Poems in Museindia

Three poems were published in the Mar-Apr 2009 Issue of Museindia, the literary ejournal:


View from Jama Masjid’s Minar

Like ants
they seem as I look down from the top
mostly white, some grey, some black, red e’en
creeping from one end to the other
of that large flat courtyard
itself Red
crawling to their ablutions - their wuzu
and then heading on to the side of the setting sun.

For whom this sijdah?
To a hawk-eyed viewer
who sees them
as ants, himself perched
forever at the top?

The Sole Slipper

I am the riot
that took place here
on the twentieth day of this summer

I am its victim
as I lie here,
stranded on the now desolate road alone
divided from
my better half

I was worn first
once
then entered repeatedly
and then left here, in a hurry
smeared with colour
in the middle

I am its witness
A soled slap on society’s face.

(5th September 2008)


Gujarat and Kashmir

I

If only it was
that the sky was not Saffron
and the ground not Red
and the house, the workshop, the bakery
were not ablaze
in flames that threatened
with more hate than heat

and had they allowed us
the little green haven,
Land,
that we too had nourished,
having wrested it,
from common foes,
with equal gusto

If only the eye was Red
merely of smoke
and my sister dead
of stabs in her back
only.

Or if, atleast
they had heeded
my folded hands, Brown
my head,
bowed in supplication, round,
in entreating
what humanity
a mob may have,
and not chopped it off…
to be soaked
in the fountainhead
of Red
that sprung
from my
diminished
corpse,
that did not
immediately fall
as had my head
(not yet knowing
manhood, nor
the sense in it all,
the candles of my
seventh wishes
not yet been thrown away),

Then,
when Abbu would come
in three days’ time
we all would welcome him
and
I would run up to him
And jump into his arms
as he’d come,
just as I had asked,
with a plane
exactly like the one
that made,
on Republic Day,
Tricolours
in the sky.

II

This
is what they called
“paradise on earth,”
and it was ours
we used to believe,
until,
the day
we first heard
the noise
and went to the square
to behold
that the world
had gone mad
that it was
Black,
and Red
made of shapes alien,
and smells.

Smells.
The smells
that smelt
like melting fat
in a pan,
greasy meat frying,
but
if only these too
could be smelt
similarly
with an appetite
that was not to be killed
for ages to come,
smells, that were not
so gross
so revolting
to make us reek of them
bath after
bath, week after
week.

They claimed
Kashmir.
They said it was theirs.
It was
their
right divine.
And so
they were making,
and said,
in future
would make,
more
such noises
and would create
more
such smells
everywhere.
Soon it was all over,
over the radio,
the Aakashvani
and the DD.

Now,

we have live telecasts
of
Kargil and
Kokarnag.
But
that smell has not worn out,
even though today
I live in Delhi.

But so has not,
the one that comes
from the
soil,
sandal,
snow,
saffron, and the
sun that
shines on the
stones of
Shankaracharya temple, and on
Srinagar and river
Sindhu.
Some things that
spell the
summary
of my Kashmir.

(24th September 2007

Maharana Pratap

“And today I was
Maharana Pratap!

Imagine the horror
that was there
on their faces
as I came terrorising
through the field,

sword in my hand
an army following
and shouts of “Jai Siya Ram”
thick in the air.

“Take no prisoners
leave no one alive”
was our battle cry
by heavens justified.

We smoked them out
we burned them inside
their own houses, how
dare they build
mosques, on our land
pristine?

One hundred fifty to
two hundred we
ourselves staked in
the pits at Patiya,

bloody bastards buried
their dead,
now they know
the other extreme.

We dug out the dead
from their graves,
and the unborn out
of his womb,

and there it sat
as a plump trophy
at the zenith
of my towering
shamsheer,

let’s see now
how much more
they produce,
how many more
circumcised parasites
they breed.

And women too
we just slaughtered,
Me, the Maharana
I won’t touch
The women of Khan-i-Khana
though some of the Chhara
may have done more
they may have ravished,
slitting and knifing the cunts,
breasts they may have chopped off
just as they did
with the penis of men
(but what the hell those were
already slit beams).

But what an orgy
what a melee
what passion
what fun
it couldn’t have been better
even in the
best of my dreams

The public, police, politicians
prosecutors on our side,
who dare touch us?
This day we separated
the milk from the cream.

And I was at its head
Maharana Pratap I was
not just Babu Bajrangi

Now I wish that
God granting
I get another chance
then not just two hundred
but twenty

thousand I want to slay
under my own supervision
as I drive on huge hordes
of Ram’s own saffron fleets!”


4-5 November 2007
Written a couple of days after reading Babu Bajrangi’s interview in the Tehelka issue, on “Gujarat 2002”, of 3rd November 2007.