Sunday, 10 September 2017

Bachelor Poems

These two pieces were written two years before I got married. Bad poetry borne out of bad moods!


Heart Broken

Dying embers
of a super nova
that cracked up
a billion years ago
do not warm up
the cold loneliness
of my nights
and the sun
never rises
in the empire
of my heart
after i realised
that the experts
have written the program
with my blood
and without you…


Bachelor Musings

The future is not bleak
somewhere there
an unlucky girl
with music and grace
may be a pleasant face
(what’s your problem- she’s
trained in domestic ways)
will become my wife
we shall lead a dull life
and make duller babies
who’d lead better lives

‘cause they won’t know the difference.

Saturday, 9 September 2017

Among Indian poets who wrote in English, Gopal Honnalgere (1942 - 2003) is one of the best. His poems show his sensitivity and deep rooted Indian sensibility. He has been largely forgotten by Indian anthologists and his books of poems are out of print. I had copied three of his poems by hand some forty years ago. This one is an all-time favourite. If your eyes mist over by the time you finish reading this, there is still hope for the world:

My mother’s saree
(Gopal Honnalgere)

sometimes when they had differences
perhaps my father tugged her saree
my mother’s saree was torn.

sometimes when he came
even intimately close to her
perhaps his cigarette burnt
again a hole in my mother’s saree.

then we were eight children;

how many pisses
shits, vomits and kicks
of us the saree bore.

yet sometimes when we were
in a hurry to go out
mother dipped
one edge of her saree
in warm water
and instantaneously cleansed our faces.

and how many menstruations
forced copulations, dragged love,
conceptions, misconceptions,
abortions and deliveries,

the saree gracefully concealed.

perhaps endless.

even when the saree was flung
to dry in the backyard

it looked endlessly

affectionate;

around which we grew
playing hide and seek.

and another old saree was somewhere
kept to quilt the cradle

for a new arrival.