Ghodbunder Road

(Mira Bhayandar to Thane)

All through the way, we keep speaking,
raising the stakes, little by little,
every night creates possibilities, which
the morning breaks, little by little.

What will remain of this night, years from
now, is only an abstract wish,
his head on my arms, his hair in my fingers
- desire slakes, little by little.

Mario had told me the Portugese traded
Arabian horses here at the creek,
'Ghod' 'Bunder' - the port of the horses -
how history wakes, little by little.

On the radio, as Ananyaa sang, she pestled
the moon, dissolved the stars,
take heed, Akhil, she sings of our lives, it
gives and it takes, little by little.

In Shimla

it always rains twice,
once, from the sky,
then, when the pines drip.

The same with you, Lalita,
once, when you went,
then, as it hit.

???? ?? ??? ?? ???? ??

???? ???? ??? ??
???? ???

?? ??
???? ??? ??,

?? ??
?? ??? ??:
?? ???? ????? ???? ???,
??? ???? ??? ????? ???

?? ??? ?? ??? ???? ?? ?? ?? ???? ???

?????
?? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?????


tr. from Kei Miller's 'Broken is the shape of everything'

Kei Miller

 

Nishit Saran

Half way down the Lodhi Road,
the first day of rain,

those who come here often must
be held by you, and pain,

and memory must, like memory does,
hold them in its skein,

remembering you, like always, with
the summer in your veins.
 

Two memories, Delhi

I

Laxmi Nagar, Delhi
1997

I must have been twelve
when a grand-uncle was discovered
during a vacation in Delhi,

you don't know him? we'd told you, he's

nani's eldest brother,
(also from Sargodha, Pakistan)
I'd never met a grand-uncle.

In his Jamuna-paar house, he looked so frail
in his drawing-room that my twelve-year-oldness
was afraid to go near him.

He could not see. And, for me, then, his could-not-seeness
had sat in the middle of the room
but no one would mention it.

He spoke to us and I followed his closed eyelids
that kept egg-whites beneath them.

I tried to measure how much 
he could see of the snacks on the table,
of my fingers, of all of us talking,
of his own speaking-about-us-without-knowing-us,
as if of course I know you, you're my sister's grand...

After a while,
he asked Pinki (my mother's name
for those who knew her longer than I)
to let him see us.

We were made to get up and
stand in front of him.

I walked slowly, my bones
shaped like awkwardness.

He touched my face with his fingers,
frailness, moved them lightly over my nose,
my eyes (should I keep them closed? or open?)
and said, he's "nice-looking" in English,
and then let me go.

I bundled back
to my edge of the sofa,
to the edge of my mother,
near her, asking her to keep me
from her people, those who knew her
longer than I, grand-uncles whose egg-whites
roamed on walls and who saw people through fingers.

II

Jangpura Extension, Delhi
2016

Rohit, it has been about six years
since you left, and of-course-this-is-very-little-time,
especially-in-this-day-and-age,
but I thank my stars that sometimes I find it
difficult to remember
your face
fully.

It is surprising how much six years
without a facebook-friendship can do,
how they can blur the edges of cheek-bones,
make the nose go was-it-like-this?
and eyes, were-they-dark-brown-or-black?

Around the third year,
when this slow forgetting had started,
I found these little slipping-away's of details
to be a form of betrayal, like the final warrant of
now-nothing-can-start-again, like the final final, like
even his face now...

but when your going sunk in through the years,
this slipperiness of memory felt kinder,
this inability to remember no longer argued with me,
it sat on my lap and let me stroke
its chin, and loved me back,
if even his face can go, then surely...

but, sometimes, near the hours
that are no-longer-night an' not-yet-dawn,
when I lie just on this side of sleep, sometimes

not always, my hand takes the shape as if it is
holding you from the back,

and the fingers still hold the gossamer air
of the bedroom as if they touched your cheeks,

as if the small slant of your nose was there,
the graze of the stubble, the lemonness of hair,
the soft drip of your ear,

as if rememberance was a game
played by fingers on gossamer fields,

and, in those nights, I didn't need
memory's ability to see, I touched, and without
saying it to you, meant, like in
those nights, "nice-looking",

and saying it held off dawn, it held off the claim
of the next day, it held off who-told-you-to-go,
why-did-you-have-to-go, it held off
where-are-you-now...

Aligarh

Dr. Siras,
In those nights,
you must have felt loneliness like a drip.

The walls of your room
would�ve been held apart only by a faint song,

and memory must have sat by you all night
combing the hours.

In your Marathi poem, Dr. Siras, the one about the �beloved moon,�
the one in which you somehow eke dawn from the dark sky,
I read it last night on the terrace,
it held me, it held my hands,
it let grass grow under my feet.

In this house that I have lived in for three years in Delhi, Dr. Siras,
the windows open onto a Palash tree.

I was 27 when I had rented it,
and at 27, the landlord had not spent too much time on the word �bachelor�
he had only asked if I had �too many parties�,
I didn�t, and I had got the house.

But next time, Dr. Siras, when I will try and look for a place in this city,
I will be older and they will pause at "but marriage?"
and I will try to eke out respect from a right surname,
from saying �Teacher�
from telling my birth-place,
and will try and hide my feeling small under my feet.

What had you said, Dr. Siras,
when you looked for that house in Durga Wadi?
What had you said for the neighbourhood, �Teacher�, �Professor�,
�Poet�?

What gives us this respect, Dr. Siras, this contract with water?

In those nights,
weighing this word in your hands,
you must have felt weak, like the sun at dusk,
you must have closed the window to keep out the evening,
you must have looked back, and hung the song in the air
between refusal and letting go.


(thanks to Apurva M Asrani and Ishani Banerjee)

To the soldier in Siachen

Come back,
the snow is treacherous,
come back,
they are making you fight a treacherous war,
you were not born in snow,
you do not know snow, come back,
I do not want you to fight that war in our name,
I want you to rest, I want you to be able to feel your fingers,
I want the snow in your veins to give way,
for you to be able to breathe, to melt
into a corner, to sleep.

Come back.

Go home.

Go home to Dharwad,
Go home to Madurai, go home to
Vellore, Satara, Mysore, do not stay in the snow,
go home to Ranchi, that war is not for you to fight, that war
is not for us to give to you to fight, let not our name be ice,
let it not heave on your shoulders, do not let us steal your breath,
the people there, the people of the snow do not need us,
they do not need you to fight, come back,
you were not born to snow,
you do not know the treachery of the snow,

go home,
to rest, go home to the sun, to water,
go home to the nights of your village,
go home to the sweltering market-place,
to the noise of family-homes, to the sweat of the Ghats,
to the dust of the plains, go home,

may you never
have to see white ever again like that,
may you never have to see
a colour become death in your very palm.

????? ?? ???? ????? ?? ???? ???? ?? - ????? ??????

????? ?? ????
????? ?? ???? ???? ??

?? ?? ???? ?? ????? ?? ???? ??
??? ????? ????? ??? ???? ??? -
??? ?? ???,
??? ?? ?????,
??? ?? ????? ?? ???

??? ???? ?? ???? ???? ?? ?????
???? ?? ????? ?? ??

?? ?????? ?? ??? ??
???? ????? ?? ??? ?? ??? ??? ??

???? ??????? ??? ??? ??, ???? ????? ??,
???? ??? ???? ??? ??? ??,
???? ????-???? ??? ??? ??

????? ??????

 

For Rohith Vemula

They might have rope enough
for his body,

have they rope enough
for star dust?

For someone who'll read this

500 years from now

How are you?
I am sure a lot has changed

between my time and yours,
but we're not very different,

you have only one thing on me -
hindsight.

I have all these questions for you:
Do cars fly now?

Is Mumbai still standing by the sea?
How do you folks manage without ozone?

Have the aliens come yet?
Who from my century is still remembered?

How long did India and Pakistan last?
When did Kashmir become free?

It must be surprising for you
looking at our time,

our things must seem so strange to you,
our wars so little,

our toilets for 'men' and 'women'
must make you laugh

our cutting down of trees
would be listed in your 'Early Causes'

our poetry in which the moon is still
a thing far away

must make you wonder, both for that moon
and for the poetry.

You must be baffled,
that we couldn't even imagine

the things you now take for granted.
But let that be,

would you do me a favour,
for 'old time's sake'?

Would you go to the Humayun's Tomb
in what used to be Delhi

and just as you're climbing the front staircase,
near the fourth rung, I have cut into

the stone wall to your left -
'Akhil loves Rohit'

Will you go and see it?
Just that, go see it.

When Farida Khanum

sings now,

she does not hide the age
in her voice,

instead
she wraps it in paisleys,
and for a moment
holds it in both of her hands,

before
she drowns it in our sky.

When she sings now,
she knows

that at the end of that note
when her voice breaks
like a wishbone,

he will stay.

Tonight

You're still glued to the bus-stop seat,
I pull you off it, "91 is here."

On Gray's Inn Road,
you again call the houses "so miniature,"
holding them between your finger and thumb.

On the double-decker,
you're still dozing off on the back seat,
asking me to wake you up when we get there.

As we get out, I'm still telling you to
"wrap yourself well, it's always colder
near the river."

As we walk below the Waterloo Bridge
and you turn to look at me, I am still
one-part longing, one-part fear,

wishing, tonight, that you were here.


(thanks to Daniel Titz and Dorian Lebh)

December Poets

To melt the winter sun, partially,
  and hold it in a glass,
    Agha Shahid Ali,

to love, count to ten,
  then at last
    to grieve,
      Auden,

then, cussedly, leave
  to tread on something
    firmer,
      Rene Sharanya Verma,

to lose, again,
  reach that place, unknown,
    darker,
      Dorothy Parker.

When I die

bury me
only in your eyes.

All those years we dated,

it remained 'complicated,'
so what I don't get is this -
why do I remember them as 'bliss'.

In Delhi, last winter,

we needed a photograph
for the poster of your talk,
so you suggested -

"Take any from my FB album
in which I am wearing enough clothes
and not making a face,"

which left my choice, from among hundreds,
to about two.

Finally, we chose you in purple,
smiling, and sitting against a wall
in what looks like JNU,

you are wearing a silver hoop in your ear

and after looking at this photograph many times over,
I know why your name meant 'loved,'
I know why this memory is silver, I know
why this memory will now always be silver.

("Kaush, pack your best clothes,
Thanga would have hated if any of us
are badly dressed for the funeral.")

Thanga, I have two winters,
and terrace nights, and songs with you,
I have a midnight dance with you,
and because you thought we 'Indian fuckers'
were 'too dramatic,' I will, for your sake,
keep safe in my hands, all the evenings
that won't let you go.


(for Priya Thangarajah)

?? ??? ?? ??? ?? ???

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??
????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ??

?? ?? ??? ?? ?? ?? ???
???? ?? ??, ??? ?? ??? 
??? ????
????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ??


(????? ?? ???)

A Language of Forgetting

tr. from Rajesh Joshi's '????? ?? ????'

A river brushed against me
in the language of water,

and suddenly, in the language
of flight, the birds
moved below the clouds,

on trees written in a hieroglyphic script,
leaves stirred together, and in their movement
was the language of rustling -

it felt as if you are somewhere close,
drawing near in the language of the body

and whispering a language of forgetting
to those you could not.

I want to believe

tr. from Ashok Vajpeyi's '??????? ???? ????? ???'

I want to believe that
after my defeat in love
when I mourn in the utter loneliness of a poem,
then, somewhere at least a leaf will tremble for me,
that somewhere a bird will resent that her world is, despite everything, so green,
that, for a moment, a planet will slow down somewhere in the universe
and in some invisible vein of the earth, the lava will cool a little,
that the ancestors spread over centuries will try an' give solace to each other,
and the tears of gods will fall in untimely rain;
that I will cry
and through the whole universe
will run a cry of sorrow,
I want to believe that in my defeat, and in my grief,
the world will not leave me alone.

Grief surrounds me as if
now that is the only body I have to live in and die in
as if that is the real colour of living
which has become visible to me only just now.

I want to believe that
when I'll try and find my way through
pain's long corridors
then, the light at the end of that tunnel will be of grief,
that the window from which a hand will show me the way, will be grief's window,
and the house, whose porch I'll rest in, to gather strength to keep on going,
will be the house where grief lives.

I want to believe that
just like the other name of laughter is often kids or flowers,
just like the other name of hope is poetry,
like that, the other name of love will be grief.

?? ???? ?? ??? - Dorothy Parker

tr. from Dorothy Parker's 'A Very Short Song'

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?? ???
    ???? ?? ???? ??? ???? ??,
???? ???? ??
    ??? ?? ???? ??? ???? ???

???? ?? ?? ??
    ???????? ?? ???!
???? ?? ?? ??
    ???? ??? ??????!
??? ?? ???,
    ????? ???? ?? ??? ????,
?? ??? ????
    ???????? ?? ????

Dorothy Parker