Amrita-Sher-Gil: Village life. 1938. WikiArt
Annie Zaidi
i
Remember what a bugle meant?
Flags pennant colours
We grew up watching the same films
You know what I’m talking about: a battlefield
shields snug against shields, swords tingling
bones stiff with knowing they could lie bleaching
under a foreign sun and any loving yet to be done
was left too late
The king and his nearest kin, fighting men all
A bugle on someone’s lips waiting for the call
A sky purpling like a bruise, grass whispering
to bare ankles of kisses imagined
Men looking into the black eyes of the end
Then: now! aye, now!
Flags, stabs, missed throws then night’s relief
Sleep. Send for allies. Count the fallen. Weep
The fight was never equal but a decent war has rules
Dawn to dusk, that’s one. And none but men fighting
face to face dare speak of honour
A torn chest is battle, a dagger in the back is not
There was loot and rape but soldiers knew:
the spoils of war are not war
My friend, you say it is the same old thing
but we both know: with every battle, skirmish, coup
the soldier changes. The enemy is new
Come walk with me
Let us see what weapons they brought
Let us gauge how badly and who lost
this thing you call a war
Is this loss enough to settle the score
on your ancient ledger? Do the math
my friend and when you are done,
sound the bugle for battle’s end.
ii
There she is
Creeping around my backyard
Came indoors with her kittens once
Just like that!
Hangs around swatting at pigeons
Doesn’t bother the rats
I had to take rabies shots once
Five shots, and for what?
Trying to save her useless spawn
We’re not friendly, no
I see her crouched on my garden wall
Sometimes I hiss until she turns her head
She’s got her ways that I don’t like
but what the hey!
She’s got her life
I’ve got my life
My point is, the difference
between your politics and mine is,
the cat lives.
iii
I will not make the cut-us-and-do-we-not-bleed
argument (can you imagine the horror
if one of us failed to bleed from a cut?)
My argument is: we also bleed
when our own brothers cut us
And you bleed when your own
cut you (and quite often, they do)
iv
We have come to ask for your infant son
We need him to lay a new tar road
That’s how smooth roads are done
Good roads require sacrifice and
It’s only fair we all take turns
Agreed?
why/why not?
We hear the electricity department cannot
Function without petrol bombs being lobbed
Into lanes holding up so tight
No husband-wife can make love, or fight
Without hearing a neighbour sucking her tongue
In disbelief
The street is to burn like a box of matches
One house setting off the next
Thus, everyone pitches in
We were hoping your house could
Volunteer as the nerve centre to set alight
Our common discontent
Surely you have no objection?
what/why?
Would you send your sister please
Down to the corner where men compare
The circumference of chests and debate
Whether biceps are worth more than a spine
And whether you can define crime as that
Which was not covered up in time
why/why not?
So, then? How do you propose
To contribute to the nation?
Going about your business?
Waiting for a tax-deducted salary cheque?
Wearing the clothes you’ve always worn?
Eating whatever you can get hold of?
My friend! My friend!
This funny attachment to your own miseries
These charred remains of youth
Your desire to grow old
Your ability to reproduce
Keep fasts
Cook
Surely you know there is more,
Much more a patriot must do?
And if we do not volunteer you,
Then who?
(v)
Let us make a balance sheet.
First, we make two columns:
| X Ancestors | Y Ancestors |
| were from north or west of the Indus who mated with eastern and southern people who were perhaps overcome by force your ancestors were ambitious, restless, but they settled down, and were either unable to destroy the people native to this land or were reluctant to the races slowly mingled and became doctors, farmers, hunters, cooks, singers, weavers, drum-beaters, saints. their words are evidence that every heart beats to the same drum |
were from north or west of the Indus who mated with eastern and southern people who were perhaps overcome by force. your ancestors were ambitious, restless, but they settled down, and were either unable to destroy the people native to this land or were reluctant to the races slowly mingled and became doctors, farmers, hunters, cooks, singers, weavers, drum-beaters, saints. their words are evidence that every heart beats to the same drum |
| broke temples that housed different gods but also took from them new shades of faith they built palaces and forts, ships and ports, step-wells, temples and some mosques too they learnt from new rival-allies new graces of gate, dome, dress, song |
broke temples that housed different gods but also took from them new shades of faith they built new mosques, and some temples too and gardens, canals, tombs, forts, step-wells they learnt from new rival-allies new graces of pillar, dress, speech, song |
| waged war a lot |
waged war a lot |
| had, then lost empires |
had, then lost empires |
| wrote poetry, mused on nature and the substance of divinity |
wrote poetry, mused on nature and the substance of divinity |
| made allies, if not friends, through women and wombs, laid claim to land and river and the pulsing strength of wrists that could wring necks, if they chose to |
made allies, if not friends, through women and wombs, laid claim to land and river and the pulsing strength of wrists that could wring necks, if they chose to |
| died in wars they didn’t understand | died in wars they didn’t understand |
| changed with time sometimes they did time in refugee camps often they spent hours waiting in line for low-cost housing lottery forms they suffered heat, cold, waves of nausea and a terror of never being safe they raged as new ladders disappeared into the bog of ancient laws unyielding as ice often they tried to get away to a new land where they thrived only to find themselves turning into the wrong kind of other |
changed with time sometimes they did time in refugee camps often they were welcome nowhere else and so they huddled in mosques they suffered heat, cold, waves of nausea they tried moving somewhere safe but were met with five seconds of silence across a phone line after they told the real estate broker their family name often they lay awake in bed and were shamed by how much they longed to be warmed by the touch of the other’s hand |
these kings, those queens
yours and mine
pawns on the chessboard of time
knights falling off the high horse of fealty
going down in heavy armour into the red dust of a nation’s history
arms flailing like windmills trying to stave off
suspicion
soon
all argument will be reduced to broken tiles
all fortresses will be ruins for lovers to tangle in
all temples, mosques, chapels, monasteries will have no part
to play save that of a hospice
for bursting hearts.
© Annie Zaidi
*********
Annie Zaidi is the author of Bread, Cement, Cactus: A memoir of belonging and dislocation; Prelude to a Riot; and the forthcoming City of Incident. Her other books include Gulab; Love Stories # 1 to 14; Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales, The Good Indian Girl and Crush. She is also the editor of Unbound: 2000 Years of Indian Women's Writing, and Equal Halves. She received the Tata Literature Live Award for fiction (2020), the Nine Dots Prize (2019), and The Hindu Playwright Award (2018) for Untitled 1. Her radio script ‘Jam’ was named regional (South Asia) winner for the BBC’s International Playwriting Competition (2011). Her work has appeared in several anthologies and literary journals including The Griffith Review, The Aleph Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Charles River Journal, The Missing Slate and Out of Print. She has also written and directed several short films and the documentary film, In her words: The journey of Indian women.
Annie Zaidi in The Beacon
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