Image courtesy Tate
Ashwani Kumar
Section 1. ‘Man and Woman’
You know, who am I?
I am Urvashi’s daughter and
slayer of demons in the city of
mirrors. Kunti, Madri, Sachi are
my other mothers.
With Dronacharya,
I mastered the art of archery, also
the science of conquering hearts.
Defeater of foes, I also learnt to
bare my lavish arrow-shaped silver
body in the divine battles across
Brahma’s expensive canvas.
Whenever he saw me dancing among women,
he appreciated my gait, the double curve of my
bow growing bigger and bigger
upon the lewd, darting glances of coal miners.
My large Persian earrings,
gold-coated conch bangles,
and creamy, opaque painted nails hide
addresses of my previous births.
Stuffed in my pastel skin is the
smell of the blood of old men in war and peace.
Neither my brothers nor my wives object when I
devour celibate monks with a devotional dance.
Section 2. ‘Changing Figure’
Every time I dance, I giggle, glow
with inertia of the real. Sairandhri,
my wife, often splits in joy, when she
sees me sashaying along, teaching
my daughter-in-law Uttara, recycled
steps on Bollywood melodies. In a
girdle of banana leaves,
I strip affection, compassion,
pleasure and finger-hole vice too.
You deserve your fate or final insults in my lap.
Where else would you bury the perversity
of the drugged Disneyland?
Every night Pururavas descend
from the heavens to
watch, clap at my exotic
pole dance performance
in the court of King Virat.
My brothers, Kanka, Vallabha,
Arishtanemi, Granthika,
amused like Gujarati diamond-
merchants in Opera House, or exiled
hermits among the pine trees
earn false satisfaction from the
victory of the spirit over flesh.
If you ever come to my dance bar
you can bring your own fat-free milk,
or we offer calcium-fortified juices. If
you are my lover,
I offer you free organic chocolates.
Also, for a single cover charge,
you can bring a jobless cabbie friend.
The raiding army of
Kauravs won’t touch you,
but you promise you keep your
riotous instincts in check when
you vandalize, burn down, rape your
neighbours, or blacken the faces of those who
invite artists from across the borders,
to protect our motherland
in the name of lies or lechery.
Yes, I charge for extra services
like the strange taste of the blackbuck’s
decayed flesh in the mouth,
or the sting of a whip in loveless nights.
My lovers sometimes bring
as guests of honour:
wives, sisters, daughters.
I teach them toy games in secret
chambers, pencil-sharpen their courage
to make love in daylight.
Oh, worse is manhood,
the perfect genocidal machine of
love! I don’t want to become Arjuna,
again, a blind carnivorous beast who
killed his own cousins, nephews and
teachers in the age of darkness.
Think what you like, Krishna.
When shall women cease to be
property and honour?
My father stone-crushed my
mother while making love to
her; I never knew this
until I found it in the family souvenir.
Now, you know why I accepted my mother’s
curse. You can’t cure the festering wounds of
superficial moral victories
by accidents of birth or violence.
Section 3. ‘Ecstatic Women’
In the Red Room, private friends
with Salman Khan haircuts
and weightlifter biceps
come talking of Vedic priests flying in
planes. Sometimes they bring between
their legs ancient sketches of nukes.
Ah, all men want muscular love in the
stand-up position. Gyrating under the
faded billboards of Coca-Cola,
I show off blood-letting yoga dancing.
Hissing, whistling,
they throw offerings on me in fat bundles
of invalid currency and rid themselves of
all charges of black and white abstraction.
Lovers are migratory species.
Once they get the taste for human flesh,
they never touch crabs, lizards, rodents or birds.
As I start singing Bombay, O Bombay,
the outcaste drummer raises the tempo.
Keechaka, the tyrant brother-in-law of the bar
owner, pirouettes around me, lusting over
my unstrapped, boot-liquored fermented body.
His face is smeared with unclaimed cremation ashes.
A garland of burnt red chillies
hangs from his remorseless metal neck.
Slowly his hunger for large stopwatches grows.
Restless, he advances towards me ferociously.
I cry, “Hold, hold—I am the chaste wife of
Pandavas. Do not debase me.”
Seeing this, God Bariopa rises from
the eyelashes of my wrestler brother,
hurls him to the dance floor,
and kills him with fake plastic nails at my
feet. In the glistening flecks of fluorescent
darkness, I shed my skin to the glory of a
new awakening.
Discovering freedom from ancient
scabs in the lower thighs of their
foreign bodies, jobless hawkers and
mill workers in American apparel
rush to the dance bar to learn Salsa lessons.
I, a friend of Vishnu,
know my performance can’t be
measured by laws of Manu. I work no
miracles, only remain true to myself.
I don’t know what I shall do now with my
bow, my ancient arrows gone.
Today, nobody knows my
whereabouts. Some say I am still
working at Dadar Dance Bar.
Others say I was last seen doing fusion pole
dance in the holy gardens of Addis Ababa.
( The poem is taken from the collection “
“Banaras and the Other”)
******
Notes --From the collection “Banaras and the Other” --Cover image : “You can’t please all” by Bhupen Khakhar courtesy: https://bhupenkhakharcollection.com/essay/
Ashwani Kumar is a poet, writer, columnist and professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai). His major anthologies are ‘My Grandfather’s Imaginary Typewriter’ and ‘Banaras and the Other’. Recently his select poems have been translated for a special volume ‘Architecture of Alphabets’ in Hungarian. He is author of non-fiction work ‘Community Warriors’, and one of the chief editors of “Global Civil Society” @ London School of Economics. He is also co-founder of Indian Novels Collective to promote translation of Indian language novels. He writes a regular book column in the Financial Express. And when his spine shakes with fears of loving wet charcoal fire, he daydreams about befriending ghost cyclones and writing fantasy fiction. More by this author in The Beacon: Cholera Conversation at Fulton Canteen Autopsychography of Mohandas Scattered Circumstances,Odd Geographies: A Life in Epigraphs. Blurring Boundaries
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