the indiad - damowordsthe indiad o lord! thou beloved of gauri! deign to accept this – the maiden...
TRANSCRIPT
THE
INDIAD
O lord! Thou beloved of Gauri! Deign to accept this – the maiden of poesy –
adorned with the ornaments of various figures of speech, charming by the gait of
beautiful diction, possessing the virtuous conduct of excellent meters, having the
bright complexion of sweet sound, praised by the world of good men constituted
of holy sages, endowed with the amorous sentiment of devotion together with
the virtue of loftiness, planned with the suitor of Brahman as an objective,
invested with the most auspicious marks of high literary qualities endowed with
numerous brilliant decorations of the literary art, revealing the modesty of poetic
humility bearing the ‘wealth-line’ of clear meanings, & possessing the virtue of
working for the good of the readers
Sri Sankaracarya
ARRIVALS
Q - What is this universe? From what does it arise? Into what
does it go?
A - In freedom it rises, in freedom it rests & in freedom it
melts away
Upanishads
AMABANDON
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
Lao Tzu
As planets in their stolen orbits sway
Enraptured by the sun’s eternal day
So too must move the motions of the heart
& lovers from each other cleave apart
& so I go, some Rama far from Seeta
Or then again, maybe I’m yet to meet her<
As Autumn’s vegetation makes decay
Down Goldenacre-Warriston’s pathway
I saw the sun rise up on Arthur’s Seat
& silhouette the city’s spinal street
This is, I think, a hint of things to come
Like Sufi’s singing Sindhi to a drum
With poet-prospects loading up with ore
I set off south to see Savitri’s shore
37,000 ft
He who tells or hears this tale shall reach the same place
Bhishma
Across Europa we have both progress'd,
By foot, by boat, by tram, by bus, by train,
But this hour, from a cool & pleasant plane,
Sees me sailing air on a higherer quest,
The scenes by cyan skies & soft cloud blest,
How seldom seen & varied the terrain
Of ashen peak, urban sprawl, verdant plain,
Gleaming sea, wastes of sand & wylde forest.
As soon as we abandon Europa,
I could already taste the eastern scent,
The sun was setting west of Syria,
The starry heavens singing its lament,
As somewhere yon the grey Arabia
My pilot was beginning his descent.
MUMBAI
It had been the cradle of two of the five world-religions; it had
given birth to poets, statesmen, warriors & kings who take rank
among the great men of history; its foremost rulers had made their
splendor felt, not only in Asia, but in the Western world
Sir Edward Grigg
Our plane approaches as the ghostly wraith
Through nights black regions steadily she falls
Into this lab'rynthe of a billion souls,
Vast myriad of language, race & faith.
So I am come, come to this sultry shore,
First diamond of the crown Victorian
Earth’s epicentre of empyrean
A melting pot of empires to explore.
By Eastern flair was Western thought inspired
I am recently led to understand,
With me I have fetched a mind of England
& all the love of beauty there acquired.
Swooning beneath an infant urchins, "Please!"
How many times would I see sights like these?
SACHIN RAMESH TENDULKAR
After the fourth six, the smile had gone from Qudir’s face,
& later that evening he told me that this boy was an
extraordinary talent
Imran Khan
Some worship Christianity,
Some pray five times to Mecca,
Kali, Laxsmi, Saraswathi,
The Buddha, Krishna, Siva,
Yet to these Indians one god ties all –
Tendulkar, like a tiger, towering tall
This was no movie shooting moment
All eyes knew them watching history
As with a flash the century was sent
Like a rocket, hurtling to the boundary<
They said you could hear the roar in Pune
They said Bradman would never be better’d
But this Mumbaiker, brighter than the moon,
Is the verve of these Indians unfetter’d!
This is the only test century Sachin scored in his native Mumbai - 148
runs off 244 balls v Sri Lanka at the Wankheded stadium on 3rd
December 1997
DHARAVI
If my mother’s face was bright in sleep, it meant we had
nothing for the next day. God will take care of us
Nizamuddi Auluga
I stand at the gateway to India,
Grand sentinel arch of Britannia's stream
About us the swirl of Bon Bohia,
Thou seven-islanded mercantile dream;
Our senses drown’d
In native hue & cry,
Cut swathes thro sights & sound
Sweat-streaming, lips parch'd dry.
Squallid, one-room'd, tarpaulin lives
Smile at me thro' the glass,
Human beehives, men, spawn & wives
E'er buzzing as we pass
Identical dim-lit shanty streets
Clutter’d with the underclass.
BOLLYWOODER
Cinema in India is like brushing your teeth in the morning.
You can't escape it
Shahrukh Khan
Some say Bollywood is monotonous
Verdict of thirty thousand King & I’s
But life, I think, best led monogamous,
Too many genres & too many pies;
& now a lucky extra was I made
Full power fancy dress & thousand rupees paid.
I met her in a dressing room -
Fair actress of the Deccan -
Both hearts beating a little boom
As though we duelled at Tekken
The jewels of romancing bloom
Well, that’s what I reckon...
...From this pretty princess of the Raj
An invitation to dine at the Taj!
26/11
The overwhelming public sentiment in India was that no
meaningful dialogue can be held with Pakistan until it
abandons the use of terrorism as an instrument of its foreign
policy
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
With a whimper they rode to the seaside
With the bang in the bags on their backs,
With a clang they slamm’d into the quayside
Like a poker shark playing his jacks,
An old man shuffl’d near them
& asked them, ‚Who are you?‛
To hear, not in Mharati, but fluent Urdu
‚Mind your business,‛ & with this off they flew
They clasp’d each others shoulder-blades
& there did pray awhile,
Ten young, outrageous renegades
Into five pairs now file,
Now flagging down five hackney cabs
To fly the final mile.
VICTORIA STATION
Man washeth his body with water,
But in his heart there is evil of every description
Ravi Das
Still dripping in her British Empire bling
Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus,
To wages, temple, village & wedding,
Carries half of her country’s passengers;
Lives fifty-four
Buy their one-way singles,
Yama comes with a roar,
& random murder mingles.
As the coppers leapt into battle
They stopp’d & then leapt out,
Pot-shot pistols, jamming rifles
Were never in the bout,
Where should be floods of bravery
Those lawmen offer’d drought!
THE GOLDEN DRAGON
While the modern artist consider’d the canvas to be his
universe, those form the earlier times made a canvas of their
surroundings
Ravinder Sharma
I felt a famous movie star
Soaking up the superb views
Some Maharajah at the bar
Sparkling in his diamond shoes
My soul sensed Durga’s avatar
& there began to muse
On this moment’s explosive catalyst
A thousand thoughts too terrible to list!
I’d never felt alive before
Our streets now the front line
As more & more the art of war
Moves through this life of mine
First nervousness on undergrounds
Now gun-sounds as we dine!
DEATH OF A BELL-BOY
Lord, the world is bad. Make it better beginning with me
Chinese proverb
Inside the Trident Oberoi hotel
The boy stuck to his joyless, strict routine
Of guest & bag & lift & room & bell
Same, same ground out since he was seventeen;
What was that sound,
Like cars caught in a crash?
He fearing spins around
He sees the front doors smash,
He caught a bullet in the gut
His vision deliquescent
He slowly lets his eyelids shut
His heart grew hesitant
Then beat its last & as his limbs relax
His brain shuts down like wick-flame doused in
wax.
MODERN BATTLES
We must conquer the world through our spirituality &
philosophy
Swami Vivekananda
A shot ripped through my upper arm
& I fell down death pretending
No pagan psalm, no magus charm
Would prevent death’s impending
Holding my breath I waited for
My ‘murderers’ descending
I stagger’d in a bloody daze
Up to the rooftop high,
Watching these blazing fingers raise
Hot angers to the sky,
& waiting for my rescuers
Sat down & wondered why?
‘Is this the India that I had dreamt of?’
I thought as palls of black smoke made me cough.
REACTIONS At this supremely dangerous moment in history, the only way of
salvation for mankind is the Indian Way
Dr Arnold Toynbee
Mumbaikers bolted every door
Their streets were mostly empty
They’d never felt such fear before
Though fear they’d had & plenty
Through them incredulity tore
As down at CST
Their bodies tow’d away on porter cars ‐
A city under siege & under stars!
Sunil sketch’d out a synopsis
Then made a hunch of calls
From actresses to researches
Before the camera rolls
‚This stuff is thrilling dynamite,
We’ll fill the movie halls!‛
AFTER THE BULLETS
Where dost thou seek me?
Lo! I am beside thee!
I am not in outer rites & ceremonies
I am by thee, with thee, within thee
Kabir
As infants love a lullaby
When fearing stormy weather
A soothing motion calms Mumbai
Place of peerless endeavor
All thinking wildfire swings to why
Our lives are changed forever
No more the former normalcy parades
A city haunted by those tortured shades.
She was a happy citizen
& now she has no legs
Another slumdog denizen
To join the gutter-dregs
Like blind & tuneful eunuchs
Or the waddling leper-pegs.
LEAVING MUMBAI
He who is desirous of the greatest attainment should right
from the start adhere to virtue
The Mahabharata
While standing in the CST
I closed my eyes a moment
Imagining the liberty
Of murderous militant
& the extreme agony
Of a screaming innocent
& felt my heart begin to palpitate
For each of them who faced that friendless fate.
I found my way to sleeper class
Upon the Margau train
Right slowly pass that mighty mass
Of skyscraper & crane
Soft fingering my bullet wound
& wincing at the pain.
GOAKARNA
After reaching India I spent some time on
going about the country
Ghandi
VAGATOR
We trace the outline of the Western Ghats,
Dawn stirs the steaming jungle from her sleep,
Goa gleams! Golden garden of ex-pats,
Dream shores Iberian...& still quite cheap;
Love life by night,
Days spent in solar beams
Or motorbikes alight
To tour the temple scenes.
We revv'd En masse to the Nine Bar,
My mount a twin-wheel'd steed,
Thro' sunset SHA to Shangri-La
Twirl'd with the Techno Creed,
On LSD, blues, ecstasy,
Weed, dexys, zanex, speed.
THE EAR CLEANER
Stepping out one golden Goan morning,
Drowsy with the sunken sun’s adorning,
Content was I to be in nature’s hand,
Soul-freshen’d as bare feet sunk into sand,
From out of nowhere stept a wizen’d man,
‚Sahib! cleaning your hearing well I can!‛
Shows Western praises in his little book,
Black blocks of wax from both my ears he took
I shook the hand that scrubb’d my hearing clear
Said fond farewells & watch’d him disappear
Round red & rugged hill flank'd by the view
Of Konkan coast careering into blue,
When first finding the profits of his fee
I never knew how sweetly sounds the sea.
OLD GOA
They were the first white faces to arrive
& the last fascist feaces to depart
Whence inbetween a race envangelized
You can still taste the breeze of ther Tagus
By Mandovi, in spacious Spanish rooms
One takes whenever pausing in Panjim
That pocket Portuguese emporium
The stuff of fallen empires lingers near
Array'd as if an eastern Nuremburg
Had Speer inspired, these barrel-vaulted rooves
So cleverly conserv'd, where faded scenes,
Like Shivapurams on a temple wall,
Paint papal hagiographies, spread proud,
& round us in the old Latino style!
GOD’S OWN ABODE
A little further down the Konkan tide
I found a beach & bay of perfect pitch,
Curvacious coconut groves ridged its side
As out to sea the dolphins please the rich -
Dance wave to wave
As deft as nymph on lyre -
Last lingering enclave
Of Lisboan empire.
Cocktails at the Cafe del Mar,
Shark meat at Palolem
The beach, the bar, the Greek guitar,
The sweet peace of Patnem,
The cosmpolotania,
Life's cool creme de la creme.
SILENT NOISE
I rock'd into business with a swagger
& tinky disco on an MP3
Where, being born a beautiful blagger,
I found myself dispensing energy
All thro the Alpha Bar, where after ten
Crisp crickets complement the sing-a-longs
& stamping feet, as in a Goan zen
I play'd my personal penchant for songs
Where blinging with the kudos of the decks
I found myself in a flash romancing
For music elevates the fairer sex
Invigorating vixens in their dancing
& so, skinny dipping to day's dawning
She led me to the milk of the morning
CREATION
Parking my scooter in Canacona
A great prostrate cow seem'd to be dying
Guts on the pavement where she was lying
But no... close by lay her hour-old daughter
I watch'd the wee one make her falt'ring first
Steps in the world, like an ambitious teen,
Thro her mother's dung, slippery & green
Then in the hot noon felt an earthly thirst
Went looking for something, nuzzling half-blind
She suckles on her mother's rough larynx
Who stood up, stands motionless as a sphinx,
& with a lick acknowledges her kind,
Who now creeps forward to the golden teat
& clamps down hard as angels swoop the street
FINDING GOKARNA
The beatnik & his blues guitar
Stumbl'd on a perfect place,
Serendipitous Sandabar;
Sand, ocean, sun & solace,
But secrets are soon scatter'd far,
The Western tourists race
To plant their towel standards on the beach
Where restaurants limpet & hotels leech.
& so, needing a quiet place to play
He stumbled on another nirvana
Only an hour or so from Canacona
For him the best place he would ever stay
This cow-eared naval of the universe
Whose beaches gleam like ingots in a purse.
DIWALI
Ever since an eager mentioning
I have dream'd of Diwali
Not knowing what its festival entail'd
Until today
When a rocket rushing past my cheek
Warns me of India’s unpredictability
Awoken by vietcong firecrackers
Echoing the brutal death of Ravana
The city night ablaze in light & magic
From hotel rooves
Watch the wide smiles of fathers on motorbikes
Carrying Catherine wheels to the bambini
& for once, the arms-width, one room'd shanty shacks
Are more affable than the harbours of Saint Tropez
PARADISE BEACH
Writing in silver light
Enough for poet’s pages
Full Moon over Paradise
This vista my heaven
Palms fringe soft beaches
Fisher boats have gone
Home through foaming waters
Under hoary jungle cliffs
High waves lap restaurants
From black, volcanic rocks
Sounds of drummers rise
Dancing rainbows sprinkle sand
Hippie sin their element
Music, nudity, magic, stars
GANJA
Between Om Beach & Half Moon I was startl'd on the path
By a native in his 'office' selling charas to the tourists
I thought awhile then bought some to aid my morning
musings
There is a Westerner wasting in a desperate jail
They'd found a tolahs worth in his hotel hidey-hole
& four years down the line he is still awaiting trial
The Saddus are allow'd to stack their chillums to the hilt
The exhaled smoke their primevil gesture to the divine
That is their Lord God Siva, pre-eminent among deism
He had discovered its narcotic properties one night
Injesting natural posions & injecting quicksilver
Would dye his skin psychadelic hues of electric blue
Then he would lay, en opiate, his back of cobra’s swooning
As his truthful, calm Parvati wash’d the world from off his
feet
QUANTUM LEAPS
Lapsing on a ledge over Paradise
Among my beads now glows a silver rose
The first one I had found, Italia
Makes sound as India, & as those pees -
Pisa, Portovenere, mark'd that find
Me playing music nel strada a Pisa
& sleeping open air... here, up Patnem
I’m busking money as a top DJ,
&, as Portovenere swept my peace
This Paradise has too relaxed my muse
Enough to think of sticking too one's path
When all its little wonders still surround
Composing songs thro bitter British snows,
But far away, where sun & sky fair meet
KARNATAKAN COAST
Beach-hut crowning Paradise Bay
Dolphins, ferrymen, swimmers
Swimitation round rocky outcrops
Mellow Half-moon Beach
Serpentine forest trails arise
Guarding sepia seashore
Om Beach’s three-way bullfight
Remarkable mammary bays
Across black volcanic plateaux
Next beach reach’d
Kudle’s curve becomes Gokarna
Hiking through cricketers
Cliff-top over miles-long surf
Imagining circling pterodactyls
MAGIC INDIA
‘Tis better to call it an oasis
Amidst we wealthy patrons of the West
Far from the hustle -hassle of the road
& the politics of familiar relationships
That plaguing the imperfect Paradise Beach
One settles by the sands of Half Moon Bay
As have a handful of deep tanned survivors
Of Goa's halyconic ‘place-to-be’
& there, stacking a mighty chillum,
I met a Belgian 'baba' on the beach
& tell him of my meager miles thus far
‚My boy,‛ he said, ‚this whole land should ye tour!‛
& with a hint of Flemish arrogance
Went on to list the laws that work the land
THE INCREDIBLE INDIA CODE
1 Book your tickets in advance
2 Expect the unexpected
3 Rub turmeric in your cuts
4 Keep tabs on yer tabs
5 If they say they’re a masseuse – they’re not
6 Murder mosquitoes before bed
7 Never trust touts or farts
8 Anything is possible in India
9 Check your room thoroughly before leaving
10 Be prepared for a train strike
11 Eat with your non-wiping hand
12 ‚I was an Indian in another life!‛
13 Plenty of change for journeys
14 Ask five different people for directions
SOUTH INDIA
Hamlet & village saw the fate-vanpass
Homes of a life bent to the soil it ploughs
For sustenance of its short & passing days
That, transient, keep their old repeated course
Unchanging in the circle of a sky
Which alters not above our mortal toil
Sri Aurobindo
HAMPI
If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully
developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on
the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should
point to India
Max Mueller
As Ghats give way to wide Deccan plateau
Hard is the journey - dusty, hot & dry -
As into view wyrd mounds of boulders grow
Ruin'd pillars that yore-since bouy'd the sky;
An Eastern Rome
Once soar'd amidst the stone,
King Krishna Devi’s home
Now rubble, husk & bone.
Gliding by graceful coracle,
Serene as English spa,
Aft’ brief ramble, robust scramble,
Claim summit... from afar
Pastel lustr'd sunsets muster'd oer Vijiyanagar.
FINDING SARASWATHI
India has two million gods, and worships them all. In
religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only
millionaire.
Mark Twain
Before first footfall in this India
I convers’d with a Winchester hippy
Who said, ‚Son when you reach that rat-rich realm
Beware of nothing but your lack of soul
& choose a god, although the gods choose you.‛
So with that wise advice I took the field
Where in a moment of the truth sublime
I found a goddess, or did she find me
Chief escort & courtesan of the Raj
Vedic apolless, lyre & art entwined
With us in all we muse, her temple found
Innocuous in Vijiyanagar
Wehere she was shining as a silver star,
Singing ‘Jaya Saraswathi Matha<’
SARASWATHI
Who can be insensible to that warm welcome that is worth a
thousand cead mille failtha of the Irish tongue
William Howard Russell
I fixt mine inner eye upon a star,
In darshan disturbing this diety,
Lull'd by the tantric strains of her sitar
A pure white flowing goddess flew to me
Upon a swan of hue ambrosial,
Her fertile smile still'd time, her luted look
My hearts consort - sublimely cordial
She read from the Pustaka's sacred book
"Wand'rer, thou art welcom'd to India,
This sari I have sewn know as thy guide,
Where e'er she willows there stay close behind!
She closed the page, sail'd high skies to Brahma,
Perform'd the blissful duties of a bride,
Rare have I seen such beauties in my mind.
MONKEY TEMPLES
Listen, O Hanuman: be not depress’d at heart; you are twice
to as dear to me as Laksmana
The Ramaayana
My goddess led me back across the stream
That is the Tunghabadra, in a dream
I pass'd thro boulders piled up demon strewn
& fell upon a temple as the moon
Rose up oer Rishimuka’s famous hill
A baba there burnt branches from the chill
& in a flash of hands we were well met
& read all night until the moon did set
of how Rama had once roam’d to this place
& praised Sugriva of the monkey race
Whose minister, the holy Hanuman
Born stones throw near, old Anjamadri’s son
With dawn I left that dear one-legged man
My muses oozing to the Ramayana
KARANCI
Scratch a rock
& a legend springs
Arun Kolatkar
I took a breath or two of night time air
My heart not knowing why, my legs not where
The starry skies obscured by gremlin cloud
I headed for the hilltop temple loud
Where rattled such a throng of Saivite
Songs echoing thro Niligrisian night
Seeming another Tuscany to me
For India oft feels like Italy
& all was silver as a Silver Oak
For searing thro the deep & astral smoke
I found there was a full moon pulling clear
Are these the moments poets hold so dear
Thro selene scenes setting dream‐trails in store
When ´morrow morns may pass these ways once
more.
AUM SRI SAIRAM
MATERIALS NOT ALLOWED DURING DARSHAN
Camera / Video Camera / Calculator
Big Bag / Battery / Binocular
Tobacco / Time piece / Toffeebags / Umbrella
Mobile / plate / Time Piece / Needles
Blades / Water Bottle /Eatables
Scissors / Cassettes / CDs / Calculator
Knife / Book / Lighter / Ciggarettes/ Pen
Flowers /Footwear / Flashlight / Walkman
Indian & international descends on Puttupathi
Form the swarming cult of the new Sai Baba swami,
A mark'd contrast to the monstrosity park'd outside
That cathedral of consumerism, devotion's grotesque bride
But safe behind those guarded gates one meditates quite freely
& joins in Dharsan with, oft-times, Sai Abba, though him eighty
Being the second avatar of a word-wide, tutelary spirit
That three times only this green planet will grace with a visit
Upon his death the first foresaw his rebirth after eight years
In obscure Puttupathi, where many years after the prophecy
The teenager toss'd flour on the floor in the middle of a thrashing
Spelling out Satay Sai Baba - the boy had always been holy
& soon the world's second largest NGO, after the UN of course
Springs up, a shaft of light providing free health care for all
NANDI HILLS
We're living in a time when the world has suddenly discovered
India because it's run out of raw material for its imagination. The
raw materials for imagination are inexhaustible here.
Deepak Chopra
Chicaning up this Karnatakan steep
T’where Tipoo Sultan rode the summer heat
The Deccan plateaux rises from my mind
The bus-stops & the longhops & the grind.
As this chorus of hypnotic crickets
Soothes away that clamouring for tickets
For here, above the views, up in the clouds,
The poet in us blends with nursery crowds
Of herb & pine as ‘midst his canine team
He like a lion keeps his stray harem,
Butch dog barking praises to the divine
"This is my realm, these trees, this peak is mine,
Mine ancestors here came a-hunting
With dear Lord Cubbon, Nandidurgan king.‛
NANDIDURGA
Make the merchants of distant foreign countries who import elephants &
good horses be attached to yourself by providing them with daily
audience & presents & by allowing decent profits. Then these articles
will never go to your enemies
Krishna Devi
India! India! thy charka spinning ceaselessly
Reflected in the flags lifted oer Nandidurgan walls
Built by the bearded chiefs of Chikballapur, who nearby
Preffer'd this mile-high safety to avoid war's sorry squalls
Until power bow'd to the Maratha's of Shivaji
This hill of pleasure, Siva's sacred vehicle, chang'd wheel
‘Til Mysore's mighty Sultans claim'd this Kushmandagiri
& won its wondrous watchtowers with cool persistent steel & would have haunted hunting grounds with hordes of happy children
But Britons reckon'd otherwise, better blood presuming
& under Lord Cornwallis this fortress won for London
Until they quit the Rajship, when native rule resuming
O India! Wild India! see how thy charka spins
When battle banners surface like the rise of dolphin fins
KERALA
Following a casual track in our hunt for artistic discoveries,
we had come out into that lost place in the jungle of South
Malabar
Alice Boner
My soul's boatman cuts thro Karnataka
To burst once more atop these feisty Ghats
Thro groves of coconut boles we venture,
Stand where the epic Lusiad lay ceased,
Fisher village where Vasco de Gama
First sank renaissance gaze upon the East;
They palanquin'd ambassadors
Through crowds wide-eyed & gawping,
Decadent Zamorin glitters,
What did these envoys bring?
Strange instruments of medicine & war,
The winds of trade blown to his spicy shore
A space in some young side I fill amid the toddies tall,
& slink'd past six defenders (two were trees) to score a goal!
SUPERPOWER
I have to say that the most surprising aspect has been the
speed at which the folks in India adapt to Western practices.
They learn fast, really, really fast.
Sanjay Kumar
This cityscape best replicates the verve of a world emerging
From the dour economics of obscure orientalia
To fiscal calisthenics crafted by master Gopitua
On the stage where global markets push to sponsor the special seats
For some years now the money has been seeping steadily downward
To the laps of middle-class aspirants whose sheer weight of numbers
Drives the consumer boom, pressures pushing the rush for real estate
Like these HG Wellsian phantasma marching on Bangalore
Explosions of energy are releas'd from opening borders
This land link'd by jangling ring-tones to the tune of seventy crore
Tho somewhere, still, a wizen'd shudra sits employ'd as a scarecrow
For this is phoenix India, fabl'd land of milk & honey
Freight flying about the country in a furious pharoe fashion
To clog her timber arteries on highways like the MG Road
BANGALORE
Sunset or sunrise you ride into hell
India Today
A whirl of British companies,
Thought it better to offload
Its highly taxed dependencies
Sending cyber jobs abroad
Computerised communities
Spread down the KH road
Eye of the vortex that is man's progress -
Xerox, sports complexes & western dress.
As I tried to reach the city
The streets were cramm'd gridlock,
Grimy, gritty, slimy, shitty,
Til well past eight o clock
A vision of commuter hell,
Confusing Ragnaraok.
SRIRINGAPATANAM
When the missionaries came, they had their bible & we had
our land. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed,&
when we opened our eyes we found that we had their bible
& they had our land
Jomo Kenyata
Beside the rushes of the Kaveri,
Yon the silicon crush of Bangalore,
Lies the capital, lost to history,
Of Tipoo Sultan, Tyger of Mysore;
An elfin town
Its ruin'd fortress wall,
This keystone to a crown,
Testament to it's fall.
We skirt the spot where wailers found
The Maharaja spread
On crimson ground 'neath mangl'd mound
Of proud & loyal dead -
"Drive on," by pony carriage
On to other beauties sped.
INDIAN RAILWAYS
Never did I behold out of Calcutta such heaps of despatch boxes,
such mounds of record boxes, such vast fabrics of pigeon holes,
such abandon of red tape WHR
I found myself waiting at this train station
Not for a train, it was just to buy a ticket
Not even for that day, but eleven in the future
The next one available from Ooty to Calicut
So I´m waiting & waiting & I´m waiting nit-pick longer
& the guy behind the desk´s on his third guy in an hour
& I was fourth, but the seventh guy´s hand starts waving
His reservation form as the third guy was about to finish
So I warned fifth, sixth, & seventh they´d be a foolish to try
linecuttin’
after all, Id been walking in the sun all day like a mad English dog
& my legs felt like lead & I was definitely, definitely, going next...
So the third guy finishes & just as I thrust my form through the window
The guy behind the desk decides its time he went to the toilet
& then, when he gets back, the bounder closes the window for
lunch!
FORT COCHIN
Apart he stalked in joyless reverie,
And from his native land resolved to go,
And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;
Lord Byron
Come share a second with serenity
Up in this lake of European rooves,
This crescent lamp'd oer th’Arabian sea
Lulls me thither, I hear the sound of hooves...
At once a sacred chime grows on the breeze,
Some teller of a thousand ancyent tayles,
Some from the world's crop-fellers overseas,
Some cross the Karakoram's lofty trails,
Some were seekers of immortal glory,
Some content to be husbands, to be wives...
Though the vision all clutter'd & hoary,
With me a single memory survives,
Being extras in the global story
We are stars in the movies of our lives.
THE
TAMILIAD
Photo by TP Kiernan
I wanted to learn Tamil, only to enable me to study
Valluvar’s Thirukkural through his mother tongue itself<. It
is a treasure of wisdom
Ghandi
KANAYAKAMARI
Everybody knows that the great reversed triangle of land,
with its base in the north and its apex in the south, which is
called India, embraces fourteen hundred thousand square
miles
Jules Verne
At last the Ghats have peter'd to their end,
Sole, savage witch-peaks all which now remain,
Then nothing but the grand Cormarin bend
Where ends Amritsar's forty-eight hour train;
Join'd eclectic
In one wylde, chopping squall
Waves from the Antarctic,
Araby & Bengal.
Ghandi guides a blood red bindi
To rest upon the line
Slipping slowly into sea,
The sky an evening wine,
I turn & face Dhruva-Lok,
Taste Himalayan pine.
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
The Hindus make little distinction between the gods & their
great men
Jayant panda
Narenda left sleepy Simulia
To realise deep faith, this mortal quest
Brought him to kiss Sri Ramakrishna´s feet
Recipient of pure Sansayan force
O lotus bliss, bliss indescribable
Now changing names he roams thro all Tibet
Mastering secret Buddhist principles
& stepping south he put them to the test
On Kannayakamari´sacred rock
Meditating for all his countrymen.
He saw man´s lot just had to be improved
By way of modern practices, & saw
Each creature´s soul seam´d by the quartz of god
& Ramakrishna beckoning him West
THIRUVALLUVAR
The outstanding greatness of Tamil Nadu was that it gave
Valluvar to the world
Shudhannanda Bharati
As I rested on a fine, empty beach, by the Bay of Bengal
In a soft second of existence I was alerted to a flutter of birds
A mile or so along the coast I saw a distant figure approaching.
An old man swathed in white robes, sporting a thick, black beard,
I expected him to pass, but as he came to within a few metres
He veer’d slowly towards me, leaving nor footsteps in the sand,
"What is your profession?‛ he curtly asked, ‚I am a sonneteer, sir!‛
His magnificent eyes burrowed into the heartlands of my soul
‚By any chance, are you carrying a silver rose?‛
Astonish’d, I show’d him the flowers like faitye round my neck
After humming an Upanishad he said, ‚I’ve been expecting you,
As seven words a kural make, seven kural form a sonnet!‛ Knowing this numbers nuances through the Tibetan Book of the Dead
This was for me high epiphany to the hidden depths of sonnetry.
MADURAI
In Madurai
City of temples & poets
Who sang of cities & temples
AK Ramanujan
Casteless, classless, in a Lancashire cap
I shook to this train's novelty suspense,
Six sardine hours & then a thunderclap
Of busy little city streets intense;
This temple, this temple is a wonder
This city, the Tamil-Nad Cadiz
Thro its wacky-racer streets I wander
One evening, wondering ‘just what this is?’
Opium! Coleridgian wish
Heeded by bloodshot man,
Dark, oily dish, crunch..."What is this?
Liquerice!..." My mind's span
Blew interspatial round the room,
Thought flying with the fan.
TAMIL ANIMALS
If you are as you have decribed yourself, the King of Animals – it
would be better for you to call yourself King of the Beasts< you
have tried to make yourself a tomb for all the animals
Leonardo DaVinci
Pastel Gopura
Monkeys perch´d like mountain goats
Squabbling like humans
Our once proud peacock
Begging at food-stalls for scraps
Far from Kings & Camps
Manless mountainside
Dragonflies dart on the breeze
Butterflies ablaze
Piglet playtime
Scampering thro fishbone filth
Young stags ajousting
Nuzzling thro wild rubbish dumps
Cows, Crows, Goats, Swine, Hens, Dogs, Apes
NALATIYAR
The English novel was parochial in the 80s. Indian writers
have given us the color
Martin Amis
Her :
O lord of fertile land & everflowing waterfalls
O lord of cool sunshine warming ocean´s running waves
O lord of good country with beautiful ebony mountains
O lord of flowery hills with lush & sparkling waterfalls
O lord of honey-bearing woods in the good country
O lord of long seashore with fine, unfailing salt-pans
O lord of the hills with lovely sandal groves on
O lord of cool lagoons & bays brimming with water
O lord of prosperous vineyards & huge gem-studded
caverns
Him :
O beautiful lady with breasts like budding flowers
O lady of beautiful hair with fragrance of musk
O lady of long-eyed spears & bow-like eyebrows
Him & Her
O lord of bewitching victories bring these beauties to me
CROSSING THE KARVERI DELTA
Though the resplendent sun in diverse quarters rise,
And though the silvery planet to the south decline,
Thy land shall flourish, where through channels deep,
Kaveri flows with bright refreshing stream;
Along whose banks the sweet canes' white flowers wave
Like pennon’d spears uprising from the plain.
The Purananiru
From Niligris’ evergreen water-tanks
Rivers aim plainward
Kabbadi, washerwomen, rickshaw repairs
Madurai´s bankside institutions
Thanjavur´s impressive medievil cityscape,
Trichy´s towering temple
Kaveri, Coleroon, Arasalar, Mahamakham
Kumbakonam´s sacred waterways
Ghostly, seacoast colonial fortress
Idyllic, white-wash´d Tranqebar
Lotus-pool, paddyfield, rainflood, riverine
Wonderful watery world
Kollidam crowns Kaveri´s imperium
Pitchivarum´s pirhouetting Cu-Co
THE MOTHER ON YOUTH
An architect hewing but self’s living rock
Phenomenon built Realty’s summer-house
On the beaches of the sea of Infinity
Sri Aurobindo
‚You will become the Person you want to be
Our future is in our own hands
The higher our private aspirations
The higher our realisation
This is the key to youth
Never accepting the irreparable
& with firm resolution follow our true life´s aim.
Those useless years age us
Contentment beginning the decline
But unquenchable thirst for progress
Keeps us moving ‘til our dying day
Those deeming completed tasks
The start of things to come
Will never feel the weight of passing days.‛
INCREDIBLE INDIA!
We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without
which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made!"
Albert Einstein
How much of mankind’s mind is Indian?
From the Caesarian of Sushetra
Through Baskarachara’s heliocentricity
To the priceless decimal point
The Indians gave the world Caturanga
Whose four divisions of the military
Foot-soldiers, Chariots, elephants & cavalry
Would show the world the wonder that is chess
A game of maths & poetry, a game
So close to life it form’d the sport of kings,
That now a Tamil sage its master is
Viswanathan Anand of Mayiladuthurai
It is as if the mighty sangams of an antique age
In his opening repertoire & analyses renew
BASIC TAMIL
My Tamil is very bad, & the sign painter I work’d with
didn’t know any English. We mostly communicated through
sign language. But we discussed everything from atheism to
the nature of art
Ryan Germick
1 Woner = Wanacum (hello)
2 Render = Nan-dray (thanks)
3 Mooner = Yevolovum (how much)
4 Nar-lee =Rumba Soo-aye (very tasty)
5 An-jer = Time Enna (what time is it)
6 Ah-roo = Poy-too-varen (see you later)
7 Air-lee = Oon Pair Enna (what is your name)
8 Eh-ta = Nar England (I am from England)
9 Umbodoo = Nalla –kay (cheers)
10 Pa-too = Sarry (yes)
11 Padi-nooner = Ta-poo (no
12 Panander = Nunbar Nan-dray (grazi raggazi)
13 Padi-mooner = Nalamar (how are you)
14 Padi-nar-lee = po-dum (full/enough)
AUROVILLE
The great saints impart sanctity to places of pilgrimage,
render actions righteous & good, & give spiritual authority
to the scriptures
Narada Bhakti Sutras
Gorgeous Coromandel, crown prince of coasts,
My wanderlust has earn'd thine ancyent treats,
Meagre are glimpses of the Gallic ghosts
Haunting Pondicherry’s well-ponder'd streets
To the north gleams another sliver of the West,
Where lingers still a hint of apartheid,
Went I, somewhat the uninvited guest,
Perfect place to read & write
Where over dust & termite mound
The Mother sprinkl’d Flanders’ green,
As dew-eyed adepts gather'd round
The brook peace of their queen,
Forming a calm co-operative of souls,
Surrounded by tough fields & begging bowls.
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO SAVITRI
I have found a guru whose glories cannot be told
Dady
Discovering rare poetry
Is the poet's shooting star,
As at Kannayakamari
Towers Thirruvallavar,
& the bard of Pondicherry,
Mused on Miltonic par,
Words wonderful, more wondrous to behold
Than Cortez ever would with Moctezuma’s gold.
I join the morning reading group,
A poet’s sacred text,
Pass'd round the loop, devoted troop,
Their leader hints me next,
& so I sang a poet's song,
Made every circumflex.
TSU-NA-MI
A myth actually arises when the imagination interprets a
natural event as the action of a personified being resembling
the human agent
Aa Macdonell
Remember them fleeing those huge walls of water
That snapp’d them & toss’d them & made bloody piles
In Mamalapuram she search’d for her daughter
A sad scene repeated some three thousand miles
Remember the sounds on the shores of Sri Lanka
The crunching & breaking & snapping & screams
As ships of pig-iron are ripped from the anchor
& people-pack’d trains flung from bent, broken
beams
Remember the mood in the days after Christmas
When so many strangers shall shun the new year
A new doleful sound as the river grows restless
As so many tears crystallize the new fear
From Asia to Africa surged a wild sea
O sing a sad song for the TSU-NA-MI
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009
There is sufficiency in the world for Man’s need,
but not for Man’s greed
Ghandi
Eight Onges died two weeks ago after drinking spurious hooch
But a boy was born on xmas day bringing the tribe to 93
& what, what of that other tribe by the wide bay of Bengal
The mighty Tamil nation now divided into two
Parted by Adam´s Bridge, where Hanuman strove for Seeta
The native, mainland Tamil – burning proudly independent /
& their Lankan cousins, killing for independance
Whose fate procrastinated at the dawn of the Age of Obama
Exploring Ramashwaram´s shores with the mythos of the
Ramayana
I listen’d to Kilinochi as Waterloo entertained Felixstowe
Til silence speaks volumes...
‚The Tiger´s have been tamed,‛ bray the international tabloids
‚We must now change our tactics,‛ affirmed determined
Prabhakaran
Within an hour a suicide-bomber activated in Colombo
ARUNACHALA
From sorrow (shoka) was born verse (sloka) you shall sing
the story of Ramayana in this very poetic meter for the
benefit of mankind
Brahma to Valmiki
THIRUVANNAMALAI
There is a town the Tamils hold
As holy as a brahmin
Where spicy shops in lanes unfold
& sundry sweets in streets are sold
Where food-stalls vie, both hot & cold
With carts of local farmin’
Now with your hunger satisfied
Stroll through the buzz & bustle
Bus, bike & rickshaw down roads glide
With shop-on-shop stood by their side
As with a cry bull-whips applied
To oxen of pure muscle
From country quietude an artist flew
Now drown’d in life, downtown Tamil Nadu
LITOLOGY
As India rolls round relentlessly
I spare a thought for Thiruvalluvar
His statue at Kannayakamari
His Kural & how I have travell’d far
His poem is to me a polar star
Some guiding light above the Bengal Bay
Where the voice of this avid avatar
Sang with such ease that all the world should say
Here is a sublime mind, his was the timeless day.
I find the perfect library
Twelve Thirukkural texts
Such energy pass’d down to me
Each fresh context corrects
His predecessors premises & now a new voice next!
SRI RAMANA LIBRARY
Far from the Goan pleasure-bubble’’s burst
At last a quest to quench mine arty thirst
This is a moment when a lifetimes strands
Flail as a wounded cobra in the sands
Or hose blown loose, yielding to youth’s demand
I sent my muse to travel spicy lands
Who settles in this little library
Where I can pass the days endisciplined
Thoughts focussing on page & poetry
The cortex soothed by cool cerebral wind.
I felt as if I was Viashampayana
& Thiruvvalavur the first Vyasa
Reciting the then unknown Mahabharata
For King Janamejaya at that sacred Sappa Satra
TRANSLATIONS FROM THIRUKKURAL
As ‘A’s announce alphabets
Divinity begins existence (1;1)
Rain's continuance preserves existance
Speaketh, then, ambrosia (2:1)
Falsehood conferring faultless fruitfulness
Nature's truth contains (30:2)
Kingly fame fades forgotten
Without righteous government (56:6)
When soldiers fear bloodshed
Kings cry destitute (77:1)
In miserable poverty's train
Many more miseries (105:5)
Her jewels perplex me
Celestial? Peahen? Women? (109:1)
VALMIKI
Upon Arunachala I did poise
The Cadair Idris of these eastern rhymes,
Breaking my trance I glance toward a noise,
& saw a Saddhu to the summit climb;
‚Aalvaar,‛ he said, ‚Valmiki is my name,
Pray tell me of the worlds from whence ye came?‛
‚Alas,‛ said I, ‚My plane seems shorn
Of Universal Values,
Depite all things tis still wartorn,
Battle splatters cross the news…
Tell me, has ever there been born
A soul that all this rues,
Brimming with truth, honour, corragio
As Florence did a thousand years ago?‛
RAMAYANA
‚There was,‛ replied old Vaalmeeki,
‚Such a man of Karma,
Truth, honesty, heart, loyalty,
Love, righteousness & dharma,
A life led for infinity
So many souls may armour
Come listen son, sit close by me,
To the legend-lines of Rama.‛
I sat cross-legged by the bard
As he star’d out into space
Tho skin baked hard, wrinkl’d & scarr’d,
Beauty once knew his face
& I sat, waiting breathlessly
Like a hare after the chase.
RAMA
I sing of Rama & his noble way;
Of humans & animals, queens & kings,
Of monsters, heroes & that dashing day
That keeping faith in heartfelt belief brings;
He was no ordinary lad of ordinary birth,
In him Vishnu had hidden godhead on the Earth.
& gave him up to Ayoudha
Midst the first sprigs of the Spring,
In the kingdom of Kosala
Where the Vedas Saddus sing,
His father was Dasaratha
& him, too, Rama’s king,
Outshining men as moons outshine the stars,
First patron of our Prince of Avatars.
EXILED
As Sita was a child of divine glow
Many had tried to win her hand in vain,
Only the bending of Lord Siva’s bow
Shall King Janaka’s tender sloka gain;
Now Rama tries &, with a heave, at last,
Into the cloudy skies his arrow flies full fast.
& as two loving souls reunited
So their woes on Earth begin
Ancyent promises recited
To Dasaratha make him spin
His former promise to a toothless crone
Must drive Rama from his bepromis’d throne
& with all of Ayoudh aflood in tears
A king banish’d his son for fourteen years.
MAGIC WEAPONS
As exiled are these captains of a race
Just leaves & deerskin cover modesty,
Thro pathless forest, roofless place-to-place,
Met many rishis pledged for tapasvi;
Now one of them to Rama drew,
‚I have three gifts for you!
Here is Brahma’s shining arrow
Its target never misses,
This, here, is Vishnu’s sacred bow,
Shaped by heavenly blisses,
& Indra’s quiver I bestow,
O such a gift this is,
For if to thee the Rakshasas appear
Thou art the only man that foe will fear.‛
SITA
Now comes the times of Rama’s deep distress
Trick’d by the guile of Lakshana,
He has left his lovely Sita helpless
To the cruel wrath of Ravana
Who has come to her in a hermit’s dress
Feigning a humble manner,
That with a laugh is thrown off with his guise,
Ten heads rise up & burn with blazing eyes.
By mule-drawn golden chariot
Them to Sri Lanka flew,
Though Sita sweats she does not fret
Down to a summit threw,
Her jewels< hoping mountain monkeys would
know what to do.
HANUMAN
Soon Hanuman, of Monkeys great,
Whose name was writ in water,
Learns of the grievous Lankan fate
Of King Janaka’s daughter,
& hoping he was not too late,
Leaping as he sought her,
Bounded the Ocean to Ravana’s isle –
A single wave-leap vaulted mile-on-mile.
Once landed he transforms feline,
Soon Sita came in view,
O weary whine, O pining pine,
Til faith she does renew,
Sweet news from this whispering cat,
‚Rama shall rescue you!‛
LANKA
As Hanuman relays happy report
Rama is charg’d with strength fantastical,
Now with Sugriva & his immense court,
All march on Lanka for the grand battle;
Into the waves
They fling great rocks & trees,
Enough for monkey braves to skip across the seas.
Soon conflict flurries night & day,
Elephants swerve thro dusty fray,
In the mountains & the plains,
Morasses of mad melees sway
Streaming blood like summer rains
Until, at last, Ravana faced Rama,
Promising his life & wife to Yama.
CLIMAXES
The duel raged, all mercy gone,
Both sworn to each attack,
Maul marathon as one-by-one
Shorn ten heads growing back
Til Brahma’s barb pierced demon heart
With wild, climatic CRACK!
As demons die so do the skies grow dim
No longer lit by fine heroic fire
Indra himself could never vanquish him
Who now lies lifeless on a burning pyre;
Alas, denounced by drums
& shadow’d by dishonour
To Rama Sita comes,
The taint of shame upon her.
REUINION
Rama sighs, ‚Love, if ye doubt me
I, too, shall go to the flame,
For tho I bare full purity
I hear gossip of your shame!‛
So Sita stepp’d up happily
Onto that burning blame
But not to ashes did her fair flesh fall fair
For she was honest – Agni heard her call
& saved her from those lethal burns,
Her faith her fate embalms,
& justice earns, now she returns
Into her chosen’s arms,
As when a Trojan poem ends
& all that fuss becalms.
ANDHRAMAN
Like Sterme’s starling, prisoners there may cry, ‚I can’t get out,’
forever. But there is no food on these savage-haunted isles, & I
think I remember the water is scarce
William Howard Russell
TIRUPATHI
While a palm-crack'd father fear'd for his mast
I was forc'd to sit out this cyclone blast
Hiding in the hills til the storm-devils pass'd
In a madhouse full of colour & caste
Where opining upon the rains length-last
An old beedie-man piped out the forecast
‚Clear skies tomorrow… before breakfast!‛
I dreamt of a storm where the wild wave crash'd
& the thunder roll'd & the lightning flash'd
& the foam roll'd awe-golden, all gouging & gash'd
& the boats out at sea were so bitterly bash'd
As with cats-o-nine tails the surface lash'd
A future-coming widow wail'd & gnash'd
With three hungry kids & their last meal cash'd.
TIRUMALA
Earth's second-born antique massif
Adishesha's sheer Sehachalam
Seven supreme planet-pregnant Naga-hoods
Vishnu's glories singing
Temple sprawling seven hills
Humbles Papal visitations
Seshadri, Neeladi, Garudadri, Anjanadri,
Vrishabhadri, Narayanadri, Venkatadri
Queing patienly brings divinity
Epiphanies, ecstasies, ablutions
Lord Venkateshwara, Vishnan avatar,
Govind, Srinivasa, Balaji
Daily lakh's of devotees
Brahmotsavam's half million
CHENNAI
Let me take you to an Indian city wild with enthusiasm
Where the levers of this heaving Madras
Make a constant crank, as curry turns the cogs
What wonderful creatures these Indian dogs
Barking intermittently from meal to meal
With hardly a strain in the gene
By Fort Saint George a chapel
As English as the downs
Carved on the wall the battle role
Of heroes & of towns
When English lackeys grappl’d
& Toppl’d Hindoo crowns
Of course there's so much more as unpeels London's Onion
Too brief my Tamil domicile, but now, to Andaman
DEPARTING FOR ANDAMAN
Gazing across exotic ocean stream
Shamrock musing drifts to distant Burnley,
Where for as long as breathing there shall be
My family, my friends, my football team –
So far away, for following my dream
I am a stranger in a strange contree,
Though slowly hook'd upon its cup of tea,
Darjeeling serv’d up with a Devon cream.
The sun has fallen & the ship has sail'd,
The last lamps of the mainland shrink & fade,
A momentary notion has prevail'd
As Vagu & Varuna soft notes play’d
Next time by solid ground my feet regaled
Into youth's fleeting heart I shall have stray'd.
ADRIFT ON THE SS NANCOWRY
On this hard holiday of a lifetime
I spent a night I would never forget
Sat buttock'd on a hole of solid slime
With fluids gushing thro my body's net
For this was my first tropical disease
A brutal bout of dysentry at that
& I seem'd stranded on the silver seas
Too weak to shoo the scuttle of a rat
Ere morning rose I haul'd up from the gunk
& found the good ship's doctor did exist
Whom with a pill this raft of ills hath sunk
With all that fleet of thoughts too dark to list
& now, tho slow, a bloated mosquito,
I'd live to see mine archipelago
ANDAMAN
I dawdl'd four days on the Nancowry,
Small taster of the voyages of yore,
Fodder'd on a bland, suspicious thali,
My heart leapt up to see Hanuman's shore;
Some deep & sheer
Mountain range submarine
Here thrusts its summits clear
In shades of leafy green.
I took a boat to Ross island
Across clear water'd bay,
Wylde Banyans stand on buildings grand,
Imperious Pompeii,
Where was the White Man's Burden
Rots a ghost town in decay.
Port Blair
KALAPANI
God save the KING, they said, god bless the tax
Alas, civilisation really meant,
Ignorance, condescension, excrescence, tax;
As freedom arose from crores of throats
The Jalalabad forty seven
disembark at the onset of their rebel heaven
Each drop of blood they shed would spring anew
upon the mainland freedom fighter born
The cellular jail built to last
Thro good ol' British know how,
Some collonial Dachau,
Where bull whips crack'd & rough sticks flash'd
& Savakar composed Kamala every dawn
In solitary confinement, for them all
HAVELOCK ISLAND
I set off with more nomads from the boat,
To one of Andaman's more famous isles
A little slice of paradise was bought
The heaven of Beach Seven’s shipwreck smile
This day may be my youth's highlight,
Behind a Finn with flaxen hair
The jungle tall upon our right,
Upon our left the ocean fair
Above, ahead, sublime sunlight,
& we were half way there
With hammocks slung oer hermits crabs,
We both adored our home
Then make love in the wave breaks
Silver moonlight snakes the foam
SHIPWRECK’D
Down southern Andaman lies Jolly Bouy
Thick with bright coral & of snorkling joy
I spent an hour lagooning in a laze
& fell astoned... then woke... to my amaze
The boat had leftme... deserted, alone,
No rizlas, samosas, water, nor phone
A mile or so across the sharky foam
A trail of smoke show´d someone was at home,
& so I built a raft but that soon sank,
So off I swam, my goddess I should thank
For showing me this was a wild riptide
My muscles haul´d me back, I´d nearly died
Then shouting to some boats around sunset,
I was the strangest fish they´d ever net.
VISAKAPATNAM
We sail'd from the comforts of Port Blair
Into the wide-wave level loveliness,
That is Ratnakar’s girdle
We men have conquer'd mountains, moats & air,
But never on deep ocean made impress
Secrets too deep to hurdle;
A wild-eye’d Karnatakan mariner grabs my hand
& saith, ‚In these waters, for Bangladeshi freedom,
The Pakistani submarine, PNS Ghazi, was sunk
By the INS Rajput, defending India’s sole carrier,
Her surging pride forever etch’d in the blood of her foes!‛
Tis night, & twinkling across the silvery sea
Spreads Waltair’s City of Destiny, & as we close
Billions of Bogimantalu beam from the Dolphin’s
nose.
AVATARAS
At the back of the ship, at the height of the trip,
Drawn by the harmonies of Lord Vishnu's call,
I saw cross the waters navel rooted lotus
Absorbing the beauteous bay of Bengal,
Transcending to milk, pearly seaway of silk,
Thou lavender cushion of infinite white,
Surrounding the foetal spirit centripetal
Sucking upon toenails painted starry bright.
"Rider, thou art return’d to India,
Saraswathi, I see, has smil'd on you,
Thy mortal aura bless'd in her prayer,
Thine energies hued in a rainstorm blue,
Come drape thyself in the Himalaya,
For there, thy Silver Roses shall renew."
SRI SRI
Srirangam Srinirasa Rao awoke before dawn
To wander Vizag’s shadow lanes of bonfires Bhogi born
Soon Andhra’s Dante cruis’d through Maupassant oer hot poori
Mulling over his revolutionary poetry
& now his city embraces as London once did Dickens;
Ram Nagar’s little Treblinkas – feet-tied, deep-fried chickens
Yon KGH’s mediworld - it Southwark & him Keats –
Across the portside’s Asta Chamas chalk’d upon the streets
& down the long Beach Road with lakhs of Nathli dying
& kids stretch’d tight their new strings for Sankantri’s kite flying
To climb the hillidyll – Our lady of the Sacred Heart –
& stood a true Mahakavi, from people set apart
Gazing on em’rald waters as the fisher boats inspire
His muse to pull from movie making’s lucrative quagmire
POLITICIANS
Is this what they died for, those fighters of old
The freedom for which a nations bravest sold
Alluri Sita Rama Raju turn’d in his grave
When Yediguri Reddy rose on his voters’ wave
Andhra’s ‘messiah’ minister begins with just four crore *
Sat in the bank, of course he knew he was destin’d for more
For with democracy corruption trails along hard-heel’d
& keeps its starving farmers debt-deep in the paddy-field
Observe, within a single term of bribery & presents
Reddy calls in the reddies at twenty five thousand percent
Fact angering Lord Visakh, the Hindoo god of honour
& yes this mortal of Kadapa has anger’d Lord Visakh
Who roars, ‚This thief of Kapada I’ll very soon attack
By summoning a thunderstorm to strike him from the skies
The next time his wee whirlybird oer Nallamalla flies!‛
* Despite the slightly negative tone of the above poem,
during my time in Andhra Pradesh I encountered differing
opinions as to the nature of Mr Reddy. On account of his
Free Health Care & respect for all religions, we was
venerated by many, ‚A very fine diamond man,‛ in the
words of a Muslim I met in Vizag.
THOTLAKONDA
I’d been studying at the Swami Vivekananda library
Of how the tumbling Sanskrit couplet first utter’d by Valmeeki
& so, choosing its nuances to explore in composition
I left Vizag’s fair vibrancy on a morning’s musing’s mission
My subject was now the Buddha, or at least his great influence
I’m certain Jesus merg’d his teachings at an eastern confluence
Boneshaking bus pass’d Rushikund, tree-fill’d beaches, Goan hills,
& dropp’d me off at the colourful foot of Mangamaripeta
From there I climb’d a pleasant hill flank’d by pretty pastel’s
blossom
Another Lingala Konda, another Gopalapatnam
Stood red & ruin’d where Ashvaghosha’s plays were once enacted
& like the Hill of Pigeons, the sacred rains cistern extracted
With views of hills & skies, & the breeze & an ocean sunrise
Far from Siddhartha’s vision, an aloofness to aid his demise
THE
ORISSIAD
Nature has bestowed fullest possible gifts on India & decked
the entire landscape with the best of beauties that nature
could possibly bestow
Dr Giriraj Shah
ENTERING ORISSA
In this country of a thousand surprises who could say when
the most inspiring experience might come
Alice Boner
As I railway'd out of Vizag for to write poetically
Verses concerning Kalingan Kings mix'd with state modernity
Above breathtaking beauties, rising on the valley's western side
More stunning than the Niligris, only a mile or more wide
A thick white bank of fog & cloud eagerly envelop'd the line
& I found it very wonderful for this world, sweet world, still mine
I'd nearly died on Andaman, but today my eyes were seeing
By Boddavara, steep hill-slopes perfect for a spot of skiing
But far too lush vegetation, as if the Cumberland fells
Had time-warp'd through to Jurassic days, as today the tunnel
yells
Of giddy kids exhilarates climbing to Shimiliguda
Asia's former highest station, a summerhouse for Garuda,
Beyond Aruka, scenery seems less savage Scottish sister,
We sierra thro this Spanish spaciousness of South Orissa
POTTANGI
The entire universe is Siva’s stage
Leela Samson
As more & more Odesha felt another Caledonia
Growing keen to claim a mountain like a high king of Kalinga
I took a bus from Koraput thro a region of hilsl & lakes
To disembark quite rapidly as Calliope put on the brakes
Above Pottangi's pleasant sparseness by the nearest rise I went
& there feel that true solitude, a Monte Falcano moment
The climb was tough & ticklish, but the view from the summit
immense
I hope its wonders to recall for the rest of this life from hence
As hovering like an eagle & lording over all of it
As still as sacred Surya, sat with the planet peaks in orbit
I must have felt how Wordsworth did on first conquering
Hellvelyn
Indeed, this could be Wansfell Pike on a rare Summer's Cumbrian
There's Pendle Hill, there's Arthur's Seat like a sea-lion, wait a
minute
My God! this land is India & I'm a traveler in it
THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF PODIA
The bodies keep coming out of the forest. Slain policemen
wrapped in the national flag; slain maoists, displayed like
hunters trophies, their wrists & ankles lashed to bamboo
poles
Arundhati Roy
More than Syed Shah Geetani, Ayatollah of the Valley,
They are seen as the greatest threat to internal security
The proud, waverless Maosits of old, tribal communties
Sick of phoney social rhetoric & oppression of the poor
Cadres meet in secret, blatant disregard for the one-four-four,
To landlords & multi-nationals carry their Yu-Chi-Chen war
& in the heart of Malkangari district they flaunt their bases
Places dangerous to visit, suspicious of stranger's faces
Where laws are only local, Praja Courts & even Love Cases
As Delhi-day approaches the district is becoming tense
As far as Koraput a glut of posters warn the consequence
Of unfurling the Tricolor, "Flying the black flag makes more sense,
We live, in such a hotbed of incorrigible Naxalites
Soldiers silent as wild leopards, we must stand by our father's fight.!"
KALAHANDI India profoundly changed my outlook on life because you see how
people can be content and very happy with little or even no possessions.
It's the reverse of the West
Gary Wright
Hill spires rise among the princely plains of Mahakantara
Where Asurgah once halted the royal progress of Asokha
& a young, unbearded Jesus smash'd a host of Hindoo idols
Then wooed the king, who loving this lad's love, declared him deity
That fortress now a happy, bent-back paddy-planting village
Where Orissian traditions still fill their silver 'Pot of Arts'
Narada's Dalkai folk-dance energizes tribal Nataka
Led by god-like Ghumuru, Lord Ravana's breast-beating Haka
& soon must come the deadly drought, when the Udaya Sagar dust
Hooch-hollow turn the men as skinny kids scrap for a single crust
Snatch'd from a dog-tired dog, as work-searches marathons of blisters
& a boy is sold for sixty rupees to feed his starving sisters
& then there are goats to please the goddess Manikeswara
March'd on to Bwanipatana to join the bloody ten thousand
KADLIPALI
The old & the young alike have turned couch potatoes - glued to the
idiot box - overnight Riyan Ramanath
There is a village in the world not yet connected to the grid
Where life is led at the pace of the plodding Water Buffalo
& puppies freely play & all the children collect wild berries
As paddy dries in the searing sun, peck’d at by Sonepur’s chickens,
Where dogs spend all day dozing & the pigs get into everything
The cute shack of a shop somehow tends to its community’s needs
From herbs for the turakarree to the village alcoholic
There’s eggs & rice, there’s flour & spice, imli, semme, plastic toys
& boys divide their leisure between the volleyball & cricket
& a wee minority possess power bars on their phones
Where the old men chatter drinking chi & smoking perfumed beedies
By squatting women sporting nose-bling, arms full of glimm’ring
bracelets
Discussing another happy bride’s matrimonial TV
That gathers dust, unwatch’d – you can hear it in the serenity
MANI WEDS SUKANTA
A wedding is a display of wealth in the garb of showcasing our culture
Ranee Kumar
It begins with an advert, on the internet increasingly
& discreet meetings to appease concord throughout each family
Then a swirling bull of energy erupts in flashing lights
Emanating from the envelopes of seven hundred invites
When disco beats down lane & street leads the groom thro
Sakhipara
To his deer-eyed, lotus face of a bride, opening with mascara
It is a beautiful ceremony on an auspicious day
The priest presents which parts of the Vedas in Sanskrit he should
say
Their hands are bound, happy promise of prosperity & children
Then the newly-weds share their joy midst many benign
presences
Where women shimmer glamorous as the lads dance with aplomb
All hoping to avoid the pitfalls of Matrimony.com
‚It’s all a lovely fairytale!‛ ‚O! the couple fit like a glove!‛
‚Well, its not long now, I hope, until their platinum day of love‛
JAYADEVI
The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity is of wonderful
structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and
more exquisitely refined than either
Sir William Jones
From the village of Kenduli by the banks of pretty Prachi
Rode the poet of Orissa, singing Sanskrit to perfections
Marrying his temple dancer he would live the life artistic
& give the world his Gita Govind, sang of Krishna & Radha
All aspects of love’s passion fires from the times of it awaken’d
To contentment in possession, a musical still enacted
From Kerala’s Kathak actors to the folk singers of Nepal
I sing of Krishna’s springtime passion with the melodies of love
Twyx the handsome chief of cowherds - urgent, charming, uncommitted
-
& his delicious consort – playful, sulky & tempestuous -
Whose hips & heaving breasts sport with the black bodies of gold robed
bees
To & fro the Dark Lord’s earings stroked her cheek, stirr’d her girdle
zone
Til morning’s lips exhausted, his body claw’d, her garlands broken/
KHARAVELA
I am one of those who prefer the violence of the brave
to the non-violence of the cowardly
Ghandi
How many conquerors have spread their banners throughout India
The Guptas & the Mughals & the British & once Kalinga
Led by a liberal, Jain in spirit, Kartikeya in arms
Who spread the old Odian script as grows the wild buffalo horn
Restoring former glories a century since Ashoka’s march
From sea to sea, from Himalayan pines to the Tamil-Nad plains
& push’d back the invincible Demetrius of Bactria
Uttarapatha, Maghada, Patiliputra in the fold
How come we know him? The obscurity of the Kalingan kings
Legendary among those who set man’s annals in precious store
Then let us set our eyes upon the caves of Udayagiri
& the Hathigumph inspictions on the brow of the Elephant Cave
A wall of fossil-letters carefully carv’d into living rock
Facing Ashoka’s famous edicts six miles direct to Dhauli
THE TURNING OF ASHOKA
Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, conquered the Kalingas eight years after his
coronation. One hundred and fifty thousand were deported, one hundred
thousand were killed and many more died<Now Beloved-of-the-Gods feels
deep remorse for having conquered the Kalingas.
Asoka
The year is 261 BC/ After the bloody battle of Kalinga at Dhauli,
Asokha is riding beside the River Nadi
Ashoka
O blessed day! What glory gain'd, the battle still pounds my senses
& in mine ears still echoes the cries of battle & death-yells loud
Those leonine roars, those clam’rous shouts, the din of drums & cymbals
& what sights - great elephants renting each other with bloody tusks
& great chariots exploding in shorn limbs & wooden splinters
But what is this? a worn woman weeps by the river running crimson
My goodly lady why shed thy tears on this auspicious of days
When I am flush with the victory & feeling very generous
Whatever on this Earth ye need my attendants shall see to
Woman
I hear you, Chakravartin, in thine armour as white as clouds
& yet, ye are a hypocrite for thy palms bestain'd with blood
& yes there is one thing I want upon this Earth above all others
To feel my husband's warmth but his body is as cold as the snows
A broken corpse - if ye have no power to make men, why kill them?
OLD BOOKS
Better we live ones destiny imperfectly
than copy someone else’s perfectly
The Baghavad Gita
On Saraswathi Puja I awoke in seductive Puri
To stroll a chi-stall-crawl to the most magnificent Jaggernath
Where being western in my ways, stood forbidden of its secrets
Upon the Raghunandan roof with three Serbian Buddhists,
I make my way back down stairs to a silent, private library
But for the crazed cacophony of the world though open windows
& found my Silver Muses examining antique bookcases;
Clio presents Howard-Russel’s ‘Diary in India,’
Calliope brings me legends from their fight for independence
While Saraswathi lays the Dhamma-Padda, on palm-leaf, beside.
& so, sat searching thro all those wonderful, worm-ridden pages
I plann’d a few set-pieces to fortify my broadening song
As if this was my first school day, such an auspicious occasion
& reason for festivity, as in these heaving streets below
THE CHITRAKARS
Indian art forms are like an agarbati, soothing, pleasurable & all
pervading. Western music & dance are like firecrackers that excite for a
while but quickly fade
Sandeep Chauhan
As Michelangelo made art to raise & praise his messiah
Three hundred families must preserve the image of Jannergath
& his twenty four incarnations, for those ten days every year
He & his siblings got to praisetheir Auntie in great chariots
Preserv’d by painters of Puri, Dandshahi & Raghurajpur
Who cloth their canvas, coating it with the gum of Tamarind seeds
Then play at Chitrakarita with vivid & natural hues
Drawn from green leaves, from indigo, from conch-shells & from
Cinnabar
To depict in epic splendour scenes from the Mahbharatra
& Krishna kissing Radha, taken from old family sketch-books
Pass’d down for seven centuries, assistance for apprentices
From Puri’s beach one morning I came to dancing Raghurajpur
To see intricate palm-leaf etchings of Talapatitichra
From bottles to stick-puppets, from bookmarks to wedding envelopes
COSOMOLOGY
The art critics have made a legend out of it
Dr Giri Raj Shah
As a continent was entering the twenty-first century
The ATMs sprawl’d nationwide could be number’d on one hand
In only sixty years her surface scruddy with plastic acne
Spreading with time, a time that changes & yet remains unchanged
As at Konark when gazing on its spectacular temple
Drawn by seven spirit horses, one for every day of the week
Upon twelve pairs of mighty wheels, for the months & the zodiac
Full well the Hinoos conjured the complex duplicities of time
For as the width of seven barley grains forms a single finger joint
Time stretches from the twinkling instances of starry Kshana
To the vasty Kaliyuga spanning twelve hundred divine years
& beyond, to the Kalpa quatorzain, Manu reborn at the tunrs
‚Very well,‛ I told my guide prospective, ‚I am impress’d with you,
Lead on...‛ tward Surya’s shining seat, dreaming ancient scenes, we drew.
UPENDRANARAYAN
The destiny of India is being shaped in her classrooms
Nehru
From the fermenting Orissa of Fakir Mohan Senapati
Where birdsong bubbles with the sounds of Odesha’s printing press
Banishing the need for sweat to make palm leaf scratches readable
Gushing out its native literature to comfort many households
Atibadi’s Bhagabata& the Utkal Darpan’s pages
Inspires the promising headmaster of Balasore’s Zinna school
Feeding his mind & spirit for he had lost his wife & daughter
& rais’d his family with such a stoic determination
Respect was won on every side, even in his very classroom
Where pin-drops echoed & single stares did drain delinquent faces
& when dreadful malaria murder’d through his locality
He organised Sera Samiti to alleviate the sufferings
& like Sir Walter Scott his muses collected local folk stories
His pupils heard these lovely tales, they listen’d & spoke not a word
CONVERSATIONAL ORIYA
Kind words can be short & easy to speak
But their echoes are endless
Mother Teresa
Night fell on the many, many tranquilities of Chandipur<
As I embark’d a stroll, astride its epic, crab-fluttering beaches
I heard a distant disco boom as if I near’d new Glastonbury
So through the trees I darted into the dark village of Mizapur
Quite power cut mysterious, & came upon a cavalcade
Of young endancing Indians, surrounded by prancing fireflies
A perfect place to practice phrases I had pick’d up on the road;
Tomorrow nar kono - they ask’d my name – mor Damo – I replied
Sundoro millano – I said – Apono komiti achanti
Mor bholochi – he answer’d & then offer’d me some turkurry
‚Bhollo swado,‛ my compliments for the sauce was very tasty
I ask’d them – ke ta tonka – but they did not want one rupee
Ho donyobad – I thank’d him & then off like a prajapati*
I moved on musing to myself – mu Orissa Kuhalapay
* Butterfly
NORTH EAST
Photo by TP Kiernan
GUWAHATI SUPERFAST EXPRESS
But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes
it to disappear or to merge in something else.
EM Forster
It has been so very wonderful this sojurn through Orissa
But now another India sends its beckoning from Bengal
So I hopped aboard the superfast but as the sleeper full for weeks
I bought a general ticket but the carriage spared not one inch
So I though I’d try the sleeper, for after all was just four hours
& got caught by the conductors & narrowly escaped a fine
By pleading English ignorance, at Kharagpur changed carriages
Stuffing myself inside third class to looks of sheer bemusement
But all I felt was friendliness as now two pretty, teenagers
Flow’d tho the carriage looking like the wives of a regal Mughal
Voices merging in harmonies to the rhythm of the djembes
& of course I gave them money, upon reaching Santragachi
The train emptied onto the tracks for a quarter mile procession
Of bags & blankets, strangers in transit to change trains for Howrah
Whose bridge screams ‘Welcome travellers to the city of Calcutta!‛
HYBRIDABAD
I believe that it does India no good to compete with western
civilisation on her own field. But we shall be more than
compensated if, in spite of the insults heaped upon us, we follow
our destiny
Tagore
Give me Saint Andrews with sea-views & putter
Or take me to Ascot to big-shot & flutter
Give me a hot-pot with good bread & butter
Or if not, just give me Calcutta
Give me the mornings stroll ‘long the Maidan
Give me the games grand Garden of Eden
Give me the Hoogley’s green glide Thamesian
Whenever I yearn for my London
For as she once was the pulse of an empire
& Edinburgh the mind that built the Raj
Then surely this great city was its soul
Where men would recreate their distant shire
Til freedom’s furnace burnt this vain mirage
& Caudhuris Kolkata did recall
SUNDERBANS
The forest which has tigers should never be cut,
Nor should tigers be chased away from the forest
Mahabharatra
Ten thousand years ago
The soul of India
Daub'd upon cavern walls
Aeons of abundance
& regal reverence
Where sages ashram sat
Midst placid Tyger packs
Fast forward to the Raj
& man-eating panics
From the Chowgarh Tigress
To Bengal's precious cubs
& on, thro Dodo time,
Man's fur-greed has left them
Annihilation verged
SANGAR ISLAND
Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all
Will Durant
Drip< drip< this snow-bed’s propitious melt
Shall carry over fifteen hundred miles
Along it’s overpopulated course
But verily the soul of India!
Whose waters sent to many sacred tanks
A nation wide, & on this delta strands
One is reminded of her creation
The ashes of sixty thousand princes
Griev’d on this isle - to purify their souls
Himalaya sent to them a daughter
Tho lost in Siva’s locks a thousand years
By terrible austerities releas’d
Those locks are like the Ganga’s many mouths
Where camphor, corpse & flowers seek the seas
PLASSEY
The East India Company's domination of the Indian
economy was based on its private army
Robert Trout
Empiric British ambition
Found a human pulse in Clive,
Whose self righteous indignation
At the Black Hole did arrive
To address the situation
All inside the Nawab's hive,
Where in this monsoon of Indra's
Growling with the guns of France,
Go rhino shields, glint curv'd daggers,
Howdah'd behemoths advance...
Halted rudely by Clive's soldiers!
Mir Jaffa sees the chance,
& leads his decisive mass from the fight,
Beams, ‚I must be the new Nawab tonight!‛
BUS CRASH
As the officers told me that a man had been carried off the road by
ay a few nights before, & the driver said there were many about
tonight, I began to comprehend I was travelling in India
William Howard Russell
My auto-rickshaw gliding hies
From the glean of battle,
A poet’s prize...dark dragonflies
Dart oer the arable
I woke to moans? to my amaze,
Bags lying by my concuss'd head,
Stumbling out in blood-soak'd haze,
From hospital I sped *
I took a room to convalesce
Amid palatial surrounds
A was a mess for more or less
A week of sights & sounds
‘Has Saraswathi saved me?’ I was glad
To catch the bus out of Murshidibad
* Berhampur
HIDDEN ROSES
I am from the back streets of Burnley – Accy Road & Stoops Estate -
& it was there, wandering Stoneyholme, that I first smelt India
Curried intoxications! Now a man deep in her hinterland
Of nothing but plains & paddy squares & dried out river beds
An intensity of flatness on every side as the immense
Ganga glides gargant, flank’d by snow white sand banks,
Not an idol, nor an article of faith - but deity on Earth
Thro Kaliachak we crept, on through Malda’s mango gardens,
That bizarre English Bazar, gateway to the Himalayan hills
Then on to antique Pandua, city of the Bengal Sultans
Whose grand Ekhlaki mosque turns to birdsong one’s own whistles
Alhamdulillah! inside the abandon’d Adina mosque
I sniff a red rose within its garden immaculately kept
A perfect moment’s respite from this all-engrossing country!
GORKHALAND
A distant view of a snowy mountain... has a strange power
of moving all poets & persons of imagination
Douglas Fairfield
They are totally different, but somehow the same
Yet have no friends in the cabinet
Of a government that owns their land
Built on the haunches of heaven
Hills heavyweight, houses high & low
Above the plains there's no heat in the head
The tea's champagne, mens' minds mountain fresh
But Bengal still clings to jealous oppression
No colleges, no comissions, no IPS
Tho darjeeling is such a fine capital
Sprawl'd epic on these steep forest spaces
As if Rome had been sunder'd by Poseidon
Where Hooker's flora fills the golden vales
That lead to Kangchenzonga, over all
KANGCHENZONGA
The institute trains young men not only
to climb Himalayan peaks,
but also create in them an urge
to climb peaks of human endeavour
Nehru
I came on Pemagangtse in the night
A leopard passing slowly in the snow
& waited til a precious pinch of light
Announced the phoenix day in foetal glow
I gazed across the Kabrus unaware
That to these climes had Calliope come
Slopes gloomy grey, as sunbeams fill the air
They turn the burnish'd burgondy of rum
Savitri's spell impells the Sun to strength
Red turns to orange, orange burns to gold
& as all shadows shorten in their length
What summit sparkles white, where, very cold,
My muse sits, singing, wisest of the nine
"On Nanda Devi waits my sister's sign!"
THE NORTH EAST STATES
A crooked cartographic handle, way out on the edge of the
national map and consciousness
The Lonely Planet
Meghalaya's lofty limestone plateaux
Mawsyram's endless rains
Tripura's tiny, territorial tribes
Agartala's Maharajan Ujjayanta
Mizoram's demi-centennial bamboo blossomings
Locustal rats attracting
Manipur's love-laden Loktak lake
Dancers jangling divinely
Assam's vital tea plantations
Perferate lime-laden tenga
Nagaland's brutal guerilla insurgencies
Dimapur's Kacharian reliquery
Tawang’s unstable, unfathomable monastery
Arunachal bamboo-cupp’d apong
KATIHAR
A bundle of contradictions held together by strong, but invisible threads
Jawaharlal Nehru
There is a certain sadness in this land
The handicapp'd are heap’d with all my heart
The twisted feet of those too low to stand
& me, all in their midst, but set apart
& when I wait to catch the midnight train
So many shudras spread about the floor
A spell of blessed respite to obtain
From drudgeries of being born so poor
& like the swine from meal to meal subsists
Therein lies the archaic chaff of wheat
On which this young democracy insists
"Caste is caste & never the twain shall meet!"
& even dreamlands which all equal share
Are here disturb'd by tannoy's constant blare
THE TYGER & THE DRAGON
India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries
without ever having to send a single soldier across her border!
Hu Shih
I mean, come on, fifteen hundred kilometers
That’s one helluva difference in opinion *
Two growing superpowers share a common border
With half of the world's population
Intersecting interests & nuclear throats
The Dragon is insular & aggressive
While the Tiger is becoming a brand
Where loss of village values drives the rupee to Kubera
By a youthful nation striving for the stars
Is it too early to predict that in the face
Of free-speech, however bakshish accented,
The chained up Chinese pressure cooker must split
& India shall dominate the world
* While the Indians insist on the boreder between the two
nation s being at 2000 kilometres, the Chinese reckon the
figure is more like 3,500
VARANASI
Since early in my life I've been fascinated by India, and I have
spent a great deal of time traveling in that country.
Bianca Jagger
Alluvial flatlands roll ever West,
The Ganga Matha shimmers into sight,
As Kentish countryside our journey bless’d
We dine on the age old City of Light;
Siva's domain
I sit beside her fragrant flow
Watching lush marigold & grain
Ash-daub'd ascetics throw
Hypnofixed on that bamboo bier
Down by the riverside,
The pyres appear, fire'd atmosphere
Reeking for those that died
Kashi lit up their blessed death
While Vedic chantsmen vied.
SARNATH
Bhikkus, what have I taught you is comparable to the leaves in my hand,
what I have not taught you, to the leaves in the forest
The Buddha
To Sarnath, ever draped in bliss bliss,
Stretch'd by the Holy River,
He came, gave men a tender kiss,
"No longer I Siddhartha!"
They knew not what to make of this,
"Call now me the Buddha!"
They sat & listen'd to the first sermon
Soft on the lips of the enlighten'd one.
As Ashoka wept devotion
Dharmachakra set in motion
Pillars rais’d up for his people
Heaven-pointing English steeple
Capp’d by ornate capital
Preaches Joy Unspeakable
THE
DHAMMA
The ceremony of the Dhamma is timeless
Asoka
HATRED
Those dwelling on injustice
Chaimn’d by hatred
Insult, hurt, defeat, robbery
Ignoring these liberates
Hatred never conquers hatred
Only love triumphant
Seeking happiness thro hatred
Denies us happiness
As victory induces hatred
Better we surrender
Among those we hate
Live in love
Despising faults in others
Amplifies ones own
WATCHFULNESS
The paths of unwatchfulness
End in death
Deem them never watchful
Foolish ignorant careless
Greatest treasure of watchfulness
Is watchfulness itself
When watchfulness conquers thoughtlessness
Wisdom’s mountain ascended
From ever watchful self-erudition
Passions pass away
Compare garrisoning natural borders
With preventing carelessness
As elephants escape swamps
Raise ones awareness
WISDOM
If people were horses
Wisest runs swiftest
As humanity builds canals
Wisdom guides mentality
Deem revering worthy gurus
Life’s measured excellence
Those loving transient pleasures
Eventually envy ascetics
Better to conquer oneself
Than enemies numerous
One contemplative day outweighs
An ignorant century
Age born form experience
Not passing years
MINDSET
From demanding unholy minds
Cravings grow creeperly
Hidden within mysetrious consciousness
Independant, incorporeal minds
Minds unsteady & dishonest
Never feel wise
Enemies may harm us
Wayward musings worse
Drinking waters of truth
Gains mental serenity
Deem highest thought swans
Leaving lakes heavenward
Community awards contented minds
With happy lives
DESIRE
Currents of strong desire
Carry away lustfulness
Those pursued by lust
Deem hunted hares
Pandering to niggling desires
Imprisons us perpetually
Neither iron nor rope
Fetters mortal passion
Deem hungers of passions
Humanity’s greatest diseases
Strong/rooted trees survive chopping
Like unchallenged cravings
Passions ruin ill-guarded minds
As monsoons hovels
EVIL
For devious arrogant libertines
Life seems easy
All our evil deeds
Inside us born
Those who speak lies
Access every evil
Minds delaying doing good
Imagine sinful pleasures
Dishonesty, theft, adultery, drunkenness
Unearths life’s roots
Which weeds damage fields?
Hatred, illusion, desire
Better leave them unbefriended
Evil, ugly souls
BODY
Those who love life
Never drink poisons
All beings fear danger
Life universally dear
When surrounded by illness
Live life healthily
Want of healthy exercise
Rusts ones beauty
Against death’s regent power
Even relations useless
As torrents flood villages
Death drowns everyone
From life’s burning fever
Infinity brings freedom
PURITY
Along paths of perfection
Fairest flowers found
Floral scent travels metres
Virtue’s perfume miles
Discovering & teaching virtue
Avoids pointless pains
Whereas bodies decay eventually
Virtue never disappears
Nobody can purify another
Purity springs within
Joy! Joy of Truth
Conquers all pleasure
As silversmiths remove impurities
Improve oneself meticulously
BEHAVIOUR
As anger boomerangs woundingly
Never speak harshly
As coachmen control carriages
Peacefulness handles anger
While perpetuating good deeds
Never repeat wrongdoings
Wrong-doers redressing negative actions
Moons piercing clouds
Father – mother – elders - teachers
Require uppermost respect
People praising personal posipraxis
Never chastise themselves
Never praise or condemn
Without just cause
FOOLISHNESS
Down long weary roads
Fools travel lifetimes
Better to go alone
Than accompany fools
Fools thinking themselves wise
Humanity’s highest buffoons
Pyres of personal destruction
Foolish labour builds
Smouldering fires consume wrongdoers
With unwise actions
When sages fault us
Their criticisms priceless
Better we travel alone
Before accompanying fools
CONTROL
Those mastering pentasensory chariots
Admired by godheads
Deem one’s personal realisations
Our supreme refuge
To climb over sorrows
Recognize their circumambience
As elephants endure arrows
Handle slander silently
Friends who control themselves
Life’s foremost escorts
From a mind self-controlled
Springs cornucopian joy
Before conquering countless thousands
Better conquer oneself
HOLINESS
Where holy men dwell
Deem joyful places
From credulous belief systems
Greatness lives apart
As carpenters fashion timber
Holiness controls soul
Unencumber’d boats of life
Swiftly sail nirvanaward
Neither birth nor appearance
Reflects inner holiness
Faith, energy, contemplation, wisdom
Overcome our sorrows
Both humble & giant
Can heaven obtain
MINISTERS
Armour laws & sentencing
With universal uniformity
Examples of good kingship
Inspires regional ministers
Better we persuade minds
Before regulating lives
Never promote bored ministers
Reward energetic enthusiasm
Ministers placed over peoples
Must win affections
Envy, cruelty, anger laziness
Affects ministerial impartiality
Whenever forgiveness is possible
Forgive repentant criminals
KINGSHIP
Frequent tours of inspection
Makes monarchy accessible
Pacifying neighboring nations peacefully
Outcharms invasion’s bloodshed
Into improving public works
Channel state resources
As your own child
Treat every citizen
Better conquering thro dhamma
Than wastrel warfare
Protecting & promoting religions
Fosters inter-mutual harmony
When humanity rewards greatness
Pacifism out-accolades warmaking
1857
Outwardly the native sepoys seem to obey your orders. But
do you have any idea of the tremendous fire that burns in
their hearts? If this fire becomes a conflagaration, it will
reduce the British Empire to ashes
John Dickinson
BEGGININGS
Europe is merely powerful; India is beautiful
Savitri Devi
As crabs emerge quite candid from their holes
Then scuttle back when danger tingles near
Shrewd Azimoola Khan his country calls
to see the battle-sunder’d Crimea
& there observes the British with a sneer
Beside the French both morale & physique
& depress'd opressive camp atmosphere
Indications that London has grown weak
His Nana, back in Oude, delights to hear him speak!
While touring northern hill stations
They planned their villainy
Demonstrations, protestations
Would never set them free
Only firm force could drive these aliens back to the
sea
MEERUT
When in the midst of the all-beauteous skies
& all this lovely world, that shpould engage
Their mutual search for the old golden age
They seat a phantom, swelled into grim size
Out of their passions & their bigotries
John Keats
As Nature panders to her mightiest
How great a gulf is fix'd twyx Siva's sons
& La Race Blanche, whose puff'd up Chelsea chest
Thro races, taxes, churches, dance-a-thons
Rules haughty & imperious, whose guns
Would often hammer insolence at whims
Of English boys, fresh from shelter'd Etons -
Resentment simmers, loyal lustre dims,
They felt it in their hearts, they meant it in their
limbs.
As all wars need a catalyst
The cartridge greas'd with fat
That loadings kiss'd, twined faiths insist
Our Gods forbid us that
Soon hundreds were court-martial'd & sentenced to
ten years flat.
ALLAHABAD
If the watchman breaks into the house
Who can protect it
Bhai Gur Das
The torch is lit, the blaze of battle burns
To mudhut Meerut’s freed hero returns
The air has changed, gunpowder stirs the sense
Tongues drunk on bloodshed bray independence
All of the northern states are in a stir
‚Surenda Sai is freed in Sambalpur!‛
Delhi's Mughal imperium restor'd
Bahadur Shah proclaim'd its latest lord
Quite central to the Gangeatic plain
The massive keystone of red Akbar's reign
Defies with ravelins & bastions
Those petty princes & their pounding guns
& if she fell India would the same
A miracle the Fleet Street mob proclaim.
CAWNPORE
Cawnpore is by no means alone in any of the circumstances which
mark the turpitude & profundity of guilt
William Howard Russell
On mouldering parapets
Patient vultures gather
Sensing confidence &trust
Lies shattered in humans
Escaping siege diseases
Women & children are slowly raped
Chanell’d toward a bridge of boats
Thick white puffs of smoke in the trees
Leaves rustling to the flight of deadly grape
A very grievous cannonade
Tulwars slash, sabres hack
Meat cleaver dismembers children
As women’s screams are silenced
Scarlet flows the waters
LUCKNOW
Why are we in India at all? ‘Because Heaven wishes it,’ says some
gentleman, who meantime thinks that Heaven’s sole design with regard
to himself is, that he shall make as many rupees as he can, get his
pension or his debentures, & at once leave the ‘confounded country’ for
ever
William Howard Russell
Midst a city large as Paris & impalaced on each side
The British peckerd up, their residency fortified
Three thousand souls, of them only a third were train’d in war
On which a constant cannonade spreads all the guts of war
Wounds greening with their gangrene, now scurvy & now disease
Runs rampant, as Hades swoons to its warm, stygian breeze
& this seems a good metaphor for this was living hell
The lower orders starving as they dodge shot, spear & shell
But not the Upper Ten, forged by a stoical grandeur
They would die the Upper Ten while hand fann’d by the punkah
Now, underground, the Cornish, proper mining family
Deflect the tunnel traffic of the brave Zemindaree
As overground attacks toss'd back, as a sortie or two
Defended British int'rests as relief toward them drew
WHILE PLAY’D THE CANNONADE
Whether it be the heat or the curry, or the state of one’s liver, it
seems that the disposition of Englishmen alters in India, & they
become very argumentative & theoretical
William Howard Russell
General - My how hot a day this is
Reverend - I cannot agree with you sir
There was a lovely breeze this morning
The hour was three I think
& if you ever had visited Stuffcote
You wouldn’t dream of calling this hot
General - Stuffcote! Why, I have been there sir
Was there, in fact, for three years sir
It is one of the coolest stations in India
Reverend - Poppycock - in august - what nonsense
General - Yes, sir, especially & most particularly In August
I have felt positively chilly all thro the month
Reverend - Chilly? In stuffcote? In August<
Servant - More champagne, Sahib?
THE FIRST RELEIF
Freedom did not come to India with ease
AB Raypee
There is a wonder griffinish in war
From the baggage-train impedimentum
To the bubbling euphorics of the kill
Come observe the famed Sir James Outram
March into the heart of rebellion
Thro groping clouds of dust - his Goorkha guns
All discipline & bunderbust beside -
That clearing reveal, through ‘Troughton & Sims,’
Lucknow’s glittering towers & turrets
& in a final drive relieved his charge
This pocket-watch of Saxon resistance
To enlarge & improve its defences
& wait upon the larger armies march -
A quarter of his boys dead in the dash.
THE OLD ELEPHANT OF RANEEGUNJ
They are strange beings these old soldiers. They tell you war is a
dreadful thing; that it is a terrible trade – a curse to the Earth; but still
they are never so happy as when they are at it
William Howard Russel
He'd fought for Clive at Plassey
&, wounded, refused to die
The Mahratta & Pindaree
He had swatted like a fly
Now on this crackling density
He cast an intense eye
A knowing look, pluck'd from his hundred years
Each blasted field of battle reappears
Of all those shambling quadrupeds
Him gnarl'd & warted most
Of those heavily armour'd heads
His trumpet chief in boast
A Guatama inspiring to the fray
His great, grey herd, & if them brave they'll charge again one day
THE SECOND RELIEF
Arise, awake & stop not til the goal is reach’d
Swami Vivekananda
Two months had pass's, two months of growing doubt
Among the sepoys restless for success
& now the British coming on in force
Thro cruel Dilkusha, La Martiniere
& Secundras Bagh – as in one hot day
Rare crosses forged from Sevastapol steel,
Some twenty four, were won in the storming
& when the residency was relaxed
They still had waggons bubbling with Moselle
& with a street of screens escaped the noose
That tighten’d into knottage as they left
A swarming host of hard fought liberty,
An India for Indians, as now
Saddhus perform their poojahs pure in peace
POOJAH
I saw Indian brahmans living upon the earth & yet not on it,
fortified without fortifications, & possessing nothing yet
having the richness of all men
Apollonious of Tyrana
Morning devotions as pure as the Chutrak
Who drinks only raindrops, he takes his brass pot
Strolling turblanless into the peasoup hue
Rinses his mouth in the steaming stream
Pours & rubs libations on crown & chest
Squinting with satisfaction
Squatting in the waters to his very neck
He utters forth his low-noted song of joy
Then returns, full of awe, to the shore
Smears mud across his quivering torso
To kiss the earth repeatedly, invoking RAM
He turns his misty eyes up the heavens
& with one last taste of Goomtee spring
Leaves, mud hardening into thick yellow paste
ONE NATION
O India! Forget not that the ideal of thy womankind is Sita,
Savitri, Damayanti; forget not that the lower classes, the ignorant,
the poor, the illiterate, the cobbler, are thy flesh & blood, thy
brothers. Proudly proclaim, ‚I am an Indian, every Indian is my
brother.‛
Swami Vivekananda
This fair city was there’s to defend
Mussalman & Hindoo, poised as one soul
Dug in their rifle pits from wall to wall
Form’d an independent native blend Forged by thoughts of futures they would now spend
Stood up from the dust where the coolies crawl
Without the threat of a gruff, English drawl
Dispensing impositions trend-on trend
Here comes the British legions - contact made
The suspense of a daily cannonade
‚Sahib, the Sikhs have sided with the foe
They look so better fed, so better paid....
Their flights of optimism slightly fade
& fall into attrition's sluggish flow.
FINAL DAYS
The fact is, we must get this work over,
or the sun will become very deadly
William Howard Russell
With cavalry curvetting
Bahadooring with their swords
Every hoof step seems blessed
The certain concomitant of success
A cumbrous train of men, bullocks, guns & tumbrils
Dew-diamonded with silver howdahs
March on infested Lucknow Invested immensely with the matchlockmen of Oudh
All willing to sacrifice their breath for Brijeis Kuddr
Exalted with the dignity of the planet Mercury
Choking up the Goomtee & the Kokraal stream
Headless bodies poison the water
Forming perfect perches for buzzards & crows
Whose thirsty caws urged each side back to war
THE FALL OF LUCKNOW
We made an expedition
We met a host & quell’d it
We forced a strong position
& killed the men who held it
Thomas Love Peacock
The Martiniere was the first to fall
Its statues arrayed eccentrically
Amid colorings incongrous
The Imambarras next, Cairo-quaint
Nearby, the vast Kaisar-bah
Looted outrageously
In a yellow house on the racecourse
Brave sepoys make a futile stand
& kill the beau ideal that leads the Sikhs
O proud warriors, last race to join the Raj
Though living by their Guru’s auspicious practices
Morality drowns in blood
They dragg’d a sepoy out to burn to bits
& laugh’d as flesh fell hanging from his bones
THE RETURN OF THE RAJ
Who rides at the tail of a Border thief,
he sits not long at his meat.
Rudyard Kipling
Shots cease & Lucknow has fairly fallen
Choked with furniture & corpses swollen
The stench of blood & powder taints the eye
Course doggerel emblazen’d everywhere
The victim pyres of pride begin to burn
& citizens have started to return
Their murd’rous faces scowling with defeat
The Brits all nervous, sweating in the heat
The plague tower of their Residency
A shrine to patience & tenacity
Those timeless Saxon traits, as rule hardens
Men once more tend the Badshahbagh gardens
Where a wild fakeer wick with coughs & spits
Amid the ruins, Marius-like, sits.
NORTH WEST
INDIA
The character of Indian culture may be expressed by one
phrase: acceptance of unity in diversity
Suniti Kumar Charterjee
NANDA DEVI
There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your
heart and won't go. For me, India is such a place
Keith Bellows
Up to the world's rooftop I slowly rose;
Checking upon the progress of the soul
Appears a mountain prospect a la snows
Of Austria, New Zealand & Nepal.
I left Almora for the Kashyap Hill,
High commune of fairest tranquility,
Fresh dawntint drew me to the lofty chill
Of this monolithic Axis Mundi.
& as the sun did smother all with awe
I saw the famous lips of Clio smile,
& sing to me as I have heard before,
"O lover of the lyrical lifestyle!"
Until these sonnets circuit all the globe
Thy thought, thy life, with poesy ye must robe!"
BHAGAVAD GITA
A human becomes the best when he aspires
for the welfare of one & all
Mahabharatra
Let us transfer to a field of battle
Where two armies are solemnly opposed
Forever on the Gangeatic plane,
Between, steering a golden chariot
Drawn by four horses whiter than the eye,
Stands Krishna, sacred keeper of the cows,
Him born when all India was asleep,
By him knelt Arjun in woeful weeping,
Shedding tears for brethren he must affray,
The king bouy'd up by his charioteer,
From potent lips gallops the song of God,
Defining how a man should live with peace,
& though Kusukeshetra flows with blood
On this famed field has Karma pitch’d its tent
KASHMIR
The sovereignty of scriptures of all religions must come to an
end if we want to have a united integrated modern India
BR Ambedkar
As Britain bowl'd a leg bye at Palestein
Her Indian partition fall wide of the mark
The Vale of Kashmeer - considered quite divine
From sanity stranded, any day might spark
The violence of Rama & Ravana
Go far beyond Kennedy’s Havana
For as thro Busselhra, when bhandar coats Jejuri,
AGNI ones & twos shall spread the fall out fury!
Most Indians want peace, they say, to live in peace
With brethren, though them by faith divided
But Delhi’s central government daily funds release
To maintain the Sinchen Glacier, how misguided
This energy expended on insults & impasse
How Laleshwari would have wept into his kahwa glass
JESUS
In the course of his fourteenth year, the young Isha, blessed of God,
came on this side of Sind and established himself among the Aryas in the
land beloved of God.
The Unknown life of Jesus
The moon-gold sweetness of Heaven’s moon-gold child
The prophet Isa, Jesus, whatever was his name
Refined his faith, I believe, in the monasteries of the East
From Jaggernath to the lakes of Srinagar
& in the Hemi Gumpha of the snowy lands of Leh
On the frontier between the pagans & the sky
Buried deep in the archives, far from prying Vatican eyes
A scroll sleeps, revealing the lost eighteen years of Christ
He had preach’d to to the Israelites of the Yus Marg plains
& read an Ashokan edict in his native Aramaic
Head full of Buddhist principles he went West to meet his
fate
To return a bearded godhead on the back of a Catholic mare
I thought so much, way back in Asurgah, where perhaps I saw his face
Though’ young & black, never in doubt was the tranquility of his grace
DALAI LAMA
They have been taken under our protection, & we cannot in
any way stretch out our hands upon their lives or property.
Permission is given to them to worship their gods. Nobody
must be forbidden or prevented from following his own
religion
Muhammad bin Quasim
As he climb'd the highest mountain he would climb
A bird above the churning pale of men
To prosper, for a time & half a time
His peers projected ‘Chinese Citizen,’
A nation’s soul to exile sends its ghost
Headless behind its Hamelin mother hen
India’s Himalayas play host
Havening the fourteenth Dalai Llama
Half decent, half to curb the Chinese boast
& so, on Kangra's Dharamasala
Tibetans soon outnumber Indians
decimated, yes, but still full dharma
Awaiting the change of world opinions
& some Tiananmen to spike the Chinese guns
AKBAR
There are perhaps very few nations in the world with the
enormous variety that India has to offer
The Rough Guide to India
There’s a full moon over Fatapur Sikiri
With which five thousand women are in synch
But one man has their measure - tender, cheeky
He plys them all with opium & drink
& Kama Sutras with such appetite
Harlets have begged to enter his harem
Though jealousy & intrigue seeds for fight
& furious frustration makes them scream
These dancing girls in their damsel dresses
The cutest Abyssinian concubines
Slave girls of Asia dress’d in Persian tresses
& Arab eunuchs’ henna-ful designs
Presents from all parts of growing empire
To satisfy its emperor’s desire
THE
BEATLES
By the time the Hare Krsna movement first came to England
in 1969, John & I had already gotten a hold of
Prabhupanda’s first album, Krsna Consciousness
George Harrisson
Being no ordinary year
The world high in the Merseysphere
Whose top stars of its firmament
Quite Sergeant Pepper opulent
Join saddhus, sannyasain, yogi
By Ganga Matha’s mass as she
Crashes into her golden plains
By Rishikesh, whose crows & cranes
Compete to claim the wooded bluffs
where four la, tinky, scouser scruffs
The timeless Ringo, Paul & John
Merge harmonies, as Harrison
Clutches Khusro’s sitar to chest
Bridging the gulf twyx East & West
KULANTHAPITHA
All the deities of the Hindu pantheon, who represent the
infinite aspects of the one true being, exist within us all as
well
Mata Amritanandamagi
As Rome has its pickl'd Lampascione
That is, the bulb of the wild hyacinth
Every village of Himschal’s most idyllic valley
Palanquins its Devta on a plinth
& pay noble homage
To Raghunathji, riding on his six-wheel'd rath,
Haul'd from the Rupi Palace to the stage
That is the Kulla Maiden, by the path
Hot chi stalls combine with circus chancers
With snakecharmers & trinket sellers small
With quality, decorated dancers
Until the viscerals to end it all
When the moon climbs full & they cut the throat
Of a cock, a buffaling & a goat
KUMBH MELA
India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human
speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the
great grand mother of tradition.
Mark Twain
My Baba hobbl’d from Rishmuka Hill
Upon his twelve year march to Haridwar
Where fifty lakhs of fellow babas mill
About the nectar dropped by Garuda
Sharing the joy of kinship by the ghats
Intoxicated as the mobile phones
Of young babas bubble with girlfriend chats
How Ganesha giggles at our ring tones
& as all festivals have headline acts
The Babas do yagas by the ganga,
The sanctity of solemn poojah pacts,
The sealing divinity with ganja
Then leaving friends with words & waves
They head home to the mountains & the caves
NO-ONE KILLED JESSICA
Today in India there are all sections of people, as the BJP
realized when the poor voted them out
Lalu Prasad Yadev
There once was a time in India
One could get away with murder
If, of course, your father sat on the Congress
She had look’d so lovely that night
A celebrity bar-maid socialite
In a fabulous Gucci dress
He was drunk, he was adamant
Her murderer proved innocent
As hostile turn’d the witnesses
A nation in uproar,
‚Manu Sharma,‛ they deplore
Cannot get away with this!‛
A modern Magna Carta, the people implore
‚Nobody can be too powerful for the law!‛
DEGREES OF SEPEPERATION
OH, East is East, and West is West,
and never the twain shall meet,
Rudyard Kipling
In Edinburgh I live
Lord Robert Kerr had brought home
A rare Vivaldi flute concerto
Soon lost in the national archives
Italia I love
Antonio pens his II Gran Mogul
Pe4rformed at Venice's Ospedale Del Pieta
To be seen by a grand touring lord
In Panipat I stand
Here Babur won India for Islam
& placed the sons of Ghengiz on her throne
His descendent, Aurangzeb,
Inspires an Italian composer
As Sicilian sonneta drive these rhymes
THE CAPITAL
To Delhi spread the Mohammedan hold,
First city of the Mughal emperor,
& as the streets of nine Cities unfold,
Emerging dynasties merging with old
Each new wave of settlers changed Dilli & was changed by it
Sohail
Amidst the most British of her faces
Tis Republic day as India Gate
Crowns the uniforms of many races,
Land, Air & Sea, the keepers at the gate.
Aggressive, competitive, energetic & violent yet vibrant
R Vasundra
Tuqluqubad’s bat-infested battlements
The roller-coasters of the Appu Ghar
The salubrious Deer Park of Safrdarjang
It’s delicious street food – spicy kebabs, paranthas & golapas –
definitely make the city the food capital of the country
Neha Thirani
The families spilling out of their tents
Rajouri Garden’s bartering bazaar
& the West, all ghetto’d in Pata Ganj.
AGRA
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stele
Dante
To leave no regrets is to lead good life
& so, the source of the tourist trail,
That glory-monument to man & wife
Over my wanderlust must now avail;
Oer crowded lanes
A wonderment arose
Nothing in all the Spains
Could match her matchless poise
The house of Shah Jahan grew hushed
His grief was overbaring,
He briefly with the heavens's brushed,
All who saw were staring,
A testament to beauty's deep adore,
The Taj Mahal, Cupid's conquistador.
SNEHALAYA
The one who earns his own living,
& part hereof offers as charity
He alone knows the secret of the path
Guru Nanak
Thro friendliest western festivity
East Lothian offers its Linkey Lea
To sooth severest disability
Of a child, & to curb the cruelty
Outmeted by the tough society
That India is still, such poverty
Must harden a happy heart to pity
But pity still we must, this great city
Of Gwalior offers sanctuary
A bird-cage in bristling bandit country
A mate o’ mine, Cammy, from Edinburgh
Had donated his guitar, here hung on wall
I took it down, the children drew together
& sang to them the play-songs of the small
RAJASTHAN
My mind blossom’d, bathed in the many-hued light of
divinity, & the events of millions of years gone by rose up
within me
Mata Amritanandamagi
OVERTAKING LANES
Two walkers sat by the side of the road
Staring at a truck that had spill’d it’s load
By that, an old wreck that just would not start
Bypass’d by a man in an ox-drawn cart,
& faster still; first a cycle rickshaw
A dull green tractor from the days of yore,
Auto-rickshaw belching dirty black smoke,
Bright red scooter missing many-a-spoke,
Some weird lorry’s siren psychedelics,
Bus driven by two mad alcoholics,
These by breezy motorcycle bypass’d
Then last, & an Ambassador of Rajput caste,
O lawless highways brave gangs of robbers stalk
You know, it’s a nice day, I think I’ll walk.
A SPOT OF CRICKET
This short, Byronic sortie to the East,
Sometime tourist, sometime adventurer,
Sees sublime sunsets as each new night pieced
This myriad India together;
Yon Udaipur,
Love’s honeymooning dream,
I trundl'd to Jaipur
To watch my native team.
With friends I met at Andaman
We watch'd a thrilling game,
With ticking ton K Pieterson
Those cunning spinners tame,
Each stroke applauded by our hosts,
For talent & for fame.
AYURVEDA
I caught a cold once in Rajasthan
Incongrous, yes, but all the same
I was all afevered in an influenzan haze
A kind coolie sent me to a free clinic
Where a Vaid there would be sure to treat me
‚Disease is imbalance,‛ the doctor proclaim’d
& enquired of my family history
My habits & emotional status
Five thousand years of holistic medication
Now hones in on this peculiar moment
When the fundamental sameness of self & nature
Sends indigenous plants & yogic cleansing
A ridding my body of waste & woe
Cloth-swallowing, removing bloody bile
PUSHKAR
Amid the arid plains of Rajasthan,
As jagged peaks rise from the calcined earth,
As man bedecks camel & caravan,
I taste the astral nature of the tirth;
An oasis,
Defies the solar bake,
Centre of pilgrim bliss
Cluster'd round sparkling lake.
I stroll'd a stroll from ghat to ghat,
Chess session camst upon,
Cross legged sat, on woven mat,
Sparr'd with their champion...
Mixing Anandian technique
& sleek gambitry soon won.
DESERT RANGER
Beyond gigantic Jodhpur's sea-surf rooves
Phantastic sandstone streets rise from the sand
Still echoing the sound of horses hooves
Still sensuous with scents of Samarkand;
We trek on west thro' realms of chivalry,
Follow'd barefoot by this gypsy player
Conjuring scenes upon his Sarrangee,
Charming the desert night with their prayer;
Down desert roads from Jaiselmere
A town was left to rot
Thro fiscal fear, with wistful tear,
The locals left the lot,
Leaving their ghostly memories
& one small broken pot.
NATARAJA
One timeless night in the scorch'd wilderness,
When sands & stars ranged with immensity,
Sinew'd with the verve of youth's loveliness,
Lord Siva, the destroyer, came to me.
He left Kailash with single, flashing stride,
Three velvet eyes a-gleam with dreamy hue,
Caphor white, clad in an ivory hide,
He had come to consecrate my Saddhu.
Nearby smoulder'd a fresh cremation pile,
Soon daub'd in ash we danced a pirrouhette,
Absorb'd in the Daemon Damaru drum.
His snakelike dreadlocks spun in sundry style,
His halo trail'd a blue blaze-tail'd comet,
My senses drew an esoteric numb.
BUNDI
Reaching the eastern edge of Rajstahan
A fortress stands abandoned, goblin-hewn
While wandering within & round its span
I wondered if it was some vedic boon;
Neath red rampart
I Kipling'd for a week,
For poets slowly part
From places quite unique.
I took a ride thro villagery,
Sought out a waterfall,
It seemed to me like ecstasy,
Immersing body's all,
& driving back, dried by the breeze,
Felt burdens lift from soul.
POVERTY & WEALTH
Two goddesses bickered about beauty
Prepared to start a second Trojan war
Srinavas wisdom thunders crore on crore
My Jyesthadevi, my Laksmidevi
There is a young carpenter of Bundi
Who is so very honest to his core
& soon they both were standing at his door
‚Who is the most beautiful, she or me?‛
The katputlisan thought a mortal while
& says Laksmi most lovely on arriving
Yet Jyestha more gorgeous when she departs
This answer made each goddess equal smile
& he, celestial wrath surviving
Learns flattery will woo immortal hearts
JAIT SAGAR
If India can make a man a man
More than the veshyalay of Amsterdam
If thro the chaos he can make a plan
Respecting Hinduism & Islam
If he can give the beggar his rupee
& tip a tout charging over the odds
If he can read his Rajput history
& choose a god but still bless other gods
If he can sleep upon the railway run,
Find fresh clean waterfalls amid the dirt
If he can wonder how the Raj was won
Then pause upon the horrors & the hurt
If he can haggle down & know his daal
Then does he have to see the Taj Mahal?
MOUNT ABU
Green peaks rise up from Rajasthani dust
The oldest in the world - or so I'm told -
The desert heat cool'd by the breezy gust
On which great teams of dragonflies take hold:
Yon Tunbridge Wellsian Toad Rock
Some Hindu New Year's Night,
Then thousand flock to cheer the shock
At sunset’s sacred sight!
They descended from this place, Agnikula’s clans
A figure from the fire-pit their sire
Alas, thro battles chivalric these scatter’d caravans
Denied the tribes the privelige of empire
Like city states of Italy these Rajputs of song & story
Form clans diverse as Churan sweets; souf, wati, & gilori
GAYATRI
Hearing a true Upanishad so beautifully sung
I turn to face its source & see & swan-sate goddess young;
‚I am sacred Gayatri Brahma’s second, loyal wife
Combing present, past & future with all the realms of life
Thro all-pervading & unchanging Parabrahman flow
T’was I who sang the Vedas by the Indus long ago
& tho ye’re soon departed, in the days when ye return
Of the Bharata wars & pious Purana’s ye’ll learn!‛
Now from the stars another swan descends, ‘tis Saraswathi
Who sulking is insisting on my muse-fidelity
& tells me of her lateness once for the Yajna of her husband
& so needing a consort married this Gayatri out of hand
Then raps her cosmic sister in a lost, archaic tongue,
& bids me leave this Pushkar to complete my epic song
RAJPUTANA
Gigantic Jodhpur
Round mem’rable Mehranga
Rippling sea-surf rooves
Oasis Jaiselmer
From turret & tower gold
Homesteads blend with sand
Jaipur's pink lady
Thro the Tiger Fort breaches
Fledgling climbers rise
Oer shanti Bundi
Stoic Tarragarh hovers
Grand & goblin-hewn
We have few days on the Earth
Friends, better ye see them soon
KHWAJA-MUIN-UD-DIN CHISTI
Beside Snake Mountain’s steeply shelving spur
There stands the saintly city of Ajmer
A jewel of the dusty Dhundar Plains
Seistan’s Khwaja wander’d through its lanes
Pondering religious diversity
‚We are all part of one divinity
& must attempt to strive for unity
& to accept God’s love for god is great
Let us be gentle & renunciate…‛
As daily he did fast & meditate
His fame began to rage thro Rajasthan
That this wild Sufi from Afghanistan
Looking more like itinerant fakeer
Could solve crusades like Belfast & Kashmeer
QUAWWALI
To the tombs of the Sufi saints they came
To the beat of an Arab drum
For the furthering of his families fame
He watch’d every audience come
To the tombs of the Sufi Saints he went
Like a mendicant troubadour
Went swinging his single-string’d instrument
To sit with it on the floor
As all sang in harmony
He ventured into intacy
His spiritual ecstasy
& velvet voice to the fore
With commendable creativity
Hopes Heaven to restore
GHANDIJI
We will always remember the great soul who changed the
world with his message of peace, tolerance & love. More
than 60 years after his passing his light continues to inspire
the world
Barrack Obama
EPOCHFALL
I am a servant of mother India & it is my duty to break the
fetters binding mother’s feet
Lokmanay Tilak
Life after Lucknow
Whitehall seizes India
Woes of child widows
The Tyger is tamed
Treasonous Bahadur Shah
Dethroned, Red Fort thrown
Ghandi’s full get up
Prime Minister of Rajkut
Hindoo banyan caste
The next Ghandi born
Father frowns as he plays with
Untouchable boys
‚There’s a twinkle in his eye‛
All the villagers agree
ENGLAND
I have nothing new to teach the world.
Truth & non violence are as old as the hills
Ghandi
Whitechapel Ripper
The fumbling fogs of London
Shroud her latest guest
Inbetween lectures
Reading Bhagavad Gita
Ghandi mused on faith
All religions right
Yet none are infallible
One truth together
Eighteen ninety one
Britain’s latest barrister
Waves its charge goodbye
Not knowing in his soul force
Grew the seeds of empires fall
NATAL
I have never been able to reconcile myself to untouchability.
I have always regarded it an excrescence in Hinduism
Ghandi
Africa! Empire!
The merchant Seth Abdulla
Needs a legal mind
With fair wife beside -
Loyal, lovely Kasturbai -
Durban welcomes them
Dogs & Indians
Not permitted in first class
Rigid apartheid
Successful protests
‚All men are colour’d equal!‛
London’s press impressed
News filters home thro reuters
India has a father
Thro tending wounded Zulus,
His deep love of Man is born
1905
I shall take birth in my motherland again & again & would
die for her again & again so long as she is not free
Kartar Singh Saraba
Sighing India
Shame, shame on you Lord Curzon
Divvying Bengal
Sri Aurobindo
Preaches passive resistance
Mass protests differ
Khudiram Bose
Missions in Muzaffapur
A train exploding
Chief Presidency
Magistrate Kingsford survives
A teenage martyr
Mass protest now are mourning
Ashes reliqued in gold casques
LOKMANYA BAL GANGADHAR TILAK
The land of India was being devolved. We had not only lost
our freedom. But were faced with the grim prospect of
losing our language, our religion, our culture, & even our
self-esteem
Shivrampant Paranjee
Patriotism
O when was this feeling deem’d crime
Tilak spurns the yoke
Curbing British misrule
He preaches purna swaraj
Fleet Street brinksmanship
His freedom to write
Crush'd by so-call'd liberals
Thoughts emprisonment
He posts to Durban
The most important letter
He would ever write
‚My friend, come home & help us!‛
Ghandi chokes on a tear
SATYAGRAHA
A moment’s fight & a continuum of constructive work –
that was Ghandi
Dr Uttamrao Patit
Midst Ahmedabad
Ghandis ashram phoenix-born
Rigorous, austere
Emancipation
Women glow with equal rights
All celibate sworn
Sectarian proof
Weaving, cooking, farming, press
Beer & baccy bann'd
Donning peasant dress
Ghandi insists non violence
The key to freedom
Simple poverty embraced
The common crowds appealing
AMRITSAR
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India,
history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of
arms as the blackest
Ghandi
By Golden Temple
Ghandi's Jallianwallah
Cramm'd with protest
20,000 hearts
One hundred & fifty guns
Omdurmania
Grisly turkey shoot
Saxons show Teutonic roots
Indiscriminate
Lass shot in the back
Where panic thought was cover
Bodies fill the well
Six month Whitehall cover up
The Raj straining at its chains
YOUNG INDIA
The cause I represent may prosper more by my suffering
than my remaining free
Ghandi
Nineteen twenty five
Heart-wrought periodicals
Undermine empires
Dissaffection spreads
Ghandi writes poeticaly
‘Seven social sins…’
Section one-two-four
Of India's penal code
Castigates its soul
Six year sentencing
While Hitler rots in Landsburg
Britannia sleeps well
Tremendous ticking time bombs
Burrowing beneath her bed
SWADESHI
Vande Mataaram, Vande maataram
Sujula sufala Malayaja – Shitalaam
Shashya – Shyaamata maataram
Vande Mataaram
Bankim Chandra Chaltopadhyay
Given time to think
Ghandi conjures strategies
Emasculating
Political knight
India's national congress
Loves its new leader
Of Jyesthadevi
This Sahasravandhani
Sings for his nation
Mother India
Find her in the villages
Life’s synthetic whole
Integrate our panchayats
Vast Pantisocracy
QUIT INDIA
Gandhi has asked that the British Government should walk
out of India and leave the Indian people to settle differences
among themselves, even if it means chaos and confusion
Stafford Cripps
Clutching bamboo staves
Singing Bhagavad Gita
Babu goes hunting
Turn the other cheek
Civil dissobediance
Passive resistance
King George receives him
This ‘half naked fakeer’ spits
Wheres our koh-i-noor
Matanginin slain
Singing Vande aataram
Tamluk’s Parvati
World war two - blood sacrifice
Fast-forwards hard fought freedom
PARTITION
I have seen the slashed corpse of the slaughtered child
Heard woman cry ravished & stripped & haled
Amid the bayings of the hell-hound mob
I have looked on, I had no power to save
Sri Aurobindo
The schisming Raj
Reversing inadvertency
Mountbatton’s quagmire
Jinnahs rising star
With bimbisaran foresight
His hegira nears
Ghandi warns of blood
Both sides dismiss the ‘buri’
‚Old & doddering!‛
Maharajan tears
Nehru hoists the tricolor
Punjab torn atwain
As Sikhs swarm out rampaging
The Hoogly fills with corpses
HERO
I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim
State in the best interest of India and Islam
Muhammad Iqbal
Sprung from common womb
The sacred vedas birthplace
Verse foreign place born
Brahma’s happy clan
Mohammed’s Pakistanis
Churning murders turn
Ghandi fasts, tho frail
While goondas roam Calcutta
Dilliwallahs rage
Lakhs of chanting crowds
India's galvanic saint
Civil war prevents
As neighbors embrace neighbors
See their fledgling nation saved
MARTYR
I shall be alive in the grave & what is more speaking from it
Ghandi
As the Punjab quakes
Serene as Lodhu gardens
Delhi’s mood beclams
Nathuram Godse
Edits the ‘Hindoo Nation’
Violent radical
Outside Birla House
‚Namaste Ghandi‛ - three shots
‚He Ram‛ - the world grieves
From his ghee-fuel’d pyre
Ghandi’s ahses scatter’d wide
His sainthood wider
Young Mandela, Luther king
Much moved to match his marches
GOA
What mattered it how mighty were those emperors
All at the last went hence with nothing, bare of foot
Guru Gobind Singh
Tagore's Mahatma
Some divine Kagasarum
Moves men from the grave
Empires are crumbling
As Pondy parts with Paris
Just proud Lisbon clings
Doctor Lohia
True Ghandian devotee
Sings satyagraha
Goan guerillas
Nehru’s national army
Portugal retreats
Three centuries since Plassey
Modern India was born
DEPARTURES
I noted that people are happy here in India. When I went
back home, people had everything in the materialistic sense
and were surrounded with abundance, but they were not
happy
Goldie Hawn
SEVEN FAITHS
Religion does not consist in patched coat, of yogi’s staff or ashes smeared
on body. Religion does not consist in mere words. He who looks on all
men as equal is religious
Guru Nanak
As the Mona Lisa smile beams out 83 percent happiness
The same sacred ratio applies to the Hindoos of India
With their seven holy rivers & their seven sacred cities *
Of the G_O_D of gender, the operatives & devotees
But such is the diversity of history, climate & culture
Six other significant religions milk the energy of prayer;
Islam’s divine well trodden path of a Sunni disposition
Brought from the Meccan desert by the princes of Tamburlaine
The Buddhist clan resurgent beneath the fourteenth Dalai Lama
The Parsees of Zoroastrianism's Persian sense of duality
The Christians who came in riding on the backs of Portuguese
horses
The Jains spreading mystery & purity in their karmas shedding
& Punjab’s turban’d Sikhs, soldier saints of Guru Nanak
Whose songs are still sung daily, his picture on every wall
THE CHARANS
This benighted country
S Prasannarajan
All hail to thee! Ye Gujurati singers
What melodies these blissful rishis bring us
Dwelling in a sameekan ignorance
Dismissing modernisms - aids the trance
Of tribal bards - the Megharals consent
On maya & celestial descent
Whose singers of love songs, stirring story
Are deified upon their death-glory
& poetesses’ spirits prized so much
Their sisters rise in praise throughout the Kutch
Where scattered stones bare witness to those bards
Whose curses shatter egos into shards
Of how their victims cave din terrified
& gave in to the glue of suicide.
THE INDIAN CASTE SYSTEM
Our real problem in India is not political , it is social
Rabindrabnath Tagore
Ever since pale Aryans declared darker skin inferior
The caste system entrenched in a ruthless, divisive psyche
Some socio-political blockage of the DNA vein
But you can’t stop consensual commensality
As PROGRESS forced the weavers into factories
Education has dragg’d India’s archaic system
Kicking & screaming into the modern age
Indian fathers once made all manners of handicrafts
& at the same time taught their sons the trade -
Lohar, Sonar, Kumbhar, Dhobi, Darzi, Kewat, Teli –
Today industry denies vocation, caste shrinks in status,
Lovers intermarry against grandmother’s firm objections
& the Brahmins have crises of identity & conscience
While others go to college & simply choose their lot in life
L´ENVOI
I have spent more than 5 years in such research, wandering
from the palm-wreathed shores of Ceylon, & then through
the wonderland of the Hindoos, to the glacier-clad heights of
the Himalayan ranges, seeking out the wise men of the east
Evans Wentz
I catch a final sleeper
Neath over-reaching sky
Beyond the pale Narmada
Pull back into Mumbai
I settle on Andheri
To spend my final day
My heart’s roseate duty
Has gone, I hope, OK
I step ‘tween mendicants, oxen,
Fresh stools, strays, tips & crows,
Strange monkeymen, hags, swine & then
A sense of friendship grows,
"One glorious sub-continent,
As complex as a rose!"
DIU
India was the genesis of the spiritual East, & also,
incidentally, the refuge of European intellectuals seeking
escape from their own pattern of life Romila Thapar
Long afore captain Hawkins of Her Majesty's Hektor
Landed in these, the real Indies, prosperous Portugal
Already a part of plots & heated intrigue
Would win a bloody battle off this island
With Zamorin trade & territory at stake
A day still rippling here & roundabout
Being an enclave of western touristry
That peppers India, where I have seen
Wonders enough to last a happy lifetime
& satisfied in Ghandi's nascent state
Having just penned an epistle in his name
With these words I make my from sea-salt
Living lyric lifestyle, while London’s grasping laws
Struggle to admonish me, half a world away
THE ESSENCE OF THE VEDAS
Electricity, radium, electronics, airship, all were known to
the seers who founded the Vedas
Wheeler Wilcox
These years I live with changes coincide
As from desperate poverty arose
The Indian giant, & as she grows
The Raj is just red ruins on the ride.
One thing remains unchanging, here< inside
Still resonate those primal Vedic hymns
The spirit of mankind foster’d to guide
Us & shed light on where our knowledge dims
The Upanishads & Puranas keep
A sacred system sound five thousand years
Where Hindoo gods first given form & name
& knowing how long songs can bid us sleep
The ride of my returning reappears
To sonnetize this live, Rigvedan fame.
THE RAJ & THE ROSE
I will lay my bones by the Ganges
that India might know there is one who cares
Alexander Duff
I saw so many miseries
Marvell’d at much beauty too,
All of mankind's categories
Through a single country drew,
What mixture of cacophonies
Climb'd with the morning dew -
Them to mine ears did seem a morning choir,
The chauntings of the children of empire.
My muses blend with India,
O diamond in the crown!
The hag-beggar, the emperor,
The pale-face & the brown,
The gutter-dwellers looking up
The godheads looking down
DEPARTING INDIA
I know it's more five-star now than it was then,
but it's still a difficult tour
Ritchie Benaud
A decade pass’d since that piazza
Where first I flirted with the myrtle muse,
Now knoweth I a new peninsula
Whose galaxy of monuments enthuse
The spiritus, where all Earthly aspects
Have form'd a microcosm of the sphere,
A foundation for when I travel next,
Days of endeavour drawing ever near.
I spend a moment, musing on the wing,
As oer the sea of Araby we sail'd;
Around the Raj was flung a faerie ring
& all it's channel'd poesis regaled,
I have succeeded in my soldiering
Where Ghengiz Khan & Alexander fail'd.
HOMECOMING
I had never imagined in the wildest of my dreams that
young Indians would take over Piccadilly Circus & make me
feel as if I was in Bada Panda, the Grand Trunk Road of Puri.
I ran over to join this devout band of young Indians &
danced with ecstasy all over the Circus & Leicester Square
Joydeep Nayak
At last my gaze is cast oer English skies,
The thrills of one’s homecoming multiply,
Bursting through cloud we claim a poet's prize;
Big Ben...Tower Bridge... & the London Eye.
& I am back, back from my epic tour
Ten rupees all that furnishes my purse,
Scraggly & tann'd I call upon the door
Of compassion & an NHS nurse.
"Well I got shot, I gush´d out dysentry,
Wee mozzy bites became massive bags of puss,
Salmonella, concussion, entwisted knee,
Neuropraxia... Love, just look at us!"
"It's lucky you survived"... I smil’d a smile,
"Dying," said I, "It's never been my style
INDIA
Everyone has his own idea of India
JM Haynes
Nation of nations, hot & happy land!
With spicy dishes morsell'd by the hand
Being a valorous & graceful race,
Thy universal mullet firm in place,
Despite taking three men to stamp a form
& creative corruption Laksmi's norm
A fanatacism for the rupee
Cements this secular society
Of power-cuts & cripples & bazaars
Neath a pristine panapoly of stars,
Of swastikas & cricket in the streets,
Bounteous crops & oversugar'd sweets,
Ashrams soothing riot-torn religion
& always blaze the rays of Asia's sun.
TRANSLATING NALATIYAR
A great thing in my life was going to India
Beatrice Wood
Pendle obscured by fog
Bulging in my pocket
Tamil literature’s priceless Koh-i-noor
Bodyclock revolving Bombay time
Tranquil parkland hiking
Toes & fingers numbing
Tamil texts in Towneley
Ancient Jain gnosis
Thirukkural’s esteem’d sacred sister
Baynan & Margosa
Vital lamps lighting all mortality
Converting quatrains into Kural
Many miles from Madurai
O remarkable poetical sensations!
THE ENGLISH CASTE SYSTEM
What have I gained in England?‛ I knew I had learn’d to wear a collar &
tie, to polish my shoes, to brush my hair & to say ‘thank you’ & ‘I am
sorry’ many times a day< I had learned to be fashionable & to drink as
they drank; in other words I had learned how to worship my body< I
saw far more evils in England than I ever did in India
Bakht Singh
‚Call that Democracy!‛ harangues the hypocritic West<
While a monarch sits sycophantic to her taxpayers
Her beggars sleep in hostels, addicted to all-sorts of bullshit
& skivers, real or blagging, milk the great state cash cow dry
Our primal meat is eating – farmers, chefs & grocers serve us
Then Builders & architects provide the other basic need
& factories manufacture all life’s myriad necessities
Administer’d by penpushers in bright satanic offices
Next are the social cornerstones – doctors, teachers, soldiers
Then life’s little luxuries – reflexologists, film-makers -
Above all these the moneymen bake cakes & hand out crumbs
Above them rule the overlords - judges & parliamentary elect
While hovering over them fossils rotting in the House of Lords
The only difference I can see is about 4,000 miles
MEDITATIONS
A single spirit in a multitude
Sri Aurobindo
The world is changing mate
In the face of fact & feat
Colour-obsession regressing day-by-day
Usain Bolt, Lewis Hamilton - fastest men on the planet
Vishy Anand - chessmaster extraordinairre
& thro sheer will, skill & luck
Obama comes to fend off world oblivion
& all as black as crows
Like a Rosa Parks sit-in or a Martin Luther march
Far from the Dravidian stigma of varna
When Brahmins could slap him for caste & colour
A youthful Dalit doctor suddenly stands & declares
‚Milega Muqaddar! One fine day
I shall be the Prime Minister of India!‛
MY PENELOPE
Ultimately it is the individual that counts
Nehru
Four months have pass’d
Our love’s bulb buried
Whittinghame’s fertile soil
Footprints melt snow
Yours hot with Kalahari
Mine with Goan gold
Gathering firewood
Spring heralds surround us
Parachute snowdrops, rainbow crocuses
Year’s first lonely lamb
Envisioning Sivaratri
Perhaps her prayers answer’d
For love & life renew
With Glenda’s tender kiss!