My Sister’s Bible
My Sister’s Bible
A collection of poems
(Translated
from Malayalam)
S. Joseph
Worldwide Circulation through Authorspress Global
Network
First Published in 2016
by
Authorspress
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My Sister’s Bible
(A collection of poems)
ISBN 978-93-5207-283-5
Copyright
© 2016 S. Joseph
Disclaimer
All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
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Printed in India at Krishna
Offset, Shahdara
Dedicated to
my mother and father
The ottal
reeds caught in the wind
paint the
noise of the crow-pheasant.
(From “Beyond the
Brick Kilns”)
3.
The Mole
4.
A Letter To Malayalam Poetry
6.
The Mason
7.
Group Photo
8.
One’s Own
10.
Running Ant
11.
Dhwani
12.
Elephant
13.
The Fishmonger
14.
The Song
15.
Can Write About The Western Parts
16.
Water
17.
When We Part
18.
The Same Road
21.
Views
22.
Cow
23.
A Meeting
24.
Dressing Up
25.
Washing Stone
26.
Prison
27.
Fading Away In
The Shade Of An Umbrella
28.
Some Dark Spaces
29.
With The Moon
30.
Butterflies
31.
Aquarium
32.
The Light Of God
33.
By The Sound
34.
Pencil
35.
Unexpectedly
36.
Shorthand
37.
Many Lines
38.
Black
40.
The Core
41.
Just A Few
44.
Two Girls
45.
The Line
46.
Boy Friend
47.
Sister
48.
Mystery
49.
The Eel
50.
Stitching
51.
Basket
These are what my sister’s Bible
has:
a ration-book come loose,
a loan application form,
a card from the cut-throat
money-lender,
the notices of feasts
in the church and the temple,
a photograph of her brother’s
child,
a paper that says how to knit a
baby cap,
a hundred-rupee note,
an S. S. L. C. Book.
These are what my sister’s Bible
doesn’t have:
preface,
the Old Testament and the New,
maps,
the red cover.
O
In my student days
a girl came laughing.
Our hands met kneading
her rice and fish curry.
On a bench we became
a Hindu-Christian family.
I whiled away my time
reading Neruda’s poetry;
and in the meanwhile I misplaced
my Identity Card.
I noticed, she said
returning my card:
the account of your stipend*
is entered there in red.
These days I never look at
a boy and a girl lost in
themselves.
They will depart after a while.
I won’t be surprised even if they
unite.
Their Identity Cards
won’t have scribbling in red.
O
* Stipend: Stipends
were disbursed by the government to
students from economically and socially backward sections of society.
I know a girl
who has a big mole on her right
cheek.
She lived some distance away
by the hillside with cashew trees.
Whenever she passed along the
alleyway
by the side of my home
I would look at her, removing that
mole.
She would pass on, head bent.
Isn’t she the daughter of that
woodcutter,
she has no friends – said Mother.
Later, a woodcutter married her
away
and she got a family and children.
There are no cashew trees there
now.
Someone said
that there was something missing
in my poems.
Isn’t it the problem of a big
mole?
I asked.
O
Met you on the river one day,
sat together for quite a while.
The river has a window, you said,
through it I will fly away.
Kept remembering what you said
Even after I left you to reach my
village.
If the river has a window, it must
be a house;
If you wanted to fly away, it must
be a jail.
I live among the poor,
in a hutment just like theirs.
Eat what I get,
have to fetch water from afar,
hear father calling me a dog.
Have to clear mother’s shit and
piss.
Tins, sandals, bottles, paper,
my job is to pick and sell them
all
People call me a rag-picker,
vehicles refuse my knapsack.
Yet I called you,
you didn’t come.
I know your people:
Those like big buildings.
They locked you up
in stanzas and metres.
You saw the world through a hole,
tripped and fell against household
things.
Won’t forget the way you looked at
me
as, decked in silks and smiles,
you sped away to the temple in a
car.
Tired of it all, eh?
A girl may long
to see the woods,
to sleep in a thatched hut,
to wade through filth and slush.
She will burn in the sun,
catch a fever in the rain.
What you want is freedom,
right?
That is all we have:
You can say what you like,
can bathe in the brook,
can chirp with the wag-tails
visiting the compound,
can sit on a mat on the veranda.
Mother and Father will
keep your company.
I will come rushing after work.
Can lie down on a supper
of gruel and sprouts
or just watch the sky.
Owls’ hooting would scare you,
then I will cover you with love.
O
The ploughman’s poem:
He covers the field with
cow-dung and leaves,
and levelling it he returns.
The sky gets busy drawing
in the muddy puddle
with its slanting coconut trees.
Turn your head a bit,
and you will see the washer woman
through the plantain trees.
The toddy tapper on the palm
takes up the rhythm of her
washing.
Clothes hear even in their sleep
in the sun.
One of the poems of the
forest-dweller
is to smell out an elephant
from a handful of earth.
The mason looks at the stones
and the stones look at him.
Does the boatman write poetry?
For he draws a wrinkled circle
with the water that he
scoops out of the boat.
Will a tin-pot be poetry
for one out of sex-work?
Yes. Since she has found another
life.
The beggars’ poetry is
to have to point to themselves
without fingers.
One may think
the grave-digger has no poetry.
He is singing,
All our hopes get buried
In the
churchyard’s six feet of earth.*
The field is ripe for harvest.
Reaping is poetry,
to be sitting, tired from reaping,
in the shade of the coconut tree,
to be drinking water.
O
* Lines from a popular
Malayalam film song
Once I went to work with a mason;
sat on the cowshed’s half wall
after the noon-meal.
A bird is pecking at a banana.
Can I catch it?
A yellowed papaya leaf is gliding
down
I can make a flute with that
hollow stalk.
At dusk, while in the toddy shop
The mason said:
You are unfit for this job.
You keep on murmuring,
brood too much,
Bring a hoe for a hammer
And a brick for mortar.
Just vanish with that pan!
The mason died a few days ago
But in my memory persist
that bird eating the banana
and the stalk of that papaya leaf.
O
Tomorrow is the ‘social’ and the
group photo,
don’t forget to turn up
I have paid the money,
we have to stand close to each
other,
says one girl
The readers may think
it happened in college years back.
Fine, you can think so.
Had a life estranged
from every one in every way.
So I just went underground
to my limited shelters.
What do you think?
Some complex?
How does a poor, low-caste fellow,
dark to boot, live in Kerala?
Have you an idea?
Yes this is the experience of
different people,
in different places
including that of women.
Don’t always read it as mine.
That’s why I said
it doesn’t have to be college.
If it does,
we can strike work together,
study together –
But, mind you, I will disappear
once in a while…
Haven’t you seen those who
disappear once in a while?
She shows me the photo.
One who stalked her is standing
just behind her.
Of her own caste.
It’ s because of this disease
he chose to stand there itself.
You can remove him
and have my picture there instead.
Time has changed,
I am not doing that.
There is a cursed life some Malayalees live all along.
O
Being born by a river,
can call the river one’s own.
I was born on a hill top and grew
up there.
Climbing down the hillside
one can reach the rivulet.
There I bathed, washed my clothes
and went fishing.
When I had grown up I went down
along the banks of the rivulet
smashing my head against rocks;
going beyond the bend
through the bamboo plants,
sneaking under a short bridge
it reaches a larger rivulet.
I bathed there
washed my clothes
caught fish.
I went further along the bank of
the rivulet.
The rivulet merges into a river
Did not go along with the river.
For
I am only a poet of the rivulets,
a small poet.
My own rivulets call out.
O
Between these lines,
sometimes I and sometimes you
may cease to exist.
We are not acquainted with each
other.
We might have seen each other
in the town, or on the beach.
It might be you
who stood holding the railing of
the bridge
watching someone angling down
below.
Or, we must have met somewhere
while going out to buy meat or
medicines.
We are just ordinary people,
aren’t we?
But we try to do extra-ordinary
things.
You drive a vehicle.
Or open a shop availing a loan.
You pass an exam. You sing a song.
I try to write poems.
Our actions may outlive us.
I will cease to exist in between
writing.
And you, in between reading.
O
Having dropped a
leaf on which an ant runs about
into the water
can be
re-written as having abandoned a penniless friend
in a city
of which he knew but little.
Lying to
her,
sending
the woman who had come to stay with you
back to
her homeless home on a bus,
can be re-read
as having left the kitten on the other side of
the river.
But as to where the rejected
city dwellers and villagers go,
can only be written and read
as such.
O
Often
felt helpless because of the
quarrels.
Look, I will leave you and walk
away to my home,
she had protested yester-night,
Mother wore the chatta
and mundu** and left from home.
But when she reached the stone
beneath the slanting
coconut
tree
she just sat down there.
Having sat there for sometime
as she returns
we
the male children would ask mother in a mocking tone:
No place to go, is that it?
We would laugh loudly.
I who today turns out to be a poet
was the first to
tease
her.
Today there are no open quarrels
at home.
Everything is merely suggested.
Mother will spend her time sitting
or lying in the central
room
with flooring plastered with cow dung,
Or in the porch,
or
behind the cement ledge of where we keep the firewood.
Sometimes I feel sad that she will
soon dress up and leave the
house and this world.
That sentence ‘No place to go, is that it?’
Which I uttered to mock Mother
that day
Seems to be the biggest dhwani
that I have ever used.
In life as well as in poetry.
O
* Dhwani: Sanskrit aesthetic concept about hidden meaning
** Chatta and Mundu: Traditional
dresses of Christian women in Kerala
The elephant in the forest
is the fish in the water.
Fish is caught from the water,
water remains intact.
Elephant is caught from the
forest,
forest is left intact.
Fish is turned into curry fried,
elephant is made to lift logs,
is caparisoned and paraded in the
festival.
The water only goes on moving
The forest smuggled in by the
elephant burst out.
Men flew, screamed.
The elephant in the forest is not
the fish in the water.
O
The fishmonger was washing the
vessel
in the running water of the tiny
stream.
The screw-pines did not see
him.
There is a motor workshop where
the stream
heading down straight, takes a
sharp turn.
He didn’t see its laterite wall
either.
Parallel to the stream
to the south and north
the M.C. Road* raced away
It’s we the children who saw
in the water not even half a foot
high,
the body of the fishmonger
lying face down,
the vessel, the scale and weights,
epilepsy having twirled him down.
Water playing about his hair.
In the water, the screw pine leaf
playing about
stabbing down and raising itself;
in the still corner of the stream
water-bugs roam.
What does one see reaching that
same spot now?
A chicken shop,
the workshop with plastered walls
the paddy-field in the earth.
There is no sign of the
fishmonger.
O
* M.C. Road: The main central road, the high way of Travancore, built
during the reign of the Maharaja, connecting Thiruvananthapuram in the south
with Angamali, the northernmost boarder of the erstwhile state of Travancore.
Someone lives
in a house in the valley.
When the sun fades
you hear the song
going around the mountains.
Don’t ask as to what it means.
Meaning or meaninglessness –
is that all there is to it?
We can sit in this tree’s shade
listening to his song.
How beautiful is this nature and
world, isn’t it?
Know how many leaves are there on
this tree?
Something like that is there in
that song.
O
Can write about the western parts
Can write about
the western parts,
having gone there
to work for the bund
at the age of
thirteen or fourteen.
When I walked through the kari*
the wind pushed
me on and on.
Above the
plantains with torn leaves
fields extended
as far as one could see
Drank the water
from the canal
Tried rowing
someone’s boat.
It is in the
water that the stone wall is built
I also dived
into water with large stones
and placed them
in the deep.
You have to
feel about to place the stone.
After the
midsummer vacation, returned to school.
So also in
poetry –
the stone has
to be placed in the unseen depths.
O
* Kari: Black soil
In the past people like us
did not have wells.
We had to go to the houses of the
affluent
to fetch water.
They would draw water in a bucket
standing in the yard.
We were to stand below and draw
water in areca nut palm –
spathe pails.
Else there were water holes in the
middle of the
paddy
fields.
Mother or grandma going to fetch a
pail of water
tied to the ends of our calls from
the yard.
Losing all sense of time they will
exchange news from
the
village.
Then chaachan*
will return from work
as full as a toddy-pot.
This water is not hot enough,
arguing with Mother
he will pour it away.
Beating, fisticuffs, kicks
The neighbours will come to look.
Then with me and a lighted candle
Father will go to fetch water.
Since the drama was not over yet
the night will doze off
with the curtain string tied to
its legs.
Today we have a well,
no water.
Tilting the well,
took out four pots of water.
O
* Chaachan: Father
When we talk about
parting from the house
amma* said:
Everyone has his or her own affairs.
This place has to be sold and divided among all.
The youngest daughter has to be married off.
Elder son left home long, long ago.
The younger one has reached nowhere.
You too will go.
Where shall we go in this old age?
We shall be dead and gone soon.
Younger sister threads the needle.
My daughter has been served rice
by her mother.
She comes in between and touches me.
I said:
amma, we too will part
and later die.
Never will we unite in such a house
any longer.
Shall we ever meet anywhere, later?
Now the child runs around us.
O
* Amma: Mother
The same road
in the tree-shade.
That same man
selling tea.
From the distance
a pedestrian walks up.
Question,
answer –
everything
like old.
Mud road,
grass lawns,
the goat that grazes
at a distance,
the sky…
Everything.
No,
look once more
sharply.
The road has been tarred.
Another man
sells tea and cola.
It is a woman
that approaches from afar.
Question
answer
unclear.
It is true that a goat
grazes in the distance.
There are two kids also
there, the sky darkens.
O
Beyond the brick kilns,
beyond the sugarcane fields
going past the woods by the stream
in which jungle fowls roost
and the ledge of the paddy field
that races above the stream
beyond ottal reed thickets,
beyond the toddy sub-shop
there is the house of a painter
friend.
He has father and mother
uncle and sister.
Since she is a ‘distant’ sister
sometimes she comes along
and stays at his place.
A girl ties a rope to the
lone tree and swings,
the rat and its death
entering the same burrow.
Two red chillies,
what he had painted,
Paintings from Wayanad.
He did not draw
his life at all.
Having seen him drawing
having become friendly to it
the bricks in the kiln
draw with the smoke, a tree.
Seeing that the sugarcanes
dip their brush in white and
paint,
the jungle fowls draw
with pencil legs.
The ottal reeds caught in
the wind
paint the call of the
crow-pheasant.
O
I love you,
she wrote
on the palm of my right hand
which vanished no sooner than she
wrote it.
Only the lines in my hand stood
clear
as the crossroads where she left
me waving.
Reaching that same road-junction
in the city
after sixteen years
the same little shops
the trees and flowers that bent
over the wall
were looking up
that path through which
she faded away waving
from that junction.
Husband, children, house
she may be staying so,
I imagine for no reason.
Otherwise I will start crying
till my right hand gets soaked.
O
Valley, small pond
children stand bathing their dog.
In the pond pulsing fishes.
In the mascara touched eyes of the
fish
dog children sun
and a bird flying away.
In the eye of the sky
pond valley child.
And the thaanni*
tree in full bloom.
In the splintered glass of the
mind
earth sky sun
and the dog licking its wet body.
Can one see the dilemmas of the
mind
in the pond, in the sunlit grass
land,
on the edge of a large rock
in the sky beyond …?
O
* Thaanni: A tree with
medicinal qualities.
The cow grazing in the swamp;
near it the pond heron, in the
sunny moment.
Go back, cow! Go back cow!
Pelting stones
the little kid makes it scramble.
The one that went back was the
mud-coloured bird
with its belly all white.
The sky above, the sky above.
Grazing and grazing the cow
drowned in the mud.
Its scream became bubbles,
then the grass covered it and
everything was as old.
Go back, kid! Go back, kid!
The sunlight fades; darkness
falls.
O
Between the rubber plants with
copper buds
there is a drunkard path.
Beside it
a small talipot palm.
Saw an old man.
He said:
your folk were our serfs.
I said nothing.
Slowly
slowly
the palm-leaf
opened towards the crows sitting on the rubber trees.
Are your children in America doing
well?
Oh, the kids left their father
behind
and took away the mother?
I asked.
He also had no reply.
With a bundle of grass on her head
and a cow
a poor woman passed by.
O
Sitting on a bench in the railway
station
reading C. Ayyappan’s* stories.
Staring at the floor
a woman of around twenty passes
by.
There is a child in her hand;
hair copper-coloured.
She picked up a stone from near
the track
and disappeared
behind the stacked logs.
The train is coming.
While opening the book
sitting by the window,
she comes along with the baby and
a song.
Has dressed up now.
What did she do with the stone?
O
* C. Ayyappan is a Dalit short story writer in Kerala.
Sitting by the window
someone sang about the spray;
someone caught up in the quarrel
as to whether he had got wet in
the rain.
Only we got soaked
said the predecessors.
I only felt the spray, said he.
Between the arguments was
forgotten the washing stone.
It lay between the trees,
below the sky,
on the river bank.
With a cheek bruised
from everyone’s blows.
Getting wet in every rain.
O
* Remembering the bruised face of Adivasi leader C. K. Janu after
she was brutally beaten up by the police.
I have never gone to jail
nor seen any prisoners.
Have looked from beyond
the moss ridden wall.
Have stood thinking
about the cells and people inside.
Maybe, a convict from inside the
jail
will stand thinking many things
about the outer world and me.
He doesn’t know me,
but his memories starting from the
prison,
if they forge ahead,
may sometimes
come and touch this cell from
which I write these words.
Inside the large window
which have cells for religion,
caste and colour.
Because
his memories may also
surely be like
my words that fall scattered
move hurriedly;
and joining together
hit that single point.
O
of an umbrella
In the poetry of the early days
there is a girl.
Those poems were for her to read,
who, in April when the konna* blossoms
filled the whole place
gave me a photograph
and faded away in the shade of an
umbrella.
The photograph was taken
when she was sixteen.
With big eyes
slightly dark,
disappearing in herself,
nobody’s own,
photograph of a girl.
It was lost somewhere?
Every April
when I see konna flowers
I see her.
Reached her southern place
one day,
someone who waited
within the words that described
the way.
Walked through the fields where vegetables were planted,
the body got scratched by the
screw pine leaves.
Reached her house –
saw the konna plant.
Packs a sapling,
but forgets it there.
My early poems
are in my distant house.
I add these few lines
to them.
The sun was not shining bright;
nor did it rain.
Then why did she
fade away that day in the shade of
an umbrella?
O
* Konna: Golden shower tree, Cassia
fistula.
Even when the noon day sun
runs across the rubber groves
some dark spaces remain here and
there.
Mostly birds like crow pheasant or
tree-pie
arrive there.
Flying low and lower still,
plot by plot,
tree by tree,
they fly close to one another.
Their cries light up
Those dark spaces
My appan*
sent me to find out
where their nests are.
By the time I set out
the rains came pouring down.
I flew up the hill like a
dragonfly,
watched the waterfalls gnawing
the insides of the hollowed rocks.
In the bushes where leaves rotted,
while I leaned and listened,
the cicadas stuck to my shoulders.
As I wake up
under the tree,
fruits are falling;
one there, one here.
O no, it is the jingling laughter
of a forest girl.
We built a house on the meadows.
In a glide
the herd of deer turned to
sunlight;
it was looking for shade.
The herd of elephants, turned into
darkness,
was looking for sunlight.
One day she showed me a cave
in the heart of the woods.
The sounds that go into it would
come back.
It was full of water.
Do all birds and men come
from here? I asked.
O, I don’t know,
I remember her saying.
Then one day, lying in her lap I
said
the search for birds’ addresses
took me nowhere.
I also remember her saying then:
They’re both our children.
Appan called me in a dream.
Hearing him call we left the
woods.
By the time we reached the village
the leaves were falling
My house and my appan
lay covered with leaves.
Only now I realized
my house too was in a space
knotted with darkness.
The lights there had gone out long
ago.
Now at noon, a crow pheasant arrives there
and in the afternoon, a tree-pie
too.
Their calls light up
Those dark spaces.
And then one day when the children
could understand things
I called them and said:
I went in search of the origins of
these birds,
failed to find out;
now you should go and find out.
By the time you return
the leaves would be falling.
O
* Appan: Father
Coming by the train crossing
distances
the full moon travels along the
train –
trees, houses and lights fade
away.
Wife waits in the tile-roofed
rural home.
Getting down from the train in the
city
going by the bus
then walking.
Moon is still all along
up to the moment of reaching home.
And the latch of the wooden door
is put in place.
No, the moon is shining in the
room as well.
O
Butterflies are artists who fly
around
with paintings in both hands.
They exhibited paintings to the
people
when there was no such practice.
Later cave paintings, murals and
canvases emerged.
The fleeting butterflies still fly
around
with paintings in hand.
As larva they had no paintings in
hand.
They are both worms and painted
wings.
They combine ugliness with beauty
and
make the ugly beautiful.
Human childhood walks after the
flying butterflies,
holding two paintings in hand.
Humans shed their wings when they
grow
and then they crawl as worms for
the rest of their lives.
O
Fish live in water.
But humans, animals and birds live
in air.
So there is no point in saying
that
they live on the soil, on trees,
in flats, in caves and so on.
See, air and water give way to all
other beings.
Otherwise you cannot pass through
rock, wood and wall.
The constituent elements of air
and water are the same.
For fish water is the base of
life.
For terrestrial beings, it is air.
Air is peril for fish.
Water is danger for terrestrials.
Humans and animals live at the
lower strata of air.
On at a slightly higher level live
birds and planes.
The atmosphere is an ocean on the
ground.
The sea is a strange aquarium.
Life on the ground is a life in
another strange aquarium
with an open top.
O
She sleeps
in the light of a lit torch.
She thinks
that light guards and protects
her.
She believes
it looks at her all night
and that light can look.
Suppose light can indeed look
but how can it guard and protect?
That is her belief
She is a believer in God
and she is obedient.
Does she think
the light which protects her
is the light of God?
Then God is light,
the world created by God;
God’s light scatters all over it;
she sleeps with the prayer.
But that light is also one
that lets another person see her.
O
I saw six of my students together
today in the city.
They stood shocked
at my question, ‘Where are you
going?’
Then quickly they smiled,
told me where they were going.
‘Did you recognize me?’
I asked them.
Yes, and they said my name.
I was happy.
Those girls who can’t see,
recognized me by my voice.
That recognition leads me
to a realization:
I am becoming invisible.
From now on I can be recognized
only by my voice.
O
It flutters its wings over the flower;
then it descends,
sits on the flower a bit;
then ascends,
hovers, descends
slants down, lies
head down; the butterfly’s
ways seem unpremeditated;
So are their midway stops.
Similarly
as natural is a little pencil,
fine-shaping a touch-me-not,
flowers with pollen
that sticks to your hand when touched;
darkening the moment of the bat
that dances freely
after drinking honey
in the banana flower.
Writing the graceful slither
of the krait sliding down
curvy, on the door.
It gets worn out by all these.
Its dark taste lingers
on the front teeth,
lips,
tip of the tongue.
O
Unexpectedly
some lines
come,
soon disappear.
In those lines
some poems
may have come;
there never came
a full poem that way.
I wish
at least one poem
came like that.
When you search for them
in the world of poetry
you see they are few.
Ones with big goals
adamant positions
complaints
muscular strength
noisy arguments
are dime a dozen.
Walk aimlessly,
look at the fish in the stream,
worry about the end of cold.
A sudden rain.
an unusually cold night
bat flying into the room.
Were there poems
like these?
O
Neatly combed to the back
the hair seems to be on a run.
Hiding inside the knot
written up by merging several
curves
sprouts of hair behind the neck
disappear in the knot
as soon as they rise up.
Nevertheless
a sprinkling of brown
as if to remember
the moment gone by.
An odd hair
strayed at the back
as a finger
ran over the left ear
then flew forward
landing between the lips.
No matter how carefully you tie,
a wandering single hair,
hints of the lushness
of the whole hair let loose.
O
So nice to sleep in cold weather
when you have a blanket around you
Such fun to look out of the window
during the heavy rains of idavam*
If there are clear water springs
even hot summer is real fun
Even death is sweet
if you fill your loved ones’ hearts
The loner looks at the field
enjoys himself sketching it.
Looking back, even lost love
shines like a jewel.
Unappealing features of an
ordinary girl
turns elegant in the course of time
Moments of prosperity occur
in between stretches of poverty.
Sit on a hill and down below
you can see the whole village
Wait by the pond for long enough
and you’ll see a leaping fish.
O
* Idavam: A month in the Malayalam
calendar
On a black face
eyebrows, eyelashes and
lips have a special charm –
same trick as writing
on black with a deeper black
When the black woman gets drenched
her eyeliner spreads –
It’s the black that sets out of
black
and strays somewhere
The jet black shirt worn by the
black man
covers half of the black skin
the rest is lit by the lowered
wick.
What is black?
A place in the middle of
gathering things looking for
thickness.
If so, only in black do you get
black?
Hairblack isn’t just a sign
Skinblack isn’t just a sign
Skinblack in animals
entices
Skinblack in humans is low;
whiteness has status
What is skinwhite?
A shade stepping on black, isn’t
it?
Black, you can say,
lies hidden beneath white.
O
A newspaper cutting on extinct
fish
is pasted on the college wall.
The ones who pasted it dissolved
among the
other students.
Images of swimming fish are there
with the news.
Through the pictures plenty of
paths open
to the inland ponds and sylvan
streams.
While looking on, a thought pops
up:
Will my race also become such news
tomorrow?
Extinctions have become an
inevitable truth
on the planet.
Some animals are already in the
protected list,
even the tiger.
As I toddle everyday
when I turn the corner
I weep remembering my race
facing the threat of extinction.
O
1
If you give up a few mundane
things
sit at a windy place
walk through the fields
climb the little hill
quench your thirst from the
spring,
you hear the woodpecker working on
the wood.
2
The areca trees have lined up by
the river
houses plastered with cow-dung in
their midst.
A woman cuts wood at the shore;
torn pieces of wood
on the moist bit on the walk-path.
Dried-up little streams faraway
covered by nameless plants.
There I will sit back,
with the sandy breeze on me
and cry.
3
A friend lives in the shade
of a tree.
His shack is built there.
He would shiver
when it is rainy and cold.
His life is real;
when all junk is filtered
that’s all a man is about.
O
Why is it that just a few people
keep shouting water is depleting?
Just a few.
Why is it just a few people
worry about rocks?
Just a few.
Why is it that just a few people
Give company to hills?
Just a few.
Why is it that just a few people
talk about tribal people?
Just a few.
Why is it that just a few people
stand with the homeless
at the crossroads?
Just a few.
Why is it that just a few people
stand with the landless
near the Ghat slopes?
Just a few.
Why is it that just a few people
go looking for answers
to unanswerable questions?
Just a few.
O
The man looks around
from the top of the sand-hill
his hands tensely kept on his
folded mundu.
The sand-hill is chopped out
for rail line doubling.
A machine pulls out sand below
a house covered with dust above.
The train had a long pause
(the doubling work delays signals)
Now it flies;
trips would get easier
when the line doubles.
Things would get difficult
for the man standing
beside the house on the sand-hill.
O
He sits in the wild thicket
giving once over to the slash play
of kuruva barb fish,
that one with all pectoral scales
in collective glares.
Now his gaze flip-darts a
fishing-line.
Not that he figures anywhere in
the tale.
No, not still the kuruva is
privy to it.
When it gets to know
It’s no kuruva fish at all,
just a lass called fear
who scrambles away her tresses
drip, drip, drip.
O
Two girls lived in a house,
they looked alike
They did their homework, had food
slept very early.
The room had a wooden ceiling,
it was slightly cool.
On the wall were pictures
skillfully drawn by the girls.
They always saw happy dreams
and slept very peacefully.
Their childhood continued nicely
no sorrow at all.
One day they had a pain,
the girls who looked the same.
One day their parents shut the
door
went somewhere far away
Don’t, do not, open the door to
anyone
familiar though they might be…
Saying many ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’
they went somewhere faraway.
The girls watched television, drew
pictures tastefully on the
computer.
Time went by and evening came,
tears filled their eyes.
Night came, the world was dark
and when their parents got back
They opened the door, cried alike
and then they smiled alike
The sun came, fell on snowflakes
writes down about the girls.
O
A circular field,
a pond
in the middle of the field,
a chameleon
sits
like a picture
on a fallen, tiny tree branch;
a small butterfly flutters.
A boy
sits with a fishing line.
The line that holds
the stillness all around
seems to be in his hands.
O
1
She told her mother; then
was about to set out
to meet her boy friend
who had written
he would wait for her
the whole day.
Then her father came in,
asked her
where she was going
on a holiday.
She muttered she had told
a girl friend
they would meet.
2
Later lying on bed
did she tell her father
this?
‘Father, I’m going;
a boy friend
is waiting.
I must go.’
Did the father look elsewhere?
Did he say anything?
O
My sister and brother-in-law
bought a little land
on the hill,
built a house
in the shades of
a mango tree, a jackfruit tree;
Glimmers of fish
in the well they dug in front
of the house;
while my sister lived in sorrow
because of her children’s loss,
sand-digging machines
came like thieves,
stole the hill around the house.
Sister’s land turned into
a small plateau
on which the house stood
amidst the wind;
all had gone by the time
I got there.
Her brother, me, sings
with a torn heart:
“One who brought down the hill
should burn and melt into nothing
That which was gained by selling
earth
should turn into a handful of
earth.
Mala* crushing Malayalees
are not Malayalees.
One who brought down the hill
should burn and melt into
nothing.”
O
* Mala: A rocky formation larger than a hill, usually covered by
thick vegetation; the words Malayalam and Malayalee originate from a
combination of the words ‘mala’ and ‘aazhi’ or the sea.
While walking in the shade of a
tree
in the college campus
a boy ran up to me and asked,
‘What is mystery?’
I was flustered for a moment
then tried to say,
There is mystery in everything,
something that eludes grasp.
Now, can you please elaborate it?
Nothing came to mind,
told him to come later
to the department.
The boy went away.
I waited for him
with a Japanese film story.
I am still waiting.
Is he a student in this college?
Which course is he in?
What is his name?
The waiting continues.
O
When with fish they display the
tail,
when with snakes they display the
head
none keeps company for long,
very rarely seen nowadays,
getting extinct.
After catching them, the puzzled
fisherman
might let them go.
The ones not puzzled
curry them.
Thus they turned into a tale.
Animals, birds, people,
languages, organizations,
which are getting extinct
are arranged in a table.
While adding the eel to it
also note the reason:
‘Having always had to lead a
double life.’
O
A girls combs her hair, sitting by
the window.
This sentence alone would make a
poem.
A piece of cloth being stitched;
the girl combing her hair sees
rabbits,
swollen red eyes and lips chopping
off leaves.
A smile comes to her lips
thus some more pictures get
stitched on.
O
Ottal reeds are brought
from the edges of paddy fields
encircling plantations;
the dark surround of ponds;
the confines of the canal.
Palm frond slats to bind the rim
may have been brought
from among boulders
entangled in creepers atop
hillocks.
Fronds of the talipot palm
yield vazhuka slivers and theru
slats.
Sipping black brew,
basking in the red afterglow of
betel,
ottal reeds, theru slats
and a knife without handle
– a basket is born.
Or, sometimes,
it’s slivers and slats
with a song thrown in.
After the first knot is tied,
the strands plaited,
tugged tight with toes,
ah! there it is, a little sun!
At other times, it is a sky
upturned.
Though we were under the regular,
overturned one.
Baskets go to market.
And come back with ray fish and
pony fish,
hand-held coconut grater, pleated mat,
and tender-sweet coconut kernel
for the kids to feast on.
Baskets also go for aaraattu festivals and perunnaal
fiestas
and return with namesake-moms happily met over
there.
Or a dizzying ‘well of death,’*
merry-go-round or circus,
brimming with pots and pans.
At times, one basket
lies almost at rest in the house
holding some rice and a few provisions.
Another basket drains the steaming rice,
another treasures jackfruit and seeds,
yet another, now bottom-torn,
for the hen to brood under,
another yet, almost
done.
Two baskets together
form a globe.
Ottal is stalked under the thatch.
Also, a bundle of vazhuka
slivers and therua slats.
A knife threading the dark
thrust between the
rafters.
Today, ottal reeds
are no longer brought
from fields or from around the ponds.
No theru slats are
brought from hillocks
There are no songs,
no more.
In the twilight-torn East, a basket of light.
O
* Well
of death: It’s a deep, broad pit lined with vertically placed plants,
resembling a giant basin. A stunt-man rides a motorbike along the walls of the
pit, remaining horizontally owing to the centrifugal force obtained at high
speed. If the speed slackens owing to some mecha-nical failure, the rider collapses to the
bottom of the pit to his certain death. This adventure-sport is a favourite in
Kerala’s fair-grounds.
K. Satchidanandan: “My Sister’s Bible,”
“Identity Card,” “A Letter to Malayalam Poetry,” “Different Poems,” “The
Mason,” “Group Photo,” “Elephant,” “Some Dark Spaces”
A. J. Thomas: “The Mole,” “Between these Lines,” “The Fishmonger”
P. J. Benoy: “One’s Own,” “Running
Ant,” “Dhwani,” “Song,” “Can Write about the Western Parts,” “Water,” “The Same
Road,” “Beyond the Brick Kilns,” “After Sixteen Years,” “Views,” “Cow,” “A
Meeting,” “Dressing up,” “Washing Stone,” “Prison,” “A Village Girl,” “Fading
Away in the Shade of an Umbrella”
Ajai Sekher: “When We Part,” “With the
Moon,” “Butterflies,” “Aquarium,” “On
the College Wall”
Jobin M Kanjirakkat: “The Light of
God,” “By the Sound,” “Pencil,” “Unexpectedly,” “Shorthand,” “Many Lines,”
“Black,” “The Core,” “Just a Few,” “Eases and Difficulties,” “The Song,” “Two
Girls,” “The Line,” “Boy Friend,” “Sister,” “Home and Us,” “Mystery,” “The
Eel,” “Stitching”
Saritha varma:
“A Lass Called Terror”
M. T. Ansari : “Basket”