Clones

Akhlaq Dorji Chanda The two of them entered the world of blunt trauma. And a thick vat of pounding love and lust. In the woods on the southfacing slopes, just beyond the Parthasarathy rocks, they had a rock of their own. A mini plateau of a rock. The small trail where ghostly humans frequented their ancient trembling urges to the root, led to the top of a landing. Mice and mosquitoes accompanied the two at every step. They walked. Wordless. The woman followed the pathway made by the man among the brambles and moss. At the far corner of the thicket a dark curl of smoke rose, burning varnish and twigs perhaps for the kabadis and charwahs after the andhi last evening. They ducked—squatted and tried to make sense of such kindred hellbirds ; other unfulfilled sensile bodies. The two looked liked spirits hollowed out of the marsh. A moonless January evening in Delhi and the dark fell like a thunderclap and twigs and leaves continued to gnash beneath their feet. The two moved on. And a kumthha shrub caught her shawl and millions of thorns held her back. He turned back and freed her move. He looked like a raggedy soul, who could frighten the drifting nilgais with his very presence. And she, something burning within, hardening—eyes now tender, now locked in their corral like hot flex. He entered the consecrated expanse and looked at the ground. An aluminium bucket and some leftover food in the dirt he quickly noticed. Ah, other ghosts had been here. Ghosts seeking their own grave. She whipped out a bottle—still icy cold, water it was. And shuffled a torch through the gloom in order to make sense of their bearings. The woven limbs of the ancient kadamb and dhau trees stood still, motionless above, guarding the rock. And apparitions. She placed the rug, their bedroll, beneath. Squatting tailorwise. He could see her contours—her superb long -lived foreleg, her untousled hair. Her nose most of all—sharp, hungry, sniffing earth and marsh. The torch glowed sideways. He shoved aside his dirty boots. And now he gestured with his elbow. And fastened their possibles on to the near branch—yesterday’s meat, nuts in a panni and a couple of beer bottles. The bygone misogyny returned as he looked at her contours again—he remembered his favourite Appalachian lines—‘they is four things that can destroy the earth—women, whiskey, money and niggers.’ Are these fit for Aravalli too? But this woman he loved. Far beyond his own ways. This creature of a woman. She has been running like a machine for a thousand years. He loved those centuries. They provided habit. Did God make this world to suit us? She thought, even as she was becoming aware of his gaze—tender and fierce. She knew exactly what he had in mind. Lust and harsh dissipation. And a searing jealousy that was their lot. She can know her heart but she did not want to. It was like swinging against a barrage—again and again. Every time she would deeply feel his non-politics, every time his ways of making love left fresh fleck on her skin, every single time she would be aware of her own different destiny. Losing grip, shaken like a guilty thing surprised, she would gain love and strength for one more birth. And grow ancient in some wounded grace. And every single time the beast in her would quiver like a drygulch wraith, booming and banging against her own wish. Best not to peep in there. No. Can she tend this meaningless casual darkness of his soul? Can she bear these destructive caustic blood clots in his brain? And her own ghosts—yes, they arrive and keep on swarming, dancing naked all around her pyre of a mind. Nilgais stamped and snuffled somewhere close in the dark. And he lurched forward to hug her slender buttocks from behind. Crossbreeds they were at that moment. Running rough. Matted and greasy with the gloom. Her ribs were like fishbones as she turned and swung at his torso. As she put his weight over her wiry body, she was thinking about the meetings with the minister and marches and slogans and papers and write-ups and petitions and about her kid and distant her mind went, to a world of her own—Hallabol Hallabol! The grass and the stars seemed like a hazy nebula. A pattern that has followed her life, never to become her own. She looked up the sky and vultures seemed to be circling above the world. Their silhouettes across the still, vaulted sky like a pale ghost army. Were they from another order? Now sweat beaded her free nipples and as he went wild he kept on muttering, wheezing at times. And she knew this rhythm; across the milky-way like a great electric kite the Great Bear rose and the two of them wrapped like the last sentinels untouched by a decaying, happy world outside. That world—shining, value laden India, was not theirs. Tethered to each other they were tethered to true geology. Like navigators in a plateau pounding and brawling, sifting obstinate jealous shadows of a lifetime, they battled with each other. Their teeth on edge and sand and grit in every pore and in every bit of the meat and nuts there was dust. That night they rode through a region galvanic; raging shapes lead to soft blue fire and returned back to the great clanging ridges of the folded Aravalli. ********************* The sun rose blearily. And he remembered his interview today. 300 yards from the sun and sand that he found himself in. The hallowed world of academia shall greet him, if he is able to play his cards craftily. He turned around and she looked like an angel bathed in contentment. At a distance he saw the corrugated form of a jhinjheri tree in full glow. And geometric butterflies abuzz like wood nymphs, circling around ragged kerfs and shrubs. He knew contentment meant nothing.
‘Irreparable Loss Should Be Forgotten As Soon As Possible’

In a conversation with Anil Sinha, Vamik Jaunpuri also says, ‘Poems should not be slogans but they must be loud enough.’ The interview appeared in a Commemorative volume for Anil Sinha, published by the Anil Sinha Memorial Foundation in 2014. Translation: HUG. Introduction: Anil Sinha The 85 year old Urdu poet (born: February 23, 1910) has seen many ups and downs in life, poetry and in organizational politics. He has an in-depth understanding of the role of the poet, the poet’s craft and his relationship to society. To have an audience with him is like traversing through a few eras all at once. He has published five books so far, four among those are books of poetry—Cheekh( 1948), Jaras (1950), Shab Charag (1978) and Safre Na Tamam. His autobiography is titled—Guftani Ka Guftani, which I had read in Patna’s Khuda Baksh Khan Library. He believes that a poet’s journey is never-ending, since humanity and society never come to an end. He joined the Progressive Writer’s Association in 1972. His poem ‘Bhukha Hai Bangal’ became a great hit. It had instantly spread byword-of-mouth and was on everyone’s lips at that time. He was formally associated with the collective till 1950 until his straight talk, and obligation towards poetry and society,led to his marginalization. To date, his position in the organization is not very sound and yet all his love and lore has always centred on the P.W.A. The ideal, that he ought not to abandon an organization with which he has been associated right from inception, never left him. Most of his poems are the finest of treasures and a bequest of the home grown Indian thought process. He was quite unknown to the Hindi world. Usually Vamik Sa’ab was a man of few words, but whenever he did decide to speak—he would go all the way. Ajay Kumar of Jaunpur has helped me in appreciating and making sense of the Urdu lafz that he has often used in the course of our discussion. This conversation dwells on poetry and politics, and their relationship. We also discuss poets and litterateurs and their intellectual role in matters social. As we enter through the enormous gate of the almost 200 year old Lal Kothi I remember a snippet of Ghalib’s famous sher –उग रहा है दरो-दीवार पर सबजा ग़ालिब“…germinating vegetables on the walls and portals Ghalib.” But these walls and entrances were not marked with decay and loss; they opened us up to a throbbing, transformative, great and living poet, forever eager and restless to dream and instantiate a happier, freer and egalitarian life for his fellow beings. Vamik Jaunpuri, at 85—seeking and searching Urdu’s real spread and enlargement, is very much the same creative persona that we have known for so many decades. Vamik Sa’ab, who has forever tried to take poetry to an elevated height, thinks that to be a poet is to be a paigambar—a prophet. If a prophet means someone who, for the betterment of the world, for the sake of a peaceful future, works toward bringing forth an equitable world into existence, so does the poet. By presenting before us testimonies of daily struggles, the poet stirs us with energy and furore so that one may imagine a more equitable and just society. This idea of the poet as a prophet is much of Vamik Sa’ab’s belief and it means that in his own way he is aware of his responsibility to contribute to nation building. So, he would often draw portraits of those higher prophets with china ink—the likes of Tagore or Ghalib, for instance. We reach a veranda in Lal Kothi. The rain soaked sun shines lightly and the spotless sky is reflected in the green grass and brambles on the walls. On the other side of the veranda a greying poet with his paan-dabba sits on his easy chair. The dabba is placed over an old, dilapidated chowki. The poet’s eyes burn. I am with Ajay Kumar, I say, and the poet greets him—“Come Ajay, if Begum was alive, she would have offered you paan right now.” In his thoughts I could see his begum—his homemaker, sakhi, secretary too perhaps. And as he stands up and makes us comfortable—he says; “Irreparable loss should be forgotten as soon as possible.” One can see why Vamik Sa’ab, in spite of relentless pressure from his sons and friends, is beholden to his soil, his world. “ए मेरे प्यारी ज़मी / नौर सो नाज़ आफ़रीं/तेरे चमनजन पर/हुस्न की सरशारियां /फ़िक्र की महमेज़ पर /फन से तो जन्नत निशाँ /गगन ज़लज़लों के क़र्ज़ में, जन तुझे ठंडक मिली /आदमी की भी बनी/आशिके मज़दूर तू …” This zamin begins in Lal Kothi but spreads all over India. He says, thinking deeply, dreamily —that a new mutiny is needed now. Fresh and fecund.The ones who are dividing the nation and are hell bent on keeping the poor in their rightful place—it’s they whoshould be worried instead, not the poor. Their dreams must never be fulfilled. One should think of a fresh blueprint. Ever optimistic, he believes that such a future is not very far, that such sentiments might again stir our nation, especially in the rural sector. Mutiny itself is a sentiment and a powerful, hidden one too. One who understands this sentiment might work towards shahadat(martyrdom). This sentiment was very much present in Ashfaqulla Khan and Bhagat Singh, he ponders. In my ancestry too, there has been a tradition of such sentiments. One can use the very idea of being a shahid (martyr) in making a surat (representation/face)—that is, for composing art and literature. This very idea of inquilabi poetry should be the basis of our writing, he feels. Now, more than ever. Otherwise we are destined to fall into a bottomless pit. ********************************* Anil Sinha: Can you please tell us a bit more about these powers that are trying to get the country into a morass? Vamik Jaunpuri: Do I need to explain it after all that has happened? You too have been
Prayers, Power, Coronation

1649, Charles I—bodies temporal & eternal Eikon Basilike –The Pourtrature of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings-—Frontispiece. *************************************************************************** 1530-1584, Ivan IV (The Terrible): stills from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1944 film. *************************************************************************** 1973, Chile: Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte ************************************************************************** 1998, General Sani Abacha and his Family: Being blessed by late Pope John Paul II when he was in Nigeria. Kneeling before the Pope is Rakiya, General Abacha’s daughter. Looking on are the two sons–the eldest, Abdullahi ‘Moglee’ and the youngest one, Mustapha. *************************************************************************** Imam Khomeini : In Solitude, In Public–transfering piety *************************************************************************** March, 2009: General Than Shwe offers prayers during the consecration ceremony of the Uppatasanti Pagoda in Myanmar’s administrative capital of Naypyidaw. *************************************************************************** 1984-85: General Zia-ul Haq–President after the Referendum–the clerical world meets the political. ************************************************************************** New Delhi, May 20, 2014 *************************************************************************** adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Crows in the Mist

Parimal Bhattacharya ‘Most of the mango trees around our house were part of the family’s common property. Nobody had rights over the green fruits that dropped on their own, sometimes hit by a nor’wester, or the ripe ones that fell in the middle of the night; anyone could pick them up. Unnoticed, the mango flowers would blossom and one day aunt would open her fist to show a tiny green mango.’ This is from the autobiography of Manindra Gupta, a poet, as he remembers his childhood days in a village in erstwhile East Bengal. He then goes on to describe how they would run about in the mango orchard during a summer squall, amid the swaying branches and thunderclaps, as the green mangoes swung above their heads like trapeze artists until they snapped and fell. His aunt had a hunter’s alert ears. She could pick out the solitary thud of a dropped mango from the web of sounds of the nocturnal garden, could detect the noise of fruits falling in the bushes, upon hard earth or grass, or in the wet mud around the pond. Carrying a lantern, she would unfailingly reach the spot. In Bibhutibhushan Banerjee’s Pather Panchali, there is a passage where Apu and Durga go to a mango orchard during a thunderstorm. The scene is there in the Satyajit Ray movie based on the novel as well. There is another scene in the film where their mother Sarbojaya, rain drenched, stealthily picks a coconut from a neighbour’s garden. In countless stories and memoirs set in Bengal, divided and undivided, there are descriptions of green mangoes dropping during summer squalls, of coconuts dropping in ponds, of ripe palm fruits dropping in the somnolent heat of autumn afternoons. The thuds and plops of fruits dropping on the green, fecund earth of Bengal have echoed in the collective memory of generations of Bengalis. It did not fade even after the Partition and the exile that followed, but continued through the rattle of tramcars, the patter of typewriters and the wail of the mills’ sirens. The same thuds and plops echoing in the memory could even block out the sounds of skeletal men and women dropping dead on the footpaths of Calcutta during the great Bengal famine of 1943. In the late 1960s, another sound was added to the acoustic memory of Calcuttans: that of youthful human bodies dropping on the Maidan, the wide parade ground in the heart of the city. Falling on the dew-wet grass at dawn, those sounds almost perfectly replicated the thud and plop of fruits dropping before their time. Just before that one would hear, like an approaching nor’wester, the rumble of police vans, followed by the groan of a door opening, the swish of running feet on wet grass, the whistle of a rifle, and then …One couldn’t see much in the thick, early morning mist; one could only hear. The mist, laced with wisps of grey diesel fume that hung in the air through the night, had begun to dissipate with the first rays of the sun, and was now whisked up by a man running through it, like a paintbrush on wet canvas. A silence would descend as the gunshot scared off a colony of birds on the trees by the Red Road. After the police van would leave, a slow breeze would begin to blow from the direction of the river. The bronze fairy atop the Victoria Memorial still revolved in those days; a keen ear would pick out the faint metallic whirr in the stillness of the morning. Soon the crows would appear… ————————————- Parimal Bhattacharya is a Bengali writer whose books include Darjeeling: Smriti Samaj Itihas and Satyi Rupkatha – Odishar Ek Upajaatir Jibansangram. This is an excerpt from Dyanchinama. [Translation: Parimal Bhattacharya.] adminhumanitiesunderground.org