book excerptise:   a book unexamined is wasting trees

Contemporary Indian poetry

Kaiser Haq (ed)

Haq, Kaiser (ed);

Contemporary Indian poetry

Ohio State University Press, 1990, 187 pages

ISBN 0814205011, 9780814205013

topics: |  poetry | anthology | india | english


This anthology from 1990 includes many poets who have appeared in
other anthologies - the usual suspects.  Haq tries to cast a wide net,
including J. Birjepatil (doesn't work for me) and Shanta Acharya (I like
some of her stuff, see below).  On the whole, the number of poems
that worked for me are limited.

Missing are Agha Shahid Ali, Sujata Bhatt.

The poets are presented alphabetically, which has the merit of being
uncontroversial, but seems rather unimaginative.

the book has an excellent getup - good paper, binding etc.  the poems have
breathing room.  the volume is out of print and hard to find; i was 
lucky to find it for $4.50 at an US used book store.



Excerpts


Busride To Char Minar : Shanta Acharya p.5

		(b. 1953, now in London)

Cramped in a corner,
I ride a bus to Char Minar.
Bursting bodies press on me
as strangeness begs familiarity
in sharing a hard, narrow seat.

I feel the soft, wrinkled skin
of an old Hyderabadi begum
leaning to the window for fresh air,
gasping curses on Allah for her plight.

The mother with child at her breast
squats near my feet, quite content:
two little dirty hands tug innocently
the edge of my crumpled shawl.

Before I mingle again
in the crowd of Char Minar,
two sunken eyes offer me
eternity in a begging bowl,
promising me a reserved seat
in the crowded bus to heaven,
provided I pay the commission.
	(online at http://www.shantaacharya.com/thisthat.htm)



G. S. Sharat Chandra : April in Nanjangud p.27


Downstairs the aunts discuss the drought
It's so hot the crickets in the gul-mohur tree
Have gone dry in the throat.

There is no one hawking oranges
In the street an auto-rickshaw choking
Towards the hospital

Ryots on their way to the Marwari moneylender
Squat under the gul-mohur tree
Their turbans lined with dust.

There's not a sign of cloud
From the bridge of their forehead
To as far as the town's boundary



Shiv K Kumar : Mango Grove 101


above my head clusters of virgin breasts
of peasant women
kneeling over graves
for boons.

The white sun hurls its red
shafts through the sparse leaves
to singe my left toe.
I assume another stance
to dodge the inevitable.

A snake doodles its neutral course
along a dry bed of cacti.

The wind that soughs through this maze
has no assonance --
only the rasp of an alligator's
tail lashing the sand.

This summer may never end.



Arun Kolatkar : The Priest's Son p.89


   these five hills
   are the five demons
   that khandoba killed

   says the priest's son
   a young boy
   who comes along as your guide
   as the schools have vacations

   do you really believe that story
   you ask him

   he doesn't reply
   but merely looks uncomfortable
   shrugs and looks away

   and happens to notice
   a quick wink of a movement
   in a scanty patch of scruffy dry grass
   burnt brown in the sun
   and says

   look
   there's a butterfly
   there



Shiv K. Kumar (b. 1921) : Days in New York p.99

Here I live in a garbage can
The pile grows bigger each week
with the broken homes
splintered all around.
A black cat chases a shadow
down the passageway:
its whiskers presage another snowstorm.

The white of the negro maid's eyeballs
is the only clean thing here,
besides, of course, the quart gallon carton of milk
squatting at my door.
They wouldn't believe it here
that Ganges water can work miracles:
in spite of the cartloads
of dead men's ashes and bones—
daily offerings to the river.

I open each morning my neighbour's Times,
whisked away from his door
before he stirs.
Gloved hands leave no fingerprints.
And a brisk review of all our yesterdays is no sin.

En route to perdition
I sometimes stop at Grand Central to piss.
Where else can one ease one's nerves
when the bladder fills up
like a child's balloon?
In the Gents, each in his stall,
we stand reduced to the thing itself.
Questions catapult in the air:
'Are you a Puerto Rican?
A Jamaican? A Red Indian?'

I look for the feathers on my skull,
a band around my forehead.
And mumble, 'No, a brown Indian,
from the land of Gandhi.'
The stranger briskly zips his soul
and vanishes past the shoeblack,
who turns to shine a lanky New Yorker
swaddled in the high chair like Lincoln.
Incidentally, there are no beggars at Grand Central.
Only eyes, eyes, eyes,
staring at lamp-posts.

Back in my den after dusk
I bandaid the day's bruises.
Outside the window perches the grey sky,
an ominous bird wrapped in nuclear fog.

At night the Voices of America
break in upon my tenuous frequency,
intoning the same fact three times,
till the sediment grips the Hudson's soul.
But my soul is still my own.
For, every Sunday morning, I descend
into purgatory,
the basement where three laundromats
gulp down nickels,
to wash all our sins.
But the brown of my skin defies
all bleachers.
How long will this eclipse last?

	This is	a tightened version from the initial draft
	source: http://www.oocities.com/varnamala/shiv.html
	see interview at: The Hindu



Insomnia : Shiv K Kumar p.103


My wife snores. My son's dream
fingers have reached the sideboard's
top-shelf for Cadbury.
The sky grins through a handful
of stars while I hold the defiant
pills in my torpid hand.

I'm a double agent. I'll drug
my watch dog to burgle my own house.
I know where my wife's secrets
lie sealed. Each night 1 hear
the same tattoo in my skull's chamber.

I have counted all the stars
over my terrace. The steel bars in my
neighbour's balcony are twenty-one
and three suburban freight trains rumble past
the rail-crossing between two and four.

Darkness now snaps at the seams.
A hymn floats across the sky
like a bird's warble.

And somewhere down the lane a hand-pump
creaks - the milkman's bottle
jingles at my doorstep.

I must walk through the day's fire
to let another moon demolish me.



Insomnia : Shiv K Kumar p.103


My wife snores. My son's dream
fingers have reached the sideboard's
top-shelf for Cadbury.
The sky grins through a handful
of stars while I hold the defiant
pills in my torpid hand.

I'm a double agent. I'll drug
my watch dog to burgle my own house.
I know where my wife's secrets
lie sealed. Each night 1 hear
the same tattoo in my skull's chamber.

I have counted all the stars
over my terrace. The steel bars in my
neighbour's balcony are twenty-one
and three suburban freight trains rumble past
the rail-crossing between two and four.

Darkness now snaps at the seams.
A hymn floats across the sky
like a bird's warble.

And somewhere down the lane a hand-pump
creaks - the milkman's bottle
jingles at my doorstep.

I must walk through the day's fire
to let another moon demolish me.


Hands : Jayanta Mahaptra p.108


Between them
a silence occupies the whole place.

Slowly my body has walked
into deep water.

As a boy I learned to come in
by the back door. Sad
houses now, clean and leaning
against one another, full of sleep.

My old rag elephant is
smothered with small screams.

From the dark surface,
waving like grass-
When the last boat crosses the lake.


Life Signs : Jayanta Mahapatra p.109


What's in my father's house
is not mine. In his eyes,

dirty and heavy as rainwater
flowing into earth, is the ridicule

my indifference quietly left behind:
the sun has imperceptibly withdrawn

and nothing stirs there
except for two discoloured kites

and the whisper
of an old myth in the clouds.

Thinking to escape his beliefs
I go to meet the spectre of belief,

a looming shadow the colour of mud,
watery and immense as the Ganga.

It is thus the odor
of a captured contry lingers

my father's voice
echoing wearily from bone to bone,

comes to rest
on my eye like a speck of mold.

And I have taken my likeness down
from his walls and hidden it

in the river's roots  a colourless monsoon
eaten away by what has drifted between us.


Dom Moraes (b. 1939) : Gone Away 137


My native city rose from sea,
Its littered frontiers wet and dark.
Time came too soon to disembark
And rain like buckshot sprayed my head.
My dreams, I thought, lacked dignity.
So I got drunk and went to bed.

But dreamt of you all night, and felt
More lonely at the break of day
And trod, to brush the dream away,
The misted pavements where rain fell.
There the consumptive beggars knelt,
Voiced with the thin voice of a shell.

The records that those pavements keep,
Bronze relics from the beggar's lung,
Oppress me, fastening my tongue.
Seawhisper in the rocky bay
Derides me, and when I find sleep,
The parakeets shriek that away.

Except in you I have no rest,
For always with you I am safe:
Who now am far, and mime the deaf
Though you call gently as a dove.
Yet each day turns to wander west:
And every journey ends in love.



R. Parthasarathy : from Trial: 7 p.148


--7--
It is night alone helps
to achieve a lucid exclusiveness
Time that had dimmed

your singular form
by its harsh light now makes
recognition possible

through the opaque lens.
Touch brings the body into focus
restores colour to inert hands,

till the skin takes over,
erasing angularities,  and the four walls
turn on a strand of hair.



Vikram Seth : Profiting 179


Uncomprehending day,
I tie my loss to leaves
And watch them drift away.

The regions are as far,
But the whole quadrant sees
The single generous star.

Yet under star or sun,
For forest tree or leaf
The year has wandered on.

And for the single cells
Held in their sentient skins
An image shapes and tells:

In wreathes of ache and strain
The bent rheumatic potter
Constructs his forms from pain.



Contents

Shanta Acharya (b.1953, Cuttack -> London)
    After Great Struggle 				  3
    Trees 						  4
    Busride To Char Minar 				  5

Meena Alexander (b.1951 -> NY)
    No Autumn In My Country 				  9
    House Of A Thousand Doors 			 11
	    The house has a thousand doors
	    to keep out snakes,
	    toads, water rats
	    ...
    Everything Strikes Loose 				 12
    South Of The Nilgiris 				 14

Jaysinh Birjepatil (b.1933, Baroda -> Vermont)
    Hunter Gracchus 					 17
    The Secunderabad Club 				 18
    The Gateway Of India, Bombay 			 19
    Hill Of Devi 					 20
    The British Cemetery At Surat 			 22

G. S. Sharat Chandra (1938-2000, Mysore -> Kansas)
    April in nanjangud                                 27
    Communions; For Robert Bly 			 28
    Photographs 					 29
    Brothers 						 29
    Mount Pleasant, U. S. A. 				 30
    Tirumalai 					 31
    For All Aliens 					 32

Keki N. Daruwalla (b.1937, ex-IPS, Delhi)
    Railroad Reveries 				 35
    To Gandhi 					 37
    Vignette I 					 39
    Hawk 						 40
    The Mistress 					 43
    To My Daughter Rookzain 				 45

Kamala Das (1934-2009, bi-lingual Malayalam)
    The Invitation 					 49
    The Looking-glass 				 51
    The Freaks 					 52
    The Old Playhouse 				 53
    The Stone Age 					 54

Eunice De Souza (b.1940, Pune/Mumbai)
    Sweet Sixteen 					 57
    Varca, 1942 					 58
    Forgive Me, Mother 				 59

Imtiaz Dharker (b.1954 Lahore, Scotland, Mumbai)
    Purdah I 						 63
    from Purdah II 					 65

Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004, Mumbai)
    Background, Casually 				 69
    from Passion Poems 				 72
       2. Monsoon
    	 3. The Sanskrit Poets
    	 4. On Giving Reasons
    The Patriot 					 73
    from Nudes 1978 : 2, 9 10 			 75
    from Latter-day Psalms: 1, 7, 10 (concluding)  	 77
    Night Of The Scorpion 				 80
    Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher 				 82
    Enterprise 					 83

Arun Kolatkar (1932-2004, Mumbai)
    The Bus 						 87
    An Old Woman 					 88
    The Priest's Son 					 89
    A Kind Of A Cross 				 90
    A Low Temple 					 91
    Between Jejuri And The Railway Station 		 92
    from The Railroad Station:
    	   2. The Station Dog 				 94
    	   4. The Station Master 			 94
     	   5. Vows 					 95

Shiv K. Kumar (b. 1921 Lahore / UK / Hyderabad)
    Days in New York 				 99
    Mango Grove					101
    School Children During Lunch Break 		102
      	     the coffin clenches its teeth
	     though beneath its lid the grasshopper
	     is still poised for a curvet
    Insomnia                                          103
    Lord Venkateswara's Temple                        104

Jayanta Mahapatra (b. 1928 Cuttack)
    A Twilight Poem 					107
    Hands 						108
    Life Signs                                        109
    The Lost Children Of America 			110
    Again, One Day, Walking by the River 		115

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (b. 1947 Mumbai / Allahabad)
    Index Of First Lines 				119
    Canticle For My Son 				121
    Engraving of a Bison on Stone 			122
    Company Period 					123
    The Roys 						124

Dom Moraes (b. 1939 -> NYC)
    Kanheri Caves 					129
    Landscape Painter 				130
    Autobiography 					131
    A Letter 						132
    The Island 					134
    Gone Away 					137
    From Tibet 					138
    Prophet 						140
    Letter To My Mother 				141

R. Parthasarathy (b. 1934 -> US)
    from Exile: 1, 3, 6 				145
    from Trial: 7 					148
    from Homecoming: 14 				149
    Delhi 						150

Gieve Patel (b. 1940, Mumbai)
    Naryal Purnima (august 1965) 			155
    O My Very Own Cadaver! 				158
    The Multitude Comes To A Man  			159
    Bodyfears, Here I Stand 				159
    License 						160

Attipat Krishnaswami Ramanujan (b. 1929, Mysore -> Chicago)
    A River 						163
    Some Indian Uses Of History On A Rainy Day 	165
    The Last Of The Princes 				167
    Death And The Good Citizen 			168
    Alien 						170
    Connect! 						171
    Chicago Zen 					172

Vikram Seth (b.1952 Delhi / US)
    Research In Jiangsu Province 			177
    Profiting 					179
    Moonlight 					180


bio

Kaiser Haq was educated at Dhaka University and received his Ph.D. at
Warwick. He was a commonwealth scholar at Warwick, senior Fulbright scholar,
fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and professor of English at
Dhaka University. He also fought in the Bangladesh war of independence as a
commissioned officer. He is currently a poet and a professor of English at
Dhaka University.

see this interview


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This review by Amit Mukerjee was last updated on : 2015 Jul 22