Once this was a nation
K Satchidanandan
THE BARBARIANS
We were certain they would come.
We broke the idols of those who
might have stood against them, one by one.
We waited in the capital to welcome them
with goblets brimming with children’s blood.
We removed our clothes to put on barks
set fire to monuments,
propitiated fire for the sacrifices to come ,
changed the names of the royal streets.
Afraid our libraries might provoke them
we razed them to the ground, letting
only the palm leaves inscribed with the mantras
of black magic to survive.
But we did not even know when they came.
For, they had come up, holding aloft
our own idols, saluting our flag,
dressed like we used to be,
carrying our law-books, chanting our slogans,
speaking our tongue, piously touching
the stone-steps of the royal assembly.
Only when they began to poison our wells,
rob our kids of their food and
shoot people down accusing them of thinking
did we realise they had ever been
amidst us, within us. Now we
look askance at one another and wonder,
‘Are you the barbarian? Are you?’
No answer. We only see the fire spreading
filling our future with smoke and our
language turning into that of death.
Now we wait for our saviour at the city square,
as if it were someone else.
( Remembering C. P. Cavafy’s famous poem, ‘Waiting for the Barbarians.)
***
WALK, WALK
Walk, walk, walk together
Walk with the questions
yet to find an answer
Walk with the song
without a roof
Walk with the pitcher
whose river has vanished
Walk with the last leaf
of the felled tree
Walk with the consonants
of the proscribed poem
Walk with the blood
from the stab-wound
Walk, walk, along the shade
between the hare and the grass;
through the fire
between the word and its meaning
Walk in red with the sun’s dreams
Walk in black with the moon’s solitude
Walk against the wind’s direction
Walk across the water’s flow
Walk, walk,
from death to life
with a palette of colours
You are the sculptor
and you, the sculpture
Stop, and you will fall
Walk without a pause
like the Buddha leaving for Gaya
like Jesus climbing Calvary
like the Prophet hurrying to Medina
like Gandhi marching to Dandi.
Walk, walk on,
never look back.
Walk.
***
A SONG FROM THE RUINS
I stand on these ruins with my weary steps
Like in Harappa or in Hampi
Once this was a nation
A continent built in salt and sweat
A flower raised by blood
A conch risen from the sea
A map of many colours drawn in tears
Extending from the Himalayas
To the Arabian Sea.
Now I see the festival of the people
Turn into a funeral procession in black
And triumphal chants into laments
One tale for each murder
One battle for each memory
One more Partition in every heart
There was a time when we treated
Even our conquerors like guests
They turned our land into a rainbow,
Left in our treasury life-styles,
Languages, arts, cultures.
But those who chose to play the coloniser,
We fought as one person.
We won freedom despite your betrayal,
We created a nation where no faith
Was alien; no tongue, foreign
Even in the darkness of the dispossessed
Flickered the fragrant moonlight of hope.
The moment you raised your
Banner of hate and greed, people’s flag
Became a rag, and their anthem an elegy.
You came with another history,
With another geography and arithmetic.
You robbed us of our woods and lands
For your masters, scared the down-trodden
Shaking your weapons. You feared
Those who tell the truth, extended
Poison vials to those on the brink of
Suicide, let loose the demons of
The netherworld on earth.
We were a nation, but now we are dust.
Even in this dust are the cries of the
Imprisoned stones, the songs of the
Survivors, bleeding memories rising
From the dead on the gravestones’ grass,
Letters blossoming on the violins ascending
The clouds, pale angels flying to the sky from the
Waste-heaps, the white horses of untamed desire,
Pigeons, pigeons.
We will come back,
From the empty barns dreaming of the sun
Even in winter, from the odours
Of piss and pollen in the alleys,
From the joy that fills breasts, oranges and poems,
From the turbid pools of remembrance,
From the days that enter the fishermen’s cottages
Like rain-drenched dogs, from the
Flying brooms, from the clothes of miners
Stained with oil and coal, from the pictures of
Wild goddesses drawn in the tribal hamlet
With the quills of quails, from the
Brave memories casketed in language,
From the unpolished words carried by
The pariah’s wounds, from the trampled
Plant of the night with its golden leaves,
From roots, from roots.
We will raise a new nation, of compassion and
Sisterhood that laughs without hate, a nation,
Without walls and borders, without
the rich and the poor, its head held high,
And its arms open to all, here,
On this soil of dried-up rivers and heirless forests
Where evening stars fall like magnolias, we lay
Seven stones.
***
Also Read: MY MOTHERLAND and Other Poems
TO YOU, BABA
(Remembering the rape of a little girl in JKathua, Jammu)
Have all our horses reached home safe, Baba?
They alone wept and neighed
when those monsters tore me apart
between the feather reeds and blue grass
The asters on the hill top
tightly closed their eyes, the soft sedges
bent their heads, and the streams
grew turbid and froze, like my blood.
As I lay drugged dreaming of the moon
arriving on white horses,
I did not know, Baba, those white shirts
were going to offer me
as a sacrifice to the goddess.
In my half-sleep I heard Iblis’s raucous laughter,
and the neighing of colts
tender like moonlight.
As I woke up, it was blood everywhere, Baba.
The horses were all gone.
The cowslips, clovers,
sparrows, dragonflies,
the sound of waterfalls
laughing like Djins, all gone.
Thirsty, I cried;
they did not give me water;
instead another man came, then another.
I heard Mama call out my name,
but I could not answer
they had stuffed my mouth with my little skirt,
that colourful one with butterflies.
They called me haramzadi;
I remembered you, Baba,
as they tore me asunder with their horns,
and trampled me with their hooves.
What is our religion, Baba?
And that of those who murder God?
How do Malaikahs cry?
I need a new skirt, Baba,
This time, with roses.
Let us follow the rainbow and
go to the castle of clouds.
I am scared Baba. I heard even these walls
whisper: ‘Blood, more blood’.
This is not our land, Baba.
The red of the flag we used to hoist
comes from the little blood of tiny girls,
its green, from the grasslands
we have no permission to enter,
its white, from the dawns we have never seen
and that wheel- it chops us up,
minces us, every day.
Go, Baba, with our dear horses,
with Mai, to a land where men have tears,
flowers do not grow fangs, where
butterflies do not gloat over the poor blood
of nomads, where devils do not look for
the bodies of babes to hoist their flags,
where there are no borders.
Then I will wipe off my blood and
come back, my old smile in tact,
and leap up in my spotted little skirt
with the frost-grass
and the white colts.
Everything will come back,
like from Aladdin’s lamp,
forests, rivers, birds, angels,
everything.
***
WOMEN
One woman walks in a hurry sobbing,
A house with faded paint on her head.
One woman goes on waiting at
A railway station where no train stops.
One woman with a halo of glow worms
Walks in the dark towards the stars
One woman makes sure her wings are in place
Before she launches herself into a flight
One woman steps into a cornfield in drought
With a raincloud on her shoulder.
One woman sings a song making a fruit tree
In autumn burst into blossoms
One woman glints like a spark of fire in the ashes
Of her little house set on fire
One woman scoops up her baby and flees to the border
Watching a fighter-jet swoop down
One woman sharpens the letters of the alphabet
And pulls out the fangs of the enveloping dark
One woman closes the door of her house with a bang,
Walks out and hums a medley on the street
One woman looks at the image of Jesus on the cross
And yells in agony, “Son, my darling son!”
One woman leaves her man on the panel
In Khajuraho and finds her pleasure herself.
One woman, her muscles hardening as I look on,
Turns into a goddess of iron and fire
One woman sharpens her sickle again and again
Rubbing it against a rock in a forest stream.
One woman climbs up a tank and offers
Flowers to soldiers with the moon’s smile
One woman tired of her life on earth leaves for space
In a vehicle made of her own bones
One man stands aghast on the roadside
Too scared to cross the road.
********
Cover image of Harappa courtesy Mani Junction: https://www.meemainseen.com/2015/10/harappa/
K. Satchidanandan, poet, art critic, essayist and public intellectual writes in both English and Malayalam.
K. Satchidanandan in The Beacon
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