DNA TAG-A-POET CHALLENGE: April isn't the cruellest month

You'd agree, summer is infinitely more tolerable when you’re balled up on the windowsill, sipping on aam ras, sinking your teeth into some succulent poetry.

As the Academy of American Poets winds up their annual observance of April as the National Poetry Month, we decided it’s time for our indigenous celebration of language and literature! 

Indian writing in English is a rich stew of the foreign and the localised, the colonial and the cross-bred. To remind ourselves of the uniqueness of the language that has conceived decades of powerful literature, DNA arranged for readers to throw poets Keki N. Daruwalla, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Jane Bhandari and Sampurna Chattarji a creative challenge. The result? The poets wrote four poems in English, woven around Hindi tag-words assigned by our readers, creating some beautiful bilingual literature, just for you.

Now, should you meet a certain Mr. Eliot in one of your lazy siestas, would you tell him he was wrong about April?

Word: Mitti
Poet: Arundhathi Subramaniam
Tagged by: Saloni Chadha, Mumbai

Mitti

As a child
I ate mud.

It tasted of grit and peat
and wild churning

and something else I could never find
a name for.

Later I became
a moongazer

always squinting through
the skylight 

believing freedom
was aerial 

until I figured that the moon
was a likely mud-gazer

longing for the thick sludge
of gravity, 

the promiscuous thrill 
of touch

the licence to make, 
break, remake, 

and that’s when I uncovered 
the secret role of poets —

to be messengers
between moon and mud — 

and began to learn the many 
languages of earth

that have nothing to do with nations
and atlases

and everything to do 
with the dreams 

of earwigs 
and the pilgrim trail of roots 

and the great longing of life to hold
and be held, 

and the irrepressible human love 
of naming: 

ooze, mire, manure, humus, dirt, silt
mould, loam, soil, slush, clay, shit, 
mannu, matope, barro, 
tin, ni, shwan, luto…

All have their place, I found,
in the democracy of tongues

none superior, 
none untranslatable,

all reminders 
of the anthem 

of muck 
of which we are made, 

except when June clouds capsize
over an Arabian Sea

and a sleeping city
awakens to an ache so singular

that for a moment, for just a moment, 
it could have no name 

other than that 
where sound meets scent 

and a slurry of matter 
meets a lunatic wetness: 

mitti

Just that. Nothing else will do.

***

Word: Fursat
Poet: Keki N. Daruwalla
Tagged by: Sanghita Sen, Scotland, UK

Illustrations: GAJANAN NIRPHALE

Drunk poet in Lucknow
Declines meeting girlfriend

       
Forget my stutter Ji, and forgive my stammer
At the moment my head is under a hammer.
Not auction Ji, not Sotheby and its kind
No takers for my skull though its insides are sublime,
Whiskies’ hammer has put memory in a bind.

Forgive my stutter Ji and forget my stammer
you know I am uneasy when it comes to grammar
In Urdu we say ‘fursat mein’, in English ‘at leisure’
The prepositions confound, this ‘in’ or ‘at’ leisure.
In Punjab we pronounce the word as ‘leiyar’
(Don’t tell this to your friend that almond-eyed Miss Aiyar).

Madam I want to think of you in fursat
as night and dawn both think of dew
                                        in fursat
I am waiting for that desired moment to alight
when I can fall in love with you
                                        in fursat
But I must warn you, some options are foreclosed
There are problems in meeting, the Bars are closed,
 kabab joints have been thoroughly burnt and bulldozed
                                  In haste, not in fursat 
there can’t be any romantic trysting here
for the Romeo police is good at fisting dear

I have a proposition, please Ji don’t see red
Could I write a love poem on you instead 
                                                      in fursat

***

Word: Maa
Poet: Jane Bhandari
Tagged by: Aishwarya Sharma, Mumbai 

Illustrations: GAJANAN NIRPHALE

The Badge of Honour

This is Maa, they said:
A proud old lady, bundled

Into her sari, ankles
Weighted with silver,
Ears bent under the weight
Of multiple earrings,
The small gold mangalsutra hidden.
By silver chains around her neck.
On her forehead, red.

I never wore this badge of honour,
And never missed it when he died.
But when they said, 
You cannot wear red,
I cried. That day I cried.

***

Word: Bahurang
Poet: Sampurna Chattarji 
Tagged by: Ankur Kesarwani, Pratapgarh, UP

Illustrations: GAJANAN NIRPHALE

How Long Do You Have Left?

Bahurang 
the fool
in the variegated suit 
that will set her apart 
from the black-and-white 
pawns
as she stakes
her truth 
in the flatterer’s courts.

Bahurang 
the crew
that will whisk away 
the safety nets
and spread 
instead 
a trampoline 
to fling the raging poet
into air,
higher, still higher! 
till she finds 
a way 
to turn from rage 
to lucid speech
and so,
return, 
to earth.

Bahurang 
the song 
that weaves 
voices into rolling riffs 
with tabla-taps and sitar-strums, 
Jew’s harp, shehnai,
flute and violin, 
into one.

Bahurang 
the reef 
born of tumult 
under water.
When a volcano erupts, 
an island emerges.
When a volcano dies,
an island subsides,
and all that remains 
is a coral reef, 
reaching 
towards the sun.

You,
the fool, the crew, 
the artist, you, who paint in 
single hue,
dare you dream 
in many tongues?

And you, 
lost maestro of motley sound,
who will hear you 
now?

Bahurang Tubbataha*, 
clownfish, parrotfish, 
hawksbill, hammerhead,
how long 
do you have 
left? 

Perhaps
just as long 
as that soap bubble floating 
solo 
past my window
in a hotel room 
in Gujarat.

Bahurang 
its miraculous descent—
unbroken, 
glistening
and every colour 
intact. 

*Bahurang Tubbataha is the Filipino name for a rich, diverse and endangered coral reef in the Philippines