KATYAL IWP 2016 Page 1 of 16 Akhil KATYAL Poems My grand father used to ask us to read him the shop-signs in Devanagri: 'म टिं ू आइस-क्री ' 'जगत हार्वड ेयर' 'चित्र मसने ा'1 All his life, he had known only Urdu - leaving Lahore at 18, a young railway-clerk new at the desk then - in the early months here he had struggled, tried opening a cigarette-shop in Delhi (Pachkuiyan Road) before being given the same job in the Indian railways in Lucknow. In all this commotion, he never bothered learning another script, dependent still, at 73, on his grandchildren to read him ice-cream signs when he treated them to an orange-bar. Now, years later, when I ache to read Faiz's letters in his own hand-writing, I have to write to a facebook-friend in Lahore, or ask a boy in our neighborhood, or worse, use a translation app, which is like rubbing stones on silk. What grand-father and I do not know - Urdu, Hindi - 1 ‘Mintu Ice-cream’, ‘Jagat Hardware’, ‘Chitra Cinema’ KATYAL IWP 2016 Page 2 of 16 lie in each others' glass, in each others' loss, in their remaining on our tongue, and yet, as we try, in their flying from our eye. Dehradun, 1990 As a kid I used to confuse my d's with my g's, and that bit of dyslexia didn't really become a problem till I once spelt 'God' wrong. That day, the teacher wrote a strictly worded letter to my parents, and asked me to behave myself. Also, as a kid, I could not pronounce the letter 'r,' so till I was sent to some summer vacation speech correction classes at age 5, I used to say, "Aam ji ki jai," "Aam ji ki jai," -- then a teacher2 taught me to hold my tongue against the ceiling of my mouth and then throw it out quivering, 'R,' 'Rrrr,' she wrenched it out of me, over many sessions, "Ram," until then, I did not know God was so much effort, till they made him tremble on the tip of my tongue, God was only a little joke about mangoes. Aligarh In early 2009, in Aligarh, U.P., two men with cameras forced their way into Professor Ramchandra Siras' house and filmed him in bed with another man. By next year, Siras, Marathi Professor at Aligarh Muslim University was suspended by AMU authorities for ‘gross misconduct’ and evicted from his official residence. In April that year, he died in a rented apartment under mysterious circumstances. 2 ‘Hail Lord Mango’ KATYAL IWP 2016 Page 3 of 16 Dr. Siras, In those nights, you must have felt loneliness like a drip. The walls of your room would’ve been held apart only by a faint song, and memory must have sat by you all night combing the hours. In your Marathi poem, Dr. Siras, the one about the ‘beloved moon,’ the one in which you somehow eke dawn from the dark sky, I read it last night on the terrace, it held me, it held my hands, it let grass grow under my feet. In this house that I have lived in for three years in Delhi, Dr. Siras, the windows open onto a Palash tree. I was 27 when I had rented it, and at 27, the landlord had not spent too much time on the word ‘bachelor’ he had only asked if I had ‘too many parties’, I didn’t, and I had got the house. But next time, Dr. Siras, when I will try and look for a place in this city, I will be older and they will pause at "but marriage?" and I will try to eke out respect from a right surname, from saying ‘Teacher’ from telling my birth-place, and will try and hide my feeling small under my feet. What had you said, Dr. Siras, when you looked for that house in Durga Wadi? What had you said for the neighbourhood, ‘Teacher’, ‘Professor’, ‘Poet’? What gives us this respect, Dr. Siras, this contract with water? In those nights, weighing this word in your hands, you must have felt weak, like the sun at dusk, you must have closed the window to keep out the evening, you must have looked back, and hung the song in the air between refusal and letting go. (thanks to Apurva M Asrani and Ishani Banerjee) KATYAL IWP 2016 Page 4 of 16 To the soldier in Siachen Come back, the snow is treacherous, come back, they are making you fight a treacherous war, you were not born in snow, you do not know snow, come back, I do not want you to fight that war in our name, I want you to rest, I want you to be able to feel your fingers, I want the snow in your veins to give way, for you to be able to breathe, to melt into a corner, to sleep. Come back. Go home. Go home to Dharwad, Go home to Madurai, go home to Vellore, Satara, Mysore, do not stay in the snow, go home to Ranchi, that war is not for you to fight, that war is not for us to give to you to fight, let not our name be ice, let it not heave on your shoulders, do not let us steal your breath, the people there, the people of the snow do not need us, they do not need you to fight, come back, you were not born to snow, you do not know the treachery of the snow, go home, to rest, go home to the sun, to water, go home to the nights of your village, go home to the sweltering market-place, to the noise of family-homes, to the sweat of the Ghats, to the dust of the plains, go home, may you never have to see white ever again like that, may you never have to see a colour become death in your very palm. KATYAL IWP 2016 Page 5 of 16 When Farida Khanum sings now, she does not hide the age in her voice, instead she wraps it in paisleys, and for a moment holds it in both of her hands, before she drowns it in our sky. When she sings now, she knows that at the end of that note when her voice breaks like a wishbone, he will stay. I want to 377 you so bad3 till even the sheets hurt i want to ache your knees singe your skin line you brown breathe you in i want to mouth you in words neck you in red i want to beg your body insane into sepals i want to 377 you like a star falling off the brown i want to feel you till my nails turn water i want to suck you seven different skies i want to be a squatter in your head when it sleeps when its dark i want to break laws with you in bed and in streets and in parks 3 Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (since 1860) introduced by the colonial British government in India criminalizes sexual activities ‘against the order of nature’, which in practice criminalizes homosexual sex. KATYAL IWP 2016 Page 6 of 16 Some letters of Indian soldiers at World War One 'Only the broken limbed can go back,' 'no man can return to the Punjab whole,' - there are things in the soldier's pack that, once you open, there's no going back, 'I am like a soap bubble and have no hope of life,' each letter knew only the broken limbed go back, the trenches were death and the nights were black, even 'lice...they bite terribly...worse than a rifle bullet,' there're things - if you'd hear - in the soldier's pack that say: it is soldiers who die when men attack, '...in one hour 10,000 are killed. What more can I write?' And when the broken limbed go back, what stories would they tell, which crack would they cover, for 'this is the time for brave men,' no matter that the things in the soldier's pack know that bravery is the oldest lie on the rack, pulled out in bloody times. 'Star of my eyes,' listen, if I am not among the broken limbed who go back, read the things, will you, left in my soldier's pack. (thanks to Daljit Nagra) Maruti Swift It takes a 1248cc diesel engine, 4 cylinders, 16 valves, a max. torque of 190 newton meters @ 2000 revolutions every fuckin' minute, it takes rack & pinion steering & drum brakes & disc brakes & steel tyres, it takes one thousand five hundred kilos of metal moving, always moving in 48 second loops on the assembly-line, KATYAL IWP 2016 Page 7 of 16 painted & cut & bolted & fed by workers. It takes workers on 9 hour shifts, one 30min lunch break, and two 7 minute tea-cum-toilet breaks (those two-seconds-late-&-pay-cut-breaks) it takes "if my leg itched, I do not even have time to scratch it," it takes waiting for one's own fingers it takes white-hot "discipline" cut by teeth, welded by metal to townships with smoke-grey evenings it takes 13 days of occupation, months of sit-ins, lock-outs, it takes 147 workers arrested on manufactured evidence, to make one of these. (thanks to Anumeha Yadav, Satish Dalal and Imaan Khan) In 1995 I was ten and you were already battling the stars of a virus, and in the middle of grocery shopping, and street pavements bursting with lilacs, you lived so close to dying, that every morning, KATYAL IWP 2016 Page 8 of 16 when you woke up, it took two seconds to ascertain, oneself, and then, one's own. With the worst behind you, you said, how can people write about letting go, as if it was 'tragic' that they went, as if their going could not have been averted, as if, a scale had weighed in the sky, but already you sounded unconvinced of your own voice. In that year, I did not even know what sex is, what veins are, except a book - my father's - on the benefits of herbs, which, on its last pages, talked of stuff that nobody told me nothing about, talked of erections, semen, power, & something perverse about a horrifying illness, and how it takes only the select. You said, in those years of holding that which you did not know, "Reagan let us die," with a kind of resignation that without forgiving, already wraps 'letting go' in a hope, and slips it in the dimension of myth, before sneaking it behind the books on your shelf. Now when friends visit me, and stay for a day or two, I thank my stars, and when they leave the room, go to the loo, KATYAL IWP 2016 Page 9 of 16 or run for a morning appointment, I think of you, making what you could, of someone always going, of someone gifting togetherness as if wrapped in paisley, light like feathers, resting on the sill, about to go which way I do not know. (for Mark Doty) In 2002 - as late as that - Switzerland joined the UN, and that old cat, Queen Elizabeth, was 50 years into clawing her throne. In 2002 there was a failed coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - so the year, you could say, saw both good & bad days. In 2002, Daniel Pearl was killed, and Israel dragooned a Bethlehem church, but in India, in 2002, nothing of note happened, except of course Dhirubhai Ambani died, besides that, nothing as such, they say, "2002? It was nothing much." (tr. Hindi poem ‘Do hazaar do mein’) KATYAL IWP 2016 Page 10 of 16 India vs. Pakistan Kashmiris will cheer for Pakistan when it comes to cricket; my criterion usually is - the more gorgeous one should win it. So when I compare all the boys, in their team and ours, will I absolutely disappoint, because I kind of see their point. Namesakes On the second date, he asked, "What does your name mean?" "It means the whole universe, all of it, the whole damned thing," I said, quite tipsy, and elated, but found myself very soon deflated, "Akhil," he said - being creepy - "isn't that the first word of ABVP?"4 [Varun is typing] Varun: Hey how have you been? You know just last week I had been thinking of you Varun: Listen hey I'd been meaning to tell you something for a while but Varun: Hey I saw you near PVR Saket the other day and I was going to Varun: Hi Uday, have you seen Margarita, with a Straw, Would you want to go this week? Varun: I don't know how to say this but I'm just going to, Varun: Hiiiii Varun: Hi [Uday is typing] Uday: Hiiii I'd just been thinking about you, where have you been Uday: Hellooooo you, long time! Uday: Varun!!! 4 Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the national student wing of the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party in India.