Evening Things
By Nabina Das
5 p.m. The trees invite blue china clouds
They forget the sun cannot light the lamp
5 p.m. You are drinking tea with honey
Inside a penumbra by the Radhachuda tree
You can wait, then bring the oil lamp out
Circumnavigate the non-existent tulaxi
The Namghar’s 5 p.m. silence will soon erupt
Its tranced kortaal dueting with the khol
5 p.m. You will know that time has struck
Gooseberry dreaming the shadow of a home.
NOTE: I realize there are some words in the poem that are not from the English language and hence need explaining. However, I don't like giving glossary.
Image from my photo album
Redness
The summer storm bloomed on an eastern sky
the west looked red
roses of anger heaped on a bush stuck in its thorns
smarting faces, hatred.
**
You were watching Caché in the living room TV
blood squirting from slashed up necks
headless chickens scattered in an ungainly race
backwards, forward, again back.
**
My finger touched a tomato skin shedding light
of a red ink, darklike –
wasn’t this what my father’s revolutionary friends
brought in, a newspaper wrapped tight
**
So not everyone would know how words tumble
red and angry on our roads?
I thought I saw a word flutter open again, a hue,
not a name or mundane things like odes.
**
You thought we’d lost our tongues, our attitude
piled under the redness of shame
peripheral to storms, deaths, news of constant ruse
and I realized, a color doesn’t need a name.
**
By Nabina Das
Little glasses warmed by steam
Posing ballerinas pirouetting in silver holders
Glassy eyes too from steaming tears in
Tea-colored eyes
The kettle whistled Reza said, like
The train whizzing past his little
Iranian township that sang
Where poplars grew tall, very tall
Reza’s arms ceramic and
Bent bow-like from his time in jail
In a dark cell where he wasn’t given
Books to read or
Newspapers but just lashes and blows
Now and then for reading Marx
At the university
His tealeaf eyelids brimming up
With that memory …
He handed us glasses on silver holders
Held them tender, candles during prayer
The Revolution was not for my
Heart and soul, Reza cried
O my dear comrades, O my friends…
I came to be with you for freedom
And manifestos and democracy
Talks showering morning’s calm
On poplars I loved, my friends loved
Friends who were lost and gone
For singing The Internationale
Their arms bent too, cracked ceramic
Backs scarred, resting in unknown graves
Sometimes letters from prison came
Once a year, till they stopped, mentioning
The smell of tea freshly brewed
Just like this, verses of aroma
Coiling over us during our tea
With Reza one nineties evening…
He still waits in exile.
First published in Mad Swirl
**
Waiting on the News
By Nabina Das
Come Aitaa
we must discuss before time if we want radishes in this year’s garden
green gourds climbing a common fence, sure, you can have some
also coriander to sprinkle on the pitika for a late afternoon meal
bhoot-jolokia that no one will eat, the army fancies it now we know
the newspapers have it all, the tea shops get their fortune told
Come Aitaa
Let’s talk about the one-legged pigs and calves born this year
the ducks that won’t stop chasing the hens even if you yelled,
about the corner-shop Bipin I’m not sure, his ma died crying
for he was gone in the forest, they say, to become an insurgent,
but the mother said… to find the old dog Gela of the mangy coat--
to those stories Aitaa, my answers are slippery feet on oil
Come Aitaa
Let’s walk down the paddy lanes just till the town bus stand
While you wait for aunt Moromi; I’ll tell you why Aslam won’t sell
His fish cheap even if you swear on the hungry-mouthed floods
forsaken huts and the fungal pots pans we won’t ever throw away
but if you wonder why the one-eyed Harekrishna didn’t return
from the big market of Ganeshguri, no ID, no whereabouts
Aitaa, I swear on my loveless luck I’d have to invent a new fairytale.
By Nabina Das
When they came home they praised
Her for her naked room, the swiped floor
Kantha-stitched cushion covers and a neat
Tulsi plant doing a dhamail in the breeze
When they arrived at the garden gate they
Marveled at the roses she grew after meals
The verandah with old cane stools dozing
Before evening gods would arrive for alms
When they were asked to say a few words
They saw her brass urns glint on shelves
Filled with partition stories, re-invented,
Re-told with new metaphors washed clean
With her starched chemise in this side’s sun
They wept to see her calmer than usual
So, they sat down by her body’s silence
When they looked at her all wrapped in white
Sandal scents holding on tight to a gray lock
Tucked behind the right ear, they also saw
Her fingers soiled from that side, maps of tales.
This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship
**
After the Show
By Nabina Das
We were on the paddies
we walked gingerly
toes to toes to heels
against toes
they said someone
might be following us
We were on
the rails of words
we spoke less
just squeezed
proverbs like stress balls
or mother’s hand
We were inside night’s
armory where
owls sharpened our
verbs of anxiety
skunks clawed at rising
codas of our breaths
We were sweaty
after our show
each one of us done
with our roles
entering a new theater
with the summer mist
where our faces
were terracotta
against the thuds
of rifle butts someone
said would follow us
till the journey’s end
We were deep
inside a language
whose dialogues
rang in a darkness
bright as the ancient
demon’s teeth
its beastly innocence
shone through our flak
There were flowers
red and green
there were the gods
fallen face down
songs about how
they all became
absent mannequins
also songs the grain-
thrashers sang
in the split of
old war stories
then we rehearsed
another new scene.
This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship
**
Ahalya’s Wish
By Nabina Das
Her visit made everyone run
fetch her special seat, water glass
a separate special plate, later scoured
separate, after her after-work snack
We kids ran in a tumult to see if
her teeth were different in number
than the last time, slurpy betel
juice soaked, scary monster-red
Mother made chitchat, served her
coconut candies in summer
black sesame sweets in winter
with jaggery or handmade bread
Aunts poured her water slowly
careful not to spill, not to mop
once she cleaned the outhouse
a relic from an unknown rural life
Once she cut the shrubs, weeded, threw
the dead skunk in a ditch and cleaned
up, we kids asked her to pick a name that
she’d like to be in her dreams so she
could be allowed to play with us
make us clay dolls of earthly shapes
Her dark forehead gleamed, no sindoor
the sari-end bunched at her sagging breasts.
Her instant candor still rings in my head:
“I’d like to be made flesh, don’t know the name,”
she said. “Feet first, I will touch everything.”
This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship
**
Was walking to the library
She naturally didn’t see
The truck creep up behind her
Stuffed with soldiers wearing
Leafy helmets, false implants in
The heart of that shell-shocked
Macadamized Bengal town
**
Her face a sorry storybook
Quite a few pages torn
When they found her by
A garbage dump, stared at
By the ancient panhandler
The poor bastard refused arrest
Shouted abuses, got suitably
Thrashed by the police
**
The young man whispered
Show me your palm your
Red henna peacock from
Last night’s festivities
Then she read him a poem
About crocodiles in snare
Until they fell asleep in
Each other’s arms, dreaming
**
There was a river, grass and
Flowers shrouding its banks
Its depth unknown, but easy
For the rebels to swim
The same night Yahya Khan
Made quick plans to strike
Universities where students
Danced to songs of Tagore
**
That was a night when nervous
Sirens screamed on, his
Would-be bride was picked up
And thrown. Folding up
Maps that fooled, didn’t show
A country of hearts, he left
A peacock mourned for her
And him. No country yet for them.
**
Image from the Internet: Jamini Roy, Untitled; gouache on paper.
Sleep is a sharp river bend
Geology too, on a face-smooth rock
One that climbs up the banks
From the creek that flows
Behind my hill on a cascading street
Called water, silent at night
They say the trout should
Flock after this neon winter passes
And now only sprigs float
Below the dam after six miles
Where half-nude youngsters jump into
The liquidy sheet ignoring signs
That say “don’t”. They still do
With their sudden laughter waking up
Us who sleep on the rocky shore.
**
Image from the Internet: Six-Mile-Creek, Ithaca, a painting by John Clum
Wood-Story Before the Millennium and Now
This is a table where we used to keep a glass vase in the nineties
the sun a syruping gooseberry often tumbling out of it reckless
a wooden table, smooth-plank body of a tree dressed for our
weekend dinners. Some clutter as it happens with faces clustered
coats of varnish and heavy-lashed lacquerware, dead-white ceramic
this will still be the same surface where we will spill the gravy
push the sparkling tea across, lick any fallen crumbs with thumbs
**
Keep the fast, it gives long life
to your husband, those elderly
women will implore and
let the table carry ornate
plates of offerings you won’t easily touch
only after the moon does first
its shadow on the water on your silver tray.
And then the table can sing like a cricket
all that crockery clattering
we will eat everything before
the moon-shadow devours the mind
ignoring what the women say.
In fact, you will know, I only cared
about just crickets because they
love the blackness of soul just as I do.
**
When I close my eyes I see my aunt lissome and dark with her braid
long like those thick twines for hauling country boats to shore
she smiles and shows a tooth we were told is of the elephant, rare.
I see her on her back on the bed tossing a red plastic ball over her chest
lob and drop and lob and show the gajadanta smile while my uncle
sits two feet away on a table, the one they never dined on, used as a shelf
for things, littered for the most time. He dangling his black-shoed feet as
if he is a kid watching the unbelievable enchantress woman’s trick
of lobbing a red-desire ball high up; the head of the old-fashioned bed
preventing him to leap forward, also because I zip into the room
looking for my cousin as uncle shifts, legs undangle, the table creaks.
**
The life story of woods
when they come from
forests of greenness
tells of more lines and stars
than found on our palms.
**
I don’t remember when Habib Tanveer or Gangubai the siren throat died
when was it bringing home wads of cash that quick dirty jobs paid was cool
money for home, food, electronics, but no song or lines; but I do remember
rehearsing one afternoon with Habib for a play we would perform in a street
where racketeers and launderers ran their shops; they watched, we stood
on the dust as if on breadcrumb crusts strewn on a table top, hewn uneven
because no one cleaned; a china cup stayed back, the old tea leaves telling
a tale of the millennium as they should, like all things emancipated and sweetly old.
This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, New Delhi.
Image from Danse Macabre literary journal
Luit On Our Tongues
We were five or six, men and children
in a tempo, that rackety raucous vehicle
With three capricious wheels heading
towards Sonitpur, our vacation, where
Mangoes had ripened summer’s belly with
the monsoon’s heavy showering grace
The usual route was flooded, abandoned
Luit had licked it wet, fungal, even after
The water receded; this was our Old Luit
father kept telling me how the Red River
Has its liquid name from the colour red
after a battleaxe washed itself, lots of blood
Now there are bridges that drown currents
hurrying us in buses and cars in a riverine flow
The Bodo teacher sitting just next to us said
the river does actually speak the curious hue
In gurgles by his village sweeping in a chant:
Bhullum-buthur. He smiled. Bhullum-buthur
Bubbles in the head, the mad water’s dance
the Brahmaputra in news and TV he knew
It still gurgles day and night, another man said
like human voices when slashed, when spent
Gasps bhullum-buthur in river tongue, the dead
so did our Luit, took stories along and lives
Between conversations from the diverted route
we saw the faraway river gone red-eyed with mud
The blood all faded, perhaps the colour of the red-
ness entrenched like the leftover evening sun.
The other titles published in IL are: "No Country, No Names"; "Gandhari's Eyes", and "A She-Ghost can only call Names".
Image from my computer: Setting sun on the Luit (Brahmaputra), Assam.
