Kunwar Narain

He sells peace in the neighbourhood.
His shop
of loudspeakers
is right next to my house.
...

Pull him out first. Uproot his house
from its foundations
and make it stand on its side like a cot;
...

I wandered all day
and nothing happened
I met people all day
and no one humiliated me
I spoke the truth all day
and no one felt hurt
I believed everyone all day
and no one deceived me.

The miracle is
that when I returned home
it wasn't someone else
but I
myself
who returned home
totally intact.
...

As usual
this time also
the police reached the place
much after the incident
so that they could record what
the eye-witnesses said. But

except for a heap of ashes
and charred bodies
there were no witnesses

the old and the young
who had built the pyre
with such frenzy
and had lit the fire -
the killers who had fed the flames
with helpless victims and danced . . .

Where did it happen? . . . In this country.
Why does it happen in any country?
In Belsen - Biafra - Belchi - Vietnam -
Bangladesh -
...

Wheat-coloured, a peasant's ways,
scarred brow,
height not under five feet,
talks like he's never known grief.

Stammering,
if you ask his age, he'll tell you -
several thousand years, give or take a few . . .
Seems crazy, but isn't.
Has fallen off high places more than once,
and got all broken up, so

looks glued together,
like the map of India.
...

Lying in a field of flowers,
I have often thought about the dew,
fluorescent dots
dripped onto the petals
with nibs of light.
What astrologer designed this complex horoscope
of the glittering firmament?
And why do these luminous signs vanish,
from one to zero?
Whose is this cynical, geometrical yawn?

And then I thought
about the bedraggled leaves under the trees -
Who thought up this mathematical puzzle?
The wind is counting:
it gathers leaves anywhere,
and deposits them anywhere.
At times, it snatches a few leaves from the tree,
crumples them and tosses them carelessly away.
At times it spreads out a new sheet,
and doodles trees, trees, trees . . .
...

Occasionally, when a flower blooms
the whole forest dotes on it
and in no time, flowers fill up
its body and mind, water and land,
its each and every minute.

Then there is the other forest
that did not have a flower
or any talk of it.
Just a question
that a seed in which is encoded
the lineage of a whole tree,
how is it that after coursing through
the many branches and sub-branches,
genres and sub-genres, loops and sub-loops,
sequences and starts, of its development
and reaching its zenith
there is still saved
an unassuming beauty?

Some day
in a wilting voice
it must have said - I have to go now . . .

On bidding farewell
the many angularities of its going
must have changed to analogies, limb-by-limb.
First it must have gone like fragrance
then like form
like sap, like hue
then it must have scattered wing-by-wing
like a kingdom.

But as it went, it must have once
turned back and seen
its own spectral image
left in someone's imagination,
and seeing something even more beautiful
it must have stood speechless
somewhere between earth and sky
a helter-skelter shadow picture
in the hazy light of some folktale.

An incomplete creation
returns to earth again and again
looking for the same listless eyes
that see life as if a dream being effaced
and leave in dreams an ineffaceable life.
...

Finally, I'm losing touch
with my laughter.
Often it is missing in the right places,
or it explodes in the wrong ones,
as if right and wrong were all the same thing,
as if my laughter were not mine, but had a will of its own,
roughly sketched in,
not signifying happiness,
just a part played by a clown in a silly play.

Sometimes semi-laughter,
or pseudo-laughter,
or mad laughter
contorts the intricate moulding
that flakes from the face . . .
Only the eyes laugh,
Or the lips.
The rest's half-submerged in tranquil depths,
glimmering like a rock
that lifts up its face,
shaped by millennia of pounding waves
into a human semblance.
...

This time he was not there -
the old tree that always stood at attention,
like a guard at the door to my house.

His worn leathery trunk
weather-beaten life
wrinkled rough upright shabby,
withered branch like a rifle,
turban of leafy flowers,
rugged boots on feet,
creaking, but full of vigorous courage

In sun in rain
in rain in cold
untiringly alert
in khaki fatigues

He'd accost from afar, "Who goes there?"
"A friend," I'd answer
and sit down for a moment
under his benign shade.

In fact, there always lurked in our ways
the mortal fear of some common foe -
the house had to be saved from thieves
the city from plunderers
the nation from its enemies

had to be saved -

river from becoming drain
air from becoming smoke
food from becoming poison

jungles from becoming deserts
humans from becoming jungles.
...

All the things in my mind
were otherwise absolutely clear and chronological
that each city had
its histories and modernities
its city squares and thoroughfares
lasses and lads
rivers bridges gardens parks
difficulties and amenities
similarities and specialities
its palaces and forts
museums galleries theatres
its writers artists stars
and legends of martyrs
its epics, armies, ports and airports.

The map of each city's geography and history
was absolutely clear in my mind

That one day,
in the zoo of Lucknow or maybe Krakow,
while rambling, there rambled in my mind
the map of the entire world
and man's entire history . . .

In what time am I?
Where have I come from? In what city am I?

In Kafka's Prague
in a small room, No. 22 Golden Lane?
Or in the by-lanes of Venice?
Or in Ballimaran?
Am I in the grand palaces of Habsburg?
Or in Wawel Castle? Or the Diwan-e-Khas of the Red Fort?

When I returned I saw
standing in Humayun's tomb or maybe the Qutab's precinct,
a new riddle of Amir Khusro
connecting
to the chronicle of the arts, another link.
...

Eyebrows raised at some youth's youthful ways,
on a broken armchair
half-sprawled
half-stalled, coughing, old, this Lucknow.
To the Coffee house, Hazratganj, Ameenabad and Chowk*
split up in four mores, this Lucknow.

(1)

This Lucknow of a few dead-beat youths
arguing pointlessly at each point -
boring each other, but bearing each other -
running into each other, yet shunning each other -
swallowing woes and wallowing in woes -
and longing for life hither-thither.

(2)

Another Awadh* twilight -
took two hours to take in and spell out
a trifle needing ten seconds to sort out
yoked one's untiring brain
to the rattle cart of a brainless lout
tired it out on Hazratganj streets - up, down and about,
no ends met today, made do with a talking bout
spent the evening yet again, like a fated rout.

(3)

Bazaars -
where wants run out of breath fast,
Bazaars -
where an epoch of crowd strolls past,
Streets -
with no space to name,
Hustle and bustle -
with no cause or aim,
just a come-and-go so dreary,
this is - the town's haberdashery.

(4)

Like a tomb of dead magnificence,
like some widow's forbearance,
propping up a canopy
of sad Awadh twilights
atop domes turned rickety,
Like a courtesan's song and sway,
each tomorrow like yesterday,
Lucknow, like a hunched nawab,* bowed,
like courtesies and greetings bestowed,
amidst ruins, the lament of some princess echoed,
like delicacies embroidered on a delicate dress,
the city's frail finesse,
like quawali-singing* poise
to entice some fickle head
in the decadent graces of princely stead:

Longing for a new life like some patient,
the Lucknow of Sarshar and Majaz,
the Lucknow of connoisseurs and alas of bores:

This is Lucknow, Sir,
ours and yours.
...