Aim, Shoot, Poster
Alok Dhanwa District Magistrate You are an outdated speaker You speak such an oppositional tongue As if you are fighting kings Of a time when Parliament was unborn still Do you think the Parliament has allowed The language and traps of hostility the same As it used to be during the times of the kings? This man, on the other side of the table, listening to you so intently Patiently, with full concentration He is not a king He is the district magistrate. He is the district magistrate More educated, adept, impersonal Than the king. This man is not from that distant fort—brought up in cold pomposity. He was born in these back-alleys He’s brought up amid our failures and mistakes Aware of our courage, greed He is way more indulgent and canny than the kings. He can conjure up more confusion And keep us away more clinically from freedom The government must keep close vigil on his superlative mind. Sometimes we must even learn from him. ——————– Lights, Projection, Your First Film The night the bund gave way And the river flowed in You didn’t even care to inquire The way you grew up without this town Where stood your first train Lights, projection, your first film. ———————————— Chowk The riches of those women have remained with me The ones who had trained me to cross the chowk From my mohalla they turned up Every morning to their work they went My school on their way Ma would lend me to them. In their safeguard. And I would await them after school-break. Yes, those women taught me waiting. And then the local quasbah school loomed On my own now, I made other friends. There were other roads to the school, other keys We found out soon. Decades gone, those days Come back to me. In some big city Seeking to go across some odd, imposing chowk I think of those women I extend my right hand to them And with my left, I clutch the slate The way I had left them At the broadsheet-backs of my twenty twenty years. —————————– Who Saved my Soul? Who saved my soul? A flicker of a light from the little candle A few boiled potatoes saved it. Flames in dry leaves And earthen utensils saved it. That jungle yellow cot And that yellow coloured moon Those street-play lumpen jokers In rags With voices like the glory of truth Tussling, exchanging blows In street corners Driving away rioters From these fearless blithe Hindustanis have I learnt the craft of the stage Drama seemed like some thoroughly drenched outfit. Carrying tongs for grandma’s rotis From the Idgaah mela, little Hamid returns And after December 6 As February was sneaking in Wild berries Yes, these things have saved my soul. —————————— Worth Now you even get paid for forgetting This is what greedy, untroubled folks do. —————————— Junction Ah, Junction. Where the train stops for some time. Tarries. Refuels itself for the rest of the journey I look for my old sweetheart there. —————————————- Aim, Shoot, Poster Is it April 20, 1972 Or the right arm of a professional killer or the leathery mittens Of some spy or some stain on the binoculars of a marauder? Whatever it might be, I can’t call it a day. It is an ancient place where I am writing now Where till this day, tobacco sells more than words The sky here is pig high Nobody uses tongue here Nobody uses eyes here Nobody uses ears here Nobody uses nose here Here: only teeth and stomach Arms scraped in soil No humans Save a blue khokhal Relentless, that seeks grain From one torrential rain to another… Here, is this woman my ma Or an iron girder 5 feet tall In which hangs a couple of dry rotis. Like long dead birds There is no gulf between my daughter and my strike As constitution, true to its promise Keeps on breaking my daughter and my strike. After one flash election Am I supposed to stop thinking about explosives? On this April 20, 1972, can I live with my children like a father ought to live? Like an inkpot filled with ink Like a ball Like a heath full of grass Can I live with my children? Those people ferry me to my poems They use and blindfold me, let me rot across the border Never letting me reach the capital, distant I get hounded, detained even before I reach the Zila-town. No, not the government The cheapest cigarette brand in this country has stood by my side. My childhood, that germinated near my sister’s feet Like yellow rend shrubs Has been flattened by the daroga’s buffalo If the daroga has the right to shoot so that he can save what remains human Why not me? In this soil that I am writing now In this soil that I walk In this soil that I plough In this soil that I sow the seeds And this soil from which, extracting grains I carry to the godowns and storehouses Should I have the right to shoot for this soil Or this rat of a zamindar who wants to make this country A moneylender’s dog? This is not a poem. It is the realization of shooting bullets Which are now meeting every single pen-pusher. Every single tiller. ————————— Girls on Rooftops Still the girls come on to the rooftops Their shadows fall on my life The girls are here for the boys Downstairs, amidst bullets, the boys play cards Sitting, on the stairs above the drain Lazing on benches outside the footpath tea-stall Sipping tea Around a boy