For decades, she has dominated our thoughts, our words, our actions. Once someone told me, “Your mother has brought you up very well.” I was happy and I also realized that possibly that was what my mother was aiming for. To be spoken well of through her children. After having both her knees replaced, she was made to walk on the third day of her surgery. She did. Through pain levels unimaginable, she did. My friend told me, “Never have your knees replaced. You are not half the person she is.” I have to agree. Her hardships, her struggles, her work made us what we are. We grew to fear her, we wanted to love her and I think I do. In my own way. That is a dented suitcase I have not unpacked yet.

I see my mother, fastidious, wanting to do things on time, driving us up the wall with her demands and her process of getting her work done, which is to delegate them to me and then to embark on a process of haranguing and wonder how she created a daughter like me. My idea of time is elastic and a day can stretch for months, something that can take a month barely takes a day and vice-versa. Are we what our parents create? Or do we make our parents in our image?

I often think of the opening line from Albert Camus’ The Stranger “Maman died today.” I think of the connotations of the line and feel distinctly uncomfortable. While psychoanalysts have constantly told us how we work relentlessly to erase our mothers from our bodies and I meet women who worry if they will become like their mother, I sense that erasure is not entirely possible. At a certain age, a sort of fragility sets in women. The dynamics of caregiving changes everything about mother-child relationships. The child can see the parent it is going to become or already is in the way they treat their parent. Sometimes, mother wonders how the years have flown and how it is that she got so old. The memories that they live amongst are often repeated, reiterated till your ears bleed. But you will sit and listen. Because that is what you need to do. To get up and walk away is somehow blasphemous, wrong and uncaring. You don’t want to do that.

In Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan’s verses, I see a beautiful connect. The schematics of caregiving and the heartbreak of seeing a figure of authority becoming a dependent is poignant. The parent is everywhere. A corporeal and non-corporeal presence. Only poetry can express such love. Shobha holds the verses like one would hold a baby bird. She inspires the same emotions in the readers too.

At the end of the day, no matter how hard you have scrubbed yourself, no matter how much you have fought against it, there will be a part of your life, a seemingly inconsequential action or a quirk of behaviour that you have brought back from your parent. These poems are a testimony to the longevity of human feeling, of memory and of a sense of time passing and the powerlessness we feel. Understanding is all.

Sonya J. Nair
Editor

We Need Bodies

I read some lines by a writer
who had a stroke,
and she declared
that we need our bodies
to express ourselves.

She said that a song
required a throat
to pass through
before its music
touched the air.

Her words took me to my mother
as words sometimes do
these days.

I thought of her, my mother,
body now frail, and slow,
still holding words and thoughts
for us to receive
each day.

Her body weaves together
pieces of life,
hers, and ours.

It carries in its cells, the travels
to distant places,
the homes built
to strengthen
our existence.

When she holds my arm
to steady her walk,
her hand is part of the body
that once held me close
and stroked my fears away
at night.

As her fingers
tremble in mine,
I feel the weight
of what we’ve shared,
the years that lived
in her skin,
now slipping away.

In the quiet, I understand.

Yes, we need bodies.
We need bodies to carry our love.
We need bodies to tell our story.
It is where we are remembered.

Only After It Is Named

Isn’t that why we embark on journeys?
Not only to see new things,
but to see things in new ways?

Many of us need to go far away
to allow what we have left behind
to become clearer.

How many times I’ve done this,
the packing and unpacking of my life. 
Each place feeling familiar
for a while.

And then the unsettling feeling
of a less than firm foundation.
Nomina si nescis, perit cognitio rerum. 
If you don’t know the name,
the knowledge of a thing perishes.

But how well do we really know it?
And how much of it ever becomes ours?

Perhaps enjoyment comes slowly-
through uncertainty,
even disappointment. . .
before appreciating a destination,
with any depth.

I Made Her Bed

I slept in my mother’s room
and on her bed
the few hours
that I spent in Kochi.

I felt her presence
in all her belongings;
the half-drunk water-bottle,
on her bedside table,
her hairpin,
with a strand of gray hair
still caught in its tine,
the muscle rub,
with its cap loose,
where she could reach it easily,
the balled up mismatched airline socks
that she needed each day
in scorching summer
or winter.

The bed had been made
with a pillow
placed in its middle-
its lump visible
under the bed cover.

Beds must always be made
and covered when you leave the house-
was her mantra.

As I moved the pillow
to the head of the bed,
I imagined her sleeping
on her left side,
at the edge
of the large mattress
with the pillow under
her knees. 

This is where she used to be
all those years;
alone at night,
only her thoughts
for company.
The cooing of the pigeons
in the early dawn
woke me,
as it must have
my mother.

Bracelet

Every morning,
and often
many times
in a day,
I struggle
with a thin gold clip
that keeps
my bracelet closed.

It requires
holding together
with pressed fingers
the two sides
of the circle
that wraps around
my wrist.

These days
it reminds me
of my life.

Of the force
of responsibility,
of completion. 
Of the strength it takes
to make a whole.

Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan is an author of a dozen works of fiction and nonfiction published in India and United States and an award-winning voice-over artist who won the 68th National Film Awards, India, for Best Narration Voice Over in 2022. She also worked for almost two decades as a non-profit development professional and as an advocate and fundraiser for persons with disabilities.

Writing names in books, promissory notes on trees, on walls- Madhu Mohan, on those mausoleums of eternal love that kings built, is all a hope that one day someone will remember and thus all that was supposed to be dead, supposed to be lost to the sands of time or to the drudgery of life will still live on. And then one day, when the books are burnt and the trees cut, when the walls are pulled down, when mausoleums are demolished, when there are no children, we are truly, truly dead.

And Gods are not immune to this form of mortality either.

The Gods come into our lives as those to be feared, those who love us, those who must be appeased. They form silent, all-knowing, all-seeing presences and remain in their shrines in our homes, in our places of worship, their name taken in vain, wine or whine several times a day. They stay alive thus; blooded by our memory, travelling with us on every journey, witnessing our every transaction, our every action. Till one day, the shrine is jostled as we dust our home, or when children play a game of ball. The God falls from their pedestal. And forms a crack. And suddenly, just like that, the God is no longer a God. They become not-God. They did a not-Godly thing by falling down and breaking. They must be sent away. In Hinduism especially, it is believed that a broken idol must not be kept in the house. It must be either dispersed in a river, a sea or placed at the foot of a tree in an open space, where the energy it gained from the devotion it received before breaking, can dissipate.

So then, thus, God becomes a no longer-God. No one remembers them. No one worships them, they remain a figure under a tree. During a journey to Hyderabad, I came across the shrine of Kattamaisamma- at a place called Tank Bund. Kattamaisamma is a local goddess who has the power to avert floods and she has been doing exactly that for the people of Tank Bund for many decades now. Across the shrine, bang in the middle of a very busy road, stands a tree. It was possibly a shrine. I happened to notice this tree and went across the road to take a look. At the foot of the tree, a parallel shrine of broken gods sat. Presided over by Ganesha- the elephant-headed God, sat a veritable array of Gods- Shiva, Nagaraja or Snake gods, Sai Baba of Shirdi, Devi in her many manifestations, Ganesha who was obviously prised off a panel at the entrance of some house when they remodeled, some panel of gods given as house warming gift, the vermilion finger-dot on them still intact, Gods peering out of broken frames, gods presiding over calendar sheets of years gone by. Gods stacked, stashed, left behind. Gods- many handed, decked in finery, some already fled, leaving just frames behind, while others sit, patient, having witnessed the frenzy of devotion and the calm reasoning of desertion that humans are capable of.

It was Kapil Kachru’s poem that we carry here today that made me think of the no longer -Gods of Tank Bund after all these years. Kapil’s poem has a very vivid memory of a temple he visited some decades ago in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, which is also my hometown. I know the place he talks of and the temple too. When I read his work, it made me smile. His eye has missed nothing.

That is his blessing. And perhaps his bane too. Kachru has a very personal, lucid eye that he trains on the universe around him. He seems to carry his history- real, imagined, political, personal- in the pocket of his coat. Like raisins. Or like a sea anemone. A case in point are these lines:
Who will feed the crows
when we are gone?

Mother’s mother asked
leaving for the last time
the house her husband built
in the Garden of Turnips

Ever since then, the question
addressed to nobody in particular
gets raised, like a threatening sickle

Eighteen years later, heading to Anantnag
you miss seeing or hearing crows
miss the turn for the place
Father insists on visiting

By a slender shoulder of road
you ask a passerby
taking his bicycle for a walk

Much easier finding an old grave
than a new one, he says, with a smile
drier than day old bread and points the way

(Radio Kashmira, https://www.inversejournal.com/2022/01/20/radio-kashmira-a-six-part-poem-by-kapil-kachru/ )

The sardonic, sly humour that sheaths biting satire and political angst makes it difficult to pin-point the discomfort that he manages to release.

We know how much he likes keeping an eye on life in the street we prepared a table specially for him by the window

So to speak, we had the glass removed some time back it was fatally attracted to bricks, you see

Particularly during riots, which have become awfully popular, these days

(Waiting for Kolatkar Mia, (https://bombaylitmag.com/waiting-for-kolatkar-mia/ )

Kachru presents an important voice in poetry today. One, that is capable of treating language with reverence. Of being able to reveal the prismatic impact of language and through it, articulating the polyphonic modern body. A body where memories, nations, languages, cultures, syntax and registers collide and where much that is valuable stands in danger of being lost. Kachru’s verses are astringent as they look to cut through the noise to reveal the layers of eternal journeys beneath who he is today. The journeys he undertook or those that others went on before him, or for him.

Reading the verses of Kachru, following him as he unfurls memory after memory, is like watching an act of prayer. Its personal, but it also includes you. It remembers you, names you and invites you into its circle of remembrance.

It is an act of immortality.

The four-part poem, Kochulloor Calling is a very philosophical, impish take on a very old temple. The many colours we brushstroke faith with, is potently narrated. Kapil Kachru looks at the many parallel lives lived on a single morning on the premises of a temple. And in the midst of it all, there is a God who might possibly need a quick getaway. It’s a delightful, contemplative idea!

This is why, though it is well within reach, I am not posting a current picture of the temple Kachru talks about. Let it remain in our memories as he remembers it. I would like to think that Kapil Kachru once passed this way and picked up a temple in the once-sleepy village of Kochulloor, put it in his pocket along with the raisins and the sea anemones and quietly walked away. He took with him, the Gods, the not-Gods and the no-longer Gods.

Sonya J. Nair
Editor

Kochulloor Calling

a four-part poem
for Samyukta Poetry
by
Kapil Kachru

Kochulloor Calling

I

Sleepy village in the deep
south of God’s Own Country
yawns at moody December sky

seven thirty in the morning
an ungodly hour for night owls
all across this vast blue-green
pebble of a planet

on a cement plinth
below a woven cane roof
braced by bamboo

it occurs to you
none too soon
what your old man
was talking about

that disc of stone
hole in the middle
beneath your
overgrown beak

that’s what lingas looked like
in the old days, marking
propitious places to cross
ones legs & close ones eyes

the scrawny excuse for a tiger
in the corner of this makeshift shelter
receives the new-found wisdom
tail curled in comic horror

native hunches pinned down
by Plaster of Paris, hanging on
with declawed paws & an un-
healthy complexion

that’s not going
to get any better
any time
soon

Kochulloor Calling

II

A veteran horn blasts
breakfast calm to bits
an elephant trumpets

in acknowledgement
your attention hijacked
ears on end

you follow the sonic
invasion through the
blast & trumpet lane

over broad, smooth steps
down to what looks like
it might be a pagoda

on one blast & trumpet side
stone wall, painted white
bleeds from cynical pores

graphic brushstrokes ooze
the symbolic red blast &
trumpet substance of belief

Skanda comes face to face
with his furious nature
& feeds it to the fire

almost new, red Kawasaki
blast & trumpet, parked side-
ways, right there, to the left

by the main entrance, don’t
you know, even God needs
a getaway vehicle, these days

blast
&
trumpet

perched in the thick, green
canopy above, an owl rests
her sleepy, telescopic eyes

Kochulloor Calling

III

It’s a big step
you take, so casually
over the threshold

no owl would dare
not in this blinding
light

best not look back
too soon for that
sort of thing

up ahead, a young bull
elephant, feet bound
with linked metal chain

trots along a paved
rectangular path
around the central shrine

straddling his neck
man armed with
carved ivory horn

curved like crescent
moon, which he blasts
every chance he gets

the elephant trumpets
obediently with his trunk
devotion is slavery

he bellows, wake up
you sleepy slaves
wake up

after sufficient laps
clockwise, around
the shrine

he catches a break & rests
anticipating a well-earned
offering of morning fruit

on a covered platform
behind the compound, you bow
to the magnificent being

with gratitude
you haven’t felt before
thanking him

for abducting your attention
for luring you here, barefoot
in this temple courtyard

all the way in the deep
south of God’s Own Country
close to Kanyakumari

the elephant eyes you with
the suspicion you deserve
& keeps his holy distance

Kochulloor Calling

IV

Not old, the young villager replies
about a hundred years or so
the small, weathered statues
of Nagarajas, guarding the immense

time-honored tree, shielded by
hoods of cosmic serpents
speak of older memories, still
nothing stops wind & water

gnawing at the agonizing work
of mortal hands, the sea doesn’t
deliberate, only scrubs the features
off your face

with salt, scrapes away
all trace of who you think
you might be, wipes it clean
without second thought

late last night, while you imbibed
the wine & olive soaked fantasies
of Hellenic seafarers, Athena sent you
one of her own

a white barn owl, gold freckles
across breast & belly, arrived at the
windowsill to behold you as one would
a curious specimen

in an expensive glass box
at the world-famous zoo of a foreign city
imploring you with the silent miracle
of telescopic eyes & you were scheming

to take a picture with your phone
how else would anybody believe?
startled, the owl flew off into the night
never to be seen again, until earlier

this morning, you caught sight of her
in slivers of sky, slender blue ribbons
cut by translucent glass slats, saw her
turn upward

in a desperate last-minute
maneuver, escape an eagle’s
bloodthirsty grip by the width
of a tail feather

cheered on by a savage
chorus of crows, fluttering
in noisy formation around
the predators

you couldn’t tell if they were
cheering eagle or owl, or placing
bets on both, you couldn’t deny
how maniacal it was

the eagle gave up chase
the crows settled down, eventually
you spotted a couple, hours later
on a low boundary wall

taking turns pecking a cat’s tail
from either side, harassing
the little hunter till he hopped off
& went hissing into the overgrown
yard
*

Kapil was born in Lucknow and lives in Boston. His poems and stories have appeared in journals, magazines and an anthology in India, The Netherlands and the US. Including Inverse Journal, The Bangalore Review and The Bombay Literary Magazine. Negligible Inertia, his debut collection of poems, was published by Writers Workshop.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/35376443/Negligible-Inertia

After a very, very long time, I decided to set out on a journey. Last month. I have been in the habit of going on long drives these few months, but that is always with someone. Those are journeys I might evoke on another day. Today is about the sort of journeys I rarely make.

I had no idea where exactly I was headed towards, how long it would take and if my route map was even right. All I knew was that I was setting off. A friend of mine was staying at a place of healing that was nearly 70 kms away. And this visit was to spend the day with her. I checked the map on my phone and set off just when the crisp morning air was beginning to warm at the edges. The sun was just right and the roads were reasonably empty- the world had not yet made up its mind about what to do for the day. It seemed that for a few kilometres at least, I was on my own.

Highways are strange places. The architecture of a highway as well as those of its peripherals-such as shops and roadside eateries always seems to encourage you to drive on. There are invariably a number of workshops offering you tyre changes, car showrooms – in case you decide to change your car midway, tender coconut stalls for a quick pit stop, eateries that serve real good food at blink speed, set up such that you eat in your car, watching others go by in a manic gust of speed, supermarkets that facilitate a quick getaway once you have bought those obligatory water bottles, chips, chocolates- and magazines for the co-passengers. Everything suggests movement. The hoardings along the highways advertising wedding sarees, jewelry, cars, hotels, resorts ask you to keep moving- to get to another life- one that involves tangibility of a different sort.

I got on to the highway and waited for the directions. The Voice said, “now drive straight for 45 kilometres.” And I loved it. In these highly volatile times, where everything is such an effort, the simplicity of the directions and the matter-of-fact way that it was handed to me was pure joy. And so, I drove. And drove up hills and drove down the hills, passed places of historical and tourist interest, including Jatayu Para- the Jatayu rock- the place where, the bird, Jatayu tried to stop Ravana from abducting Sita and died valiantly. Jatayu first reasons with Ravana and asks him to consider the gravity of his actions. When that fails, he is said to have attacked Ravana’s chariot, killed his charioteer and mules. Ravana in retaliation cuts off Jayatu’s wings and leaves him to die on the mountain top. Sita drops her jewelry on Jatayu in the hope that Ram would find them.

Ram does find Jatayu, hanging on to the vestiges of his life, so he could tell Ram about Sita and also to point him to the army he would need to enlist help from. Thus, Jatayu forms an important part of the narrative pivot of the Ramayana. Atop the mountain at Chadayamangalam, is a 200 feet long, 150 feet wide sculpture of Jatayu, fallen on his back, wings slashed, claws clenched. And beneath the sculpture is a multi-dimensional theatre system and other recreational activities.

I suppose, this is why I have never felt the inclination to visit the place.

Driving on, I came across a number of sprawling nurseries that announced plants ranging from orchids to chrysanthemums and poppies. I made a mental note of poppies. They are addictively pretty is what I heard! The solitary highway flowed into the molten noise of a big town that threw its chaos in four directions at a traffic intersection. The map calmly told me to turn left and then I came upon another junction, where there was a fruit stall that hung on its façade, enormous ropes of apples. The ropes made of apples were at least four feet long two feet thick and I wondered who would buy so many apples. And if the shopkeeper would have the heart to decimate his work of art. ‘Apple Junction’ led me to quieter roads, where one would come upon yellow and violet flowers caught in a surreptitious embrace- in that sea of green, this riot of colours was an interlude. My car was not a machine, it was a travelling eye.

The undulations gave way to a short stretch of flat lands where, situated right in the middle of a vast plot of land was a temple. There were no boards announcing the deity, nothing really to suggest the existence of a temple except the architecture. And a tree from which red pennants fluttered. Every branch, including the topmost one had red strips of cloth tied to them. In many temples, these are tied for wish fulfilment. Sometimes, these pieces of cloth are offerings to the Naga Raja and the Naga Yakshi Amma – serpent deities. After the rituals, the cloth must either be burnt or be left to the elements. Tying it to a tree is the best method of letting the cloth disintegrate as the cloth does not get polluted through contact with the garbage on the ground. There it was, a tree full of vermilion prayers trailing in the wind. I drove on.

I finally reached. And spent a very pleasant, memorable day, drove my friend up the wall with philosophical questions and in the evening, turned homewards. The journey back was rather crowded- the traffic, the people, on coming vehicles, I sought the tree- it looked magnificent in the light of the setting sun. The murmurs of the fabric of prayers falling slowly silent.

It suddenly occurred to me that I should get down and visit the temple- closed though it be due to the pandemic. But the anxiety of trying to make it home by nightfall made me drive on. I drove past the junction with its apple ropes, past irate vehicles angrily belching smoke in the effort to get home, and onto that straight stretch to get me home. All the while I was thinking about my decision of not getting down at the temple. Of not taking a risk. Of playing it safe. I wondered if it summed up the way I lived my life. If I had ever been young and foolish. I looked at the road I was driving on and realised that the edges and the lines marking the lanes were not in straight lines as they usually are. They were zigzag! Jagged lines along the national highway…on the path that I was supposed to drive straight for 45 kilometres! Perhaps, here was the Universe telling me, the crazy sits perfectly snug in the seemingly sane. That sometimes, being young doesn’t mean one is foolish and that one doesn’t have to be young if one wants to be foolish. Grinning to myself, I stopped at the nursery selling poppy saplings. They told me very somberly that they had stopped selling them years ago. It was just too expensive to change the board is why they let it remain there. I walked by the beds of plants, ponds of lotuses, huge tubs of roses and asked for a white hibiscus. They said they had hibiscus saplings, but didn’t know if they were white till they bloomed. I then drove on and stopped at three more places and they too told me the same thing. In that entire stretch, not a single white hibiscus had revealed itself to nursery owners!

By then the road markers had gone on to being straight and dusk had fallen. But I was happy. The world I had seen when the morning was a blush on the horizon, I was now looking at in the shadows cast by the moon, and it all seemed so different. If the morning belonged to sight, the evening belonged to instinct. When I read Aaliya Baba’s poems, this was the feeling I got. That she occupies the worlds of sights and instincts. That the land she comes from, its histories, its geopolitics has shaped the way she thinks, dreams, celebrates and travels. The land and the destiny it seems to be writing for itself permeates her identity and colours the world in the hues of violence and resistance. She writes,

The sacrificial Eid is yet months away
Yet Ishmael is dangled on the cross
The angels keep
their censored silences
and pour them into our hearts.

It isn’t even Muharram
But sisters wrap mourning
over their torn cloaks, and wipe off
sweat from the cold bullets
settled in the brows of their brothers.

Yesternight the guilty moon
wouldn’t show up.
All night it asked of me:
What joy could I shine upon
On all those slaughtered Eids?
I supplied no answers
the dread in my eyes furnished them.

(Eid ul Fitr in Kashmir)
Baba interrogates the self by pinning it against the ravaged land and the promise of what could have been. There is no bitterness, instead, an anger flows through that does watch for the elusive glimmer of hope. Her voice rings with a certain fearlessness as she hacks her way through uncomfortable truths. There is immense strength in her words and her themes encompass a wide variety of subjects such as the conversations around writing, the semantics of resistance that inform her writing and the ways that the discourses of the mind shape that of the body.

We live only one season
In the life of a tree.
It lives our lifetime
In just one cycle of seasons.

(Man and Trees)
These lines made me reflect on the tree I left behind and of the bird sculpted atop the hill. I thought of the ways the non-humans carry our baggage, our anxieties and seem to exist to enable us to carry out our tasks of revenge, lust, greed, salvation. The anthropomorphic in us just doesn’t seek permission. It slathers significations, attributes love, enforces loyalties and createsexpectations. Nature, however, tries to survive. We will never know if within all these tales there is Jatayu’s untold tale of revenge- a revenge he was willing to die for. One that he passed on the baton to an ideal king and sent him on his way to commit another heinous crime- no less in
magnitude to the kidnapping of Sita. The murder of Bali. And thus, set in motion a chain of events whose cataclysmic effects were felt for several births and generations thence. Karma is merely a synonym for chain reaction. It’s a way of telling us that nothing in this world goes by
without making its presence felt. That a tree standing in an open field in Kerala can come back through the verses of Aaliya Baba who lives in Kashmir. That one doesn’t have to visit a bird who is for posterity, etched in pain on top of a hill down which people can rappel or take cable
cars from. The bird flies down and looks over your shoulder as you read verses of sacrifice, lament and bravery.

Elsewhere, a tree looks to loosen promises tied into blood knots.

JOURNEY
I stitch my small dreams
like wounds that
never bled…
I am a bundle of
deep memories that
stick to my soul like magnet…
A little me
smiling in the distant fairly tale
wondering, how I came this far…
Life is a rulebook
following its own verdict

reluctant me, turning with the pages!

POETRY IS WAR
And when my despair will grow violent
It might explode in symbols
Or diffused metaphors
I shall do no speaking!
One shouldn’t when obsessed
With blood!
I shall pose for pictures
Near the autographed pieces
Of my bleeding heart
Enrolled in shimmering shroud,
Some scented foreign ink.

If war means this,
I fight it everyday!

MY VOICE
Leave to me what is left of my solitude…
Few pieces of peace are still here!

The spill over of pain
shall be carefully poured out into unpreserved words…

The bravest for me was to embrace myself…
I hid under your shadow, not knowing the journey stopped in the darkness…

Me, the shadow and the night look one here at this place
I shall regain voice to tell them apart!

For now
Leave to me what is left of me!

WRITING
I must paste silence…
spread it evenly across corners
of all pagesthat have metaphors engraved by me.

Images like loud horns, screaming unawares
grabbing one in the desperate frenzied moments
that had crashed and violated
the stillness of my mind.

I must paint white over the black-on-the-white,
to make it all look peaceful and serene
And leave no record
of tears or blood or the heartache…

A soul that knows forgiveness
mustn’t commit violence
against silent pages
And cage them into perpetual agony!

MOON

they plucked one moon from the dark
and hung it over my roof top
calling it a festival,
tinkling human voices grew louder
greeting me on this wind chime of a moon

I rose still to usual pale sun
until noon kept working on the red clots in my memory
with a homeless chap’s desperation
to appropriate my smile
to the pictured portrait of the last night’s moon.

Born And raised in Srinagar Kashmir, Aaliya Mushtaq Baba is pursuing her PhD from University of Kashmir on the politics and philosophy of Autobiography. Her poems have appeared in journals like Miraas, Sheeraza, Kashmir Lit, English Studies in India and Setu (Pittsburgh, USA). Recently, her poem “Equality” was published in the anthology The Kali Project: Invoking the Goddess Within/ Indian Women’s Voices.

There is a film in Malayalam called Panchagni (Five Fires), scripted by M.T Vasudevan Nair anddirected by Hariharan. Released in 1986, the film is a nuanced look at the socio-political lives of the afterlife of the revolutionary movement in Kerala. It traversed the everyday performances of violence, desire, anxiety, unemployment, social stigma and entitlement that played out as names, people, places, their identities.These stories became synonymous with the sacrifices that the modern day Keralites claim as their legacy.

The film had as its protagonist, Indira, a young woman who is serving a life term for executing a landowner who raped and murdered a tribal woman. While she is out on parole, a journalist takes an interest in her and seeks to secure her release. There is Sharada, Indira’s friend and Savithri, Indira’s sister- female characters, married, with homes and husbands- women who are subconscious nudges to the audience showing an alternate universe that Indira could have occupied had she not set out to avenge the gruesome incident. The journalist manages to secure a pardon for Indira and she is overjoyed. She can see her whole life playing out before her, a family that has gradually begun to accept her, a life of marital bliss with the journalist- there is even happy music in the background. She runs to the residence of Sharada to give her the news and finds that Sharada’s husband and friends have assaulted the young servant girl. Frozen with shock, she sits by the girl.

The husband looks at Indira and smirks. It is a smirk that reeks of entitlement, a certain repugnant human insouciance- one that comes from privilege- be it social, economic, political or sexual. She shoots the man and returns to jail.

That smirk, and all that it conveyed- that was my first brush with translation. The multiple meanings that I read into that expression, the meanings that it signified for the protagonist, for life, for the innumerable different possibilities that the day, the incident, the reaction could have taken in the film, have haunted me for decades. Over the years, I have become more acutely aware of the ways that we translate our world around us into bite-sized, relatable, tolerable experiences. How we transmogrify thoughts into sounds, into language, signs, expressions, gestures, food, a pat on the arm, a crinkle on the forehead and how all this is converted into Time- the present, the past, the fast-approaching unseen.

The last three years have witnessed some concerted efforts at promoting translations especially in India. What was once a means of merely cashing in on the popularity of mainstream English fiction by making the same available in Bhasha literature, has now evolved into a practice with serious political, cultural and linguistic purposes. There is a canon of Bhasha literature building up in English, with regional writing from the 1930s, 1970s and even the Sangam era making waves in English in the last three years. The rising political confidence and the factors of shifting demographics, the presence of a more interested readership are also factors that play a vital role in the boom being witnessed today. Apart from these, the common person, the middle-class person is in the middle of a quest. The quest for making sense of the changes they witness in the world around them. These translations help a better shaped picture to emerge about the mind-boggling dynamics of India which often seems to be held together by adhesive tape and willpower. Running a finger through the 2021 JCB Prize shortlist, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a lot of translations and many of them from Malayalam. VJ James’ Anti-Clock is my current forerunner, The Man Who Learnt to Fly but Could Not Land by T.P. Rajeevan is not exactly fiction and has a strong sense of the local that it derives its spine from. And Daribha Lyndem’s Name Place Animal Thing while not a translation, evokes a childhood I left behind. The crucial insight these and other shortlisted and random translated works present in this day and age is into the conscious use of history- political and inherited. This is the sort of fierceness that can bring an anti-clock into existence – one that challenges the Anglo-centric notions of time, of progress, of our readings of directions. What is up is down and down is North? Its all in the perception, isn’t it? There is a comfort that translations bring- that lives and people who exist elsewhere go through the same grind as we do. That Jas from Marieke Rijneveld’s Discomfort of Evening wonders about dusks and the wide world like D from Name Place Animal Thing, like I, and possibly you did at one point of time. That the quivers felt by Mohanaswamy as he lays eyes on a handsome man (in Kannada) are echoed in Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar in English and Sachin Kundalkar’s apprehensive protagonist in Marathi- among others. This is the community that translations can create by introducing one to a world that is so like and so unlike the ones we live in.

October 14 was World Translation Day- a very commendable idea that marks the need to be able to speak and think in the language and experience of someone else. It is also the way to keep languages alive- especially those languages that are being decimated under the march of ‘progress’. This edition of Samyukta Poetry honours a Malayalam poet- Rosemary- a poet who in her native tongue has woven elaborate tapestries of experiences that are transitioning- from the narratives of a reminiscing daughter to that of sheets of rain, from the misted mountains to the singularities of falling in love. It made me think that what is poetry if not a fluid act of translation- one that effortlessly speaks multiple languages at the same time?

Rosemary, born Maria Goretti, is one of the most decorated names of Malayalam poetry. Often considered a natural successor to Kamala Das- a reference that she modestly denies- Rosemary’s poems carry a tinge of melancholia. The winding notes of many of her poems evoke the image of nostalgia that is seeking a home. Home itself is a shapeshifting term for Rosemary. It is sometimes a mountain topped with snow, while sometimes, it could well be within the fragile heart of a bird. Her images are etched out and laid out in elaborate detail.

“The love of an old man

Is like the slanting showerIt

wets the blades of grass

But penetrates not

The thirsty root.

It doesn’t cause

The boughs to tremble

No vibration…

It rustles down –

A quiver

Of arrow-like tears

Unable to penetrate

The caverns of the earth.

(Slanting Showers-translated from the Malayalam by Hema Nair R.)

The translator remarks, “What makes Rosemary’s poems worthy of translation and what makes it interesting to a reader of English poetry is the thread of universality that is apparent in the depiction of the experience of the individual psyche.” (https://rosemarypoetess.wordpress.com/page/2/ )

Columnist, Journalist, Activist, avid gardener, there are many words that describe Rosemary. But for me, she speaks through her poems, the images of black jagged rocks rising from the seashore are the images her works commonly evoke in me. The presence of an all-seeing, non-interfering God is indeed very interesting in the works of Rosemary. Mercy is a derived commodity in her poetry. It may not be present as an overflowing pool but needs to be squeezed like blood from rocks. Her landscapes are unforgiving and the birds wary.

A mediocrity

With all the novelty already gone”

Is love a solid mass

That decreases when shared ?

Is it gold pledged at the pawn shop ?

My love is a spring that comes down from the mountain mist—

A never ending flow !

It is like a lamp that burns for ever

Nothing is lost

How can it go out

When passed to new wicks ?

I don’t believe in a love that is protected

And cared for all the time

Why should I protect and protect my love

Like a fungus-discoloured bronze vessel

Thus making a worthless thing of it ?”

(A Spring from the Misty Mountain- translated from the Malayalam by Sudha Warrier )

Translating Rosemary presents unique challenges, her line breaks, the nuances that are ensconced within her choice of words make the work move with glacial speed. And that is, ironically, the charm of it. One can rethink the lines over and over, but there hardly comes a time when the glide, thrust and parry of English matches the simple, elegant desolation that Rosemary wafts in from Malayalam. It must be the same with all translations. I suppose, in translation, as in life, there is no satisfaction. There is always something more to be done. Something to be added, changed, possibilities to be considered, a smirk deferred?

Sonya J. Nair

Editor

Rose Mary is one of the best-known poets in Malayalam. She has a number of accolades to her name including theSergei Yesenin Award, SBT Poetry Award, Muthukulam Parvathy Amma Award and Lalithambika Antharjanam Best Young Woman Writer Award. Vakkukal Chekkerunnidam, Chanju Peyyunna Mazha, Venalil Oru Puzha, Ivide Inganeyum Oral, Vrishchika Kattu Veesumbol, Nalinakshan Nairkk Snehapoorvam and Marikkunnuvo Malayalam are her major works.

About the Translator:

Dr. Nair’s nuanced and committed translations have seen her becoming the first person from Kerala to be awarded the Charles Wallace India Trust Translator Fellowship which was spent at the British Centre for Literary Translation, University of East Anglia, UK. She is currently translating Marguerite Duras’ L’Amour from the French to Malayalam. She can be found at  https://sreedeviknair.net/

House with No Door

Facing the sea,

hewn from granite,

monumental in its desolation,

stands your ancient house.

Its wooden door

etched with memories of the sea.

Day in and day out, the waves pound.

The incessant roar of the sea

            envelops the house.

You, a plundering pirate!

and I, your bondslave,

bound in servitude by the

ropes of your love.

Our dusky chamber

fragrant with khus,

bathed in amber light.

Serpentine bodies, coil and uncoil,

as passion plays the snake charmer’s reed;

Muted hisses.

Sometimes

in the wee hours of

 a lust-filled night,

you jolt awake

on some strange impulse

to wordlessly disappear,

flinging ajar the wooden door.

At times, answering

the call of unknown waters,

you leap into the outstretched arms of the sea,

wrenching free of my embraces,

smashing the wooden door.

Ill-fated voyages….

            Returning vanquished, enraged

you slash the door

with your keen dagger.

Your endless mood swings;

volcanic outbursts,

 lightning arrivals and departures….

half-abandoned kisses….

My poor heart,

forever

 a trembling bird,

quivering on snowy paths.

            The bolts of the door

give way

at your merciless handling;

its ceaseless creaking

on moonless nights

make me sad, depressed.

Rattling like skeletons

on mountain tops,

it falls quietly,

one day.

Ah, the house without doors!

Before me

infinite vastness,

reaching to eternity!

Wind, rain, sand dunes,

tidal waves,

all within the reach

of my hand.

Towards me,

the waves come charging

with infernal growls,

and plunder your treasures.

An ardent wind

coming from the west

gathers me into the eye

of its hurricane love.

my arms turn wings,

and I, like a seagull

 glide weightless over the sea.

When

the conqueror

          of many worlds,

returns triumphant,

          victorious flags

          fluttering bright,

and far flung seas

          under his feet,

          before him

looms

the majestic tower –

forbidding,

eyes aflame,

like a leviathan

from ancient times.

In its inner yards

the scent of the sea;

the furniture

cold, frozen;

long, regal curtains

swaying in the wind.

When you,

frantic, bellowing,

roam the empty rooms

 like a marauding lion,

I, on the wings of the wind,

 soar, whistling!

Moonlight silver

and sunlight amber

lend sparkle to my wings.

My heart turns

wild with ecstasy!

In my soul,

neither this earth

long-suffering,

nor the pirate lover

remains.

Broken heart, deep sighs

sad, gloomy nights,

all memories of

a long-forgotten life!

Between You and Me

Do not

 be afraid of my love;

it asks

nothing of you.

Do not

doubt my friendship;                 

it wishes not

to own you.

Once,

on a dark

bleaknight,

fairies came, and

filled my heart

with love.

I was

in deep slumber,

when they gave

this gift of love.

When I woke up

my heart

was overflowing.

The sad

and the lonely

came, and

snatched it

from me.

The rest I poured

into a chalice.

Beneath

the vast sky,

through

open lands,

along

desolate paths,

I kept wandering;

the chalicein my hand,

spilling over!

Do not

feel guilty

about my love;

I didn’t take it

from someone

to give to you;

Remember

my telling you

of love

going waste?

of the chalice

 overflowing?

This

I want to make clear –

if ever

you come to me,

be not

like a king

visiting his maid.

I do not

want tax-free lands,

or stately provinces.

Do not

come like God

revealing Himself

to a devotee;

I do not

want boons

from your bounty;

Neither

is my heart

an empty void,

to be filled

with your radiance.

Approach

like an emperor

visiting another;

a friend

visiting a friend;

let’s meet

on equal terms!

Like a flute

looking for a raga,

a question

seeking out

its answer,

let it be

spontaneous….

My Poetry

“Where does poetry come from?”

asked the man with spectacles.

Do they drizzle

 from cloudlets

floating in the sky?

In the mysterious green

of dark dense forests,

do they hide?

Is poetry

the bloom of the soil

lush with dreams?

Is it

the tingeof despair

spreading on

failed romance?

I know not, truly!

My poetry –

it springs

from extreme anguish!

Like mushrooms

bursting forth

when thunder roars,

from every blow,

 a poem blooms!

It’s blood

oozing from

my heart’s wounds.

From sorrows

 never shared,

 it breaks forth!

It’s my life;

my poetry –

it’s me!

Isn’t all poetry queer? That is the question that has been running through my mind all these days. Even the most vanilla of poems that talks of some distant fields, full of yellow flowers could be queer. Because, a poem is never just what it presents itself as. It is always something more, a much of a muchness (from another queering work). The unfamiliar patterns of words that dip into palettes of colours or parameters of comparison. There is always a process of defamiliarization that goes on. Recognizing the whorls of meaning a poem can contain and the gradual opening of the same is a spiritual experience. Much like falling in love, or coming back from the dead. Birds in the sky become godlike, terrible beauties are born and dreams become raisins in the sun. That on saddest nights the poet writes the sweetest songs attests to the power of poetry to transcend the ordinary.  To help one feel the feelings.To queer the ordinary. 

If all poetry is queer, then what is Queer poetry? The simplest definition is poetry that is written by those who identify as queer. But that is not the sort of answer that we can get away with. What if a transperson writes of walking a dog? Does the mere fact that the poet is a transperson automatically qualify the poem as queer themed? I would like to think not. Because, that would horribly limit the infinite possibilities that are presented by the idea of Queer. For me, queer is in the insight, in the point of view that a person has. In the way they set their language free and inflict pain or pleasure.

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.
(Elizabeth Bishop, Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore)

It ought to be recalled at this point that this year’s Pulitzer Prize for poetry went to Jericho Brown for Tradition and the citation read, “a collection of masterful lyrics that combine delicacy with historical urgency in their loving evocation of bodies vulnerable to hostility and violence.” Expressing his happiness, Brown tweeted, “I mean…I dunno…you have to admit, “Black queer men win the Pulitzer for poetry and drama” is a pretty funny sentence, right?” thus referencing Michael R. Jackson’s win for the play, AStrange Loop. Why these victories are significant is that they were seen as affirmative and as beacons of light for all those who nurse similar ambitions. The identity always casts a long shadow. Rarely do we come across headlines that say, “Heterosexual wins the Pulitzer”. It could well be that what distinguishes queer poetry is that it is called so. Redact the poet and the lines will still read the same. But the poem won’t be the same. The poet becomes as important as the poem itself. 

Speaking of the cult of the poet, there is hardly any need to go into the expressions of desire as manifested in the poems of Sappho and others, being as well-known as they are.In fact much of old-world poetry, did not accommodate the notches of differences between same sex or hetero love. The poets wrote of the Divine as a lover but often, this was placed outside the ambit of the corporeal or carnal. The feeling conveyed was one of the sublime. Poetic traditions in India such as Rekthi flourished in the courts of the Nawabs. There were men dancing on the streets in the rapture of the love they felt for their Lord.  They could hardly be called queer. Not in the way the term has evolved politically. 

In the modern sense of the term, queer poetry is not just about the poet. It is about the subject matter. It is about its ability to connect to a community that relies on a network of like-minded individuals for sanctuary and support. The sharing of the experiential is a vital way of reaching out to the community, the members of which often experience violent and destabilizing changes.

To undo justice, and to seek
To quash the rights that guard the weak-
To sneer at love, and wrench apart
The bonds of body, mind and heart
With specious reason and no rhyme:
This is the true unnatural crime.
(Vikram Seth, Through Love’s Great Power)

In an interview with Firstpost, Akhil Katyal, who along with Aditi Angiras edited the anthology of queer poetry from South Asia, The World That Belongs To Us, talks about the fraught situations in the Indian subcontinent and the ways colonialism left its impact. “This debris– along with intractable pre-modern prejudices that our part of the world still carries—resulted in very vitiated positions for queer people who are often viciously attacked on cooked up social or moral grounds. So, let’s write our poems against such attacks together.”

This doesn’t mean that queer poetry is charged with the responsibility of being a round the clock activist. There are heartbreakingly delicate poems that convey very personal narratives of love dare not speak its name and yet is a love story like any other. The ‘everydayness’ and ‘relatability’ of queer love makes it very unqueering and that is what is so queer about it!

Like

In the Urdu Class
I confused my be with pe.
He asked me to write ‘water’,
I wrote ‘you’.
Who knew they’d make them so close,
Aab (آب) and Aap (آپ).
Both difficult to hold on to.

(Akhil Katyal)

See? Just another love story! Or perhaps not! 

And on that note, we bring you our first feature for the month, a handful of poems by Dr. Gaurav Deka. The poems, when strung together, seem to tell a story of love, of coming of age and finally, of coming into one’s own. They seem like a remarkable rite of passage with the narrator finally discovering his own voice that was made for singing. It is liberating to experience the frankness with which his words create narratives not only of love and longing, but also of the complexities of relationships. Deka has a rather introspective tone and the words gradually unspool to reveal the silence at the centre. Though love dominates the conversations, it is the need to survive heartbreak that the poet is trying to come to terms with. The need to break free while being present, is not as potent as the pangs of loneliness that are expressed. The poet says

It is almost fifty years early in
Matheran now.
In your rented house,
you drink alone.
Beneath the immortal evening
moss,
the tamarind tree in the backyard—
in its own sad senescence—is thin in
its roots.
(The Three Doors of Anagnorisis)

Deka’s poems are very physical. There is always something happening. Even while the body is at rest, the non-corporeal keeps travelling between worlds and universes. 

in November
just before we decide
to take the ride
draw his
soul on paper planes
and throw them
off the hills,
she tries to be earnest.
(My Friend Talks of Break-ups in Winters)
Just another love story? We leave it to you to decide.

We are joined in our work this month by a team of illustrators, who have kindly agreed to work with us. Today, we feature an illustration by Akshay A. S, a final year M.A English Language and Literature student at M G college Trivandrum. He is a poet and has a penchant for sketching. Unbeatable combination. Do look up his works on Instagram at #jotdowntales.

Some years ago, I read Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend and was intrigued by the opening chapter. Lila, a character disappears. With all her belongings. Disappeared as she always wanted, leaving “not so much as a hair anywhere in this world.” I thought it was wonderful. Aspirational. To vanish would be to break out of the shackles of being the filling in a middle-class sandwich. But then the mind is its own doctor and it began playing the films of forced disappearances, notions of escapism, the dangers of being unprotected and then the waves of life, employment and love rushed in, inundating and extinguishing a gypsy in the making. This week, I was reading Madhuri Vijay’s The Far Field and it brought back all those candy floss memories and the inevitable association with Ferrante. It also made me think of the hundreds who go ‘missing’ because they are uncomfortable citizens. They and their questions cause discomfort or well, they can be disappeared because they can be taken away and no questions asked- or those questions can remain unanswered or unheard. 

It is one thing to pack a bag, plug in headphones and set out to search for the meaning of life and quite another to be plucked off the road while on your way to school or while taking food for your parents working in the fields. The history of political violence and disappearances of political activists or innocent people is not restricted to any one country or specific struggles. It is an almost uniform pattern. Of power. Of the ways power desperately exerts itself to stop having to hear dissent. 

Poems

When I first read Tali Cohen Shabtai, I thought of Frida Kahlo. The wilderness of colours that pervaded Kahlo’s art, the way her body was an ambassador of her art and how the person in totality was art. And when I went through Tali’s collected works- I found I was not far off the mark.

Inebriated/ Also a poet
That with him we looked like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo….

These are the opening lines of one of her poems from her bi-lingual collection, Protest.  The more I read her, the more I began associating her with the sort of lineage that gave us poets such as Eavan Boland and Hollie McNish. The sort that carry the ghosts of Plath, Sexton, Rich, Angelou. Those that disrupt the conventional lines of what poetry by ‘women’ must sound like.

I am the patient etherised upon the table. It is midnight already, the steady hum of crickets merges with the clatter in my head. The words I had once written, now return every now and then to haunt me. Perhaps the words that return are not mine alone, they arrive without warning, fragments of lines, now longer tethered to the text, they arrive like the breeze on cold city nights. “You always seemed to go round in circles”, I murmur to myself. I discern few other sounds. A leaky tap in the kitchen, must get it fixed, I make a mental note. The sound of the clocks ticking go on as ever, “No man goes down to the same river twice”. I think of entropy for a while, the second law and time. The tap keeps leaking. By now I have almost become used to its incessant rhythm. “All of art is resistance against entropy”, I scribble on a piece of paper, knowing once again that I am indeed going round in circles. The phone rings, I let it. The traffic lights blink. I have grown tired of conversations, of platitudes, of “art, beauty and the meaning of it all”. Hollowed out from inside, I roam these streets like a shadow of myself. This city, its neon facade, its filth, its contradictions, look at me questioningly. I smile back at it and keep walking in this “unending chorus of human feet”. I slip into my dreams. My dreams are of smoke and death. Stray faces appear behind glass, a dog bares its fangs, licks a bone clean, mannequins walk gingerly, a one eyed man grins.

Neon

A faraway house
overlooking the highway,
the lights of which
always flicker the same way
in my memory, always the dim
yellow of longing chasing me.
Just as a seafarer knows
the sea by the way starlight
meanders over it,
I discover the city
late at evening,
walking along
its illuminated contours,
and find in every corner
the disjointed strands
of time and distance
and being and non-being,
shaping their own narratives,
even as I keep searching
for effervescent light trails
of headlights and cold neon.

Tonight

Here I am
in this cafeteria
having a bowl of noodles
all by myself
with a dozing watchman
and the soft, mellow glow
of an electric flycatcher
for company.
I put on my headphones,
my playlist switches to Norah Jones.
I think of my friends for a while
and then my mind shifts elsewhere.
The song begins ,
“Come away with me “ she sings
and I here alone
in this midnight shack
think to myself
that I would if only
I knew where.

Movement as Metaphor

Droplets of light
condensed on night lamps
split open
caught in a flux in
spools of thought
held in equilibrium
mid-air nesting
in the emptiness
of every atom in
every cell and the
continuum in between
where motion begins
only in the mind as
a single twist of phrase
unlocking doors,
as a trickle going down
the endless slope,
as a nameless soul
receding from its shadow.

Notes from an unfinished diary

I

Criss cross zig zag pools of light, comfort is disappearance and then oblivion…oblivion…oblivion just writing the word is bliss, poetry is tapping buttons on a phone and auto correct results , erasure is art is life and the continuum in between , the excess of everything has choked me , life is perennial asphyxiation, an endless process of fading away moving zipping past cities, civilisations the old man under the tree telling us tales of our dreams and the mats that waiters dry at night, the lover’s hand groping in the dark , How do I trust anything?memory , literature is artifice, art is truth , truth naked without embellishments of language, of anything , thoughts clear as water, clear as a sentence that does not employ a metaphor. Must wake up sometime before they arrive, then again the next day and the next, life is a series of such days , how does one break away ..

II

Antidote to melancholy :The act of naming ,The colours ,the sounds, the flesh and all that remains hidden In the shadow all that diffuses out of the surface of our being and the air expanded by our emptiness as it passes in and out through the nostrils as days turn to nights, as all that remains of a once familiar name.

III

The currents in the vein ,  blood flowing like a river, the banks on both sides unknown, the day draws to a close, a boatman begins his song, sound penetrates silence, bit by bit, the first poem on a cave wall reaching beyond time to us, gathering silt of time, of memory as the world passes in a long drawn breath, the very act of naming is creating, the rebirth of the world in the head, the sounds ring hollow , a skeletal hollowness, the night endless..

IV

The world held out as if a piece of paper. Plain white eye balls, stars replaced by LEDs, the sky cellophane, I scream and hear the sound of my voice which separates into sine waves.

It moves outwards, upwards ephemeral wisps of smoke. The ceiling buzzing incessant, the sound of crickets in my head, the static from satellites, orbits losing its course, language born in the womb of silence, reaching towards what cannot be known, cellophane skies reaching out to us…us?  thin lights of the night , absolute silence , the mind melting words, sounds, the mind on a sprint out run by light, the first embers of the fire, the signs drawn but never understood, not of death or of  life, a mystery without resolution, words pushing against air, enlarging space, the self diffused , the shadow of the shadow keeping us where we are.

V

Condense droplets cold surface night ice cream blank page the sun lanterns night lamps heat youtube voices.

Voices information the world trapped in a skull, stream of consciousness no boundary, end of the page the point of it all? Deadlines dead line cooler night gives way to morning shifts work and repeat, what am I looking for, the end apocalypse starting over the physicality of writing poems, people in photographs and people beside you and then people into nothingness me into nothingness, with them who are they ?friends connected by invisible threads, to her whom I love, to her whom I think I love, the way the fingers move over the keyboard backspace backspace heat  boredom solitude split open empty space time body tv series transport in a story of someone somewhere pinned down to time, place, location, country, family, caste, name, universe? Face the man in the mirror thinking in devised metaphors language handed down how does one step out of one’s own feet ?words as vehicles of release, Hormones ?

happy chemical? Sad chemical?

VI

Symmetry breaking triggered by the first word, in the perfect vacuum of silence, the trigger pressed, time – the noose around the neck, entropy fluctuation, a probabilistic blip in the all encompassing halls of nothingness, propelled forward, the brain fist sized presiding over the universe, and you caught in between . All poetry is reminiscence of time when there was no time, space uncharted, a raft caught in the ocean currents of neurons, torn apart by genetics, strands entwined condemning us to a name, to 3.14 , to loneliness, to this eternal separation, to an alpha numeric name next to a blob of green, to anonymous chat rooms, to curious blizzards in Russian novels, to the unsayable buried in the ambient. 

Smoke

We wither slowly
awaiting
our eventual invisibility.
The hourglass fills
bit by bit,
we turn vaporous,
appear as frost
on the windows
of our unborn children.

Debarshi Mitra is a 25 year old poet from New Delhi,  India. His debut book of poems Eternal Migrant was published in May 2016 by Writers Workshop. His second book Osmosis was published by Hawakal publishers in 2020. His works have previously appeared in anthologies like Kaafiyana, Wifi for Breakfast and Best Indian Poetry 2018 and in poetry journals like  ‘The Scarlet Leaf Review’, ’Thumbprint’,  ‘Guftugu’, ‘The Seattle Star’ ,’The Pangolin Review’, ‘Leaves of Ink’, ‘The Sunflower Collective’, ‘Coldnoon’, ‘Indiana Voice Journal’, ‘The Indian Cultural forum’ among various others. He was the recipient of the  The Wingword  Poetry Prize 2017, The Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2017 and was long listed for the TFA Prize 2019. 

One among the many odd things I have done is walking at 2 AM through the corridors of a hotel undergoing renovations, in search of water. A friend and I had booked this place online for the duration of a conference and when we reached, we found they had just completed rebuilding…the protective covering from some sections had not even come off. But they honoured their part of the bargain and let us stay there. All was good till at about eleven at night, when I thoughtlessly finished off all the drinking water. Later, finding my friend extremely thirsty, I rang up Housekeeping and Reception by turns…to no avail. So, feeling evangelical, I stepped out of the room in search of water and walked into utter and total darkness. I walked to the other end of the passage, peered down and found the reception a gaping black void. That’s when it struck me that we were the only people in this hotel- all the staff had gone home. There was no guard either. As I walked back to the room, the doorway looked like a block of light in a chunk of darkness. It was a most beautifully desolate sight. Back in the room, I remembered a bag of oranges we had bought earlier. Nothing like freshly squeezed orange juice to assuage guilt and take care of a cranky, thirsty friend.

The real reason we made the trip in the first place was not the quest for academic excellence, but rather, to visit the final resting place of a young man very dear to my friend. His untimely demise had shaken her and this trip was a search for the much-needed closure. We travelled a long, long way, on roads hewn out of mountains, the chocolate brown of the earth covering every conceivable surface. Summer was at its height and I was careful not to drink more than a mouthful of water at a time.

We reached the cemetery. There were rows of graves, marked and unmarked. There was no way to find him except ask for help at the office of the nearby church. The office was a relief, with its cool tiled floors and a ceiling fan. The priest called the father of the young man and asked him, “There are two women here to pay their respects. What is the number of your son’s grave?” The poor man couldn’t remember. And I wondered how one forgets the number of the grave of one’s only son. The priest hung up and looked sheepishly at us. “Maybe we just look at all these graves and say a general hello?” I tentatively asked my friend. She remained silent. The priest sensing her grief, sent for his assistant and they combed through a huge register and located the number. Upon reaching that simple, unmarked grave, we stood in a pool silence. Us and a raven that we imagined was the soul of the departed.

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The priest and assistant came to see us off. It was quite the occasion in those parts- two mysterious women visiting the grave of a young man. I think the last event to cause this sort of flutter in the village was the coming of electricity. I mentioned this to my friend on ourlong way back to the hotel and she burst into laughter. Maybe that is what is called closure. I did not mind the dust anymore.

Personal commitments and the vagaries of lockdown keeping us geographically apart, the next time I saw her was in yet another cemetery. We were the only two people there. The burial had not happened. The prayers were still going on at church. The cemetery had no graves. Only vaults sealed with concrete, with iron rods drawn across them. In some cases, two rods crisscrossed the vault. I caught sight of my friend walking towards me.  The first thing I asked her on seeing her in person after a year was, “Why the rods? Do they imagine the dead might push open the vaults and leave?” Such is the nature of sorrow that no reply was needed or given. It was almost afternoon and we stood in pouring rain, staring into the depths of a newly opened vault, the edges jagged and raw. The darkness within made me think of the hotel corridor and that single column of light. Two very different types of darkness and two very different experiences of light. Perhaps, two very different vaults.

The search for the somewhere else is what takes us across continents, oceans and chasms. I wonder if that search ends. Or in most cases, if it even begins. We are too rooted, too afraid, too busy preparing for some inevitability that these journeys remain unembarked upon. Our stories for never setting out are almost often the same, only the characters change. The philosophy of the quest demands the sacrifice of excuses. The charm of the excuse is so great that we lose the courage to leap. I once spent ten minutes staring into the depths of a swimming pool, unable to dive in, despite there being no danger of drowning. It was the inability to take the plunge. A stranger at the pool finally put me out of my misery and pushed me in as she casually walked by.

Kiran Bhat’s poetry, like the poet himself, is not afraid of diving in at the deep end. It is fearless and speaks loud and clear. Written from various parts of the world that Kiran has made his home in, the verses reveal the poetics of a bright and beautiful mind. Having begun travelling at the age of twenty, he has been to 132 countries, learnt twelve languages, and has called nineteen corners of the world home (Atlanta, New York, Mysore, Bangalore, Madrid, Lisbon, Cuzco, Florianopolis, Delhi, Malindi, Istanbul, Tokyo, Yogyakarta, Shanghai, Moscow, Paris, Mumbai, Cairo, and Melbourne). But his heart resides in Mumbai. He speaks English, Kannada, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Turkish, Indonesian, Hindi, Japanese, French, Russian, and Arabic to various levels of proficiency.He generates very energetic conversations with creative people across the globe and his crucial participation in online events such as Golchakkar keeps the discourse flowing.

The strength of his poetry comes from the interrogations that he subjects himself and the world around him to. What interested me was that the questions he asks are the ones we may ask ourselves in the course of a day. But the answers are very different from the ones we are wont to give. Kiran answers with no subterfuge. The responses hold nothing back- just like the poet himself. this can only come from a person who is at peace with himself and in control of his identity. The incidental nature that one ascribes to identity is shattered with the conscious, lucid way that Bhat addresses his own.

The whole process of standing up and walking away from the world you have set up in a space of a few years or months and entering a new culture, handling a new currency, a new history and political custom is not an easy task. The self becomes a disciple of the mind in the process. The body- a mere vehicle- not the core of our existence as we often consider it to be. Little wonder that one of Bhat’s signature works is Kiran Speaks, a series of conversations that he has with his consciousness. Modeled on the styleof Confucius’ teachings, these poetic interrogations take on different voices. To quote the poet, “I believe mostly in the strange serendipity that comes with the chaos of our world.”

The effervescence of Kiran Bhat’s personality shines through in his narration. This why I have preferred to let him speak through the videos. This is also the first time that Mandarin is being featured on Samyukta Poetry. To convey the sense of peace that these poems bring about and because in these chaotic times, a little bit of art that navigates and replicates the pathways of the mind seems appropriate, we feature doodle art by Kukku Xavier. I think they go well together- the questions asked and answered with the openness of skies, smells of cities once called home, thirst quenched with orange juice, lost loves, slivers of light at the end of corridors and the shadows cast by death. All meet in art. All is art.

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宇宙问道:你的命运是什么?

宇宙问道:你的命运是什么?

客燃脑回答:
去全世界旅行，
虽然结果并无意义，
并且会把耻辱带回家庭。

因为我非常相信
我必须说的话，
我必须写的作品，
以及，透过人类的历史，
我必须传递的信息。

The universe asks; what is your destiny?

The universe asks; what is your destiny?
Kiran responds:

To travel the world,
Do nothing of value,
Bring shame to my family.

Because I believe so much
In what I am meant to say,
In what I am meant to write,
In what I am meant to pass down,
Through the annals of humankind.

噪音问：你什么时候找到内心的平静？

客燃脑回答：
首先我要停止关注我家庭说的话。

然后，我就听见自己的内心；
然后，目的就会降临；
然后，我便跟随目的。
这样我就有了平静。

A loud noise asked

A loud noise asked:
When will you find peace?
Kiran says:
I ought to stop listening to what my family says.
First, I will be able to listen to myself.
Then, my purpose will come.
Then, I will follow my purpose.
Then, I will know peace.

一个在公交的陌生人说:你最爱什么?

客燃脑说:抚摸狗的肥胖胡子看空心电视，
做我的父母高兴。
我在写好的时候休息。

然后客燃脑明确了:
但是这些东西满足我的精神，
不我的身体。
红树林，
特别明丽，
颜色切我的舌头。
特别包揽的母，
它们有龙的照耀。

但是他们不是野生。

我看他们给我想想
一千火。

一百跳舞的吉卜赛人。
我的未来的爱人。

用最古老的交流的工具性高潮，
语言，
触动我尝试了解人类。

这些是我的做爱的东西。

A Stranger on the Bus Asks: What Do You Love the Most?

A stranger on the bus asks: What do you love the most?

Kiran says:
To pet a dog on its belly.
To watch mindless television.
To make my parents happy.
To rest after writing well.

Kiran then clarifies: but this is how to please my mind and not my body.

A mangrove, so bright, it’s color cuts my tongue.

Eyes so sapphire, they belong to the dragon,
But these are eyes that do not belong to the wild,
A thousand naked flames -
One hundred gypsies in dance -
But to my future lover.

Communicating through the primal tools of humanity to understand another person’s self.

Orgasm, language, touch.

These are a few of my favorite things.

在酒吧很好看的男进了客燃脑问: 你怎么男的种喜欢?

在酒吧很好看的男进了客燃脑问:你怎么男的种喜欢?

客燃脑面对他和回答:
一朵莲花的花瓣比他的笑暗淡,
一同火龙果比他的亲吻没有味道。

可能他矮小，
可能他又胖，
但他问我关于我的最喜欢的书，
当我犯错，
他原谅我。

有些人叫他克里希纳，
有些人叫他拉玛，

我叫他我的情人，
我的哈比比。

他好看?
他还好。
他很聪明?
相对如此。

当我们做爱的时候，
和我们的皮肤彼此摩擦，
我的皮肤变黑了，
他的皮肤变亮了
我们的棕色变得一样。

在酒吧很好看的男嘲笑。
他问为什么我不想
一个帅或者聪明的男。
客燃脑的回答是简单。
当瀑布流动的，
充满活力的级联，
它必须放入，
池塘中最具气质的。

A handsome boy at the bar approaches me and asks: What is the kind of guy you like?

A handsome boy at the bar approaches me and asks: What is the kind of guy you like?

Kiran faces him and responds:
A lotus flower has petals dimmer than the luster of his smile,
A dragon fruit imparts a lesser taste than the thrust of his kiss.
He might be short, he might be chubby,
But he asks me about my favorite books,
He forgives me when I say something wrong.

Some call him Krishna,
Some call him Rama,
I call him my habibi.

Is he handsome?
Just okay.
Is he smart?
Relatively so.

But, while we make love,
And our skin rubs against each other,
My skin darkens,
His skin lightens,
We become the same shade of brown.

The handsome boy at the bar scoffs.

He asks why I do not want,
Someone who is handsome, or smart.

Kiran’s answer is simple.

Because when a waterfall flows,
With the full vigor of the cascade,
It needs to drop down,
Into the most stolid of ponds.

"A Handsome Boy" was previously published in Fearless Love: Anthology, by Mohini Books

我的男友问我:你为什么喜欢我?

我的男友问我:你为什么喜欢我?

我回答:因为身处自然，我们本该在一起
它不是宇宙法则
不是政府强求
这是天命
你我在一起便是自然而然
你我便是自然
让我给你个例子
海洋由无数个粒子组成
当海洋孱动的时候
它并不知道为什么在动
只是自然而生
我们就如海洋
我推动着你

你推动着我
我无法知道你自哪而生
你无法明白我至哪而死
客燃挠知道
我想让你看看在你体内的所有部分
我想让你清楚我的极限在何方
我想和你如琵琶鱼般缠绵
变成小鱼蠕动在女性的身体里
直到他在她身体里消失
换句话说, 我们是两个灵魂，
一个肉体

My boyfriend asked: Why do you like me?

My boyfriend asked: Why do you like me?

I answered: Because according to nature, we should be together.

It is not that the universe dictated it by law,
it was never a government mandate,
nor the will of the Heavens.
It is the simply the nature of you and I together.
It is natural for you and me.

Let me give an example.
The ocean is made of many particles.
When the ocean is moved,
The ocean does not know why it is being moved,
It simply reacts.

We are like the ocean.
You move me.
I move you.
I do not know where you begin.
You do not know where I end.

Kiran knows;
I want you to see every part of your body.
I want you to know the limits of me.
I want to mate with you the way the angler fish does.
To be that little fish that squirms into the female body.

In spirit two,
in body, one.

"My Boyfriend Asked" was previously published in the What Rough Beasts blog run by Indolent Books

Kiran Bhat is an Indian-American traveller, polyglot, and author. He is the author of the English-language story cycle, We Of The Forsaken World... (Iguana Books, 2020), the Spanish-language poetry collection Autobiografia (Letrame Editorial, 2019) the Mandarin-language poetry collection Kiran Speaks (White Elephant Press, 2019), the Portuguese-language story collection Afora, Adentro (Editorial Labrador, 2020), and the Kannada-language travelogue Tirugaatha (Chiranthana Media Solutions, 2019). He has had his writing published at The Brooklyn Rail, The Colorado Review, The Florida Review, Eclectica, Waxwing, The Free State Review, Cha, The Mascara Literary Review, The Chakkar, and several other places. You can currently find him nested in Melbourne, but he calls Mumbai his eternal home.

Kukku Xavier is an Assistant Professor in English at All Saints’ College, Thiruvananthapuram.