The Girls Who Read Poems

(For Shalini)

They are everywhere though very few
making a place for themselves
among millions of girls of this vast country
they are everywhere
despite abiding by the strict familial instructions
that expect them to reach college
and then come straight back home
In spite of the extremely charismatic Indian cinema
and the readily available and endlessly colorful world of cable TV
that has intruded into each and every home
I wonder why they read
our poems published in a colorless magazines
that are full of very rugged experiences of life
why do they squander away twenty-five rupees
for the sake of a few hindi poems
the money that can be used to buy
a Grihashobha
a Meri Saheli
a Vanita
stitching embroidery and beauty editions
or a shining English magazine like Femina

A girl like this talked to me over the phone yesterday
her voice coming from
a distant feudal town in the eastern region
had a bizarrely firm confidence
and a bit of regular naivete too
She wouldn’t stop providing feedback
about my poem published over a month ago
which was about love

I was almost amazed by her selfless voice
She was sweet and pure
like a hilly brook cloaked in a baanj jungle
I wanted to ask her
the same question:
why, leaving so many worldly things full of fun,
do you read poems
but I kept listening to her for a great while without speaking a word
there was a resonance in her voice
which is there in the voice of every girl
who on her way back home from college
despite clear instructions to come straight back home
stops midway for a while to relish golgappas
and also to buy that magazine
which has some poem
by some young poet like me

They read it sitting in the quietude of home
assuaging and putting to rest somehow
the world that weeps within
concealing their dreams
their griefs
their agonies
and their plans
that can never materialise
They read the poems
along with the household chores
and the required college studies
they read the poems by finding time somehow

When I finally asked this question to her while winding up the conversation
in came the ruthless riposte:
You tell me first,
why do you write poems?
If any reader has been able to comprehend this
then can it be explained to me please?
Why do these girls
running away from the captivating splendour of the outside world
every time
read poems
in the pitch darkness of the inside
dimly lit by love left over
someplace

A Place

There is a place on this earth
that I remember
without putting it in the bounds of
latitudes and longitudes

Why do places exist in our lives?
Is their existence so essential?

Can we not live on this earth
without settling down in those places?
Just like love
are places a compulsion of our being?

Whatever it is but they are there
and they will exist even if we don’t set them up
Just like love that will be somewhere in our lives
even if it is not in our practice

Among the many places in my life
it is just for this place
that I think this way

I should have reached there many years ago
So many years ago
that I could see it being made

I should have left that place many years ago
So many years ago
that I could have escaped
seeing it being ruined

But nothing like that happened
and now I just remember it

At times
I remember it
like a drunk man fallen on the ground
and at other times
I remember it
like the benevolence of a person
who picks up the fallen
 

I Talk as if Someone Listens to Me

All through the night
like a favorite black and white heroine from old movies
memories circle around
covered in clothes from tip to toe
under a few strong hilly trees and dense wildberry bushes
a few scenes come running down the slope like awkward idiotic heroes

After a continual stupor
I wake up to see one more morning lying outside the door
blood dripping from its elbow
an equally blood-drenched newspaper sagging under it
It appears like a beaten-up woman
My wife ignores it as if it is just my morning not hers

I look at my swollen eyelid in the light of my morning
Tea grows cold on the table

The reek of old times roosting in my mouth gets thicker after wild cleaning

A layer of dead skin molts from my hands and my son stares at me in wonder

And so I finally get ready and step out to the outside world
and there I talk loudly as if someone listens to me.

(Translated from the Hindi by Bharatbhooshan Tiwari.)