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)

That night in Mumbai when Brandt asked 'Are you good with speed?' and I said 'Yes'

it was as if
I pillion rode the moon
on the Western Express Highway,

and every mile we raced on his bike
we reclaimed from the sea,

the Goregaon high-rises passed us by
like longing measured on a Richter scale,

and the sky, window-lit at Malad, tripped
onto us,

at Kandivali, the fortieth floors spun out
into the night till the sky was only staircases,

and when he dropped me
by those black mountains of Borivali,
I realized I had held onto my seat
like the black holds onto basalt,
like the skin holds onto bones,
like Mumbai holds onto sea.

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)

Come

tr. from Ashok Vajpeyi's '??'

Come,
like darkness comes near darkness,
like water runs into water,
like light dissolves in light,

come, wear me,
like a tree wears the bark,
like a mud-path wears the grass,

take me,
like the darkness takes the roots,
like water takes the moon,
like the infinite takes time.

You walk in

and my eyes catch fire, you touch
me and my skin's live wire,
and no matter tonight
how much I deny
her, I think I
am going
to die of
desire.

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

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

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


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

Near Eros Cinema, Jangpura Extension,

the woman from Cameroon
       greets three white girls in
              French, I hear "deux ans, vous?"

The rickshaw-guy from
       Darbhanga asks the Lajpat
             aunty to pay more, she makes a ????.

The house broker from
       Jhung, who's been here sixty
              years, finds landlords for all the new

lawyers from Lucknow or
       Chennai, or Philly or Austin.
              The shop-cleaner from Muzzafarpur,

watches the bill-board with
       a 50 year old hero and a 20
              year old heroine that he will woo.

The taxi-guy from Greater-
       -Noida is trying to find M
              Block at midnight and cursing U-

-BER. And I am walking with his
       hands in mine, feelin' here-&-now
              and also a no-where-in-particular.

You

tr. from Suchi Kushwah's 'Tum'
for Rituparna Borah

 

the four walls of our room
and the silence of the forest

the unbroken tune of crickets
& the silver tide of heartbeats

at this time who would talk
on our village-streets just this

shivering of the moon just
this movin' hand of the clock

and on that small mud road I
can hear even when someone's

going quietly here our bedsheet's
folding and you're turning lightly

on the pillow your hair lie a
little confused & the ring on

your nose is still shining and
even though your eyelids say

you're asleep your eyes are lost
& pining and even though I don't

know what dreams you're seeing
they break your sleep again and

again you might be dreaming the
moon that was peeking through

the evening branches just to see
you you know 'coz you're maddening

to look at and see this damn book
at your side that has fought me the

whole night and when I picked
it up and kept it aside the jealous

pages still fluttered even as I
muttered in your ears nightly

"the four walls of the room
and the silence of the forest."
 

Suchi Kushwah

 

Devdungri, Rajasthan

Even the night refuses to completely darken
here, as the moon keeps turning each stone

silver beneath our feet; you can play foot-
-ball at night and know exactly where the

goal is. She wrote in that email that Mohan ji
was somehow always hopeful, despite the odds,

"something will turn up," and even as I read it
typed, I knew her emphasis was on 'will;' that

night the moon was our bonfire and memories of
all their years, of making flowers grow out of stone,

were now stories, silvered by age, of those who were
gone, but, they said, those who have come back to us

like colour in flowers, they still see us through these
years, they come to us in songs, like ants, they are in

the small, like elephants, they are big, Kabir sang "Tu
hathi mein hathi ban baitho, cheeti mein hai chhoto tu,"

an' each year as they hold up the silver mirror to those
who're sun-burnt with power, keeping account for a

world that is both concrete and air - here, possible,
and yet, always beyond, "there" - the goal, silver-lit,

remains, despite the night, with us, and the moon still
burns white, and there are always in Devdungri, Gods

lying visible-invisible in the darkest hills of the night.

???? ?? ?????

tr. from Sthira Bhattacharya's 'messages in blue'
 ??? ?? ?????? ??? 
      ?? ????, ?? ?? ??? ??
?????? ????? ??? ???; 
      ???? ??? ???? ????? ??
?? ??? ?? ?? ??? ??? 

Sthira Bhattacharya