Hans Holbein the Younger’s Danse Macabre. (courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)
Ashwani Kumar
New and Old Memories of Virus
Almost punctually
every day at the break of day
Karim Lala sold eggs of rare Ethiopian snakes in Amritsar flea market.
Unsuspecting, hunchbacked Multani farmers from neighbouring
villages bought them as fertilisers for their corn fields.
Desperate for treacherous afternoon pleasures
teenagers used smaller eggs for fishing in the local ponds;
some adults used them for baits to trap
nautch girls from Quetta, traveling without camel riders.
In wintry December
rose- scented, unpolished large snake eggs were
offered to the village Gods in the fertility rituals
and debauch priests violently lashed themselves for calligraphic body pains.
Such were the simple and symmetrical times
when wails of widows, and orphans were unheard of
and no one questioned why local bards write in straight lines.
**
If you assume life was predestined
everyone lived in the past perfect and nothing had happened.
You are wrong.
Wounds of self-mutilation were deep;
Some were physiologically superior
a few lacked organs for metabolism, and
many belonged to the infected memories of inferiority.
Wandering virus of vengeance had infected everyone
at least in the last ten- months of delusional bigotry-
shredding our habits, and memories of peaceful living.
Full of malice and money
jewellers, antique dealers, and ironmongers had closed their shops.
Everyone was busy digging trenches around their house.
Measuring their hip-sizes and bone-density
doctors and nurses were preoccupied with saving winter fur for patients.
On the kitchen table
eyelashes of peacocks and ribbed wings of butterflies were
new delicacies for aging grandfathers.
Anyone who complained of stomach-ache was
stoned to death at the village square.
You won’t believe when it all happened
We were all sleeping so well, yes, so well!
**
Roaming market to market
In search of hallucinogenic drugs for regaining his youth
Karim Lala one day forgot to lock his monastic warehouses.
Newly born snakes in flannel suits, and baseball caps
sneaked out from their sheltered cages.
In no time, there were snakes all over, and
hundreds of thousands of their humanoid followers
started spreading glories of infectious disease with
prostrating paternal pride and oratory.
Husbands and fathers were the first to kill
their wives and daughters in panic.
unpaid labourers, barbers, beggars, and cocaine addicts were
the last to offer themselves for culinary sacrifices.
Hatred was such a fetish food;
one man’s meat was better than another
and cold meat was more favoured than warm, soft, normal bodies.
The hunger for revenge grew so strong that gods also joined
the ascetic rulers in the feast of totem eating in odd places-
behind the discarded piles of oxygen cylinders or in trains running late.
Everything was falling, failing.
Evil had become a new fever
loving and lusting after homeless protesters and poets.
**
After years of silence like fishes frozen in the ice-box
I recover from short-term memory lapses
search for the lost property papers of my ancestral house
amidst the newly built monuments of follies in the capital city.
I’m now sure of it –
kissing, smelling, touching
everything has become forbidden.
I’m still alive but
so much fear has entered into my lungs, muscles, and blood stream
I can’t find my body except on the certificate of vaccination –
a false and fake memory of virus!
********
Ashwani Kumar is a poet, writer, and professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. His major poetry volumes include ‘My Grandfather’s Imaginary Typewriter’ and ‘Banaras and the Other’. Widely published, anthologized and translated, his poems are noted for ‘lyrical celebration’ of garbled voices of memory and their subversive ‘whimsy’ quality. Recently, he has co-edited Migrants, Mobility and Citizenship in India (Routledge 2021). Presently, he is working on his next volume of verses and an edited anthology of poetry.
Ashwani Kumar in The Beacon BLURRING BOUNDARIES Scattered Circumstances,Odd Geographies: A Life in Epigraphs. Cholera Conversation at Fulton Canteen Brihannala In Dadar Ladies Bar Autopsychography of Mohandas
Leave a Reply