Badri's Poems

[Collected here are some of Badri’s poems]

September 30, 2011

Crossing the Line

Sardar Montek Singh Ahluwalia,
He plan my poverty;
Suddenly I am a rich man,
For my income is thirty three.

Having crossed the line by a whole Rupee,
I now have more and more;
I see around my jhuggi things
I never could see before.

That magic buck floats angelic
Beyond my penury;
The thirty two upon the ground
Reach up for the Christmas tree.

The knowledge that this extra buck
Puts me among the haves,
Makes me feel I needed not
The sumptuous fishes and loaves

[Collected here are some of Badri’s poems]

September 30, 2011

Crossing the Line

Sardar Montek Singh Ahluwalia,
He plan my poverty;
Suddenly I am a rich man,
For my income is thirty three.

Having crossed the line by a whole Rupee,
I now have more and more;
I see around my jhuggi things
I never could see before.

That magic buck floats angelic
Beyond my penury;
The thirty two upon the ground
Reach up for the Christmas tree.

The knowledge that this extra buck
Puts me among the haves,
Makes me feel I needed not
The sumptuous fishes and loaves

That I never had nor ever will
Find upon my skeletal palm;
Better prepared I am to starve
With thirty third for balm.

At thirty three the son of god
Suffered fake demise;
Food or no food I too am set
To rise, and rise, and rise.

Dear Montek, he give selflessly
Such healthful advice;
Soon no poor shall remain,
But plenty of rice.

Sept 16 2011

Sanjeev Bhatt

May I salute you, officer Bhatt,
For feckless citizen that I am,
However well-meaning,
Your Promethean metal
Fires my feebleness to a blaze;
You are to our home-grown tyrants
As Bhagat Singh was to the Angrez.

Like the Amazon, Setalvad,

On the worst of day
You teach the lesson that
The poet of old taught—
When the sensible-terrified
Slink from your side,
Then ‘ekla chalo re.’

As to success, success is not
Merely the end of things;
Success is in the soul that
Man, woman, or child brings
To what is with mortal dangers fraught.

The success you already have
Is not for a season or two;
It is a flavour that generations
Will savour,
A rod of steel that the fallen
Spine will raise, giving to cruelty
And cunning their due.
BR, 15/Sept/2011

May 17 2011

(published in hardnews)

Geronimo, Indian, you never do die, do you?
Badri Raina Delhi

They haven’t forgotten
how you strove
on behalf of what was yours.
The British came for us Indians,
and we caved in;
many made merry, and do
to this day;
but you would not let the Yanks
have full sway.
Your WMD was the land,
the forests, the waters,
the peace, wisdom, the civilization
of your natural nation.
But their genocidal guilt
they cannot tame;
which is why they gave
to Osama your living name.
But the more they snuff out
the acorn of sanity, Geronimo,
the more you sprout;
have no doubt
that your argument on behalf
of the earth
will either ruin and rout
the mad marauders,
or oblige the furies of Nature
to take all, yielding new birth.
And when that happens, O Apache
philosopher, little Geronimos
all across the new world
shall sing hosannas of love,
and again you shall be the king
of universal caring.

April 26, 2011

Truth is a Truant Bird

Truth may be a truant bird,
but it is real, real, real;
like radio active uranium,
you may not Truth quell.

You may trap Truth in uniform,
you may wash the ink away,
you may stamp it underfoot,
Truth will have its day.

Nor god nor man can build a cage
of subtle secrecies
adequate to quell the Truth
or bring it to its knees.

It flies past the Commissioner
and his obliging policemen;
it brings the wasted corpse to life,
its death is never done;

it crawls on badly broken wing
into the murderous lap;
it sneaks from out the buried life,
it draws a relentless map

from perfidy to perfidy,
from encounter to encounter;
it winks from the weakest ltttle twig
at the mightiest chief minister.

The Truth, it is Banquo’s ghost,
sending banquet into flutter;
it makes of Macbeth a shivering thing,
it is Justice’s bread and butter.

April 13, 2011

The Arabs and the Imperialist Manifesto

Since every scribe is telling it,
it is best that we tell the truth ourselves.
So here is how it is:

Saudi Arabia

You know that we know that you
bankroll terrorism, that fifteen of the nineteen
who knocked down our towers
were Saudis, all Sunnis to boot,
that you run torture chambers
to which our own Guantanamo
is no more than a wimp,
that your women exist only in name,
that nothing is further from your
political kitty than democracy,
that dissent in your country is a one-way
ticket to disappearance and mortality,
that you run Mecca in Spartan white
of simplicity and renunciation,
but serve in gold plates the least oblation—
all that and more we know,
but we also know that you have oil
more than any;
and that our need for guzzling the same
gives America its name.

Be thou secure then from what rhetoric
we unleash about terrorism, democracy,
human rights upon imbecile nations
whose ripostes may be rational and kosher
but, being non-oilsome, live out
of god’s and Imperialisms’ favour.

Then it is no small thing that on your
sacred soil you let our jackboots
perform their ordained toil.

Egypt

You stood by us, and kept both
Hamas and democracy at bay,
protecting the Zionists and the promised land,
but, having no oil, it was best
that we notched a favour with
the millions who screamed ‘down
with dictatorship; give us democracy.’
Thus we prove that given the circumstance
we may have the cake and eat it too.

Bahrain

Is it a small matter that our fifth fleet
finds such welcome digs
in your waters and on your land?

Or that your Sunni despotism
keeps the Shia hordes of your populace
in their proper place?

That being the case, what is their revolt
for democracy and freedom
but sheer anarchism,
threatening to widen its insane dance
in an embrace with the Shia recalcitrant Iran?

Thus Hamas and Ahmedinijad
may be their people’s choice,
but what is there to rejoice
in electoral mandates
if they do not favour the United States?
So, O the bulldozer of Bahrain,
bolstered by conscientious Saudi tanks,
you belong to our puissant ranks.

Yemen

Same goes for thee;
poor, mangled, and miserable
your people may be,
any despotism is better
than a people’s outcry if an Al Qaeda
is waiting by.

Syria

You may be secular to the bone,
O Baathist modernists,
your women may breathe freedom,
you may have, like the old Saddam,
held your country together
against schism and sectarian mayhem,
we know how you remain suspicious
both of Israel and of us.

We know how you dare to keep alive
your links with Hezbollah and Iran.
We know how you aspire to take back
Your own lost Golan.

Such sentiments despoil your modernity,
and justify the unleashing of democracy
within your climes.
Thus for thee the bell chimes.

Iran

So what if you had no hand in 9/11?
So what if our own Saudis
spawned those men?

Your crimes are beyond the pale—
you are Shia, and you fear not
the Imperialist dragon’s tail.

The Saudi’s may be the Wahabis
who feed a Pakistan, an Afghanistan,
who banish music, merriment, books,
who torch mosques, churches, temples,
schools, and relegate to the farthest nooks
laughter and women, who contravene
every article of faith on which
the Americas began,
they are not the fundamentalists whom
we fear; indeed, we hold them dear.
It is you, who may have a Persain history
replete with poetry, philosophy, speculation,
and other gems of humanist creation,
who are the fundamentalists of menace extreme,
because you have the cheek to pursue that dream
of independent existence and national culture,
who call the vulture what it is—vulture.

You we will pursue and hunt
till the Saudis are fully content
that Fukuyama will never knock at
their door; that history may end
elsewhere, but not where our own
Sheikhs and Mullahs contend.

Libya

Gaddafi, O Gadaffi, we know you
did many good things by your people;
we also know that for four long
years you stood by us, in nuclear
dismemberment and in oil,
but, alas, we had to do what we did
for two reasons: one, to take
the world’s mind away from Arab
troubles, and to win some battle
while Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan
we fail to settle, however we may
bomb and blast, however our generals
yap yap and dress in fine fettle.

We knew that Idris, whom you dethroned
in 1969, had his loyal tribes in the east
of your realm; thus it was proper that
we sold tribal mayhem as call
for democracy, so that once dethroned,
the Russians and others no longer got to see
a drop of your oil which should all ours be.

Conclusion

Thus, O beloved Arabs, understand
once and for all:
dictatorship, monarchy, or democracy,
these are handmaidens that remain on call.
It all depends on how our cookie crumbles;

We do not give a shit
who speaks reason, or justice, rights
or reformations, who approves or grumbles.

We will decry fundamentalism when it
makes of us an enemy;
and we will call it democracy
if it says “let that be which suits
Wall Street, Pentagon, and the GOP.

February 2, 2011

For decades your endless waters
flowed quiescent,
all your fertile powers spent,
vassal to far-off matters,
as a despot had you in thrall.

How you have now turned
from slumber, O Nile,
and already spurned
with the memory of ancient might
a regime of cruel guile.

Your children of all ages, both sexes,
and all religions
fill Egypt shoulder to shoulder
and end to end—
their vision not of violence
but something far bolder:
as their conglomerate voice waxes,
they are determined
that in the Egypt to come
not just some, but all
shall feast of peace, prosperity
and democracy.

Children of true Islam,
the revolution you make
bids fair to shame
a world of perfidy that has given
to the faith such a bad name.
Your chant of human liberation
already rings in nation after nation.
Never will either the Arab world
or the rest of us be quite the same.

O Nile, your waters pour a needed balm
on a desecrated world;
do receive our salaam.

February 1, 2011

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young in Cairo was heaven.

That friend who always has something
up his sleeve beyond what seems,
beyond the moment’s magic,
already puckers his canny brows,
and, tragically distant from the glory
in Tahrir Square, counsels caution:
“ok,” he says, “but where will all this lead”?

To him I say, “knowledgeable thou art,
and professional to the finger-tips that will
no doubt type back a cold-blooded column,
full of ifs and buts, and leaks from ‘reliable sources,’
and a construction of events
that will make the millions of secondary import,
I say to you what has happened in Cairo
puts to shame all our ifs and buts, our
cold-blooded columns, our reliably-sourced
wisdoms of conspiracies and stratagems;
in the political history of the world’s darkest
days, Tahrir Square was where
the Second Coming happened;
Jesus came as Gandhi, and smiling ever so
sweetly with the sad pity of judgement,
blessed the peaceful and peace-making
legions of hateless and patient sons and daughters
of the ancient Nile, rewarding
their undaunted faith, made breachless
by common labour and common resolve,
with what they deserved.

At Tahrir that happened which
not the smartest of us in studied proficiency
could ever stipulate or foresee.
Will we now have the sense and the spirit
to take it from here, and for mankind’s sake,
set our hearts, minds, and sinews together
a new earth and a new heaven to make?

Cairo, Tahrir was the site for epiphany;
we either have or do not have
the eyes to see.

January 15, 2011

Blasphemers in nook and cranny

Who is bringing the earth to terminal grief–
blood-dripping war-mongers or blasphemers?
globalised looters or blasphemers?
racist imperialists or blasphemers?
the Brahmins of the world, or blasphemers?

The blasphemers, of course;
the other ones always have god
on their side, have they not?

And they are everywhere:
termites eating into the nooks
and crannies of the new world order
that the honest foot-soldiers of
Faith and Finance
work so hard to build
for those whom god loves.

Thus is it that we must be clear
about how blasphemers inter-connect,
far and near, in bold public square,
on Facebook, or Twitter—
spaces we made available,
so the world could be made stable
for salvation through profit-making ;
they think the progress we furnish
is simply for the taking.

Thus also the need for liquidation
if Liquidity is to be protected
for the global Corporation.

No greater blasphemers than those
who transgress
what we have designated blasphemous.

A Salman Taseer in Pindi,
or a Giffords in Arizona,
a Chavez in Caracas,
or a Muslim in Poona,
a Dalit in India,
or a Christian in Alexandria,
a cloutless woman anywhere
who dares the paterfamilia,
a Naxal in Chattisgarh,
or an Assange in London,
this avalanche of renegades
the world must abandon
to authorized assasins
and outsourced agents,
if the way is to be cleared
for the latter-day regents
of Faith and Finance,
of Values and Morals,
to do the blood-dance
that may bring laurels
to god and his prophets,
to corporates and armies,
to priests, pundits, and mullahs
who bless and bolster all these.

Thus, have at them, blasphemers—
they are all red;
have at them, have at them,
they are best dead.

Socrates was one such,
and what was done to him
saved the world for merchandize
and Capitalism.

And Capitalism unsung by Faith
is never a safe bet;
small minds that question this
offer the biggest threat.

Thus Capital’s drones and Religion’s goons,
they have a job to do,
a job no less than to save the world
from a mere me and you
that blaspheme unthinkingly
on the side of the human crew.

December 24, 2010

2011

The chicaneries will no doubt continue,
but all will never go downstream either;
there will be salmons that will
struggle upstream,
and birds that will throw their wings
against the howling wind.

Always, always, it is the undefeated soul
or two that holds back the weight
of oppression,
singing the sanity of common loves,
quelling the uncivilities of power,
shaming the marauders to look
their twisted mugs in the mirror,
sowing and spreading the radiance
that even the blackest of hearts desires
but is too afraid to acknowledge.

Were that not so,
the world would have ended long ago.

In time to come,
billions whose bread is stolen
will be better informed;
across all boundaries and hues,
they will learn to band together
and obtain their dues.

High and low,
when bullets and businesses
have run their course,
they will know the time has come
to shop for love.

So next, when we put shoulder
to the wheel,
let us feel with ever greater zeal
the power of our faith—
that however the crooks grow bolder,
all that lives must either draw breath
together, or not at all.

And that it is no longer a call
that the mightiest might ignore,
persisting like fools to have their own
air, water, fire, and shelter as before.

December 16, 2010

Radia, Tusi Great Ho

Those that compile lists
of the rich, famous, and powerful
men and women
just missed out on Nira Radia.

Once given that proverbial chance,
Radia made the rich and famous dance
to her competent tune, and made fool
of many vain achievers
without ever going to a management school.

A fine instance of how a tool
may the business world advance.

Name a corporate honcho, a minister,
a television group editor
of consequence, a columnist
that did not fear her soft little fist,
or in wisely concealed calm,
eat of her copious palm.

Is there something else that qualifies
for greatness?

Yet she does not figure among
the rich and famous
who have make the world a mess.

I salute thee, Radia;
thou hast the quiet finesse
and packed power
of the gentle constrictor.

Your velvet and fur
smother without a hiss.

You administer the kiss
of money without raising your voice
or losing your poise;
it is the self-righteous, anti-national
whistle-blower who makes all the noise.

Those that lose the throw of the dice
shout hoarse when the corporate
or minister of your choice
favours not them with a big enough slice.
such is the price of success,
but only till the next minister or government
sorts out the fuss.

O, Radia, thou wast born to prove
the truth of the simple maxim
of which the bearded German knew:
that what we call the State
is a consummate brew
of the corporate and those
that his bidding do.

The people—they elect government,
then on their way are sent,
fulfilling Democracy’s political intent.
You make the cabinet and ensure
that the moola flows
out of their plate
to bolster the needy corporate.

The tiresome moralizers call this loot,
whereas you and I know
you only further the proper
business of the State.

Radia, do not thou fret;
with Tata and the Channels—
who did not make a story
of what you were upto—
by your side, no investigative wretch
may so much as touch
a hair of your cool-competent head;
it is the rabble-rouser who
will pay instead.

Julian Assange, what is with you?

Julian Assange, Aussie, we arraign you
for taking our First Amendment to heart:
“Congress shall make no law. . .abridging
the freedom of speech” we have writ;
but that was when we were the “land of the free
and the home of the brave.”
That starry-eyed time is long past;
since then, as befits an imperial power,
we set ourselves the goal to enslave
regions and regimes that would not
play the part that would befit
vassals to our military-christian destiny.

You thought that since we laud
your over-zealous counterparts
in a China or a Mynamar,
jailed by authoritarian juntas,
and facilitate for them the Nobel prize,
you could do the same in democratic disguise,
allowing no room for hypocrisy,
and, playing god,
use our hidden truths to tar
our resplendent diplomacy.
More fool you; our posse
will pursue and hunt you down.
Hide where you will, you clown,
we will get you still.

Free is free till you play our tune;
step out of line, and you will soon
find we are the same
as those in Beijing or Rangoon.
And if the Russians want the Nobel
for you, as we did for the other two,
we will raise a merry hell
far more fatal
than anything they could do.

You mistake much when you think
that our Constitutional forefathers
would shamefacedly blink
at our procedures.
Look up the Philadelphia papers
and you will know that from the first
our professions were wisely studded with capers.

We allowed to ourselves as Protestant whites
privileges that puissant kites
alone have from Nature
over every lesser, crawling creature.
Such is meant to be the presiding feature
of our place on the hill;
those that pull us down we kill.

November 22, 2010
GDP, Graft, and Greed

A great wonder is upon us,
we “grow” at 9%
but are beset by graft and greed;
contrary to best intent.

We had only thought to put
Capital at the centre of our lives;
not to banish uprightness
deep into the peripheries.

Which is why we ensured
that religion thrives as much
as any top grade tycoon
with the magical Midas touch.

Unlike them semetic faiths,
we know there was no “Fall”;:
god is not out there for us,
but constantly on call.

Which is why we put the best above
every law of the land;
and the best are those can conjure up
billions through sleight of hand,
and keep the wheels of religion
well oiled for telling use;
we appointed them our trustees
for Capital and ethical views.

How can we believe that Capital
gobbles both morality and god,
or that money is more than mantra,
and piety less than fraud?

Believing so would mean you know
that our strategic partnership
with the United States of America
would take an ugly dip.

Far better that we acknowledge
that all humankind is “depraved”,
and only through the Son of God
may we Hindus be saved.

That would take our partnership
to a point of inter-operability
where our own gods and goddesses
would not a fetter be.

And, converted to “depravity”
we would not so bemoan
the graft and greed that troubles us,
but make Capital our very own.

Then grab and loot with just intent,
and often go to war;
subjugating the lesser worlds,
our fortunes would soar.

Our generation next would not be tied
to silly thoughts of the poor;
released from ethical humbug,
they would conquer the world for sure.

This in-between is what holds us back
from deserving dominance;
time we left the destitute
to god’s destined comeuppance;
time we ceased to make pretence
that graft and greed are sin;
depraved we came, depraved we are,
depraved we the world shall win.

This Capital-driven modernity—
ah, what a boon it is indeed;
it makes us kings of razmataaz,
with millions to serve our need.

Sunday, November 28, 2010
Corruption Shameful
I am a modern, metropolitan, middle class man;
I do not like corruption;
I know corruption is the exclusive preserve
Of the non-English-speaking politician.

The bureaucrat and the CEO—
they have no corrupt intent;
whenever they are on the take,
it is for development.

Likewise, when high caste and fair skin
appropriate national wealth,
they have no graft or greed in mind,
but only the country’s health.

Or when media anchors and columnists
connect with lobbyists,
it is for no unseemly cause,
but only for India’s best.

There are those that tell you
that injustice, pogrom, penury
are far worse than corruption;
such is their idiocy.

After all it is god has made
the rich rich, the poor poor;
and god is a Hindu patriarch,
and pogrom is his cure.

Corruption, however, is a sinister plot
willfully set in motion
by Hindu-detractors and unionists
to destabilize the nation.

Thus only a market let fully loose,
and right-wing religious parties
aided by friendly media moghuls
can rein in the upstart smarties

who think they may the tables turn
on those who do corruption
for no benefits of their own,
but the welfare of the nation.

Lastly, them investigative agencies,
they must needs be saffronised;
or else they will the corrupt let go,
and in ways barely disguised

go after a Modi, a Zadaphia,
a Vanzarra, an Amit Shah,
telling the nation that mass killings
are worse than corruption, bah!

Just as the secularists propound
that Yedurappa is corrupt as well;
how far the calumny might go,
it is truly hard to tell.

They ask us why Yedu does not resign,
thinking nothing of Karnatak’s future;
these casteists do not know
that Lingayat is pure nature.

Now, having said my piece,
it is for you to make sense;
and should you fail in that regard,
admit you’ve no defence.

Sept-Oct 2007

Makhdoom Mohiuddin

Translated from the Urdu by Badri Raina

O Saviour

Screened beneath a scrubby tree
Of fainting, fragrant Chameli,
Some distance from the tavern,
Some distance by a cavern,
Two fond souls
Burnt up whole
In the heat of love’s delight.

Love the Word,
Love the God,
Love the pyre, the raking rod;
Two fond souls,
Damp with the dew,
Soaking in the silver moon anew,
Like a pair of dusky flowers true.

The evening breeze,
Done with securing soft release,
Stole into her raven tresses,
And presses gently, gently presses,
Against the warmly glowing cheek,
And does for a glorious moment cease.

By daylight we saw them there,
And by night we saw them there,
And by the stars burning bright;
And silent minarets saw them too,
And the temple portals saw them too,
And the chinks in the tavern saw them too.

From the beginning to the end
Is there amidst your arsenal
A cure for love?
O, tell us now,
Is there amidst your arsenal
An answer to this vow?

Beneath the fainting Chameli,
Away from the tavern,
Away by a cavern,
Two fond souls
Burnt in wholes
O Saviour, helplessly.

From Within the Prison House

Confined,
Endlessly confined;
Fervour and rebellion, yes,
But unbegged, unacclaimed;
And night,
And the hush of night,
And simmering loneliness.

From beyond,
Far beyond
The sheer walls of the prison house
Echo the bells,
The sounds floating across
From somewhere within the depths,
The entrails of a seething city.

The mind is startled,
And quickened is the breath;
And my dying, despondent thoughts
Wake anew.
I recall every momentous word, every deed,–
Humanity stampeded
Into asphyxiated lanes, dark and dreary,
And their careworn feet
Beating, beating, beating,
And upon their brows
The scars of struggle and despair.
In their eyes
The agony of the past,
The apprehension of the future;
Millions upon millions
Of cracked, careworn feet,
And millions, endless millions of people,
Sunk in their faceless anonymity;
And millions of tired hearts
Ticking listlessly
In millions of starving breasts,
Writhing under the weight of tyranny,
Tossed about by inexorable politics.

I wonder where,
Upon what crossroads of destiny,
Those pent-up aspirations,
Those denials, inequities
Will explode.

But these aspirations
This upsurge of a youth,
Sad, helpless, refused,
Die down and sleep,
Wrapped in the chains that hold them bound.
And when in my sleep I turn,
The clanking of the chains
Brings back to mind
The truth of an intense life.

And I fear that all my life,
My aggregate of hours,
May waste away within the prison house
Rather than be sacrificed
To freeing my motherland
From the stranglehold,
The prison house of terrible want.

(Hyderabad Jail)

Sept-Oct 2007

Sahir Ludhianvi

Translated from the Urdu by Badri Raina

Chakle

These lecherous lanes, these auctioneers of pleasure,
These caravans of life beguiled of every treasure,
O where are the gentlemen who keep the gentle ledger?
Where are the eulogists who sing the pious Hind?

These crooked side-streets, this flat bazaar,
That unknown caller, this jingling silver war,
These virgin bargains, this haggling at the door,
O where are the eulogists who sing the pious Hind?

These filthy alleys, sick with ugly stench,
That pale and unripe but smothered public wench,
These exploded shells stretched out on the bench,
O where are the eulogists who sing the pious Hind?

The sound of dancing feet, above, beneath,
The tiring tabla keeping to tiring breath,
These soulless cells coughing away to death,
O where are the eulogists who sing the pious Hind?

Upon the street these bursts of lewdness,
Round about the windows the lustful press,
Those eager hands snatching at her dress,
O where are the eulogists who sing the pious Hind?

These faded flowers, these stains of betel spit,
These leering looks, these bits of bawdy wit,
These faces by pale consumption hit,
O where are the eulogists who sing the pious Hind?

These hungry eyes naked with desire,
These exploring fingers, fevered and afire,
Those hurrying footsteps, leaping higher and higher,
O where are the eulogists who sing the pious Hind?

The saintly beard and youth this place has known,
The fragile father as well as the fattened son,
Oh, they are sister, spouse and mother, all in one,
O where are the eulogists who sing the pious Hind?

Help, O help, this offspring of Eve,
Radha’s daughter and Yashoda’s kin believe,
Dear to God, dear to Zuleikha perceive,
O where are the eulogists who sing the pious Hind?

Call every gentle son of God, O call,
Show them this spectacle of sin, this fall,
Call the eulogists of Hind, O call them all,
O where are the eulogists who sing the pious Hind?

(first published in Dialogue India 2, Calcutta, 1962)

Taj Mahal

I do not care
If the Taj means to you
The great symbol of love;
I do not care
If perchance
You should bear
Towards its aura of colourful romance
A reverence deep and true:
Love, not here, not here
But elsewhere
Must be our rendezvous.

What sense does it make
For the poor to be
Frequenting
These haunts of royalty?
What sense does it make
For soulful lovers
To traverse
A pathway
So rudely dense
With the imprint of an imperial day?

Past the trappings
And the frill work of romance
You must have peeped, ah Love,
And noticed how
Behind the elaborate song and dance
Lie evidences of less lovely things.
Into the dark and cheerless interiors
Of our own houses
You must have looked—
You whom
The icy tombs
Of dead kings
Divert to ecstasy.
Countless are the people
Who have loved;
Nor were their vows contracted
With less faith,
Less intensity.
All that they lacked
Were the instruments of pomp,
Because like you and I
They too were underlings.

These awesome monuments,
These tombs,
These ramparts,
These fortifications—
Testimonies to the grandeur of willful emperors—
Oh, what are they
But festering ulcers
In the rotten womb of time?
And into these have poured
The common sweat and blood
Of our common ancestors.

Even they must have loved, ah Love,
Whose deft fingerwork
Has given to the Taj
Its beautiful splendour:
Yet
Their nameless loves lie buried
Under nameless graves,
And no one did ever light a lamp
Upon their rough and jagged headstones.

These lush lawns,
This pensive river bank,
And the palace fair,
These filligreed walls and arches
Soaring high,
These shapely minarets
And these squares of subtle art—
Oh, in all these
I can hear the monstrous laughter
Of a wanton emperor
Reverberating with a monstrous insult
Full in the face of our forlorn loves.
This is no place for us, ah Love,
This cannot be our rendezvous;
Elsewhere must we go,
Elsewhere remove.

(Published in Dialogue India 2, Calcutta, 1962)

January 17, 2010

For Jyoti Basu

As I write, you seem set
To bid adieu—
Your life’s work more than done.
We would be truly greedy
To ask more of you.

What man walked so straight
And for so long
With a single thought in mind—
To do what you could
For fellow men and women

At the end of the line.
You solved what you could solve;
Neither birth nor accomplishment
Vitiated that simple resolve.

Your stern, Spartan selflessness
Made no song and dance;
No sophisticated twist of theory
Stymied your advance.

Communist beyond compare,
You knew your country
As cannily
As the bird knows his tree.
And, doing so, you did not
Ask for the moon,
But gave to the morning and the afternoon
Appropriate remedy.
Never did your worst adversary
For a moment doubt
That your life was never your own,
But given wholly
To those that were down.

Every one’s Jyoti Babu,

It will be no fault of yours
If those that grew into sentience
During your precious longevity
Sometimes fail to see
The straight and narrow, running,
Instead, round and round
The mulberry tree.
Your counsel would still be:
“however starstruck the neo-liberal world,
Be not among the busybodies,
But the destitute majority.”

As we say most grateful bye,
Beloved comrade leader,
Smile upon us just one last time
So we may know
That you hope in our strivings
As you depart in flesh,
But never ever from the people’s heart.

December 20, 2009

Copenhagen, 2009

At Copenhagen they met—
Greed and Need.

Greed said, “ cut down your need”;
Need said, “enough of your greed.”

Greed retorted, “the Earth cannot wait
For your need to become greed”;

Need rebutted, “you are a great one
To say so,
Having created all our need.”

Greed, you know,
Of course wished to have the cake
And eat it too;
Need knew if that continued to be done,
There would be no place for Need in the sun.

Everyone
Swore they would cut down their carbon,
And save the Earth
For a renewed birth,
But not before Capitalism had its full-bull run.

Greed said, “Capitalism is ours; we made it;
Leave it to us; you do that which is fit
For your station.
We shall carry the corporation
To your lands,
And thereby have less emissions on our hands.”

Need said, “emissions anywhere
Will not spare you,
Because the Earth is one;
Thus either all of us Capitalism shun,
Or we all roll down the mountain.”

The Bolivian, the Cuban, the Venezualan
Said, “the Earth cannot be parceled out
Anymore for anyone’s convenience;

The Capitalist lout
Had better see sense,
And recongnize
That the world’s mountains, icebergs,
Rivers and seas, air and fire
Are Socialist:, making no distinction;
Either everyone lives or everyone dies.”

Consternation followed upon
That recognition,
Obliging the chief spokesman of Greed

To exclaim:

“If indeed the Earth is Socialist,
It is best dead;
We shall go build Capitalism anew
In heaven or hell instead.

Come Christmas, we walk away from Jesus,
And walk into the Shade;
We swear upon the blood of the Barons,
We shall never let Capitalism fade.
Having brought down the Berlin Wall,
Wall Street shall stand unbroken,
However the Lehman’s and the others
May have rashly spoken.

Let the fatcats be the fatcats,
And the hungry be in the billions;
We have all the arsenal,
We shall train our guns
On all the world’s ragamuffins
Who have no reason to be;
And, being, who only obstruct
The Market from being free.
War shall be our answer
To that ultimate perfidy.”

Thus at Copenhagen
Did the Earth make up her mind
To put an end to mankind,
And some better species find.

June 5, 2009
Kamla Suraiya

You wrote well because you wrote
honestly.
You wrote honestly
because you did not allow
your fear to override
your imperative scream.

Nor allow anyone but your own sense
to be your best audience.

Against authenticity such as that
all correctness is rendered flat.

Those that desired and admired
you at heart
caviled in public,
but were shamefaced in their gut.

The agenbite of your passionate inwit
had innocence writ
all over it.

When you gave you saved nothing;
when you took you spared nothing.
As I see,
that is how god
must have meant us to be

Kamla Suraiya, in all things
your life scored over your writings
which, searing as they are,
only play second-fiddle to your story,
which was bigger by far

O, priestess of flesh,
the lush of your pristine soul
bedewed all.

13 June 2009
Binayak: A Tribute

After two needless years in the slammer,
you came out smiling, with a steady eye.
You seemed not resentful, but calmer—
frail in body, but in spirit high.
The deadly inert of your calling
so unshakeable in its cool,
so wholly a stranger to self and fear,
that governments may tear their regimented hair,
they seem evermore the fool.
Around so perfect faith as yours,
systems can only be falling.
You are no sprinter over the short span,
but the horse for the long haul—
not rippling in the flanks,
but fed by an inexhaustible soul.
You would truly never hurt a fly,
but neither would you stand by
when the wicked ones try.
However sour their lives,
you know that the least are more dour
in the worst of their trials
than guns, money, or politic knives.
It is not the fickle favour of the fashionable
mighty that does you bless,
but the relentless right of ordinariness.
Niyogi watches and pronounces “yes.”

February 14, 2009
Cuba Fifty

Dear Fidel,

The Trotskyites say

That the revolution you made

Was not a proper one;

It was not even socialist.

It was not led by the proletariat,

But by petty-bourgeois, nationalist elements.

They remind us that on your

First trip to the United States

After the victory over Batista,

You openly said you are not a communist.

They remind us how

You ganged up with the Stalinist PSP,

Which in turn had lent support

To Batista in the 1940s.

They even say that at Havana

University, you came to be enamoured

Of Fascist ideology of which you

Read in Rivera’s book.

They tell us Che had no clear

Revolutionary ideology;

They tell us it was Mella who truly

Was an organised communist,

Which is why he had to flee

And be assassinated in Mexico,

Much like Trotsky himself.

They tell us how Che only

Ended up becoming an icon

For the Capitalist commodity bazaar.

We do not know what is the only

“correct” path to revolution;

We only know that you brought

Health and education to Cuban people,

Redistributed unused land,

Reduced rent, and increased wages.

And we know that unlike many

That espoused “socialism” you

Refused to cave in to the imperialists

Next door, despite

Strangulating blockades,

Invasions, and some ninety or so

Attempts to murder you.

We also know that in everything

You decided or did,

You spoke to your people, intimately,

And continuously,

And you even allowed the making

Of so subversive a film

As the incomparable

“The Death of a Bureaucrat”,

Wherein a stout Cuban housewife

Is heard to say angrily, and without fear,

“there are things that even Fidel

Cannot change”, such as bureaucratic

Hassle and corruption.

We recognise that had ordinary Cubans

Truly been as suffocated

As the world is told,

You could not have lasted fifty years,

Whichever way you tried.

We are delighted that the Cuba

You and your compatriots made

Exists, and promises to continue

To exist—an experiment that reassures

And teaches that it is possible

To be warm, human, and happy

Without being capitalist,

Or capitalist hanger-on.

Looking at the world,

That is not a little.

We notice that your example already

Transforms so much of Latin America,

Unthinkably,

And could, if we worked hard and sincerely,

Help transform many other places.

We think that is a unique contribution,

And a lot more than others have achieved.

We, therefore, salute the great people

Of Cuba who have stood with you,

And understood you.

Today they see that while Cuba exists,

Capitalism crashes, and rushes

To embrace the hated welfare state.

Who knows where things might go

From here?

Live on, therefore, and keep that

Talk coming;

We like your expansive rumblings;

At least you say something,

While the Capitalist marauder

Says shut up and sell;

Where you have strenuously saved

The human being from becoming thing,

The Capitalist says only the thing

Is king, and nothing else will do;

And he will not let us question that view.

Our salute, Cuba, who seems to us

Still as new

As when you first embarked

From Sierra Meistra.

You may yet prove

The loadstar that much of the world

Is looking to.

Carry on your battle equally

Against imperialism and complacency.

25 November 2008
Obama, The World Rejoices, But What Will You Do?

Dear, dear Obama,
You are a bright man,
An upright man,
A man above hate and recrimination,
A just man whom suffering makes wince,
Having suffered much—
A man who means well by his people,
Black, White and others,
And by the world.

Your people did not give you victory
Only because you are Black,
But because they long for the return
Of decency, peace, and prosperity.

Yet, you are to be now
The executive head of a conglomerate
That has inflicted much suffering
Upon all parts of the world,
Even when it did what looked like the “right thing”.

You will preside over a powerhouse
That never tires of justifying all its deeds
Now in the name of freedom,
Now in the name of god.
And the power-structures your predecessors
Built, often over the world’s blood,
Surround you,
And assasins lurk and abound,
Having drawn high blood before.

What will you do?
Make intelligent compromise?
Go down with subtlety the trodden road,
Putting your best intent on hold?

Or, will you make bold,
Embrace the world, and walk in its step,
Giving with selfless grace,
And taking with gratitude in required measure?
Silence the dogs of war,
And let peace and mankind smile?

Everywhere, people wait and watch—
In the sands of Iraq,
In the mountains of Afghanistan,
In the usurped lands of Palestine;
In the streets and factories of the world,
Among enslaved states,
And “sanctioned” swathes of territories
Where children die in the millions of denial,
As their elders trudge from land to land
Looking for some momentary home,
Till they trudge again.

And in your own country
Memory seeks to transcend
Her founding genocide,
And the animal sweat of slavery
That furnished the White House
That you shall adorn.
Those that made history
To put you on high
Wish to be a people like any other,
Trusted, loved, wanted.

In your victory speech you said
How after “some two centuries, America
Will have a democracy by the people,
Of the people, for the people”.
Do you remember?
Therein you said everything, remembering
As you must have that even as
Jefferson was writing the Declaration
He owned a hundred slaves,
Remembering Rosa Parks, and Doctor King,
Remembering that not until
A hundred and ninety years after independence
Did Black people get their right to vote,
Although it had been written
That all men are created equal
And have unalienable rights.

Not wishing to be seen as only Black,
You did not say all that,
But also not wishing to be another Uncle Tom
You knew and said that democracy
Had arrived only some two centuries after
The Declaration.
Which is why you also said
That America’s strength is not war-making
Or the scale of her wealth, but the ideals
Of that First Covenant
Which now has found fruition.

Obama, how can you then not see
That the world awaits the very same message?
If “exceptionalism” there must be,
Let it not be thrust like a dagger
Into the world’s breast,
But like the light that once issued
From those ideals of equality
And unalienable rights.

Could you be seen to be
That beacon,
The world would gladly join with you
When you were seen to be righting
Those that oppressed the world.
Something you cannot do with success
If seen as chief oppressor.

Let, therefore, from the Bush
Rise the fire that warms all mankind
Without fear, or greed, and favour
Only for those who need justice the most.
So we may with Christopher Marlowe say:
“Black is the beauty of the brightest day.”

Failing, you risk everything,
Most of all the faith of those who,
In electing you, thought
An alternate America is possible,
And an alternate world as well.
And many then will say, perfidiously,
Never trust a Black man to run the country.
Unthinkable would then be the regression
Into bestial war and bigotry. Take then the blessings of the world,
And, use your clout
To work not for the fat-cats
In America and the nations,
But everywhere for those
Who for centuries have been left out.

2008
Size ten

I hurled my shoe
At George W,
And there is nothing he could do
About it.
I showed him, slam dunk,
How liberty was drunk,
Clobbering the hunk
In a size ten fit.
My shoe it was that put to shame
An empire’s shenanigans;
All its fat, all its fame
Went fending at the shins.
My shoe, it spoke for the million dead,
And more millions starved and maimed;
Like David’s sling, my size ten said,
“Go Goliath, thou art tamed.”
A shoe, it is a wondrously
Effective instrument;
No cruise, no cluster can ever better
Its masterly intent.
It burns no cities,
It breaks no bones,
It simply ruins the soul;
It actually pities
In ground-zero tones
The subject of its goal.
Go, George, go,
Enough of your surge,
Your tattered Wall-Street calls you;
Having brought woe
To the world at large,
Go save the land that mauls you.
We of Messapotamian breed
Lived long before your kind;
We surely lost our beans for a while,
You go and we shall find.

HUSAIN

Warmth in your beard,
Wonder in your eye,
You waft nimble on natural feet.

You render gods and goddesses
Tender to human reach,
Much as your own best friends.

But, O, childlike lover,
You forgot the crude lesson
That gods and goddesses are most venerate
When installed neutral to love and hate.

Like Kings and Queens, or the State,
Or some minaret, spire, steeple,
They have the most obeisance
When distant from the people.

BLUE IN THE SKY – on Arafat’s death

Abu Ammar Arafat,
You were born on wings;
You may not have had a country,
But you were the toast of kings.

Striving for your Palestine,
You made the world your own;
Your iron will, your smile
Made the high and mighty groan.

While nations fell at the feet
Of the tyrant, terrorist Sam,
You stood ramrod in Romallah—
The lion that none could tame.

Your strength came from your people,
As man, woman, and child
Learnt from you the lesson
That struggle must be our guide.

Abu Ammar Arafat,
Your are the blue in the sky;
However dark the seasons,
You do not ever die.

OUR SHARE OF THE WORLD

Given that most women can
be as callous as most men,
and most men as caring
as can be most women;

Given that most women can
marshall facts as most men,
and most men be as addled
as often most women;

Given that most women like
dominance as most men,
and most men can fawn and flatter
as can most women;

Given that most women in
field, factory, office, or war
can better men at their own game,
and most men do just as well
at whatever it is that women claim,
why should it be the case
that men possess all but two percent
of all the wealth the world has?

Is it not cruel
that being different must also mean
being unequal?

Here is what we say:
recognize the altered night and day;
men and women must together find
an honest will to put behind
a habitually distorted humankind.

SONG FOR JOAN BAEZ

Is home lost forever, then,
Lost for evermore?
Every creek I crossed ahead
Was cooler than before.

The things that I set out to do
I know not what they are;
Dear people of my little town,
I’ve strayed, I’ve strayed too far.

At rise of dawn I see no sun,
At dusk no voice from home;
O mother, this city has
So little, so little room.

I think, nor care, nor feel, nor share,
I am busy all the time;
And what I do I only do
Because it brings a dime.

Is this the way it has to be?
Is this the way about?
This silver that has strangled us
Could we not do without?

Is home lost forever, then,
Lost for evermore?
Will Jesus help if all we do
Is multiply the score?
_________________________________

(in Crescent God & Other Poems, Writers’ Workshop, Calcutta, 1982; poem written in 1970 in Madison, USA)

DIVINE ADVICE

Hiralal Panalal Golmalker—
He went to milk Ganesh;
The tusker, turning the spoon away,
Said “listen to my updesh:

For many a year I have spread
My hand
Outside your iron gate;
Each day your durban drove me off
In ragged and starving state.”

“But, lord, I never saw you there,
However could you hide?”
“While you were looking for the marble
God, I was the little child.

Now take all the milk that you can buy
Against your rotting wealth,
Feed every urchin in your town,
Bring Bharat back to health.

Come back to me when that is done,
And my trunk shall give salute”;
Golmalker went a sadder man,
But something less a brute.

From Modest Proposal & Other Rhymes for the Times, SAHMAT, 2000.

HARIJAN

God’s own people you call us,

you lowly hypocrites, who

raping, looting, marauding, masquerading,

inherit the earth, not knowing

how it slips from your grasp

each passing hour. We

keep you clean and disinfected

for now, safe from the filthy

gorge of your ceaseless intake,

but soon—how very soon you do not

guess—your stink shall be your own,

and you shall drown ten fathom deep

above your vermillion

into your own excrement.

We shall look from above

and laugh in your untouchable face

as you squirm your desperate way

upto the brim—and fall again.

And in our laughter, we shall be kind

And call you Harijan.

FROZEN

First we are born to man and wife,
Then they give us our names,
Those names then our prison make
Of inflexible religious frames.

But I that a ‘hindu’ am
Might well have a ‘muslim’ been,
Had the sperm and egg that wrought me
Come from an Aslam and Nasreen.

What sense that we should thus invest
Our lifelong loves and hates
To an instant we had no inkling of,
And consign to that our fates.

If then we remain a dumb zygote
Through all our waking life,
What use a heart, a brain, a tongue,
What use our sentient strife?

Must we in loyalty embrace
What darkness made of us?
Or should our selfhood discriminate
A ‘maybe’, a ‘no’, a ‘yes’?

Is it our name that renders us
At all times wrong or right?
Or should ‘human’ mean that we create
Some self-made luminous light

Beyond what thoughtless body heat
And the accident of birth
Confer upon us unbeknown—
Mere creatures of the earth?

Those that gave us ‘holy’ books
Remade what went before;
Would they have wanted generations
To rest frozen in their lore?

LITTLE INDIANS

Millions of little Indians—
Hindus, Muslims, and others,
For them no law, no land,
No fathers, mothers, brothers.

They slave in little tea-shops,
They beg along the road,
They sleep upon their little feet,
They have no bed, no board.

Governments make new budgets
Of which they are no part;
Governments feed on government grants,
They eat their little heart.

The rich perform ablutions
To please the gods above;
The gods return their favours,
And increase their treasure-trove.

Little Indians find employment
In hell-holes we call factories;
Their lungs fill up with poison
Gas, government collects the taxes.

Some little Indians go to public school
In bus, or car, or jeep;
A million others look for food
In wayside garbage heap.

Their schools are in government file,
Their meals are part of Plan,
But when nation needs an atom bomb,
They eat whate’er they can.

Little Indians, they are taught to sing
“Mera Bharat Mahan”;
Little Indians wipe their hunted eyes—
They wonder what is on.
(From Modest Proposal, Sahmat, Delhi)

THE INDIAN GIRL CHILD

I am the Indian girl child,
I am my father’s pride;
I wash, I mend, I blow the hearth,
While my brothers go seek and hide.

As the nation forges far ahead,
I scrub the country’s floor;
I pray, I fast, I long to see
My brothers eat more and more.

When viral burns my well-fed frame,
I require no tablet,
For my brother needs that I mother be
While he learns his alphabet.

I am sent to another house,
For labour is scarce;
Should my dowry unpleasing be,
I gladly assume the hearse.

Thus, all in all, I rule the roost,
I am goddess everywhere;
I suffer worship and abuse
With matchless wear and tear.

But all that I have said above
Depends upon the help
That sex-test probe kills me not
First in the womb itself!

AMBEDKAR

You carried your own mat
to school, drank water from
open ditch, turned furtive corner
to keep classmates from contagion.

In the stable with undiscriminating
animals you strove against sleep
and suffocation to make
your future bright.

Then matriculated, found royal
patron, and in time proceded
scholarly to Columbia land.

Three day’s food you forsook
against the price of desired book.

Triumphant back you came,
full of letters and law,
yet still but untouchable.
In that final act of fun,
O learned one, they drew from you
the Indian Constitution.

There, in mockery of your better sense, you
wrote your brethren down as citizens,
equal of fat man’s town.

In your delegated power, you forgot
the quick truth you were taught
in boyhood’s rooted hour.

Since that time, your upraised
marble finger points in ghastly
guilty joke the ubiquitous way
to that house of good intent
called the Indian parliament.

Resurrected expedient from archive
file this ceremonial April day,
paid homage to on T.V. screen
as incomparable, untouchable god,
you help beguile your trodden brood
into compensate caste and quietitude.

The fate of all great good men
was yours, while the shame, the perfidy,
the liberal double-cross endures.

PALESTINE
October 5, 2007

When the clouds gather,
and doubt creeps into my bone,
I turn to you, O Palestine.

I do not wail
that everyday of every year
you struggle to hold at bay
mountains of perfidy;
I only see that yours
is the invincible spine.

No Atlas lifted a heavier load
than you, O Palestine.

When my eyes falter and dim
against the false lights of the oppressor,
I close my lids and find
fresh, flashing discernment
in your indomitable mind.

Palestine, my Palestine,
yours is the brightest intellect
among all mankind.

HIPPOPOTAMUS
The new Indian middle class
is full of pelf and prayer;
it ogles at the fop in front,
and quarantines its rear.

The new Indian middle class
is full of potato chip;
it hogs away at restaurant,
but is careful with the tip.

The new Indian middle class
means business every way;
it will have the atom bomb,
whatever you may say.

The new Indian middle class
is cross at population;
it simply cannot understand
why people live in the nation.

The new Indian middle class
is bored by argument;
argument so upsets
its vacuous content.

The new Indian middle class
connects with tradition;
it often needs to fly abroad
to propagate that fashion

The new Indian middle class
is a hippopotamus;
it fattens on protected feed,
and yawns at politics.

The new Indian middle class
is into channel V,
where V stands for vertigo
and viscerality.
The new Indian middle class
drives to disco tune;
it sees nothing upon the road
except its good fortune.

The new Indian middle class
if full of stock and share;
it packs globalised machismo
in Philips underwear.

The new Indian middle class
is Pentium perfect;
its email carries latest news
of when and where to eat.

The new Indian middle class
is glued to one-dayer;
it despises Parliament
but is buoyed by Tendulkar.

The new Indian middle class
marries in farm houses,
where poor relations never reach
and whisky drowns all grouses.

The new Indian middle class
is too busy to visit;
when parents lie in ICU
Archies card does it.

The new Indian middle class
uses language like hammer;
it has no use for critical thought,
nuance, complexity, grammar.

The new Indian middle class
will surely take us far;
from hauteur, humbug, heartlessness
to bloody civil war.

(from Modest Proposal & Other Rhymes for the Times, SAHMAT, jan.,2000)

RAMAZAN

The month of the Koran
is not for fasting alone;
it is that we may cogitate
to the bone.

Devout summer days of devouring heat
penetrate
to the sahara of the soul;
in the torrid sands of old
eyes, scalded of dross, dig inward
to discover gold.

Or, is it that we submit
to this alchemy of hunger
for reward of righteous pain?
Is it that
even with fat sides turned lean
and knowledge
of the agony of those that blunder
all their days and nights
in dark famine,
we yet hedge and relapse,
nicely, into the habit of being well-fed,
into the heavy apathy of lead?

Can it be that we may fend
that hell below
turning from the here and now?
What prophet would have said so?

Badri Raina

(fr. Crescent God & Other Poems, Writers’ Workshop, Calcutta, 1982.)

NETANYAHU IS NO FUNNY NAME

Netanyahu is no funny name—
It means the Zionist jew;
He does not mind the Arabs much
If elsewhere they remove.

The Netanyahus like Palestine
Kosher and occupied;
So peace demands that they revile
Those they have exiled.

Netanyahu is very proud
Of his animus without alloy;
But wizened statesman, Arafat,
Makes him look a boy.

Netanyahu will rant and rave,
Till better sense prevails;
Or else, like history’s famous fools,
Precipitate travails.

But there is hope for
Netanyahu—
He was at Harvard once!
For Netan may be a loud Likud,
He surely is no dunce.

(from Modest Proposal & Other Rhymes for the Times, Sahmat, Delhi, 2000)

IN PRAISE OF GORBECHEV

Comrade Gorbachev, where are you,
What think you so sadly?
Russia is still too large a place,
And needs to be broken up badly.

Comrade Gorbachev, your noble work
As Sam’s security chief
Requires that Russia’s petty pride
Come to some further grief.

Comrade Gorbachev, never you mind
Your one percent bond with the people;
Not for them did you lay the stone
Of Greenback’s devouring steeple.

Comrade G, what saint did ever
Fee deterred by the people’s need;
Your goals, likewise, soar well beyond
Mere proletarian greed.

Comdrade G, the mafia await
Your liberating leadership;
They loot and kill but rather lack
Your theoretical rigour and grip.

Comrade G, put on your hat,
And buckle your holster belt;
Arise like Quixote and make upon
Good sense your campaign felt.

Yet, remember, Vladimir here and there
Does still command a statue;
Thus fire what final shaft you have
So Sam orders one for you.

Comrade G, it is now we see
Your full scale contribution;
You found in place two evil empires,
And diminished these to one!

(from Badri Raina, Modest Proposal & other Rhymes for the times, SAHMAT, 2000), p.105-06

THE GLOBE AS REAL ESTATE

This impossible Castro—
He will not understand
That America is policeman,
And Capitalism is grand.

When Chicago plays baseball
They call it “world series”;
For the Globe is real estate,
And America holds the lease.

Thus, if Iraq, Cuba, Korea
Think they are nation-state,
As opposed to indentured labour,
They but deserve their fate.

Look at this ancient Bharat—
How she has behaved better,
Paid what is due to dollar,
And prostrated to the letter.

Well might you ask why mighty Sam
Falls flat at Beijing’s door;
Quite simply because the Dragon
Knows blustering Sam a bore.
And believe me that’s a habit
We could use more and more.

(From Modest Proposal & Other Rhymes for the Times, Sahmat, Delhi, 2000)

INDIA’S FORWARD MARCH

Laugh not at Indian management,
Indian management is no funny thing;
If minimum wages fall away,
Potatoes at least are rocketing.

You would’ve seen in primitive lands
Resource squandered on children’s health;
Our management alone it is
That reinforces wealth with wealth.

Manmohan may not give to us
Nutrition, room, or water;
We do have billions in foreign reserve,
Whatever can the rest matter?

Come Ides of August and we shall have
A year-long diet of speech;
After all, the beggarly Indian must
Learn not to be a leech.

For, how long may India’s forward march
Be stalled by starving hordes?
How long may villains dressed in rags
Pull down the silken gods?

Are we or are we not to take
Our place among G-7?
So, stop cribbing about this and that,
And prepare for a piece of heaven.

(From Modest Proposal & Other Rhymes for the Times. Sahmat, Delhi, 2000)

HINDUTVA SAMRAT

Dear, dear Modiji,
You are doing fine;
Whatever else you do do,
Don’t you ever resign.

Bete noir of the secular eye,
Cynosure of the Sangh,
Your are the consecrated bull,
Your droppings dharmic dung.

The Constitution is not for you,
Not for you the Court,
Why worry about the republic,
O hindu rashtra samrat.

The gruesome grin on your ten-fold head
Need heed no human sound,
Not till another Ram appear
May you see lowly ground.

Saawan Aayo Re

The rains have come—aha! oohoo!
In the concrete courtyard below
the seventh-storey high-rise window
English-speaking, up-market cretins
kick and yell, thinking it is grass
under their feet.

Parents, bending down from precarious
balconies, worry how their tip-top kids
despoil their designer shoes.
Some speculate that their car-engines
may have given up the ghost.

On the fringes, next door to the condominiums,
spooky urchins in the jhuggies
mingle with the melting mud, no
speculation in their disjunct eyes;
their mothers or sisters have no respite
from visiting model kitchens
where putrid remains of last night’s
wasted food await their cleansing hands.
They sight the dussheries in the fridge
that they cannot buy.

An older couple, resting on their ill-fed
haunches by the edge of the highway,
wonder whether the ousted peacocks will
ever return.

A neglected TV from the vicinity blares
updated statistics of the wounded and
the dead in the day’s reckoning,
followed quickly by happy tidings of
MDH masala and the latest flyover
that will connect another road to another.

A lone bird on a lone tree, dripping, bobs
his eye, trying to make sense.

Saawan Aayo Re – II

This monsoon burst of firmament—
it has its majesty,
centred, not the least, in angry
indifference to middle-class life,
perfect riposte to the shuttered
complacence of petty order,
that nonetheless leaks in
one fragile corner or the other.

Suddenly, one has knowledge
of powers that shred gadgeted
securities to smithereens.

Only the very rich or the very poor
can meet its depredations—
the very rich because they can trust
the very poor to clear up the driveway
and fetch the provender against
some extra charge,
and the very poor because the stubborn
force of their forbearance
matches the monsoon’s puissance.
The very poor—all their days and nights
are monsoons of one sort or another.

We in the educated middle
must our windows bolt
at every fresh assault.

Thank You, Harold Pinter

Dear Laureate of the rakish headgear,
not many writers there have been
who refused the cunning
that conflates the red wound of life
with the rainbow deceptions of art,
rendering invisible the bullet-bespattered
corpse under the comforting tapestry
of an imagined fable.

You are the rare one.
The days’ dangerous warlords
have their insouciant fun
greatly despoiled that a truth-telling
recalcitrant such as you,
rail as you do with souls’ honour
at the litany of their murderous misdeeds,
should have been bestowed the Nobel.

But, in having done so,
you have sounded the shepherd’s horn
of simple-minded, caring sanity
on behalf of a beleaguered humanity.
You have called to account
the blood-dripping vanity
of the god-deluded wolf
that leads the imperial gung-ho.

Moses of our misbegotten time,
the punishing rod of your annunciation
has struck a telling blow
at the Pharoah of the day.
You have loosened the terrified tongue
of the paralysed powerless,
filling the world’s strangulated lung
with a gale of forthright air
that carries the promise of sweeping
into the backyard both Bush and Blair.

Caretaker of the oppressed,
the tune you sing
with unmitigated passion
inaugurates our return
to the loving table of the spacious
common room
in a long-awaited homecoming.

(This poem first posted on the website freeindiamedia.com)

Those Were the Days

Those were the days for tomatoes.
While mother settled to haggle,
dime a dozen, we picked them off
the mottled pile, filled both
cheeks with tomatoe
and split the seed
full of tickled tongue.
Then went for more.

How kindly tomatoe man smiled
upon our raw delight. We
might have been dear to him
as his own tomatoes.

His good eyes creased
with pleasure, the tomatoe
man upon hasteless haunches
was the czar of giving.
Nowadays tomatoe vendors
love not tomatoes. They
sell them for a living.

The Journal of the Poetry Society of India, Vol. 5, No.2, 1994.

The Human Condition

When “human voices” were drowning
Prufrock,
A mass of common riff raff
Were making a revolution in Russia,
And peasant loins were seating
Their muscle
On the Romanov throne.
When the world was “wasteland”
To Eliot,
Bhagat Singh and Gandhi were
Demolishing Britannia,
And setting its sun.
Millions knew for once that their
Condition was not fixed in the Fall
But could change for the better
If they so willed.
When on Ash Wednesday
The penitent was pining for the condition
Of the bone,
Shorn of sin and flesh,
A subterranean world of famished bone
Was aspiring to put on some flesh.
When the cleansed soul was viewing
The rose garden,
Nehru had a rose in his button hole,
Proclaiming the joy of living and making.
“The human condition,” my arse.
If that was true,
Why the despair of the learned now?

South Asian Ensemble (Spring : 2010) 83 South Asian Ensemble (Spring : 2010) 84

Makhdoom Mohiuddin
Translated from the Urdu by Badri Raina