Then Will Come Envy
Viren Dangwal [Translations: Ashok Pande] Defining the poet of our times, Nazim Hikmet once remarked: “The real poet is not engaged in his love, his happiness or pain. In such poet’s poems his people’s pulse must beat … The poet, in order to be successful, should, in his poems, shed light on the material life. One who escapes from real life and thus treats of unrelated subjects, is destined to burn like straw.” Probably the most innovative and the most daring among his contemporaries, Viren Dangwal treats the ordinary world with intense objectivity and skillfulness. He has turned the most mundane things like cows, elephants, tables, papayas, flies etc. into themes for his unique form of poetry. Attempting this requires immense compassion and audacity. Critics and poets alike have time and again emphasized that Viren has ardently followed the tradition of great Hindi poets Nirala and Nagarjun. Part of this is true, but what makes Viren Dangwal a unique poet is his modernity and awareness. His socio-political convictions were vociferous and underline his unassuming loyalty to common people. Constantly challenging the evils of the new world order, he dares to experiment with hitherto unknown forms and themes, constantly making us aware of the threats and vulnerability that we are exposed to. His poetry encompasses love, hope, struggle, irony and above all life – life that is simultaneously trivial and enormously full of possibilities. Summing up his vision, he observes: Down these very roads tyrants have kept coming Down these same roads One day Our people will come too. (From the Preface of ‘Its been Long since I Found Anything’ – Translation of Viren Dangwal’s poems. Published by Adharshila Prakashan, 2005) ________________________________ P.T. Usha Dark youthful gazelle Flies on her swift long legs Daughter of my impoverished country Still alive in the brightness of her eyes is the modesty recognizing hunger Therefore there is no Sunil Gavaskarsque splendor on her face Don’t ever sit P. T. Usha in that Maruti car you received as prize Giving yourself airs even in your thoughts Rather, put your feet up on the seat when you travel in the airplane Does your mouth make sounds while eating? No worries Those who regard silent jaws as civilized are the most dangerous gluttons in the world. *** Allahabad : 1970 1. I carry you along As the water carries the bank along A roguery, a nostalgia, a mischief, A panic, a suffering, a turn around, a crumpled hat, A hard kick on the bum, Scratching of a closing door with the wretchedness of paws Life is a strange riddle As soon as one thinks one belongs And spreads out the towel, ready to breathe easily One is thrown out mandatorily. 2. Scores of girders come crashing down Under them there is a man still alive His pupils are turned upwards From the corners of his lips a line of blood trickles But he is still alive, that man. His sleep is a chariot To take him to the dream that glimmers A thousand light years away 3. Groping in the dark for a matchbox Fingers find The unfamiliar feel Of well known things Knowing full well that I should have I still didn’t fill the stove Last evening Go, lethargy Stay, love Get, job Wife, be Make some khichri and chutney Loneliness Don’t stick to my neck On the crumpled pillow Like the sweat of May. 4. One personal gloom Two sandals getting worn out Three dogs barking So passed even this too, this day How wonderful would it be On opening the door to see Four or five letters Lighting up the darkness 5. I read it from the very beginning There were so many mistakes It was impossible to amend them Life was a book printed in a cheap press So many prescriptions for health They had themselves become disease. 6. A poet is fortunate to be read Just as to be eaten is the good fortune of a guava Yes, it tastes good and is healthy too Maybe, something else would flash in the mind As someone else lives in some other place. 7. Slowly, after the taste of failure fades away Envy would come. You will remember fixing The strap that keeps slipping off Of your rubber chappals You will not remember the sharp Taste of a firm guava The glittering sharpness will terrify the depressed Heart Goodness will taste bitter Shame will not leave the heart Those companions will meet like half-acquaintances With whom one learnt the lessons of life With success will vanish The sorrow of losing, the bliss of finding Then will come envy Blowing the trumpet of greed 8. The sorrow of passion, adolescence Pennilessness, a dosa a luxury In the coffeehouse some petty men Some supermen Two Che Guevaras The human being with me was Ramendra He had Four and a half Rupees 9 [Gaffar] A talkative smile on the face Like a xylophone the catechu-pot All this comes only with experience The shirt will always be sparkling too-blued white The knees will ache of course If you have to sit for sixteen hours in this tiny place “Now it is not like the old days, Sahib, Now every Tom, Dick and Harry Comes to study in the university,” In this contempt is hidden A unique brand of flattery All this comes only with experience. “My own son, Ekram at any rate Never got beyond the sixth grade” This much is certain that Gaffar Never was insulted by any student leader But neither did he ever Give anything on credit to a feeble customer. *** Manner Yellow tinged verdant Leaves have come up. Abundant. Glittering. Trees have Just this one way To tell They too love the world. *** Shamsher The night is my
The Letter Box
[A letter to the editor published in the Bangla Magazine, Arek Rokom—আরেক রকম, Volume 16. 2013. Our gratitude to poet Mridul Dasgupta for bringing this to our notice.] ———————————– Your first year’s first publication, dated January 1, 2013 has recently reached me here at Cell No. 10, Raipur Central Jail. As I was reading it I felt society’s call will not go unheeded; your multifaceted effort will be rewarded. That it is possible to bring together under one banner people of divergent beliefs and ideas is evident from the list of your contributors and from the welcome variations and originalities of the subject matter of the writings. After a lot of struggle and tussle with jail authorities, I have got the permission to read legitimate and kosher books and journals written in the Bangla language. There is no regularity though. My age is 70 at this time. I wish to keep myself active by maintaining my regular reading habits. I get to know very little of the world outside. The newspapers that the authorities give are so scratched and scraped in the name of censoring that one does not even feel like touching them, let alone reading them. I do not know whether you will consider me a political prisoner. I am a member of the Indian Communist Party (Maoist). On April 30, 2011, I was arrested from Katihar. After being incarcerated in Bhagalpur Jail for a year, they deported me here to Raipur Central Jail. I feel that they will keep on moving me around from one jail to another all my life. I am writing this note with a lot of caution and wariness. But it is a happy fortuity that there is no dearth of well-wishers. This letter proves that. The bottom-line is that it is my earnest request to you that in the name of Social Study Trust, if you would kindly keep sending me journals, magazines, essays, fiction and poetry books in English, Bangla and even in Hindi, I shall be ever grateful. I am writing under strict vigilance; so please ignore all my errors and mistakes. My nephew visits me once every two or three months. He will again come in July. I shall ask him to pay off your subscription cost when he arrives. One final request: it would be really nice if you could sometimes think of those imprisoned far away in jails. Purnendusekhar Mukhopadhayay Raipur Central Jail adminhumanitiesunderground.org
A Horseradish Is No Sweeter Than A Radish
Anna Politkovskaya Selections from A Russian Diary. Time covered here: 2003-2004 [Anna could have left Russia. Family and friends had urged her to leave. Russian soldiers, police, oligarchs, criminal gangs, and the highest-ranking Russian politicians had explicitly threatened her life. When she grew violently ill after sipping a cup of tea on a flight into Beslan to negotiate during the school hostage crisis in 2004, she saw it was an attempt to silence her there and then. Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB man who became a critic of Vladimir Putin, told her to leave Russia. But she kept on: “Our society isn’t a society anymore,” she wrote. “It is a collection of windowless, isolated concrete cells…..”. On the day Anna was shot to death, October 7, 2006, in the elevator of her apartment block on Lesnaya Street, the editor of Novaya Gazeta says that she was about to file a long story on torture as it is routinely conducted by Chechen security forces supported by Russia. That story will almost certainly never be read by anyone, inside or outside Russia. Even the substance of it will probably never be known. Russian police seized her notes, her computer hard drive, and photographs of two people she would reportedly accuse of torture.] *** December 8 Early in the morning, political analysts assembled on the Free Speech program to discuss the results as they came in. They were jittery. Igor Bunin talked of a crisis of Russian liberalism, about how the Yukos affair had suddenly aroused a wave of antioligarchic feeling in the middle of the campaign. They talked about the hatred that had accumulated in the hearts of many people, “especially decent people who could not bring themselves to support Zhirinovsky,” and the fact that the eclectic United Russia Party had managed to unite everybody, from the most liberal to the most reactionary. He predicted that the president would now stand in for the liberals in the ruling elite. Free Speech was shortly to be taken off the air by its parent company NTV, to which Putin commented, “Who needs a talk show for political losers?” December 9 At 10:53 a.m. today a suicide bomber blew herself up outside the Nationale Hotel in Moscow, across the square from the Duma and 145 meters [160 yards] from the Kremlin. “Where is this Duma?” she asked a passerby, before exploding. For a long time the head of a Chinese tourist who had been next to her lay on the asphalt without its body. December 11 This morning there was more of the same, a reputation destroyed by the Kremlin’s embrace. Andrey Makarevich was an underground rock musician in the Soviet period, a dissident, a fighter against the KGB,* who used to sing with passion, “Don’t bow your head before the changeful world. Some day that world will bow its head to us!” It was the anthem of the first years of democracy under Yeltsin. Today, on live television on the state-run Channel One, he is being presented with a medal “For Services to the Fatherland. December 12 Constitution Day. A holiday. Moscow is flooded with militiamen and agents in plain clothes. There are dogs everywhere, searching for explosives. The president held a grand reception in the Kremlin for the political and oligarchic elite and made a speech about human rights, predicated on the notion that they had triumphed in Russia. Yeltsin was there, looking fitter and younger, but with mental problems written all over his face. He was there because the Constitution was adopted during his presidency. He is not usually invited to Putin’s Kremlin. December 23 Ritual murders are taking place in Moscow. A second severed head has been found in the past twenty-four hours, this time in the district of Go-lianovo in the east of Moscow. It was in a rubbish container on Altaiskaya Street. Yesterday evening, a head in a plastic bag was found lying on a table in the courtyard outside Apartment Building 3 on Krasnoyarskaya Street. Both men had been dead for twenty-four hours before the discovery. The circumstances in the two cases are almost identical: the victims are from the Caucasus, aged thirty to forty, and have dark hair. Their identities are unknown. The heads were found two-thirds of a mile apart. December 27 Sterligov, the coffin maker, has been disqualified from standing by the Central Electoral Commission. Viktor Anpilov, a clown from the Workers’ Russia Party, promptly put himself forward. A horseradish is no sweeter than a radish. December 28 At last they have found a worthy opponent for Putin: Sergey Mironov,* the speaker of the Soviet of the Federation, has been proposed by the Party of Life (another of the dwarf parties set up by the presidential administration’s deputy head, Vladislav Surkov*). He immediately announced, “I support Putin.” The conference of the Russian Communist Party is taking place. The Communists have proposed Nikolai Kharitonov, an odd, garrulous man who used to be a KGB officer. How wonderful! Ivan Rybkin has announced he will stand. He is the creature of Putin’s main opponent, Boris Berezovsky,* now in exile abroad. Rybkin used to be the speaker of the Duma and chairman of the National Security Council. Who is he today? Time will tell. Meanwhile, Moscow is at a standstill. The rich haven’t a care in the world; they are abroad on vacation. Moscow is very rich. All the restaurants, even the most expensive, are crammed or closed for corporate parties. The tables are laden with delicacies beyond the imaginings of the rest of Russia. Thousands of dollars are spent in an evening. Is this the last fling of the twenty-first century’s New Economic Policy? December 30 Putin needed competitors, and he has received them as a New Year’s gift. The new candidates have all promptly declared that the main thing is not to win but to take part. January 5 Putin holds a cabinet meeting. “We need to
Champak, Certified
Shubham Shree Comrade I right through the evening, samosas wolfed pakoras, bread rolls gobbled a million cups of tea guzzled marking time for those mess bells at the age of 28, measuring the mirror those piercing eyes. a few grey hairs, ailing father and some relatives mother’s absurd clamour for a studio-photograph home a door bolted. in my eyes you smiled a fist stretched a fiery slogan a poster, off-colour, on the wall a kurta trailing thread chappal-straps unpinning polycystic ovarian syndrome. quietly you are that too. life unspools, thus dreaming politbureau chores for the mahila-morcha hawking manifestos at seminars or out on streets, baton-beaten some days in remand making it to the newspapers but in the room, the pillow that remains drenched malodorous where do I report that, comrade? *** Comrade II that pole 20 centimetres by the tape and his body are matched evenly at 30, a loosely hanging shirt, remnant of the early nineties and the denim, a gift from the archaeology department even after the last drag on the circulating cigarette if that parantha remains elusive then a fit of laughter is fine. MA second division whole-timer used to be a mental patient until last month his party membership an inheritance from a dead father chuckling, nonchalant this comrade, knows all about the world but not about his home inundated by last night’s flood. for a fortnight, his cellphone balance =zero! *** About That Boy with three days of stubble every guy looks hot (that is what I believe) and if, instead of the gym, for a week he is hospital interned then his eyes turn philosophic yellow and melancholic burning and lifeless unsalted laughter, shriveled smile walking but to tire on a fulsome evening, shawl-wrapped—looking at infinity eating once, puking thrice crouched in syringe-fear. running her palm over the wistful face of that boy the girl thinks deep within, let me die but nothing should happen to him ailing boys become suspicious of their lovers they cannot read minds—these ailing boys. *** Women they were to pick-up Asia’s patience Africa’s endurance Europe’s sense of fashion American glitziness but they lost their bearings they gleaned love from Asia philosophy from Europe Africa gave them uprightness America, revolt they lost all the competence of a good wife and ended up as blemished lovers too. *** Till Language Gives Us Words my mind will brace me countless dreams I will dream squeezing my native power to the final drop I will love you. whatever the yoke, as long as language lives there is complete freedom *** Love the Ganga’s the sun’s the harvest’s the flowers’ my dialect’s and your enchantment will not wane however life goes till the scent of your bosom lingers on my tongue the heart will not break. *** Rubber-Band on Socks Golu of class I, early-morning lone and shy tiptoes tothe monitor of the second grade and submits: “Please, will you give me that rubber-band from your plait?” “Sir will spank.” “Please, give, na? Sir will not thrash girls, really he won’t, My socks, they are slipsliding away.” *** Elegy Written for the Champaks Lout I was, lout I am, lout I will be whether I say it or not it will be plain from my face wily, oily, roily if you say so sure shall flash all thirty-two and endure not of this world, custom made, bonafide shall still study Hindi. Champak, certified. _____________________________ कॉमरेड I पूरी शाम समोसों पर टूटे लोग दबाए पकौड़े, ब्रेड रोल गटकी चाय पर चाय और तुमने किया मेस की घण्टी का इन्तज़ार अट्ठाइस की उम्र में आईना देखती सूजी हुई आँखें कुछ सफ़ेद बाल, बीमार पिता और रिश्ते स्टूडियो की तस्वीर के लिए माँ का पाग़लपन घर एक बन्द दरवाज़ा — हमारी आँखों में तुम हँसी हो एक तनी हुई मुट्ठी एक जोशीला नारा एक पोस्टर बदरंग दीवार पर एक सिलाई उधड़ा कुर्ता चप्पल के खुले हुए फीते की कील पॉलीसिस्टिक ओवेरियन सिण्ड्रोम भी हो तुम चुपके से ___ यूँ ही गुज़रती है ज़िन्दगी पोलित-ब्यूरो का सपना महिला-मोर्चे का काम सेमिनारों में मेनिफ़ेस्टो बेचते या लाठियाँ खाते सड़कों पर रिमाण्ड में कभी-कभी अख़बारों में छपते पर जो तकिया गीला रह जाता है कमरे में बदबू भरा उसे कहाँ दर्ज करें कॉमरेड ? *** कॉमरेड II टेप से नापकर 20 सेण्टीमीटर का पोल और उसका शरीर बराबर हैं तिस पर एक झलंगी शर्ट 90 के शुरूआती दिनों की और जींस पुरातत्व-विभाग का तोहफ़ा पैंचे की सिगरेट के आख़िरी कश के बाद भी पराठे का जुगाड़ नहीं तो ठहाके ही सही सेकेण्ड डिवीजन एम० ए० होल-टाइमर मानसिक रोगी हुआ करता था पिछले महीने तक दिवंगत पिता से विरासत में पार्टी की सदस्यता लेकर निफ़िक्र खिलखिलाता ये कॉमरेड दुनिया की ख़बर है इसे सिवाय इसके कि रात बाढ़ आ गई है घर में पन्द्रह दिनों से बैलेन्स ज़ीरो है ! *** उस लड़के की याद तीन दिन की शेव में हर लड़का हॉट लगता है (ऐसा मेरा मानना है) और जिम के बदले अस्पताल में पड़ा हो हफ़्ते भर तो आँखें दार्शनिक हो जाती हैं पीली और उदास जलती हुई और निस्तेज बिना नमक की हँसी और सूखी मुस्कुराहटें चले तो थक जाए भरी शाम शॉल ओढ़ कर शून्य में ताके एक बार खाए, तीन बार उल्टी करे दुबक जाए इंजेक्शन के डर से उस लड़के के उदास चेहरे पर हाथ फेरती लड़की मन ही मन सोचती है मैं मर जाऊँ पर इसे कुछ न हो बीमार लड़के प्रेमिकाओं पर शक करने लगते हैं मन नहीं पढ़ पाते बीमार लड़के *** औरतें उन्हें एशिया का धैर्य लेना था अफ़्रीका की सहनशीलता यूरोप का फ़ैशन अमेरिका का आडम्बर लेकिन वे दिशाहीन हो गईं उन्होंने एशिया से प्रेम लिया यूरोप से दर्शन अफ़्रीका से दृढ़ता ली अमेरिका से विद्रोह खो दी अच्छी पत्नियों की योग्यता बुरी प्रेमिकाएँ कहलाईं वे आख़िरकार *** जब तक भाषा देती रहेगी शब्द साथ देगा मन असंख्य कल्पनाएँ करूँगी अपनी क्षमता को आख़िरी बून्द तक निचोड़ कर प्यार करूँगी तुमसे कोई भी बन्धन हो भाषा है जब तक पूरी आज़ादी है *** प्यार