Pratilipi Books Published by Pratilipi Address: 182 JagrajMarg, Bapunagar, Jaipur, India – 302015 Website: http://www.pratilipi.in, http://www.pratilipibooks.com Individual pieces © copyright the respective Authors and Translators. This compilation © 2011 copyright Pratilipi. All rights reserved. HOME FROM A DISTANCE hindi poets in english translation edited by girirajkiradoo&rahulsoni The moral right of the authors and translators has been asserted. 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Printed and bound in India by Bodhi Prakashan, Jaipur. iz ISBN: 978-81-920665-9-2 CONTENTS POETS Arun Kamal (p 1) AsadZaidi (p 5) Ashok Vajpeyi (p 8) Dhoomil (p 9) Kamlesh (p 16) Kedarnath Singh (p 22) Krishna Mohan Jha (p 30) KunwarNarain (p 35) MangleshDabral (p 40) Nagarjun (p 43) PankajChaturvedi (p 45) ShrishDhoble (p 49) ShrikantVerma (p 54) Teji Grover (p 61) UdayPrakash (p 64) UdayanVajpeyi (p 66) Vinod Kumar Shukla (p 68) VirenDangwal (p 72) Vishnu Khare (p 78) TRANSLATORS AlokBhalla (p 66), Arlene Zide (p 16, 49), AsadZaidi (p 40), GirirajKiradoo (p 1, 5, 78), Manoj Kumar Jha (p 43), Rahul Soni (p 1, 8, 45, 72, 78), Robert A.Hueckstedt (p 30, 64), Teji Grover (p 16, 49, 61, 68), VinayDharwadker (p 9, 22, 35, 54) ABOUT THE POETS &TRANSLATORS(p 86) To the house before or the one Two houses after Here, something gets built everyday ARUN KAMAL Something is removed everyday Here, you cannot trust memory Translated by GirirajKiradoo&Rahul Soni The world becomes old in a day As though it was spring when I left and now it is autumn THIS IS THE TIME As though it was Vaisakh when I left and now it is Bhado This is the time The only way out is to knock on every door When the harvest is over And ask— And there is still time to sow anew Is this the house I am looking for? The fields lie bare I do not have much time The land is distracted, stunned by the sudden sun— The sky is collapsing, it’s about to rain At intervals, shade from the hedge— Fallen stumps gleam Is there someone I know, to see me from above And call me in The herd grazes at a distance And molehills A POET’S GRAVE And scattered sand around anthills For NazirAkbarabadi This is the time There are no arches, no spheres When the old remains no more Just a grave jutting out from the sand And the new remains to come As if someone fell asleep lying here As much sunlight falls on this grave, as much dew and rain INTO A NEW LOCALE As on the rest of the earth And there are two trees, berry and neem In these new settlements Where a new house crops up every day Children, lambs and sparrows hop around all day I often lose my way And by evening, the whole mohalla gathers here Sellers of amulets and laddoos of sesame Old landmarks betray me— A man with a dugdugi and his bear cub The gazing peepul, And at night, a weary beggar who sleeps beside The collapsed house, The vacant plot where Inside the grave, he listens to everything I had to turn left, The tremors from every footfall, the movements of insects, And two houses on, a one-storey house The sound of every particle sinking in With an unpainted iron gate… And the stirring of kites in the sky But I end up stumbling A part of celebration and mourning 1 2 It is merely a grave, a poet’s grave Maybe this is how the end has to come Where every spring brings fairs and fetes Turning back to the stairs, I am scared And two trees, side by side, berry and neem Someone is hiding behind the door When I try to go down, he will make his move— THE TALLEST ROOFTOP Who will listen if call for help This tallest roof on earth, my grave The rooftop littered with dust, guano, feathers At the top, after many storeys Nobody lives on the last floor, Full of fallen feathers, You will reach it at the end of your breath It is where the house dies And then you will find that sunfilled roof And you will feel for the first time A statue is immersed in a dry well When there is no wind anywhere, there is still some here Air incubates life on earth The greying hair on your chest will quiver At the top, after many storeys There is silence All the sounds of the earth have sunk Except a movement of feet on the shore— Look up The sky stretched out on so many wings The roiling air The sun overhead And below, water from a well From here I can see Courtyards, thresholds, corridors Into kitchens even But it is hard to recognize my own house My own neighbourhood seems unfamiliar Like the ruins of a lost civilization With both hands on the parapet, I peer below My head spins Someone drags me down With the hooks of a jhaggar The air suddenly thin, my vessels bursting— This body of clay cracking in the sun All my blood could not give life to a dying bird I will turn into hundreds of bed-bugs, drop by drop 3 4 of that fifty-seven for which Moolshankars, Shivprasads, Narendranaths, ASAD ZAIDI Ishwarchandras, Syyed Ahmeds, Pratapnarayans, Maithilisharans and Ramchandras Translated by Giriraj Kiradoo had nothing but silence and disdain and of that fifty-seven 1857: SEARCH FOR MATERIAL which was remembered first in the elite canon of Hindi by Subhadra the battles of 1857— a good seventy-eighty years later once so distant, are now the battles ever so close It is the remembrance of a continuum made alive, 150 years later, by in this age of remorse and crime the suiciding farmers and weavers of this land when every mistake appears to be self-done whom it’s difficult even to call rebellions one can still hear and who, in a sad, grey, anarchic parade the trumpets of rebellion— are marching from the Special Economic Zones a pure Hindustani cacophony: out to collective graves and cemeteries the murmuring of brokers and informants swallowed on the way by the data and the restless moves of seat holders of National Development and National Hunger ready to change loyalties— Who has made them so lonely? Dust and dirt was perhaps perhaps this is an imprint of later novels common people’s destiny in 1857— and popular cinema— accepted by all but now but this surely is not the cacophony it’s to be a terrible crime of those 150 crore rupees that government of India has sanctioned Battles are often left unfinished to celebrate the ‘first war of independence’ to be fought later— penned by a prime minister in some other times who is ashamed of all wars of freedom by some other means and goes apologetic for that, around the globe And sometimes, who is ready to sacrifice anything challenging the living— for the national goal of a better servitude who are perhaps more dead— the dirty-dusty dead It is the remembrance of that fifty-seven themselves rise to resume the battle which was wiped clean by a pan Indian elite They inquire about their platoons, battalions and commanders by Bankimchandras and Amichands and Harishchandras or mistaking them as sympathizers and their descendants, placed comfortably on their seats start telling that now they head to Nazafgarh they too desired nothing or ask which way leads to Bakhtavarpur? more than a better servitude 5 6 The dead of 1857 say forget our feudal leaders forget the lost estates for which they were fighting - if this is what we died for. ASHOK VAJPEYI Speak of your own Translated by Rahul Soni NEAR is there no injustice in your times or is it just that you don’t know what to do about that? Near the Stone was the Tree Near the Tree was the Bush Near the Bush was the Grass Near the Grass was the Earth Near the Earth was the High Cliff Near the Cliff was the Fort’s Tower Near the Tower was the Sky Near the Sky was the Void Near the Void was the Cosmic Sound Near the Sound was the Word Near the Word was the Stone Each was near the other But Time was near none FAR Far from the Window was the Temple Wall Far from the Wall was the Narrow Lane Far from the Lane was the Water Source Far from the Source was the Forest Far from the Forest was the Settlement Far from the Settlement was the Graveyard Far from the Graveyard was the Garden Far from the Garden was the School Far from the School were Sins Far from Sins was Poetry Far from Poetry was Prayer Far from Prayer was God Far from God were Words Far from Words was Absence All were far But close to Time— 7 8 But this is not the time to gauge a frightened people’s shame, or even to ask DHOOMIL whether the country’s greatest misfortune Translated by Vinay Dharwadker is the policeman or the saint.