DNA TAG-A-POET CHALLENGE: April isn't the cruellest month
Dear Reader, hold off cursing the sun for a while. If you are a lover of poetry, there’s still a day for this atrocious April — also observed as National Poetry Month — to redeem itself. Sohini Das Gupta tells you how.
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: MittiPoet: Arundhathi SubramaniamTagged by: Saloni Chadha, Mumbai
Mitti
As a childI ate mud.
It tasted of grit and peatand wild churning
and something else I could never finda name for.
Later I becamea moongazer
always squinting throughthe skylight
believing freedomwas aerial
until I figured that the moonwas a likely mud-gazer
longing for the thick sludgeof 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 messengersbetween moon and mud —
and began to learn the many languages of earth
that have nothing to do with nationsand atlases
and everything to do with the dreams
of earwigs and the pilgrim trail of roots
and the great longing of life to holdand be held,
and the irrepressible human love of naming:
ooze, mire, manure, humus, dirt, siltmould, 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 capsizeover an Arabian Sea
and a sleeping cityawakens 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: FursatPoet: Keki N. DaruwallaTagged by: Sanghita Sen, Scotland, UK
Drunk poet in LucknowDeclines meeting girlfriend
Forget my stutter Ji, and forgive my stammerAt the moment my head is under a hammer.Not auction Ji, not Sotheby and its kindNo takers for my skull though its insides are sublime,Whiskies’ hammer has put memory in a bind.
Forgive my stutter Ji and forget my stammeryou know I am uneasy when it comes to grammarIn 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 fursatas night and dawn both think of dew in fursatI am waiting for that desired moment to alightwhen I can fall in love with you in fursatBut I must warn you, some options are foreclosedThere 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 herefor the Romeo police is good at fisting dear
I have a proposition, please Ji don’t see redCould I write a love poem on you instead in fursat
***
Word: MaaPoet: Jane BhandariTagged by: Aishwarya Sharma, Mumbai
The Badge of Honour
This is Maa, they said:A proud old lady, bundled
Into her sari, anklesWeighted with silver,Ears bent under the weightOf 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: BahurangPoet: Sampurna Chattarji Tagged by: Ankur Kesarwani, Pratapgarh, UP
How Long Do You Have Left?
Bahurang the foolin the variegated suit that will set her apart from the black-and-white pawnsas she stakesher truth in the flatterer’s courts.
Bahurang the crewthat will whisk away the safety netsand spread instead a trampoline to fling the raging poetinto air,higher, still higher! till she finds a way to turn from rage to lucid speechand 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?
Perhapsjust as long as that soap bubble floating solo past my windowin a hotel room in Gujarat.
Bahurang its miraculous descent—unbroken, glisteningand every colour intact.
*Bahurang Tubbataha is the Filipino name for a rich, diverse and endangered coral reef in the Philippines