Soul-searching poems - Part IV

A poet as explorer

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 coming under the third section Exploration.

old maps of hindostan

Old maps of Hindostan,
where the Himalayas are
1slender strips, twisting trellises,
yellowing and published for
the diffusion of useful knowledge.
India within the Ganges,
and India beyond the Ganges,
plotting the meridians
of our destinations,
hand coloured by widows
and orphan children,
stare at me, through prisms,
at odd angles,
plotting caravan routes and
easy ways to the heated plain
rocky ridges of hard black stone
benign descriptions
that zoom out of
actual happenings
of holding out and giving in.
Such a long story of
how the smooth pebbles and sand
in my hands sweat
for reasons catalogued in
those old maps of Hindostan.

image of 1857

Old photographs
offer startling revelations
of what should have been obvious
that the earth
was flat, eroded, pockmarked
where the trees should have been.
The denouement -
sepoys blown from cannon tops.
Telegraph caravanned the news
science mastering raw emotion,
and what is left now,
are grainy images
of the garrison’s siege
arches incandescent
against this blackest night
yet, rendering incomplete
the names of those many
their blood and freedom song.

the kite

I shall fly
skimming the
flaking paint
Sprite sign
over the three
ducks in formation
and father and son
tackling carp
I shall fly
over red and blue
and white
of empty amusement parks
till my wings
touch the top
of the needlepoint
neck of a Sputnik tower
and there entangled
blow with the wind
or, droop listless
in the still airwaves.

kailasa-mansarowar*

After that blood-letting,
the sere whiteness of jagged spaces,
induces a tremor of spirit.
There is no account I can give of myself,
achievement is the numbness of nerve endings.
This advance to Kailasa,
above the treeline, some atavism stirred
at the source of the pounding Kali,**
invocations unbound.
The smallest effort spells
overreach of mind and body,
heart thrusting out
of ribcage, imprimatur
of a journey barely begun.

*Mount Kailasa and Lake Mansarowar in Southwestern Tibet Autonomous Region of China.

** Kali River.

II

Red-beaked black birds
have replaced
all the swans
of the old travel books.
In the waters of Mansarowar
the solitary golden fish that
gave itself up was
heaven’s gift,
to be salted and warmed
in Dorji’s tunic,
the thunderbolt,
preserved for prayers
that would be answered only
in the mind of Brahma.

III

Kailasa,
crystal-shining
secrets shut out from us,
not understanding,
we hoped for the best view
in our photographs.
In moments
like these,
being there
is all. I memorise
the mountain,
peering in Gouri Kund*,
devouring its static green,
refracted, in chromatic outburst.

* Gouri Kund: a small water body on the ascent to Mount Kailash; legend has it that Parvati, the consort of Shiva, bathed here.

IV

There were hills upon hills,
in the kingdom of the queens,
the sky rope
that would haul us up to heaven
snapped some aeons ago.
As we climbed today,
we came upon a footprint
ascribed to Padmasambhava.*
Not on this dust track
but on the rock itself,
overlooking the Rakshas Tal**
and its waters laden
with brackishness
and penance.

* Padmasambava: Indian monk who travelled to Tibet to preach the word of the Buddha.

** Rakshas or Rakas Tal - lake near Mansarowar.

V

Somewhere in the descent,
the tent encampments
of mandis
self-destructed
out of sight and mind,
This was no time for trade,
outstretched hands,
not of beggars,
but of keepers of a
little gompa* in a cave,
these flies in amber,
progeny of a faith that
survives,
tucked away in these lower reaches.

* Gompa - Tibetan Buddhist monastery.

motor-boating on the tsangpo

Yes, if you will
those coracles cannot hold
backpacking searchers of adventure
thus we motorboat on the Tsangpo*.
Across the river
not far from here
the monkey god and the ogress,
he, virtuous and kind and she
with vice abounding,
live, forever enshrined
at Tsedang**
Their mutant children
have ventured forth
into other playgrounds.

My boatman,
his leathered face
fracturing into smiles
insists
that we share his fermented drink
and shows off his Buddha painting.
He knows
of the river’s shallowness and its
depth, of the echoes
that rise from it
and are trapped
by the chortens* on the hill
immaculately conceived
in this playground.

The bus to gold-roofed Samye*
the way we must go
to this,
the oldest of those temples
with its lost oracle
and gilded newness
which the knowing say does not match
the old splendour.
The knowing, that is,
and the marble elephants, doorkeepers
with memories that go backwards.
Eyeing monkeys, ogresses and,
the ferment in the prayers of boatmen
on the silent river.

* Tsangpo - Tibetan name for the Brahmaputra River.

** Tsedang - town in Southern Tibet.

* Chorten - small Tibetan Buddhist votive structure.

* Samye - monastery and temple in Tibet.

folk-tales from the valley*

He with the flaming hat, the sun,
with his heat killed the children.
Their father in his fury and sorrow
sat with his open jaws
and momentarily
made the sun his captive.
The result they say
was darkness.

We will die
without the light and heat,
they said,
we must find the sun they said.
They found him in the green leaf
but hiding
not looking at them.
His terms were tough
and the price was high.
“I will eat another child,” he told them.
We must find a way,
perhaps this wild beast
will be eaten,
and the child can be saved.
But the forest has its deceivers
and the betrayal is also willed
by Tapeng, the bat who has the sun’s ears.
So Abo Tuni’s son must die;
what is the loss
when all of us will live.

Men don’t live forever
now, and everyday at sunrise
we feed the devouring sun
who will not be stopped
even when he enters our mouths.
Let him go they say,
and shoot their arrows
in the sky.

* From a Tagin (Northeast Indian tribe) legend.

St. Petersburg

The light here is special
Drenched by blood and frost
So much has happened here.
Bronze horseman, burning homes,
Nine hundred days written into
symphonies of emptied tear ducts.
“The iron lacework of fences”,
words of the priapic poet,
I came here to see more
than just the railings.
My eyes emptied you
Of every detail,
draining the swamp, imagining
the father finishing son,
here in this quiet summer house;
a death that was not foretold.
In the cold, congealing winter,
the line forms of people like ants
hands outstretched for ice cream,
defiant, no defeat this
even as soldiers,
and mothers, and lovers
saw death’s mission done.
The canal waters are smooth,
and the oligarchs make
patterns with their sleek cars
on Nevsky Prospekt,
and at the Marinsky,
candied ceilings,
music pitting the walls,
I think of how it must have been
To beg for black bread
on the banks of the slow, straining, river.

Samarkand evenings

We are in the Zarina,
little house tucked away
With the ersatz pool,
where a ghostly French mademoiselle
first wets her feet and
then glides in the water
while we watch under velvet sky
and the electricity gone.
Someone lights a cigarette.
It is the only light
that silhouettes Registan Square
where funny little children
trill their tourist English
straddling Moscow and Samarkand
new century specimens.

one of them, Aluk Beg
The astronomer’s namesake,
has his telescope trained
on the Mercedes Benz which
reminds him of spaces beyond
this dusty forgotten square,
in a town where builders planted
kisses on the cheeks of favourite queens,
with death as a reward
for level jumping.
Night time has ghazals
wafting in stillness
A train of couplets leaving Andalusia
Speeds like a rocket over North Africa,
Berber sands
Weeping over Sir Daria
Into Samarkand, where we sit,
our Urdu and English
making sense of each other,
even as realization glimmers
that, we are little morsels
tossed by the history of these parts.

The end (afternoon in a Moscow theatre)

Blackness is the mask
she wore and blackness
yawned inside the hole
on her temple, where they
took her out with a bullet.
That spring in Grozny
she was clear, effervescent
water, no stalking terror
Ninja
early harvest
bursts of unripeness
and now,
this funeral mask
She wears with deliberate intent

placing it over her face.
That clean jaw line
and beautiful long fingers
curls like the queen of the night
sickly sweet smell of flowers
on a Kalashnikov barrel.
Her death wish stirs
stronger
than your life zest,
an end of hope
broken shards
clean jagged edged
with blood drops
that the earth receives
quickly, greedily
nourishing root causes.

For Sara
dead now these five years

I wonder how the canyon
remembers you
your small slight figure,
smiling eyes and magnasound laugh.
Viewing the enormous gulf
that separated us
From our native places,
Here in America de los Indios,
Indian America,
Across the window at
El Parador del Colca*
it was cold, and
the thin ozoneless air
pillaged your breath
making every move freeze in
the slow motion of a silent movie.
We drank hot milk tea,
grateful for the heat and moisture
recalling the coral sunk green seas
of our nativity,
dreaming of the monsoon,
dredged jackfruit and little sweet mangoes.
Here rooted in your present and future,
this village at Colca, where
the alpaca* and vicuna* float
In eerie stillness
You have pledged allegiance
and pinned your flag to this mast
high and reaching higher.

* El Pardor del Colca - literally, look out of Colca - Colca is a canyon located in the Andean highlands of Peru, over 4000 metres above sea level.

*Alpaca - Andean animal, from the cameloid family, related to the Ilama.

*Vicuna - Andean animal also from Ilama family whose wool is greatly prized.

Chinese pictures

Looking at your pictures,
memory stirred
throwing up acrobats rubber-jointed
hands free
with gossamer seethrough bones
strapped in some stratosphere above the stage
Where breath stops...

Two little boys,
one with pigtail cap
Hid their faces from your inquisitive
Razor-edged lens, somehow
You scoop an eye
from the face of one of them
and say, watch their batik blue tunics...

And then, that dancer silhouette
Black embroidered slenderness, tiptoeing
Across a white penumbra
of inter-planetary space, you wonder,
and say, does it come easy
this fierce embrace of an alien way
Breaking free of that emperor’s great wall...

Two municipal workers, weathered calves
With strap sandals and street brooms
Take an enforced halt on the wayside
Besides a painted red genie mask that
Calls out to be felt
and touched
for double happiness...

And here is one of grey misty mornings
by Westlake,
bamboo rising, slow
with disembodied light streams
and an arms length of calligraphy
scholarship treading in
autumn haze.

the ajanta room

She wants yellow gold,
not red
to outline the warped cornice
where the white will not straighten
computer graphics bring me
a lotus holding
self-abnegating king
and green patches where you
deliberately clicked your mouse
and made little boxes
to fill with paintbrush hues
to subtly ape the original
“Write the captions, carefully,” you said.

And so, inform the unsuspecting public
of the monks and painters and
swan-rimmed colourbursts.
Floating apsaras
point the way southwestward
To those secrets hewn in Sahyadri
gateways to your world
before these days and nights
before me, beyond grasp
dots of infinity at universe edge.

Concluded
 

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