Creative impulses

Indian High Commissioner Nirupama Menon Rao's soul-searching poems in her first volume of poetry rain rising have been neatly slotted into three sections: Remembrance, Reflection, and Exploration. Today we reproduce her poems found in the Second section Reflection.

gandhari

We went to your play
today
Where you spoke
Through
the voices of five women
chorused grief
and impotence
drawing shadows
on crimson earth.
You dissected
the cause of war
and
your collaboration in it.
You questioned
your own silence
the stoniness that drew
dry sobs
scattering the gizzards
of carrion in inkpots.
You wished for
a dam of containment
that could see
your children play
and not lie unfeeling
in silent slaughterhouses
that you would admire
the perfection
of their creation
and not wear
this visor
of pulverising grief
emptying your embrace
of all encumbrance,
you are stone,
caked earth
and
pointed, shattered glass.

the ending

the light shone too brightly,
but it was clean and quick,
afterwards, she walked away
secure in the emptiness
to which she returned.
Years later,
she felt the loss again,
remembering
the life ebbing out of her
putting everything
together,
she knew
that it would not
be hers to ever grasp
even
if she cried that they must stop
this exercise of careful choice.

internal emigration

A phenomenon
identified newly
where escape is not
some exotic destination
not a voyage of listless faces
old, gnarled
or of youthful exuberance
and tendrils of hair
soaked with
the salt of the sea
but a tunnelling
many leagues under
vast reaches, scouting
eyes squinting in
darkness
of unspoken urges.
You are
the woman
singing under water
imagining the fishes
entering her
as she watches
her murderous lover
sing a little water song
to her drowning
knowing she will live in spaces
unseen to all
but her,
a complete celebration
of her sovereign state.

the downside

It was
a day that brooked
no shade, 48 degrees
Still rising, mirages
ricocheted off
the ice blue sky.
My attention flitting,
like dilated pupils
I drove the car
into a deep rut at road's end
Thinking
of my daughter
crucified on
a rotting lamp post,
black tresses shorn.
And,
the expletives curdled
under my breath, as I,
cursing the stalled engine,
resolved not to wear
flowers in my hair
For today and
all those stretching
tomorrows.

you need an elephant
You need
an Elephant,
to smile,
This
prescription
for a sad country
with fate lines
that are crossed,
scarred,
lost
in unravelling
the many reasons
for sadness.

Elephants
do not loom
in this stretching
forest
Silent,
withdrawn,
depressed
in canyons.
But
midnight drums
in firefly embossed
twittering cricket nights
summon you
to test your smile
in this clearing
of temples and
suspended oil lamps
Because
it is the season
for elephants
and
abandoning sadness.

two faces

He is
a small man,
balding,
wears a loose shirt,
black pants.
I choose
the fish I want,
he picks
out the fresh ones,
arrived this morning,
ice packed
from the Gulf of Kutch
and proceeds to clean them,
swift knife strokes,
precise, he knows
exactly
where the excisions
should be
Fillets neatly,
and packs it all in ice
for my car journey home.
Afterwards,
he wipes his hands,
sits down at his
rickety desk
by the co-worker
who sleeps on the floor
catching his afternoon nap,
and writes out my bill,
as neatly as he
has sectioned the fish
I speculate
how
he might
have made a
perfectly suitable
corporate executive,
brown tan suit,
nice leather shoes,
Expensive watch on wrist,
languid wife,
nice car,
two kids taking
violin and piano classes.
May be,
like in the movies,
he is just that
on alternate days,
and on others,
he engages in this smelly,
bloody diversion,
because it keeps him
in touch.

Known delinquent

A quiet stillness
draws
a circle of protection.
somewhere
light years outside him.
Inside
the turbulence rises
inking purple
around his eyes
pain that has
its tongue torn out
spitting, foaming
etching animal limbs
on damp, scaling walls.

A black umbrella
unfurled
from his school days
with fading initials,
"K.D."
neatly sown
by his mother
"K.D", his name,
actually
but all the school boys
who knew more
as school boys do,
screamed
"Known Delinquent!"
The name attached itself
tattooed scorpion
on his parchment skin
the purple rimmed eye sockets
the crusted fingernails
and the child's mind
in the man's body.
With good long term memory
he can actually remember
how he enjoyed that film
from 1964
because it had
two intermissions
and he traded
his last rupee
For two
rainbow shot ice creams.

citizen

The hole
in the sweater
he wore
just above
his heart
was
of his own making
anticipating
from where his end
would come,
he felt those
endless sweater rubbings
would keep
his heart beating.

These sons of his
bear
his eccentricities
in varying degrees
sometimes
translated into
madness and sometimes
into
defiance of their father
throwing stones
at their own house
defying custom and
in their rebellion,
beyond
the reach of reason,
but knowing
their father's secrets.

ghazal

Sung from the heart with wine
in your veins,
Song of lost love and wounded
hearts, a ghazal

Akhtari Begum has
sweet-scented camellias in
her hair
Mesmerizing sadness in
her dying ghazal.

In coconut country we sing
*Mapilla love songs
Moonlight beached on sands and
a chanted ghazal.

North to south, we drew,
this great arc
Of infinite longing, with
the breeze wafting a ghazal.
One August moon hate
brimming
over faultlines
Bridged even now by the ghazal.

This garnishing of love,
in shaded arbors
Yellowed ivory, ghost
microphone and a ghazal.

* Muslim community of Kerala.

Solitaire

It was, finally,
a life of undelivered promises.
May be,
too many questions asked?
Met by eyes
that stared through
until
deep down inside
one weekday,
it snapped.

His next stop
a window,
a balcony and
cobalt sky with
his grief shredding
him down to bare soul.
Oddly,
remembering the Afghan poet
he implored
the moon to come in
through his window
Knowing love does not
come in through closed doors. -
The moon's kiss
on his shadowed cheeks
brought release
His dreams wafted down on
his ruined garden
to settle
on arches still left standing
stubbornly,
with no real reason why
they should be there.

His white shroud
was humble enough
and he left all the instructions
for the disposal of residual
matters...
Only the arches still left standing
cradle his life's high points.

Youkali*

A soft accordion wafts
her soprano voice into
This backroom,
she sings of Youkali
lost islands,
where promises are kept
and lovers are true
and your travelling companion
is a vagabond ship
at world's edge
Fascinating that
a drowning,
intoxicating,
tango leads you there
to Youkali and
The outstretched arms of
the love
you had never touched before
at world's end, where
Oceans deliver vagabond ships
and unbroken promises, and
heap scented orchids
in Youkali.

* After the Tango "Youkali" by Kurt Weill, German composer, 1900-1950.

To be continued
 

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