Kavita IndiaPoetry from the languages of India

Name?
Bolting and bringing and periodically ravenous.

Occupation?
Spotting savagery and slithering like a spike
to splash through the woods.

Stipend?
Dabs for the day and a slab for the night.

Homeland?
Hills.

There was no trail.

The pans for toil and wages were not forged
for raising the offspring.

The spouse and mate would observe the vows
to douse the mountain with fire.

The fire would graze god’s heart
when liquor was swigged with the libation.

This tale goes back to that time.

Later the scales were shaped
and the shaft went into the hatchet.

The bondage arrived,
the winds and woods were sheared,
lost were the roots,
flat lands
and the fields,
meadows,
hills,
waters,
rocks
all disappeared,
arch replaced the bow
metal replaced the sharp wood of the arrow,
accords of men and forests were snapped.

The lakes burst,
the livelihoods,
names,
homelands
and labour
vanished
inch by inch.

Translated by Dileep Jhaveri.

Grandmother said
trees are my ancestors.

If trees are my ancestors
then all elements on the earth
are proofs of my history.

I went hunting once
and took a nap
on the swollen root overground
where I had a dream,

A fog descended from sky
a dust of seeds
that bloomed white flowers
in their fall,
oozing the spirit of life
chanting our ancestors' names.

I woke up
from a timeless nap,
felt the muscles
swollen over my skin.

I touched them—
there was a stream inside.
I heard
the rustling of leaves,
crackling of branches,
gusts of whistling winds.

I felt
My history is within me
I should read my history
flowing in my veins.

1
Bapu!
As I tag along with you,
I know what truth is
but can’t act on it.
I have disdain
for untruth,
but can’t let go of it.
Your experiments
were with truth,
I am drowned in mine,
with hatred.

2
No one imagined that
while making us repeat
‘My life is my message’
again and again;
like a shrewd trader,
you’d suddenly test us, Bapu!
I spoke from the heart:
My messages
are my life.

3
Bloodied
while grasping
for a tender shoot
or a brittle straw
in a bale of needles,
how can my hand
find yours, Bapu?

4
Mr. Gandhi!
We’re kind of done with you.
You may leave us now.
Now we exist in a digital world where
nothing is real, nothing is unreal either.
No triumph of truth, nor downfall of lies.
In fact, there’s no truth and no lies.
Only a spectacle of violence
with live visuals.
Non-violence is all junk, Mr. Gandhi!
No cleanliness, no godliness,
Everything colourful and instant.
Instant money transfer
for a billion countrymen.
Hence no need of currency at all.
Sorry, no place for you, Mr. Gandhi!
Surely, we are thankful to you
but,
but time to quit India, dear Father!
In fact, we guys can help
and delete you
with the touch of a finger, Bapu!

5
There is no God other than Truth.
To see the universal and all-pervading
Spirit of Truth
face to face
one must be able to love
the meanest of creation as oneself.
Identification with everything that lives
is impossible without self-purification;
without self-purification the observance of
non-violence must remain an empty dream.
A perfect vision of Truth can only follow
a complete realisation of Ahimsa
but the path of self-purification is hard and steep.*

The paper that I write on
The pen that forms the letters
The hand that holds the pen
are all impure.
The muscles that move the hand
the blood coursing through it
the heart that pumps it –
it’s all impure.
The mind impure,
the mindfulness impure.
Even after seven-score and ten years, Bapu,
it’s your insistence on purity of tools
that keeps me away from you!

* From MKG’s autobiography, Tr. Mahadev Desai, the last chapter, ‘Farewell’.

6
At the most
a man survives a hundred autumns,
you’ve crossed a hundred and fifty, dear Bapu!
Enough now, let go!
At times,
your leftover shadow
still appears
unbidden
to interrupt our
dances of destruction,
muddying our minds and
forcing us to pause.
But once again,
we spit venomous bolts
of forked lightning
at animals
at man
at nature
with thought, speech and deed.
Drink a last cup
from this hand stained
with bloodshed
of thought, speech and deed;
and go gentle into this good night, dear Father!

(Translated from original Gujarati by Naushil Mehta)