Anita Thampi (Malayalam)
The Symbol
The sickle
Joined
The crescent in the sky
The star
Returned
To the eyes of children
The hammer
Alone
- pained by its unromantic origins -
Started pounding
On the nail-heads
That were yet to hang
History
As pictures .
Afterwards
Burnt out
cigarette stubs
will grow back
attach themselves to the lip
And ask for fire
Fallen strands of hair
Will rewind themselves
Into oiled, shining plaits
And ask for flowers
In the night
Which seeps from the nerves
And spread out like dirt ,
Dreams
Lie close to each other
Thirsting for water
In the land where fire has not been invented
In a sandscape that has never seen flowers
We will keep searching
Till dawn
For that little shard of red
For us to think -
Fire, for you
Flower, for me.
Sweeping the Front Yard…
The back aches,
as the broom sweeps
into memory, at dawn
soil-pimples sprouted,
on the front yard
of the house in slumber
eyes deep shut.
Perhaps the rain could have
eased the ground
last night.
Earthworms must have
stirred it under,
toiling ,may be sleepless, to
build tiny homes of earth.
Only to be razed,
to be spread,
in finger-streaks
the broom leaves behind.
After the sweeper girl's
morning dance,
her Bent Backstep.
The sweeping done,
dawn alights
Light falls, the eyes
of the house open
No footprint,
Not even fallen leaves,
how clean it is!
The newspaper arrives
having scoured
the depths of night, it falls
stumbling against the door.
Then she rises from clearing the shreds
So thirsty, she'd drink the coffee to its lees.
Badri Narayan (Hindi)
Mother’s lullaby
If you had been the sun
You would have shone in the sky all day long
If you had been the moon
From full moon to new moon
You would have been slaughtered by the butcher’s knife every day
If you had been a star, my love
You would have been so far away from me
Thank God you are Badri Narayan.
It happened not so long ago
It happened not so long ago
My granny narrated it to my mother
And my mother narrated it to me
There was once a town
Where a needle and a thread
Lived together for many years
But both used to quarrel with each other
The needle felt that it was better to be a thread
While the thread felt it was better to be a needle
The needle felt that a knot could be tied beautifully with a thread
The thread felt Alas, if only I could enter the cloth before the needle.
One day the needle tried to become a thread
And the thread tried to become a needle.
But people, both lost their meanings
And both became meaningless.
A Modern Folktale
The squirrel, in its calendar
Had accurately decided upon its
Holiday
But in the calendar of the river
That day was not a holiday
Both stood close by
And between the two
Fluttered two calendars
Each with their own holidays
Clock
This clock is kept upon the shelf
And in harmony with the tune of this clock
Runs the world
Because it runs along with the tune of the clock
For it to overturn on its axis is strongly
Possible
To prevent the world from overturning
What can be done?
I feel that
For this it is necessary
That all the clocks of the world become inoperative
And there remains only one squirrel’s clock
Which, in the middle of the forest
Continues to tick tock
Investigation
Gaya, Sarnath, Nalanda
God knows where all I wandered
Who all I worshipped
The number of histories I read
The number of poets I associated with
I searched in the veena, I hunted in the lotus
Sankhya, Kant, Charvak I delved into
God knows how many Bible and Puran I inverted
In my dreams I met with Galileo and Einstein
The cranes of Siberia and the birds of Kiev island
I repeatedly questioned
I scrutinised the papers of Christ, Buddha and Mahavir
And from there I concluded
That all the rivers in the world
Are made from the tears of women.
Name
What kind of a name has my father given me
I am shackled by the meaning of my name
As if a nail has been pierced into my heartland
Now I wonder how many painful conflicts I will have to undergo
How many arrows more I will have to face
To go beyond the meaning of my name.
I have become my own slave
My father
It does not let me fill myself with a new raga
It does not let me see anything beyond myself
What should I do
I am being buried by its very meaning
How many more battles should I fight
Which obstacle should I cross
How many times and in which seasons
Should I dive into the river Kosi?
From the slavery of such meanings
I have to free myself, my father.
Genealogy
In the ancestry of trees there were also leaves,
But the leaves are not there in the genealogy of the trees
Neither are there birds
Squirrels are not there
In it Buddha, who spent many years meditating under a tree
Is also not there
For so many years I wept under it
But I am also not there in its genealogy
There should have been in it that girl
Who killed herself hanging on it
And whose soul that has transformed into a bird’s nest
Is still hanging on its branches
Where are those female saints in its genealogy
Who broke the four walls of their houses and came to it?
In it that man is also not there
Who, to still his pangs of hunger, plucked
Its first fruit
That’s why I say it is a mistake
A grave mistake
For in the trees’ genealogy
There is one stump
That has changed everyone else into stumps
Searching for
I am a little twig
Searching for trees
I am a tree
Searching for birds
I am that bird
Which is searching for the half-eaten
Bowl shaped guava
I am also the guava
Searching for the unending perennial seeds
I am a seed
Searching for myself
In the deeply etched lines of a farmer
Sifting grain.
I am that deeply etched hand
Searching for the husks of grain
Lying scattered in the fields
After the grains have been cut.
I am also that husk
Searching for the scattered seeds of grain.
For A little while
So spread out, so thickly branched
Its roots strewn on so many sides
I wonder who made this family tree
That has spread into my existence
Its branches have filled up my body
Its roots have reached upto my finger tips.
O my woodcutters!
For a little while chop off from its roots
This family tree
Although by doing this my own blood will spill
My own veins will be cut
My own arteries will bleed
But what can I do
For a little while I want to be free from this family tree
So that for a little while my soul can fill with pure water
And the sand inside it can be shaken off
For a little while I want freedom from this imposed orthodoxy.
I am tired of incessantly imitating tradition
For a little while I want to be original.
While thinking
Thinking about birds and deer
Means ultimately thinking about hunters
That is why I see each narrative popular about them
In the context of the hunters
In trees, mountains, forests, wherever, whenever I meet them
I tell them to doubt every narrative popular about them
And whenever I think about deer I believe
That till there is no historian of the deer
There is every possibility of the hunters being glorified
And to save the birds from the hunter’s net it is very important
That the birds have their own philosophers.
I’ve thrown away the eternal
fruit
Earlier I used to think
I’ll become immortal
But after seeing the result of Buddha’s immortality
I’ve dropped the idea of becoming immortal
Many days in my dreams
I saw Jesus Christ praying for death
And poor mythical Ashwatthama
Grief stricken by his immortality
Wailing piteously
And whenever he wails
A quake hits the earth
And a storm rises in the seas
That is why I have dropped the idea of becoming immortal
And
From the window I threw away
The eternal fruit
Belief
I am fragile
But more fragile than me is my book
Which I write with so much dedication.
I am fragile
But no less fragile than me
Is my photograph kept in the album
For my fragile self
More fragile are these diaries
That were written over so many years
And so flimsy is my belief
That I will go beyond time with them
During my lifetime I commission my own statues
These myriad statues of mine
That are immersed just after the auspicious days
Are no less fragile.
The letters that I write
That are burnt with matchsticks
At the end of the year
They are even frailer.
All the gifts that I give
Break in a few years
The age of presents is only one year
That of good wishes is only four days
Whatever I possess
Inanimate, words, tears
That I am engaged in justifying
Throughout my life
Slowly melt away
Like snowballs
Some say
Words are immortal
But how can I believe my words
That dissolve with two drops of water.
Dreams
Please save me from my dreams
I wonder who has put them inside me
They are gnawing me from within.
They are slowly destroying my personality
They are defeating my manhood
They are putting me inside a boiling cauldron of consumerism
Into which they pull me even if I want to come out
They are killing my all desires inside me
They are murdering my compassion, my delicacy and my past
They are pushing me into a massive hell
I scream loudly
At midnight.
Dev Maity (Bengali)
YOUR HIGHNESS
I keep lying on my filthy bed sheet
I myself am filthier than that.
Sun enters straight through my open window
Into every nook and cranny of my body
I need a little fervor
The guts to never go back
To all those NO-s.
Whom my mother worships with an incense stick in her hand
Before whom my father bows in reverence
I don’t believe in them
But in my parents
One day both of them came flying off from different households
People laughed at them, but they laughed more
I just need a little fervor
The guts to obey no one
But me.
A SACK FULL OF MEAT
Moving away from death I see, I haven’t even been born yet,
I realize, a metallic scream is what’s called surviving.
As the temples mushroom through out the pavements
In this jet-age of globalization,
This contrast makes me feel uneasy, restless
The probable proposals of my mind, sloppy like leaders
Restrain my soul from abusing and cursing
Whirling like a plane with wings on fire,
I come down from illuminated traffic-congested main roads
To this narrow dark dirty alley
Under the bulb-less lamppost, beside the act of peeing by a dog with lifted leg
A motorbike … couple (lottery) marriage in gloomy light
Engrossed in Newton’s third law about chances
I come home searing memory’s ass with my cigarette
One more day the calendar will touch my jobless messy life
A hanging arrow will wake up in my womanless bed and ask
What’s the current rate in Sonagachhi* these days?
I just feel like a sack
Inside which there is fifty one Kg of fresh meat
Of no Goddamn use whatsoever --- only shits, pisses,
Eats and slumbers
It’d have been far better to be a banyan tree in the crematory!
BINOCULAR
Over bridge over our heads
Uneven roads under our feet
Mutton cutlets at the roll corner
Beggars loitering around in front of our mouths …
Yet, don’t the matinee shows still pull enough crowds!
People with burning cash in their pockets
Don’t really notice all these stuff:
For instance, a little hand polishing shoes on the footpath
And a school bus moving past it, with cheerful faces at its windows.
The man with a pair of stilts who sobbed behind the urinal in the book-fare
Clutching his own wooden legs!
Or, for instance, the only backbone of a humble household
Sprinkles water at two o’clock to soften the roti made at six in the morning
To enable him to catch the first train.
It’s us, with deep fridges inside our brains,
A thousand eyes within eyes,
Who open the eyes of the bespectacled busy public,
Completely out of the blue.
GLOBAL WARMING AND MY PROTEST
Inside the blazing smithy
A metallic ball
Getting hotter and hotter
Turns brilliant red.
Seems like at any instance
It can explode
With an enormous noise,
Like a bomb
Hitting the brains out
And scattering it
All over the place …
Whitish
Everything covered with smoke
Blood … blood everywhere
And cries …
Just then, not a single ambulance
Is to be found anywhere in this city
One
By
One
The
Woundeds are
Becoming
Dead …
Do we really share
Any relationship with Earth?
Any Commitment?
Or is it just
One
By
One
The philanderers’ coming and going
In and out of pros quarter!
REVOLT
Something happens here everyday
Something more than what happens in an inn
Man and his soul are torn to shreds
Still, along the spine, only seminal signals flow,
Not protest!
Smashed into ground, stricken with poverty, I get up again
In every grimacing moment,
Not giving a damn.
More than ganja, I am intoxicated with my own existence
Captivated by hunger and too much libido.
Just as someone stares outside through the window… and from outside
Peeps inside --- I have seen
Boys my age loaf around
Carrying dynamite called sexuality in their body,
Fructuous girls know the versatile use of fire…
It’s just this World
This Nation
This State
Who try to play it safe
That’s why here poems are not written
On the theme of understanding between
Rapists and whores,
Surrounding the lollypop-king, builds up a sparkling cluster.
Towards that, towards that, towards that, exactly towards that,
A drunkard, awake all night, aims his pee.
A lot of thanks to my friend Mandakranta SEN, who sent to me all these poems.