2 Poems – Badri Narayan, (Trans. Hindi)
admin | Jan 03, 2010 | Comments 2
Faith
I am mortal
but the book that I write so meticulously
is more mortal.
I am mortal
but my photographs kept in this album
are no less mortal than me,
penned down over so many years
these diaries of mortal-me
are even more mortal –
and how fleeting is my faith
that I would take these along beyond time.
I order my statues in my own lifetime
all made differently
these statues of mine
are no less mortal
which are forgotten immediately after anniversaries.
These letters that I write
are still more fleeting
they would be burnt up
with matchsticks, at the year-end.
Whatever I gift
falls apart in a few days
a gift lasts a year
good wishes last four days
I desperately endeavour to prove that
the inert, indestructible and immortal things I possess,
are beyond time
but all disappear gradually
like snowballs.
Words are immortal
someone says,
but how do I believe my own words
which dissolve in merely a couple of water drops.
Love-Song
Moon’s collar
and star’s button in my shirt.
Brumous feet of a gazelle running on the back of hills
in my shirt.
Desire to meet the gold-haired girl
in my shirt.
Ire of fathers
and discontent of the guards of society
in my shirt.
Romance of a summer-evening
and the excitement of autumn
in my shirt.
Bands of seasons
in my shirt.
Yes my dear! Drums of clouds
in my shirt!
Translated from Hindi by Ashok Pande
Badri Narayan is a social historian and cultural anthropologist and currently Associate Professor of social and cultural anthropology at the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad. His interests lie in popular culture, social and anthropological history, Dalit and subaltern issues and the relationship between power and culture. He has been a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla (1998-99). The Indian Council of Social Science Research (1995) and the University Grants Commission, New Delhi (1989-93). He has also been Visiting Fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies, University of Leiden, The Netherlands (2002) and HGIS Fellow at the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam (2001). He was a recipient of the Fulbright Senior Fellowship (2004-5) and the Smuts Fellowship, University of Cambridge (2005-6). Besides having written a number of articles both in English and Hindi, he has authored Documenting Dissent: Contesting Fables, Contested Memories and Dalit Political Discourse (2001) and edited (with A. R. Misra) Multiple Marginalities: an Anthology of Identified Dalit Writings (2004). His recent publications are ‘Women Heroes and Dalit Assertion in North India’ Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2006 and “Fascinating Hindutva: Saffron Politics and Dalit Mobilisation” Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2009.
Interesting…i like them. and i like what they invoke and trigger.
Thanks.
Whether we believe that the world is eternal, that it was created or that time will eventually cease, everybody shares some interest in – or call it necessity – of relating human existence to a beginning and an end.
The poem exhibits an ‘anxiety of influence’ by forging a significant departure from conventional poems about the flux and mutability of time. Where other poets affirmed ‘faith’ in the permanence of time – see Shakespeare’s:
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and gives life to thee”.
Or
“And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.”
But the here the poem and poet are threatened by the certainty that he and his poems possibilities will end up in nothingness: “dissolve in merely a couple of water drops”.
Lovely but kind of sad.