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Dilli-Dali
DILLI-DALI by K. Satchidanandan
HOME
E-104, Amar Colony, where you reach
crossing the school for the blind,
Raghuram temple, the long winding cries of
vegetable vendors and the inviting odours
of bhelpuri and rajanigandha flowers,is not my house.
Whoever occupies the second floor
of B- 13, Kalkaji behind the Bahai temple,
the paras cinema, the December mist
and the freezing wind,
it is not me.
I don’t reside in Mayurvihar or Saritavihar.
I have no houses in Janakpuri or Vikaspuri.
I have hung around the seventeenth apartment
in Alaknanda: but how can I know whether
it is me who is living there unless
someone comes out?
I have never been to Yusuf Sarai,
I have no kin in Sheikh Sarai.
Moolchand, the ration-dealer is not me,
not even remotely related to me.
Shyamsingh, the taxi –driver, does not
Recognize me, nor do I, him.
Even a sparrow will not listen to me
if I say that nest on the neem tree is mine.
Then there is the crow named Ashtavakra,
That leaps from antenna to antenna
And that black cat, Gajmukh,
That flies from balcony to balcony:
They go on changing houses.
I asked the tortoise carrying its home
On its back: Where is my home?
He ( she) just withdrew his (her) head.
I asked the silk-worm in her leaf-house,
The snakes in their hollows in Sarojini Nagar,
The apes in their iron cages in the zoo,
the parrot in the fortune teller’s wire- nest,
all in vain. Then I asked the black dog Kali
royally barking away in front of his bungalow.
He just wagged his black tail and groaned.
I roamed the labyrinths of many a street,
Got into buses with different numbers.
But all the houses looked alike
and bore the same number as in
an Arabian Nights tale.
I felt like knocking on the doors
Hoping my daughters would open one
And come running to me with
outstretched arms.
I pressed my ears to every door:
no, it was some strange language,
not of love anyway.
Wandering I crossed the bridge .
There it was: a green courtyard
brimming with yellow flowers,
green walls, green curtains.
I opened the gate painted green
and rushed in.
On the front wall
In inviting green it was written:
C R E M A T O R I U M.
THE THIRD TREE
Trees, yes.
I recognize the neem
and the peepal..
But that third tree with
small leaves: what is that?
Not tamarind: it has no red ants
Not gooseberry: no black ants.
Mango tree would have squirrels
and jack fruit tree, crows.
Its leaves are not as close together
As those of the pomegranate,
Nor as deep green as of lime.
That third tree even parrots avoid,
Its trunk so strange and twisted,
Its odour so unfamiliar and repulsive:
Which is that tree?
Coconut trees are far away.
Even the breeze smells of mustard oil.
I don’t like kathak..
LANGUAGES
Languages do not have homes here.
Kashmiri, a sleepless refugee
sits in a street corner in Green Park,
the green dreams of the valley in her knapsack.
Punjabi, guru-faced yet illiterate,
blood flooding his memory,
sits weary and pale,
his head on the steering of a taxi.
Tamil sweats in her rags,
sweeping courtyards and
washing the kitchenware.
Malayalam, his hopes of a
new world crushed, walks shoeless
in the unwelcome winter,
clothed in the factory’s soot.
Telugu decked in cheap satin
and marigolds, waits under the flyover
for a single night’s partner.
Languages have no houses.
Haryanvi screams from the maize field,
her head in bleeding palms,
scared of her master.
Maithili is still in the woods.*
Chattisgarhi and Braj cling to each other
like two frightened kids
in the shadow of the roc-bird
rising from the television screen.
Vaishnavi, strak naked,
Her hairs let loose, laughs madly
From her rock-throne.
Urdu sings the last ghazal
Standing under the huge thighs
Of a Bollywood heroine.
I long to build a palace for
these refugees among the tombs:
I, who has not yet found a home.
I stutter in broken words,
in twisted sounds from some other body.
Which of the three tongues I use
during the day is truly mine?
or is it the pure language of mystery
I speak in my dreams at night?
My language rises from the street:
the obstinate cry of the new-born orphan.
O, Lords of men on earth,
here comes my language,
his feet dirty with the gutter’s slime.
It climbs up the steps,
steps it climbs up, to lead, to rule,
steps of the country’s parliament,
climbs, climbs the gallows,
climbs the Mount Calvary.
LOVE IN THE CITY
Love in the city is
a drop of cold water
thrown over red-hot iron.
It leaves only smoke
that burns the heart.
Love in the city is
a rose flung from
one speeding vehicle to another.
It gets squeezed between the two velocities
leaving only a bloodstain on the street.
Love in the city is
a pair of wandering shoes
in search of a room,
punctured by sharp stones.
The beloved, her fire-test over,
vanishes through its hole leaving
only dry memories of green woods.
Love in the city is
like the sky in the city.
We know it is there;
but wherever we turn,
we see only walls.
Love in the city is
The one smuggled-in cyanide pill
The prisoner manages to take at last.
He would never know
whether it tastes sweet or bitter.
THIS BEAST IS A MAN
This beast is a man.
These eyes peering out of the torn sack
once played flute.
Now a village floats in them, dead.
This is half lamb, half wolf.
Which sun will weave its wool
into a blanket for its freezing winter?
Which orchard will feed it
When choked by hunger?
Which tree shall be
its roof in scorching summer?
The village drove it away.
The city will not admit it.
Sitting huddled in this alien fog
The truth is revealed to
this Buddha of the street :
Bread is remoter than the moon.
Earth derailed from its orbit
is slowly moving away from the sun.
SUMMER IN DELHI
Summer in Delhi is a mother in panic
running to the doctor
with her half-charred infant.
The emperors already sweating in
the tombs cannot afford to
welcome one more corpse.
The song of the cuckoo
instantly turns into the smoke of trains.
TAJ, AGAIN
Ask the whip that fell on the worker’s back
how beautiful Taj Mahal is.
Let the mad elephant in chains
tell us how strong iron is.
The camel dying in the desert
knows best how deep water is.
Find out from the frog in the well
the ocean’s magnitude.
He who must grow into a shepherd
must be born in the manger.
He who should find the peepal’s wisdom
must renounce the palace.
QUTUB MINAR
A deer trapped in this minar
stretched its neck and
turned into a giraffe:
this was not how evolution began.
A Persian ghazal
married an Indian fairy:
this was not how
the human race came to be.
The last king and the last slave
have not yet jumped down
from the top of this minar.
Yet I read in these ruins: evolution,
creation, the end to evil power.
Here I am a Sufi.
HASTINAPUR
Pointing to a huge mound of earth
Covered with grass the guide said:
This was Hastinapur.
That moment I became Vedavyasa.
TOMORROW, HERE
The lullaby of the New World
rises from the Stock Exchange.
Come invest in this revolution:
tomorrow Sonal Mansingh dances here.
*Maithili is the name of a language as well as a name of Sita, Rama’s abandoned wife.
1992
( Translated from Malayalam by the poet )
Response:
Athens 27.4.2014
Dear Satchi,
what beautiful poem you wrote about Delhi! It seems as if I got lost with you in the streets. How you put an ear to the door, and hoping your daughters would come out to embrace you. Forsaken! The only revolution left is caused by turmoils (my implicit hypothesis) on the stock market. It reminds me what an old friend told me when he grew up in Delhi. Every day when fetching bread he needed to step over bodies not sure if asleep or dead. Speaking three languages and not knowing who is you, that expression captures the moment Kapuscinski, the Polish journalist who was learning fast the English language when on a first assignment to India and then suddenly realized he was learning the language of the suppressor.
My request: do I have your permission to put up the poem on the website under your name?
warmest regards
hatto
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