‘Each poem comes to me in a different form’
This is the first time I ponder over my poems in pen or in print. I have had several varied, unconnected teachers. I wrote my M.Phil. dissertation on the poems of A.K. Ramanujan over twenty-five years ago. He taught me to say things in lesser words. Years later, A.J. Thomas would severely reprimand my poems as I sent them to his emails, telling me, “don’t intellectualize in your poetry”. And much later, when Tabish Khair told me, “as I grow older, I feel poetry should be evocative”, the truth of A.K. Ramanujan coalesced with my even earlier days of Robert Frost.
I’ve never discussed the writing of poetry with Adil Jussawalla. Not even once. I hold him in great reverence. But as Adil Jussawalla and I discussed my doctoral research on Parsis over various emails, I observed his emails to me. And as I saw in his poetry too, the power of poetry is certainly evocative.
Adam Zagajewski, I have read in detail, and he tells me about his Polish worldview. He says that a lot of negative things happen in their part of the world, but they don’t shout it aloud; they just hint it. These are my strange, varied, and unconnected teachers. To them, I would also add an advice of Joseph Brodsky about not using adjectives in poetry but to describe those adjectives with nouns. And sometimes, as I write, an echo of Agha Shahid Ali resonates inside me. Not just his poetry but the deep import of his words as Amitav Ghosh quotes him in his tribute. Each of the above, I have internalized.
I have published a few ghazals as well as villanelles in English. But each poem comes to me in a different form. Many come as free verse too. I have not been able to decode this yet. There are many mysteries in human affairs, and this must remain one too.
I tend to be extremely self-critical as a person and in my poetic practice. I don’t always necessarily feel all the poems that I have published meet my critique. But poems are like babies, some look picture-perfect, some are a little deformed. All are mine. I don’t even tend to call myself a ‘poet’. I just think my touch upon the writing of a poem should be as hesitant as a child’s.So, while I write, I write with a surety, a conviction, and a squeezing out of my personality into a poem. But when a poem emerges, my touch upon it remains hesitant. I like to dwell in such incertitude. I think this incertitude underlines the process of living itself.
Cogitations
When you have success, you have no friends:
Only foam that comes from whipping the coffee.
When in failure, you are crowded with close pals,
Cigarettes, black roast java in the cup, self-pity,
Tears that come and perform a new role:
Caressing you, trying to give pleasure.
If you seek porn movies or gratify yourself,
It happens but nothing disturbs the balance of the mind.
That is the beauty of failure, the ever enduring one,
It gives you an equipoise, a time to think about yourself.
Autumnal Thoughts
I can smell the autumn leaves strewn around,
We mistake it as Spring,
Think of rejuvenation, God, and sundry ideas.
The dead do not come around,
Neither those living who are as dead.
God exists only as mulch,
The fertilizer of the earth that eats us up.
What remain are faint memories of pain,
Whether a massacre or an Auschwitz,
The leaves are strewn all over the ground.
Life exists only in its decaying corpses.
Slowness
You said, you are low on enthusiasm,
You said, people find you drab and slow.
We must define slowness as we are,
The slow movement seems so much to say more,
To me, the cadence of beauty is slow.
It is slowly the caterpillar works up the leaf,
It is slowly that the evening sets into the sky.
Your pace, as it is, you as you are, every day, you,
It is you, who is the loveliest of them all,
I love your slowness, as much as it is about you.
Gratitude
You call me the colour blue,
Azure, blue like the skies.
I feel I am dark, depressing,
Talking of d, if not dead.
You say my name is a rhythm,
You even told your mother about it.
I used to think of symphonies once,
Now, it’s just the knell and the gong.
Seasons change, my little one,
If we do soak in the Spring,
Let me live with the withering of it.
There is, of course, the Autumn too,
Let the leaves yellow and fall.
Withering is no crime, nor is decay.
Rotting, festering, are crimes indeed.
You say my intoxication of reading,
Lifts you high up in the skies,
You fly, you dream, you work.
So, let it become you, the blue, bluest skies,
Let me just be what I am.
Life and death are just two sides of a coin,
But let me celebrate you with gratefulness.
Whisper...
As a child, you played Chinese whispers,
Forget it now, Are you crazy? Outright bonkers?
Chinese whispers, as a child,
Are now sinister.
Remember, the whisper you were nineteen,
You saw that girl, she just blew you away,
You told your best buddy about her,
In a whisper, no one knew,
She saw your eyes and caught it —
A half-smile playing on her lips.
That half-smile helped you live two decades.
That teenage, sperm-heat, breathless whisper,
That was another age and time.
That whisper is now sinister.
Remember, you were mid-twenties, working as a faculty,
At an official meeting of faculty where you taught,
Where dissent, even flattery, was fawned upon,
You whispered to your colleague,
That whisper telling him the Chair was right.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, paeans to the Boss,
Remember, the Chair, who made noise about lovin’ it,
You faced the Gulag for that whisper.
That positive whisper was then sinister,
You’re lucky you’re not in China,
For that innocent whisper, you’ll vanish now.
Some folks with “good manners” and “societal leaders”
Warned me about the nature of whisper,
They always called it ‘pure evil’,
The purest form of evil.
My knowledge base expanded,
Now, Tutsis in Rwanda
Seem like child-play with Lego toys.
We are Indians,
We are the greatest civilization,
Ask any Indian — I agree,
We are the world’s greatest superpower —
Fifteen good years.
Ask any Indian again.
Yes, whisper is rude, impolite, purest evil.
You want to try shouting then.
Try it once and see what happens.
Don’t come to me complaining,
Like fellow Indians, I shall laugh at your fate.
I will laugh, I will laugh, I will laugh.
Whispers, the cooing of lovers,
Whispers are all sinister.
Shouting is rude, shouting is against “Us”,
That’s not “We”, it’s “Them”.
(Thank God, there are some people,
Many people, they’re above or beyond,
“Us”, “We”, “Them”.
Thank God.
Nietzsche was wrong, God certainly exists.)
Talking, speaking, that should be ok.
Are you sure about it?
Have you heard of Augusto Pinochet?
Does Miguel Littin ring a bell?
Any faint memories of Atacama Desert?
No, no, don’t utter “Augusto Pinochet” —
You will get to jail,
Its ok, if you’re in jail,
But if you just vanish—
Even Habeas Corpus won’t find you.
Yes, in a whisper, I’ll tell you,
If you don’t find yourself,
Someone else certainly will,
Today, someday, some time,
At least, as a corpse or some remnant of it.
I think whisper is best,
Take out words like Speak, Talk, Shout,
From your stock of words.
I still think whisper is best,
Trust me, there’s nothing to fear,
Its only about whispers.
I have a brilliant idea,
I’m a half Parsi — most Indians love to play lineage,
(I thought dogs had pedigree)
(You want Alsatians? Dobermans? German Shepherds?)
Civilizations fight, Parsis only burn their tails.
I have a brilliant idea,
Whisper, whisper, but whisper nothing,
Whisper about the weather, call it the best,
Whisper about growth, development,
Yes, call it the best,
Become blind to drains that overflow,
Become blind to everything around you,
Become blind to girls assaulted all around,
And don’t forget to hide the slums around you.
And yes, I have an Einstein idea,
Even more brilliant,
(After all, half-Parsi, some dog-pedigree lineage stuff!)
Whisper about everything,
Whisper not about nothing,
Whisper about what outrages you,
Keep your intentions good but whisper.
Whisper like a revolutionary, shout too,
Put that Che Guevara to shame!
Whisper those childlike Chinese whispers,
Whisper when teenage heat got you whispering,
And whisper everything under the sun.
But whisper without the vocal cords emitting any sound,
Whispers are good, just don’t utter any sound within you.
See, I told you I have a brilliant idea.
So, whisper about this poem too,
But don’t whisper with voice from your vocal cords.
The essay and the poems are part of our Poetry Special Issue (January 2022), curated by Shireen Quadri. © The Punch Magazine. No part of this essay or the poems exclusively featured here should be reproduced anywhere without the prior permission of The Punch Magazine.
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