Image of Divine Mother Series. Parvati. Anjolie Ela Menon
ANAMIKA
(Translated from Hindi by Vinita Sinha)
Salt
Salt is this world’s woe and its flavour too
Three quarters of the earth is salt water
And human heart a mound of salt
So soft – hearted, this salt –
It melts and ebbs away so easily!
Hangs its head in shame
When plates are swung in the air
For want or excess of salt in the daal of the day
Government offices
Are grand salt pots.
Deftly do they sprinkle salt on sores!
Ask women with the surge of salt on their faces
How they bear the burden of the saline face
Those who must repay
The worth of salt-
The ones true to their salt-
They too bear
The brunt of seamless agony
They are the ones who
Take pity on foes
And defer revolutions
Gandhi knew the worth of salt
And so does the girl who sells guavas
This world someday may crumble down to pieces
But not the salt
Intact in human sweat and God’s tears
This grain of salt
Will hold the world together.
++
RABIYA: S/HERO*
Hello, I am Rabiya Anwar,
Couldn’t you place me, Sir?
During the riots last year
They threw acid on me,
Now on my face I bear
The map of the world we live in.
O yes, I am doing well
As a seamstress.
A stitch in time saves nine.
Come for a good mending of damages.
My needle work is neat
And whatever pinches me,
I turn into a needle
This needle I use for embroidery.
All the roses in your garden
I have carved out with my rose stitch
The grass all over
Is my work at satin stitch
And stars I stud
With cross stitch in silver thread.
Long ago.
On the seventh day of creation
God employed me
For interior decoration.
Yes, He cares for me.
He, in fact is my only paramour.
All others in the world are kids
That I bore long ago
To bear all the lovely nuisance
Kids are good at.
Yes, colourful canards
Fly all about me
Like clippings of the clothes I stitch,
In a pouch I sweep them all
For some patchwork,
Some covering up
Someday.
When God,
The finest mender,
Too is tired,
I shall gently take over,
After all,
The world should not suffer,
And you know it very well,
A stitch in time saves nine.
[This poem is woven around an acid attack survivor, Rabiya Anwar who works as a seamstress in my neighbourhood]
*Published in My Typewriter is My Piano. January 2020
++
KALI*
The first glimpse I caught
Of the dusky girl
In a bus enroute to Dhaka
The conductor demands money
In a weary tone
She replies —
“I do not have it
Do what you will.
But, yes, do not delay,
Decide and dispense
I do not have time.
I must reach the hospital
For my dying mother,
Make it a ‘due’ if you like
For the return trip.”
“Who can tell about tomorrow?”
Muttering to himself,
The conductor got off the bus.
Followed the girl
Hurrying with quick steps
Wiping her sweat
Loosening her sari.
At the dhaba,
While the passengers sipped tea
From behind the bushes
The two returned.
Sitting down with a thud
Swallowing the gutka
The Conductor said —
“Not worth
Even a bus ticket,
You are now old and dreary
Devoid of all glory
Go, get off right here,
Run, if you wish, to the old witch, your mother.”
No sooner did she hear, she leapt forward
In a blink of an eye, she was Kali
Like a spark out of stone shining.
Her tied up hair unfurled
On her slender back
It fell, cascading
Like lightning she struck
Caught
Nabbed him down –—
“Will you proceed or not?”
She said,
The driver shuddered
And drove the bus forward
People laughed —
“Who can control
The wheel of Time
Beyond Time lives Kali alone.
Beyond limit and control
Suddenly She rises
Like the first flame
Of Creation.”
*Published in My Typewriter is My Piano. January 2020
++
Make believe
Make- beliefs are those sweet nothings
That cajole and trick us to sleep
Humming a lullaby
That we are so special,
Almost a class apart
Better than the sun and the moon,
And I know not what more.
Make-beliefs
About the self and others
Do keep us happy.
In their spread they gather
The crispy sweet crackers:
Eternity,
Loyalty,
Utopia,
Poetry!
In my inner chambers
I too have nurtured
Some make-beliefs
Like daughters of love
And they are the ones who shower
Such delicate care on me!
They put my little secrets under cover
With them, I talk shop
Rounding off household chores
And whenever they notice I am tired
They play a sweet tune on the flute to me
Wondering
Why am I aghast,
“Is all well at home and in the world?”
In a flick with a smile I speak –
“All well,” I cut it short,
“It’s just a headache!”
This lie too is a metaphor, a Leela
Dear friends,
As great a comforter as my Salma Baji was
Whenever, I am cold and uncomfortable
I apply the same care that
Early in life she had taught me,
Who all to remember
What all to surrender,
“Don’t bother.
When the chill is deep,
Just cover your face and
Go off to sleep”, she would say.
To sum it all up
Now these sweet excuses
Are my Salma Baji
They live so close to me indeed
I can’t survive a single day
Without the lovely excuses
Coy, comely and modest.
++
The Wolf
(In the words of the Wife who had kept a wolf for a pet while the husband was away)
“Dearest,
I, was semi literate
Wedded to a scholar,
Do I know enough – how and what to express!
When you were away
To keep me engaged
Kids gave me their story book
And from the book
I remember,
A young lad
Who took his lambs to graze
And reached the mountain top–
Out there
He felt so lonely
That he cooked up a story.
To draw the people closer
He brought the heavens down ,
Shouting-
‘Wolf, Help – Wolf!’
And running came the people from the Valley!
(Those were the times when men responded
even to random calls)
Good people ,who went to work everyday
Soon understood, the alarm was false
So when the wolf did really come,
They blinked an eye away!
The child of course was ripped apart!
Hear, dear one,
I ask you for attention –
Did the child really lie?
Do women and children
Who speak in the spell of fear – tell a lie?
Primordial stories are all metaphors that they created!
The dense aloneness on the mountain top
Would it not have been
For the tender soul
A Fearful Wolf, My Lord?
The child is gone,
But I am safe,
Sterile in my serenity
I have tamed my aloneness
And they say,
I have tamed a wolf!”
++
Baggage
It was a day in half -a- bloom
With a pleasant breeze aflow,
And my hunger pangs intense.
I drew out from the knot of my anchal
The last bit of my savings,
And flung it away like a pigeon in the air
As Queen Noor Jehan once did !
“Queen? Whose queen am I –
Sitting in a dark room
Scraping the remnants from the flour bin?”
I thought and laughed
Until I saw
Buddha walking towards me from a place afar
Carrying on his shoulders
The burden of us all!
Like the roundels of sattu –
Gram flour, the Theries would have packed for him in potlis,
On his back
He bore the earth itself squeezed in a ball.
Now my path was easy!
Towing his footprints
I retraced my steps
To the Theries,
Who looked into my eyes
And smiled:
“Hunger ,Thirst, Sleep and Desire
Are Buddhist Nuns like us,
The oldest ones,
Never would they desert you,
They alone guide you through
A slow rendition
Of passion into
Compassion!”
++
BEYOND*
There is a precise point
At the centre of all that rotates,
The wheel, the earth and the universe.
This point does not rotate
And the dancers all locate
This point with precision
As the point of the meditative pause
Amidst agile steps.
But my centre I seem to be losing
Every now and then
When they ask me,
Who the hell I am
I wish I knew.
Poor me.
I don’t even have a name,
“One without name,”
When Papa named me thus
He would have prayed silently
That I rise above all frames
Of class, caste and gender,
Transcend all the fetters and wander unbound,
Boundless like a Mother Goddess
All over the universe.
How I wish I would have lived up
To the vision of the holy man.
Not that I did not give it a try,
But I don’t know why
At every step
I was nailed down to a frame.
Every time I stepped out,
Somebody or the other followed me
With the divine mission of fact finding —
Where she is from, which caste, which region,
Just the same in every season,
Doesn’t even wear a surname.
And then on the eve of election,
Suddenly a country cousin
Comes begging for a vote
In the name of a caste affiliation.
What a committed espionage.
In a rage I smile and look beyond.
At a distance
Sings a jogi on lyre
For my attention to catch fire —
“Rahna nahin des birana hai,
Move on,
This is night halt, not your desh.”
*Published in My Typewriter is My Piano.January 2020
++
Picks in the Bin
Caught and jammed in the traffic of desires
When a life time was nearly spent,
I jumped off the bus
Plunged into the peopled sea
Went ahead on to another street
Halfway down I realised
In awkward haste I had left behind
My bundled up Mind
On the steps!
It made no sense to get back,
So I bucked myself up,
Stole a look at myself in the barber’s mirror,
Tied up in a bun my memories and my hair
(Scattered all over)
And proceeded
Empty handed
There was so much to round off
Only yesterday
A bomb had blown away
All that mattered
Such a colossal waste!
I caught a lump in throat and wondered
If the Mind I left behind
Could have held the shards up!
Splinters all around
Needed proper cleaning up
But I couldn’t offhand decide
From where to start-
Parliament, Court, Temple-Arcades
Mosques or Gurudwaras –
They were all full of gloom and fire
Against the stench of burning flesh
I then borrowed a sweep from the comet
To sweep all the universe clean
And store in my basket
++
MY CUP OF TEA*
The tea is chai in Hindi
And chah in dialects which
Merrily translates as ‘desire’.
Sold at every chowk in disposable earthen cups,
This ‘desire’ keeps bubbling in a large kettle —
To serve one and all.
With parched human lips
What we sip
Is the most intimate of togetherness.
On a freezing winter night
At the dhaba,
Or in the cosy warmth of the kitchenette,
What we sip together is a medieval romance
Of a knight in the armour going ga-ga over beauties, yet in rags.
These sagas are a reminder
That cups too once operated in a frame,
They too had a rigid class structure
And they even had a caste system —
There were cups without handles for the menial staff
And the bone china sets which could never reach
The vegetarian kitchen.
There were
Cups on the higher shelf
And then the fallen ones
With a crack in the heart
And mud stuffed in mouth
To plant a seed (the seed of karma, if you may)
The cups without ears were called cup bina kaan ke,
Cups without ears, cups gone deaf to pleas, angry and annoyed
They were often used for storing oil gone black
After too much frying.
Deftly saved was this burnt, black oil for gifting away
On Saturday
To maids for a healthy massage to her kids.
There was tea with a creamy layer,
And tea as lean as dishwater
Nevertheless
After a round of sighs
And the wishes gone by.
What now remains as the essence of it all (The Holy Grail),
Is masala tea in a cha-bar,
Slowly sipped to savour
Life’s flavour,
Whatever it may be.
*Published in My Typewriter is My Piano.January 2020
++
Mobile Library in the Melting Sun
“Walk alone, walk alone …”
Humming the Tagore song
Here goes the book shop
In a Van!
Like little women all dressed for the fair
The newer books are so very excited,
Rubbing shoulders, nudging elbows
They talk and laugh!
And the old ones?
Like child widows on board
To a pilgrimage,
They too are no less delighted.
Leaving the veil behind and
A long haul of privacy,
A sigh of relief all the books heave
And with breaths long and deep
They smell the rain- soaked ground!
Their breath, free and steady,
Gets
The earth dizzy
With pleasure!
Cuddling close to each other
In the Van
The Vedas and the Quran
And the world classics in Hindi translation!
Eager to meet them all
They have rounded off
All the household chores-
These little great women
In the suburban town
Rushing towards the mobile van
To meet the soul sisters
From the distant lands-
Anna Karenina and others!
This mystic meet is their lives’ only romance!
See for yourself how briskly they advance,
Singing unending songs
From the recesses of their lungs.
Singing their hearts out they walk beyond
All histories and geographic boundaries
And as they hold the book in hand
Water gurgles beneath the ground
Raising echoes
In the heart of the melting sun
++
Bus Ticket
In a bus stuffed to the hilt
Eyes converse and nod
And without feet
Coins travel
On a chain of hands,
From one end to the other
To reach the conducter
How this chain of hands not known to each other
Creates
The world’s most unique bridge,
I wonder!
As I speak,
I remember the poet, Biharilal,
Not the couplet but the context:
In an assembly packed with people
Two lovers who stand apart,
Smile at each other
In a buzzing crowd
In the quiet exchange of glances
Would be the peak of romance,
So I thought
Till I noticed how
The meeting of eyes unknown in city buses
Build a comradarie
To create a romance still deeper,
A romance primordial
Of the human with humanity
++
A Grocery Shop
On the footpath, in the garage, or inside the chawl –
Wherever the grocer spreads out
Ten sacks or more,
Wherever he lays out two jars or four
With perfect ease is set up
A grocery shop –
Staring in the face of the malls!
Giggling -haggling
Checking well being,
Chatting, complaining,
People come and borrow
In the shy presence of a crumpled tin board
That somehow whispers,
‘Pay now
Borrow later’
The FDI would not know
How insipid is shopping
Without this colourful ritual
Of a friendly bargaining!
++
Reform Movement
“Working on you has been a total waste
Of nascent energies,
Miss Incorrigible!”
He pronounced with proper remorse
And walked away.
When he went away for good,
Rammohan Roy, Ishwarchand Vidyasagar, Karve,
Ranade, Jyotiba Phule,
Pandita Ramabai, Savitri Bai-
Came all the way to kiss my forehead,
Softly in their soothing voice they said,
“Our Reform Movement
Was addressed to the plight of women,
But who had to reform and mend their ways,
You could easily see for yourself”
++
Amma in a Metropolis
Back home —Amma was but a mynah in the cage
The cage persists- but ,of course, it has a gained a new dimension
Through the bars, she perceives the world outside.
She chats sometimes with vendors in streets
They do not fully comprehend her
But when has language been a barrier
In a chit-chat amongst the Easterners?
Without a word in common
They go on to share
World’s subtlest joys and despair
With a stranger there.
Engrossed in her chit-chat with a vendor
Amma looks like little Mini
Of ‘Kabuliwala’ to me!
++
DIALECTS*
Once upon a time —
On a hilltop lived
An abusive old woman
Her language was so powerful
That the blacksmith borrowed
Her metal to craft weapons
Poets came to learn
The turn of phrases from her
Linguists came to trace
The origin of languages.
The story goes that
She was a bull, strong and free
Forcing people to flee.
Yet, I gathered courage one day
And reached her to say —
“Oh mother,
Teach me all that you know
All foul words that grant real force to a lingo
I shall put them all on record and
They will outlive you.
Long live the choicest curses
In all colours.”
No sooner than she heard all this
A rolling pin came hurtling down
A torrent of abuses showered on
And she said, “Not I, but your lingo will die.”
To the tune of it, some more she said.
And what she said
May not be said.
Of abuses can be
No summary precise.
The last sentence that she uttered — how do I put it,
Let me sip a little water
My throat is parched
The heart is beating fast
A lump in my throat —
Wait, for a ‘take’
Before I articulate.
She said with a blow —
“Your language be cursed
And you be estranged
Isolated will you remain
No speech in your domain.
Your tongue be twisted.”
Bitter and sour
Pungent and abhorrent
With a twitched face and finger twisted,
Said she “Get lost.”
Since then and after
Have I been thinking
Perhaps what the old woman meant was this —
Languages live and kick in alleys
They are not to be sampled
As museum diaries.
*Published in My Typewriter is My Piano. January 2020
*******
Notes --The Beacon thanks publisher and Editor Sudeep Sen and Aark Arts for granting permission to reprint five poems from the collection My Typewriter is My Pian: Selected Poems by Anamika. Edited by Sudeep Sen. Aark Arts. January 2020 Amazon link: https://www.amazon.in/My-Typewriter-Piano-Anamika/dp/1899179399 --The other poems are selections from the translator, Vinita Sinha’s forthcoming book, The Vaishali Corridor a collection of poems by Anamika in translation. Thank you Vinita Sinha. --The Beacon also thanks A.J. Thomas for steering these poems its way.
Anamika has seven collections of poems: Galat Pate Ki Chithi, Samay Ke Shahar Mein, Beejakxar, Anushtup, Kavita Mein Aurat, Khurduri Hathelian, Doob-Dhan and Paani ko Sab Yaad Tha. As a poet, she is specially noted for her insights into the modern women’s psyche and also for her delightful, intertextual chit chat with archetypal figures like the Ten Mahavidyas, Bhamati, Sita, Radha, Ratnawali, Ahilya, Amrapali and other Buddhist nuns, Meerabai , Bahinabai, Rabiya Faqueer and other Bhakt and Sufi poets Her poems have been translated into English, Russian, Norwegian, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Bangla, Oriya and Punjabi. Her fictional work Ainasaaz, built around the life and times of Amir Khusro, has won wide acclaim. Her other fictional works and memoirs include Pratinayak, Awantar Katha, Ek Tho Shahar Tha, Ek Tha Shakespeare, Ek The Charles Dickens, Dus Dware Ka Peenjara and Tinka-Tinke Pas. Her collection of essays, Sahitya ka Lokpaksha. She has authored 16 prose works in Hindi and in English, on literary criticism, poetics, contemporary literary history, pedagogy, and gender politics. Her book Feminist Poetics: Where Kingfishers Catch Fire (2008) and several subsequent works are considered trailblazers in Women’s Writing in the 21 st century. She has contributed to several essays and papers to international and national journals, and significant anthologies. She has a few more books in the pipeline in Hindi and English, by way of poetry, fiction, critical writing and the like. Anamika is the Founder-Editor of Pashyantee, an e-journal dedicated to 'womenism'.
Dr. Vinita Sinha is an Associate Professor of English at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. She is a translator, researcher and author. She is the coordinator of the Translation and Translation Studies Centre and Advisor to the students’ translation journal CODE. UGC awarded her a Major Research Project to conduct her study of ‘Subversive Voices in Oral Traditions of North Bihar’. She has published and presented her research on the art and artists of Madhubani in international journals. She has translated Anamika’s poems as a chapter in an Anthology (ed) Sudeep Sen, My Typewriter is my Piano, London, UK: Aark Arts, 2020. Her translation of the short story ‘Artists of Pain’ by Mridula Garg in Selected Hindi Short Stories is published by Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi Her forthcoming book, The Vaishali Corridor is a collection of poems by Anamika in translation
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