no matter how much they try they cannot bring me back my happiness.It does not matter.My children have nine conches and one wheel on their fingers .Their future will be bright as the the presence of one conch on the fingers is predictive of a prosperous life.

“Sea Breeze, Bombay” by Adil Jussawalla

Partition’s people stitched
Shrouds from a flag, gentlemen scissored Sind.
An opened people, fraying across the cut
country reknotted themselves on this island.

Surrogate city of banks,
Brokering and bays, refugees’ harbour and port,
Gatherer of ends whose brick beginnings work
Loose like a skin, spotting the coast,

Restore us to fire. New refugees,
Wearing blood-red wool in the worst heat,
come from Tibet, scanning the sea from the north,
Dazed, holes in their cracked feet.

Restore us to fire. Still,
Communities tear and re-form; and still, a breeze,
Cooling our garrulous evenings, investigates nothing,
Ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root,

And settles no one adrift of the mainland’s histories.

A partition poem which is also a Bombay poem. Partition’s people stitched shrouds from a flag ,a reference to the gruesome killings in the wake of the India partition in the name of nationalism and religion.Bombay turned out to be a migrants’ city and a commercial capital ,where communities break and re-form.Still Bombay investigates nothing (We have the example of the several scams and bomb blasts, riots and underworld killings),ruffles no one’s tempers and uncovers no roots.Above all, Bombay settles no one adrift of the mainland’s histories.

“STILL LIFE” by A.K.Ramanujan

When she left me
after lunch,I read
for a while.
But I suddenly wanted
to look again
and I saw the half-eaten
sandwich,
bread,
lettuce and salami,
all carrying the shape
of her bite.

“Still Life” is a simple poem written in a somewhat minimalistic style.The theme is neither the woman the poet has had lunch with nor love for her but the absence of the woman which lingers on after she leaves, in the form of her bite of the half-eaten sandwich.The situation is presented to you with no frills .Nor have any imagery been employed unless one tries to extrapolate the half-eaten sandwich to mean something deeper, in which case the beauty of the capture of the woman’s absence is lost.I would prefer to let the sandwich remain a sandwich.

“Father Returning Home” -by Dilip Chitre

My father travels on the late evening train
Standing among silent commuters in the yellow light
Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes
His shirt and pants are soggy and his black raincoat
Stained with mud and his bag stuffed with books
Is falling apart. His eyes dimmed by age
fade homeward through the humid monsoon night.
Now I can see him getting off the train
Like a word dropped from a long sentence.
He hurries across the length of the grey platform,
Crosses the railway line, enters the lane,
His chappals are sticky with mud, but he hurries onward.

Home again, I see him drinking weak tea,
Eating a stale chapati, reading a book.
He goes into the toilet to contemplate
Man’s estrangement from a man-made world.
Coming out he trembles at the sink,
The cold water running over his brown hands,
A few droplets cling to the greying hairs on his wrists.
His sullen children have often refused to share
Jokes and secrets with him. He will now go to sleep
Listening to the static on the radio, dreaming
Of his ancestors and grandchildren, thinking
Of nomads entering a subcontinent through a narrow pass.

The poem speaks about the inner loneliness of the poet’s father, the utter alienation he is experiencing in the twilight years (man’s estrangement from a man-made world) as he ceases to matter to his children who no longer share anything with him. All the while he is trying to evoke, through the racial conscious, the invisible connection with his ancestors who had entered the sub-continent through the Khyber Pass in the Himalayas in some distant past (the allusion is perhaps to the migration of the Aryans to the Indian subcontinent from Central Asia). The poet uses some fine imagery to describe the pain and misery lurking in the old man’s soul as he travels in the local train .His bag stuffed with books is falling apart refers to the state of the old man’s mind which has turned senile after all that knowledge it has acquired through years of dedicated study.

A wonderful image is used to describe his getting down from the train: Like a word dropped from a long sentence .The uniqueness of the image lies in the highly evocative visual picture of an old man dropping off from the train as though he is no longer relevant to the train which will now move forward with other people to their destinations .The old man is just a word in the syntax of life. The sentence that is long enough to carry several words forward each contributing to its overall meaning now drops off one stray word, which is no longer required.

The other interesting image is the eyes and vision, which occurs in the poem again and again. The suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes is a pretty image. The second one is his eyes dimmed by age fade homeward.

Above all we may look at the dexterous use of words to convey the “twilight” atmosphere in the poem : evening train, yellow light, unseeing eyes , his eyes dimmed by age fade homeward ,gray platform.

‘MY SON’S TEACHER”-By Kamala Das

My son is four. His teacher swooned on a grey pavement
Five miles from here and died. From where she lay, her new skirt
Flapped and fluttered, a green flag, half-mast, to proclaim death’s
Minor triumphs. The wind was strong, the poor men carried
Pink elephant-gods to the sea that day. They moved in
Long gaudy processions, they clapped cymbals, they beat drums
And they sang aloud, she who lay in a faint was drowned
in their song. The evening paper carried the news. He
Bathed, drank milk, wrote two crooked lines of Ds and waited.
But the dead rang no doorbell. He is only four.
For many years he will not be told that tragedy
Flew over him one afternoon, an old sad bird, and
Gently touched his shoulder with its wing.


The wind was strong/the poor men carried pink elephant-Gods to the sea that day/ She who lay lifeless on the road.Her new skirt flapped like a green flag and her existence announced by the green flag drowned in the cymbals of the God’s procession. The poet’s four-years old son   bathed ,drank milk,wrote two crooked lines of Ds and waited .The dead rang no door-bell. A tragic experience from the poet’s own life. Poetry of the personal kind.

Imagery is effectively used , like the green flag of her skirt  fluttering in the wind announcing  death’s minor triumphs .Minor because it made no difference to the world which went on with its procession of God with cymbals drowning her death in its sound.The child wrote two crooked lines of D’s ,perhaps of the triumph of Death’s crooked ways ,like the way in which a young woman’s life has been  cut short on her way to the poet’s house .The old sad bird ,tragedy ,has touched him on his shoulder briefly and the child will not fully understand its implication for many years to come.Tragedy has swooped down on him like a gray bird touching him briefly but he does not understand it fully at this age.

“POEM” By Gieve Patel

What is it between
A woman’s legs draws destruction
To itself? Each war sees bayonets
Struck like flags in 
A flash of groin blood.
The vicious in-law
Places spice or glowing cinder
On that spot. Little bird-mouth
Woman’s second,
Secret lip, in-drawn
Before danger, opened
At night to her lover.
Women walk the earth fully clothed,
A planetary glow dispelling
The night of dress,
A star rising where
Thigh meets belly: target spot
Showered
With kisses, knives.

The poem talks about destruction inherent in the human condition,the inevitability of love and regeneration leading to death and destruction.Little bird-mouth,woman’s second,secret lip,indrawn before danger,opened to her lover . For a brief while,after wars and domestic violence, born of the power games of nations and homes, love prevails.The planetary glow of the archetypal woman dispels her night of dress and a star rises where thigh meets belly but the target spot is showered with kisses and knives.

I like the poem for its tautness of construction and the amazing economy of words which make the poem sound  almost classical.Some very rich lines like little bird-mouth…,bayonets struck like flags in a flash of groin blood ,a star rising where thigh meets belly,target spot showered with kisses and knives make the poem a memorable one.