A few poems

Nandini Sahu

Delhi, 10 a.m. Winter

Did you hear it right?

 It’s 10 a.m. January, Delhi.

 Hitherto, no light.

 The sun is earnest and quiet.

 The mist hangs heavy overhead.

 Chandni Chowk is fighting

 with seclusion; a man with

 hands in his heavy coat pockets

 whistles a tune to battle the chill.

 No listeners out there.

 

Vaishnava jan to tene kahiye…

An old man, a freedom fighter, may be,

 takes a proud walk in Rajghat

 his teenage grand-daughter prefers

 Lady Gaga on her i-pod

 waiting for grandpa in the car.

Vaishnava jan to…in Rajghat.

 No listeners out there.

 

 Delhi, the city of mosques and minarets,

 the city of war and peace, stands still

 at 10 a.m. It’s still a little dark.

 Did you hear it right?

 January, Delhi, 10 a.m. a tender delight.

Puri Beach

Lured by silky sheets of sunlight clouds

after days of heat

nights of humid meandering climate

she flaunted her cold waves, the sapphire Bay of Bengal,

throwing tantrums of a woman.

Overwhelmed, enamored

I relaxed awhile, in October Puri beach,

where darkness died, white prevailed.

Here cold wind rebuffs the clutter

wind and air hum with

the consummation of love, that

here we are equal,  coloured  and fair,

neutrally in words and spirit.

Here history creates chapters new

and He smiles all the while

with wide open eyes.

He is the Lord of humanity

Lord Jagannath

our steering  principle, our vision

to see each day a rollicking fresh century.

The groan of the unfortunate, the poor suffering soul,

rend the skies with the reverberation of waves,

pull down the pillars of the paradise

in the chanting of mantras in

His temple in the midst of music of drum

of dhol. The Lord of man

cannot afford to sleep, round eyes

large and open. He goes through birth after birth,

is reborn in you, me, him, her,

we all glide in the ocean of

love, pious adoration, aspiring  to lull in

 His open arms forever,

resting in Puri beach

where love  and compassion

glow, reflect, refract

turn into a multitude of rainbow worlds.

Here the sea and the sand

invite. Sun beams descend like day dreams.

Ripping the spaced out canvas of sky

life breaths.

Pretty damsels, dance and music,

food, chat, gupchup, colours, merry-go-rounds,

honey-mooners, balloon kids,

lovely men and women

white Mems ,dazzling smiles,

their  dresses bright, viewer’s delight,

the snake-charmers, puppet shows

the full-bodied fisher-woman

drying salted-fish

eyes fixed in the horizon

her man seems a dot fishing

afar, singing a love song,

invite.

Even the bubbles, adult lusty foam

 invite.

Life breaths.

In October Puri  beach

darkness dies, white prevails

amid

silky sheets of sunlight clouds.

Hand-in-Hand

A man was sitting sad

I did not know him.

I only knew the masquerading sorrow.

I smiled at him.

He did not know my smiles.

Only knew the sharing .

I extended my hands.

We did not know each other’s hands.

Only knew walking hand-in-hand.

I picked a handful of salt water.

I did not know his tears.

Only knew thirst quenched, hearts drenched.

Draupadi

Why is it that they tell me

I do look dignified

after such humiliations.

My life full of such trivialities.

I know this much,

I am in Arjuna, and he in me,

I am seeking release in the love of my lord—

Krishna;

And Karna—in a strange corner of my heart!

One after another shock

ensnaring me, like a China doll.

I am not myself.

I am not alone Arjuna’s love,

nor Krishna’s

nor even Karna’s  lone victim

nor the diadem-studded queen

none of these I am.

I embrace ‘all’ ,  I bleed in ‘all’ .

In the  Kurusabha

in my long clothes, my shame I armour,  spread-

eagling in all.

This body I wear is not mine.

Like the expansive earth, it encompasses ‘all’.

My five sons—

particles of my blood

I know not their roots. Yet I call them mine.

I bleed infinitely in the lost identity of ‘all’.

I wish if I could distance myself

from my own  self and be lost in one.

In Krishna, in Arjuna, or in Karna (?)

in one,

honestly I like to know

what it feels

to be absorbed wholesomely in ‘one’ .

This is  Kurukshetra—

the land of half-humans, demi-gods

on this  blood-torn land

I cannot wail, nor can I sob.

So my heart,

like fire I play with you.

Oh, fire!

I am fire,

I am born of fire, my life is fire,

I know not, if my death be fire too !!

Sycophants, one and all, encircle me

sway and swindle me, sweltering my bones

as if tickling me

by putting one after another tiara on my head

trying to heal my unlocked hairs—the

Kurukshetra

of the Pandavas.

An illusion I am

I suffer, I am the symbol of suffering.

Even when I laugh with the cruel, hot  blood

of Dusshasana,  I suffer.

And in the city of the dead

I die hundred times in delusion.

I seek release, I know not where—

may be in all !!!

Monsoon in Puri Beach

Rain-drenched, deer-eyed

monsoon Puri beach.

The sky opens its petals

to her lotus face

hedged in waves and tides.

Wind infiltrates  deeper

into the tidal labyrinth.

In the monsoon.

The present belongs to us--

the new generation

less cynical; wealthier in ideals

perhaps

less selfish too. It’s a bee

from the same hive

that tingled  me

to sweeten  the pills of memory.

Now I am a habitual nomadic.

A keystone species of the biomass

I am

in the tangle of streams.

In monsoon Puri beach.

The sea is silent

before the monsoon.

Silence is a groundwork

as absorbed as memory,

a caged fiend.

To exist is to communicate.

Above the tides

above

 walls of water.

The pied kingfisher plunges

down – down – down.

Birds fly the nests.

In the Puri beach the tides

touch  the feet of Lord Jagannath;

incessantly the rains

sing His glory.

Lord Jagannath, the timeless lover,

smiles. Smile melts

as the rain drops.

And  teaches us

to escape from the demons within

orbiting the deep corners of psyche

in a precipitous collision course

a blue utopia.

In the mist behind the rains

the wind gets annoyed

with a snoring sea,

the blue turns to slate dark

and is submerged.

Lost stories, lost memories

rise from their graves

howl from the cliff tops

for their vanished earthly loves.

The waves, in a hurry, like

fleeing refugees

pursed by the invading onrush of the sea,

carry their foam babes in their arms

rush, pant, collapse on the shore.

The sea’s surface distrusts

the dialect of its depths

that are haunted by the ruins of human destiny.

A poem is written on behalf of a

bewildered humankind

the poem for the monsoon Puri beach

a language made flesh.

In the Operation Theatre

I’ve wrapped that moment

within my naked memory

when the doctor, the angelic doctor,

put the scissor on me.

The moment when my blood sprinkled

 in  the operation theatre

and I cried out my age-old wails.

My blood, my innermost parts

gripped me to hang between life and death

and I was nailed to the cross,

the cross of all my sins,

desires, sufferings.

My soul was naked, body nude,

my eyes were vacuum

as my heart was.

I could  then  feel him.

To welcome him I moaned   aloud

as if   it were  the moment of my death.

The sombre room, the sharpened instruments

the green clothes,  multiple

hands  hovering  over  me

the photograph of the Mother and

the stillness of the silence

all, all entered into me

and I fainted.

After so many memories

after so many dreams

I woke up,

to find my  ‘reason’  to live, at last,

in the operation  theatre.

The bird from my heart’s nest was free,  the

pretty little fair bird.

I became the proud mother of my Parth

in the operation theatre.