Poems from Europe (2004-2005)
Contemplating the sea at Beau Rivage
The little boy
clapped loudly
when his mountain
of
pebbles
crumbled crash into the sea
and then
asked his mother
why so many stones still sat
on the beach
and
she said -
well, son,
some are taken now,
and others left behind
for another wave.
Short stop at Nuremberg
All
I will remember
of Nuremberg
are
those yellow-blue buildings -
as seen through a web of wires
above the tracks,
the dreary sky -
greyer still, with the smoke
from the chimneys nearby,
the nipping wind -
colder still, with the train
being late.
At Guidos café
I will walk the night
unguided
by map or signpost
for these are but streets
that men built
so long ago
for us
to
wander
if I am lost
I know
I must
always return to the river.
Waiting for Figs
A quiet accordion
placed against the wall
waits
expectantly
as I do
for Marseille Figs
who will
(with their music)
rescue the evening
inside this
dark tunnel
over which the trains sometimes rumble
and later,
one of these trains
might
take me home,
content.
Neel Chaudhuri is a playwright and theatre director based in Delhi. He is the Artistic Director of The Tadpole Repertory, and his latest play is Taramandal, which won the 2010 MetroPlus Playwright Award.
The Resurrection
It started with wood -
aromatic deodar, wood
of the gods; its years,
etched out in ripples
where it had been
hacked down, mocked
us for our youth.
He came with a mallet,
hammer, chisel and
saw, and wielded,
relentlessly, those
years into a table on
which we would drink
wine and break bread.
I watched him work,
the June heat fierce
upon his back, as he
put on its legs, giving
the table its seven feet
of earth, bringing it
back from the dead.
lucid dreaming
at night they come to me;
visions of the Land of Cannan
burning.
its flames so orange they
remind me of the groves
that once lined Jaffa, heady,
ripe and heavy with fruit
leap off the hallowed ground
in one last frantic bid to be
doused
and cured by the lapping
currents of the Dead Sea.
Trisha Bora is an editor/writer currently based in Delhi. Her poems have been published at Ultra Violet, nth position and Poetry Super Highway among others.
A Hermits Wedding
Dead people get married,
so does my cousin.
No church would take them,
the holy books gone,
the priest didnt come,
no flowers, just weeds;
no doves, but faceless insects
crawling on the ground,
flying in the air.
Even frogs paraded in the mud.
I met no guests
for my cousin was marrying a mannequin:
they loved each other.
Her name was Zazzy, from Puerto Rico.
She had firm, poreless skin,
a tall nose that could suck all mens souls,
her nipples upstanding,
but no cleavage down there
under the purple legging.
Shes designed not to have one.
My cousin took the stage and spoke the love vow.
I do, contented. Its her turn silence.
A dragonfly intercepted their gaze,
then the groom nodded.
Shes too shy to speak.
Rings exchanged,
I took a mug shot of their day.
They cancelled the honeymoon.
She got seasick easily, he explained.
And him, lovesick.
Theyd spend the rest of their lives
in the cottage, no phone, no work, but
fishing, farming, watching the sun
rise and set, hanging clothes by the river,
and being blessed by Oshun.
This is the life I wanted,
he said, the bride agreed
this is real love.
Metropolis
I want to hide in a place where
trains dont come as often,
people stay muted in cabins,
read their own stuff, which, by luck,
may be books.
I want to find a place where babies
dont learn, children cant spell and
adults dont divorce.
The world would be a better place
as we arent any more stupid
and lonely than each other.
I want to leave this place where
smoking makes me feel like a fugitive and
flee to where everyone shall light a fag in church.
Father, I want to confess my sin
(of not smoking
enough).
Dont worry, my son, tobacco
brings salvation. Its free in heaven.
Is there a place where people pity
unloved sick dogs,
where God sings for us,
not we for him?
Why am I in a place where
the real and unreal are
inside our heads?
Millions of hollow heads,
with eyes that are equally open
and equally blank?
So I plead this place
to mourn with me for its
fake existence on maps.
Nicholas Y.B. Wong is a creative writer based in Hong Kong. His poems and short stories are featured in Asia Writes, Taj Mahal Review, 6S: The Green Bike Stories, Cha, Qarrtsiluni, and Yuan Yang among others.
Cruelty
It was the rescue
How the fireman told me
it would be OK
A man had never
said that to me before
come to a scene
to tend me
politely ask where it hurt
ask about the parts
that werent bruised or
bleeding
A fireman doesnt require
surrender
yet thats on my mind
and setting myself
on fire
the tongue
: hinge of body
the leaving light
wet tablet
on which we write
solitary sheaf
of ever-changing
leaf
Kevin Simmonds is a writer, musician and photgrapher from New Orleans, now based in San Francisco. His writing featured in American Poetry Journal, Chroma, Fuselit, jubilat, Poetry and elsewhere.
Plow seeds slowly
Sow them softly
Atai beseeched
But her children turned soiled ears
And as the earth swarmed,
She bestowed upon them: Argument and Death
Then retired with Abassi to Florida.
Its a jazz song
Our sliding Sunday suspension:
flypaper moments are sticky forevers
Careening backward or
Pushing for(e)ward
Grasp dark curls. Tightly in eager palms
Curved, like warm orbs of stained lentils
Kita used to artfully maché
Around my paper-thin plate
Burrow your brown nose in peach-pampered pillow
Flicker flowers at me until I collapse giggling
In the shade of a thousand tamarind trees shifting
We sway together, dulcet breeze of completion,
In the middle of our cracking world
Speak words that could make sense to you
While I still understand them too.
Old Tapes from the Communal Kitchen
Summers are when I run away,
freed from whale bone and steel frame
Cascade headfirst into Carnaval colors
Sweat sweet cranberry on the dance floor
you fill the space with your ether
coffee canister tucked sadly behind rails
silver band glinting in moonlight, oxidized imperfection
small chin tilted slightly in the changing
breeze like yellow orchids waving
salt and pepper mutton chops
shock me into partial growth
tepid trust games as boys tremble,
timorous
the sun plays peek-a-boo with your shadow heart,
so I guard your fealty, won in our seesaw wager,
and ginger-sidestep these infantile branches
as they begin to creep outwards
solemn summer solstice air
polite cheering in the stands
run lanes like rainbow crabs
have your pick and roll it too,
but after crowds have left
I am here sweeping.
pink appetizer rinds and raw male egos.
Sonia Sarkar is a Bengali-American based in Brookline, Massachusetts. Her work has been featured in Right Hand Pointing, Frontage Roads and 32Poems.
Father on Earth
With a hobbling gait
my father whips out his dick
and pisses like a dog.
Hes 86 and lost his reason.
Not quite, for when he loses his temper
he blurts out: Dogs cunt.
But the man who never prayed
when I was a kid
and asked us to burn his horoscope
is now humming hymns.
What is the matter with him?
Is it the strain of dementia
which is supposed to run in the family?
Is he penitent about his infidelities?
I remember his gentle physicians hands
that mended my fractured fears
as a child,
his joke about village dogs
refusing to bark at Rip Van Winkle,
his histrionic tale of Bremens musicians.
My mother, long-suffering and prejudiced
could never catch a wink when he shouts
in the dead of night as his demons needle him.
But she often holds his hands and caresses them
and talks to him as one would to a child.
Shes been doing this for years now.
So it must be love.
He now mimics my little daughter.
In fact, he is the son I never had.
Postcard
(Mumbai, May 2010)
This city sleeps like no other.
No one knows
How in the starry-eyed quests
Of singing and theatrics
A man ends up slumbering
Either on the footpath
Or under a glittering roof.
For now, the last terrorist
Is the new star in a billboard
Waiting for his hour
To step out among adulators,
The sea a mass of lilting
Indifferent cobalt blue.
Robin S Ngangom was born in Imphal but has lived in Shillong for over thirty years. He is a bilingual poet with three books of poetry, and his work has appeared in journals and anthologies in India and abroad.
Dream of Burying My Grandmother Who Has No Grave
We buried her upright, in the stance of warriors.
My brothers and I driving
out alone to do this, miles and miles
from the memory of warmth, lifting her
small strong body out of the vehicle
and laying it down
beside the railway track. My gloved hand
brushing frost from her face in the
Siberian winter of a dream in which I
was my mother, and she, mine.
We buried her there without
ritual, lowering her slowly into a furrow,
covering her with fistfuls of ice, hurrying
against the long wail of the approaching train
the engine of our car left
running, our shaking hands, a sorrow
blinding as snow. Near the end,
my brothers stepped away.
I was the last to see that dowager face.
The sting of the ice from her forehead
on my lips all the way back to waking.
Sometimes her love lights my body up
from the inside out, a love like a good
vodka. Grandmother whose body rose in
smoke, I carry your sweet burn within me
even into this, the frozen tundra of a life
with not a stone left standing
to bear witness.
Halāhala
Like my blue-throated god,
I have learnt how to hold my
suffering so it trembles between
belly and breath without trickle.
All my life I have caught
every drop and arrested it thus,
and my voice has been darkened by
the bruise of its indigo.
Gondolier, go slow. The river
is deep and my vessel, full. All night
I must carry this fermata. I must
contain all of these many tidal things,
and I must swallow each one with
a dowagers unflinching grace.
Sharanya Manivannan is the author of
Witchcraft, and can be found online at www.sharanyamanivannan.com.
Saturday Night Down
the city can get you down,
distances like
the familiar strangeness
of estranged members
of an extended family
saturday nights get lonely
read a book
or watch a fly
swim valiantly
in your stale beer
and think across doors
look into barred windows
at millions of tales
all saying the same things
in different clothes
or none.
so many worthy of love
so little time
to love them
and be loved in return
chasing an idea
across dirty streets
and unemployed people
hearing
ready-made answers
poised on the lips of
strangely dressed people
like a diver springing
lightly on the
edge of the board
where do you take
that mauve and gold evening
you saw
did anyone else?
Piya Srinivasan is doing an Mphil at the Centre of Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta. She writes poetry and short stories in her free time, and likes to travel and take pictures.
Slo-Mo Death
by Sajjawal Hayat
Tomorrow they will kill me.
I am almost certain tonight is the last night of my life. Almost certain because I have not been killed yet. I am trying to calculate my chances of surviving. If I tell the truth, I have no chance. Absolutely no chance. The minimum punishment for what I have done is death by hanging. I will have to lie convincingly. I will have to hide myself behind words in such a way that they cannot reach it.
Some think I am stupid because of what I have brought upon myself. For others I have been too careless. The rest just want to kill me. Because I have blasphemed. Can I say I was provoked? Not a good excuse. How can anyone be provoked to blaspheme unless they have already given up their religion? Apostasy is a crime with death as punishment. So I cannot use undue provocation as my defense. Only others can use this excuse. If someone stabs me, they can be forgiven by a court if they say my murder was a crime of passion, a result of undue provocation. They can say they were provoked to such a frenzy by what I had said that they lost control and killed me. Perfect defense in such a case. Killing an adulterous wife, a sister who fell in love with a boy and eloped with him, and a blasphemer become forgivable crimes if the killer says it was a crime of passion. Killing a woman who believes in the validity of her desire and killing me is almost the same.
I do not believe in anything but in my right to doubt everything. The onus is on me. I will have to apologize for making them question the integrity of their faith. If they are convinced that I am still a believer, killing me will become a little bit difficult. A little bit. I have to say I caused a misunderstanding by my words. Or my words were misunderstood. The misunderstanding was also caused by me. I have to transform my crime, I have not blasphemed but I have caused a misunderstanding. I have to convince them my real fault is that I caused a commotion of doubt. If I try to defend my right to be cynical or critical, they will kill me. In this way, I build a feeble strategy to defend my life.
I also need to be very calm tomorrow so that I can look properly surprised at the misunderstanding I have caused. I may even have to look slightly offended. Slightly. Not too much. My demeanor should signify this: how dare they doubt my faith? It is all a misunderstanding. To be able to look surprised and slightly offended, I need to have the look of a well-rested man tomorrow. I should sleep a perfect sleep tonight. Wake up at 7 a.m. tomorrow. Shave. Put on a clean shirt and a clean pair of trousers. Properly dressed, I may be able to get some respect on my side too. Every little thing will count tomorrow. I should appear to be following all the ideas of a good life so that it becomes difficult for them to kill me. To be able to decide to kill me should become equal to killing their ideas of a good life.
******
On the day of the trial, they did not kill me but sentenced me to die on my own. Everyday. Slow. Ly.
Sajjawal Hayat is a Pakistani writer at large in the world.
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Shared breath, fellow-traveller
by Samrat Choudhury
"Let's go to the park!" she said, smiling. I looked at her face closely, to see if she was serious.
I saw no joke or ulterior motive.
"The park?" I asked, in confusion.
"Yes!"
She saw I was thinking very hard.
"Why? What is wrong?"
"Oh...nothing. Let's go."
Cubbon Park was a patch of verdant, tropical green in the heart of Bangalore, a short walk from the Hard Rock Cafe on Mahatma Gandhi Road outside which we had just met. It was a pleasure to be there after the noise and madness of the traffic outside.
We strolled under the canopy of trees and headed towards a thicket of giant bamboo. Three young men, shabbily dressed, sat smoking at the edge of the thicket. They whistled when they saw Teresa, and then shouted out, calling her.
We pretended not to notice. I hoped they would not follow. Should I call for help or try and fight them if they tried to molest her? Calling would be best, and before anything happened; the last time I was mugged in Bangalore, a month earlier, I had not had time to call for help.
She was nonchalant. "Oh it's so lovely here!"
"Yes" I said.
We went and sat under the shade of a gulmohar tree on a stone bench. The afternoon sun was hot around us.
Three other men came and sat on the bench across from us, about twenty feet away.
"Do you go to parks often, in your country?"
"Oh yes!" she said. "Go, sit with a book, read...I love it! What about you?"
"Er...no. My first time here."
"You don't like nature?"
"It's not safe in Bangalore...or anywhere in India, for that matter. Only shady people go to the park in the daytime."
She was surprised. "In Portugal, everyone goes to the park!"
Two beggar women came and began tugging at our sleeves, insistent. We gave them some coins, and they left. Then two more beggar women came and demanded money.
"I really desperately feel like having something to drink...coffee or a beer."
She looked at me and smiled.
"You really desperately want to get out from here. You are so tense."
She reached across and touched my shoulder for confirmation. I tensed up, then laughed.
The men on the bench across from us sat staring at us, the pretty white woman and the plain, dark, Indian man, saying nothing, doing nothing.
"You worry too much," she said.
"Maybe", I said. How little she knows, I thought.
"Ok we will go," she said. "After a smoke."
After ten more tense minutes, we got back outside, in the smoky, chaotic, loud lunatic traffic that never stops. I took a deep breath. It was a relief to be out of there.
The shiny new chain coffee shops on Mahatma Gandhi Road were full. Outside, the autowallahs lurked like predators waiting for prey. Surely there is no wrong in fleecing a rich bastard who can afford Rs 50 for a cup of coffee, they always say.
We went to the Coffee Board's coffee house, where the coffee is Rs 10, and the year feels like 1965.
"So why are you still single, Karan?" she asked suddenly.
"Oh...because it just never worked out for me. I did live in with someone, and we were planning to get married, but she went to New York and found a handsome Englishman...I have been more cautious since."
She was silent.
"What about you?" I asked.
"I have many stories," she said, smiling. "But nothing now."
Her phone rang. She cooed hello and walked off to answer. Some boyfriend, probably. Pretty girl like her would have admirers...and she wouldnt shy away either. Yes, she would have many stories.
Whatever happened to romance and longing and the slow beauty of lasting love? The West has forgotten it, I thought. And now their amnesia is spreading around the world.
Waiting for her to return, I pulled out my laptop and headphones, and put on a Begum Akhtar ghazal. The plaintive notes of 'Mere hamnafas mere hamnawa, mujhe dost ban kar daga na de' My shared-breath, my fellow-traveller, dont become my friend and betray me - floated up into my head.
She came bounding back. She was looking happy.
"Do you want to go for a play?"
I hesitated.
"Er...when?"
"Now! At five", she said.
I had the evening free. Also, she was interesting.
It was a performance of TS Eliot's The Wasteland. There was no stage; in the first floor of someone's house, a couple of rooms were being used for the play. As we entered, a crazed looking young man came rushing up shouting "April is the cruellest month". There were four more spectators, who left soon, leaving us alone with the cast of four. They wound up the show. As we were leaving, I realised this was the house Eric Weiner had mentioned in his book The Geography of Bliss. He had come to Bangalore exploring the concept of happiness, and had stayed here. His chapter on India, written here, was titled "Happiness is a contradiction".
Teresa was angry. "How could they just stop performing?"
We got out onto the road. "Take me home", she said.
I was silent. I wondered what she meant.
We stopped an autorickshaw. She gave her address.
We sat in the rickety vehicle. She pulled out her iPod, and drifted away from me.
"What are you listening to?" I asked, loudly.
"A fado".
"A what?"
Fate.
It was a haunting melody. She is singing a song of melancholy love, Teresa said. It is a Portuguese tradition, this music of sad beauty.
It is a ghazal! I said, surprised.
We reached her house. I got out to give her a hug, and maybe a kiss. She just stood there like a schoolgirl, almost at attention, hands in front.
"Good night", she said.
I reached out towards her. She held my arm one long moment before turning around and walking away.
This is the first appearance of Shared Breath, Fellow-Travller in English. It was first published in Spanish and Portuguese in the 2009 edition of literary journal Vislumbres.
Samrat Choudhury, a Shillong boy, now works as Deputy Editor of the Hindustan Times, Delhi. His first novel Urban Jungle will be published by Penguin in 2011.
delhi.
a city which bites.
loves hates
dies & is reborn everyday.
a city burdened by history.
by age.
a city of riots
violence.
your city. my city. everybody's city.
nobody's city.
Shruti Singhi is a Senior designer at Dorling Kindersley, Delhi. She spends her time photographing the city and its people.
Starting at Mehrauli Archeological Park, in the south, we saw scattered tombs, madarsas and Metcalfe's follies...
We then proceeded to Connaught Place to explore some of the old shops there...
We stopped for refreshments at Cha Bars located within Oxford Bookstore at Statesman House...
Then it was time for the old city. The hustle and bustle of Pahaarganj. We ended up at a coffee house called Open Hand Cafe, a chain from Varanasi.
What you see here is the quickest way
to get rich in Shillong.
These counters are from "thoh teem" shops where a lowly five rupees can reap dividends of up to twenty thousand.
There is, however, a catch.
You must correctly bet on two numbers ~ anything ranging from one to 100.
Wait, it gets more bizarre. These numbers are decided by an archery competition held in Polo Ground, by the number of arrows that hit a particular spot on the target.
Some people calculate the winning numbers through dreams, where certain images (for example, fish) stand for certain numbers (five).
Who says merely dreaming will get you nowhere?
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