Indian Writing

Looking through several issues of the Delhi Magazine, I found an issue on the poetry of Mangalesh Dabral. Some lovely translations there. Here is “A Picture of Father” (”Pita ki Tasvir”) translated by Rupert Snell:

There are lots of little pictures of Father
Scattered throughout the house
His eyes sparkle brightly
with something far-seeing
Goodness or courage
In the picture Father doesn’t cough
He’s not agitated
His hands and legs don’t ache
He does not stoop or compromise
One day Father stands next to his picture
And begins explaining
Just as a teacher shows a map to his pupils
Father says I’m not like my picture
But the new rooms I’ve added
In this old house, you take them
Take my goodness to battle against those evils
That you’ll meet along the way
Don’t take my sleep take my dreams
It’s me who’s worried who is agitated
I stoop and compromise
I groan with the pain in my hands and feet
I cough like Father
I look at Father’s picture for a long time

*****

From the issue on Raghuvir Sahay, here is “Cycle-rickshaw”, translated by Harish Trivedi and Daniel Weissbort:

It may sound like socialism to say
we should treat horses like human beings,
especially when one of them happens to be a human being.
When we jump guiltily off a rickshaw,
and then feel sorry we’ve deprived the poor man of his
livelihood
and finally tip him out of pity-
in all three cases we’re a trial to him, and he has to endure
us.
It is only when we haggle over the fare
that we approach equality.
Come, you engineers of the twenty-first century,
let’s invent a cycle-rickshaw in which
the passenger and horse can sit side by side
and just go for a spin.
And what good will this do, you may ask?
Well, if there’s a disagreement between you and the horse,
at least he won’t have to turn round and get a crick in his
neck.

*****

Also the translations of four poems by Baba Nagarjun (Baidyanath Mishra ‘Yatri’). From his poem “Pink Bangles” (”Gulabi churiyan”), translated by Nalini Taneja:

So what if he is a driver of a private bus
He is the father of a seven year girl after all!
In front above the gear
He has hung from a hook
Four glass bangles pink
In unison with the movement of the bus
They keep moving…

Bending forward I inquired about them
He wasn’t expecting it.

*****

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