‘Blessed are those who till the soil;

Honour only lies in honest toil.’

 

Watch Repairer

You may go to him for replacing wornout parts

Of an old watch, or for buying a new one.

He has a fair sampling of digital and quartz

Displayed in a large glass-case, and wrist-straps

In metal and snake-skin; in leather, black or dun.

When business is dull you could catch him napping, perhaps.

Now his face is bland as a handless dial

Of some wall-clock. Eyepiece on, it clouds into mystery.

He will not share with you the world ofjewel and coil,

Or what moves a spring or balance-wheel, and if the galaxies

Orbit perfectly, may be, we owe it to his artistry;

His screwdriver and wee tweezers align our axes.

Beau monde, as a rule, shun this tiny box of a shop.

His clientele is the humbler class across the street

Keen to fasten their wrists with anything which does not stop.

Quite a few in his kitty are like that, running,

Don’t tick alike. The pulse of each has its own beat.

He, in no hurry, knows

Time is mended by a timesmith’s cunning.

Riots And Arson

Here where the hierophant leads the vulgus by the nose

Hate travels over the telegraph of rumours

Soon the cursive alphabet of a communal wind

Doodles the nocturnal sky with scarlet.

Men roasted, kids skewered, women raped

No full-moon high tide, perhaps, would soar

Taller than these towering fires, stoked

By cellophane, wood and molotov cocktail.

The strobic orbs may gutter, turn into

Cold galactic clods eons from now. But here, men

Are immutable, will devise newer ways to divide

Themselves – beyond colour, argot, creed.

The fire is irreverent. It darts its tongue alike at stones

Of a mosque or temple. Commemorates

No prophets, does not bend or kneel. When

Doused, reveals not just cinders in its wake, but shards

Of human recrement, and every worshipped God a fake.

* 05 August 1978 went down in the annals of history as the day of the goriest communal carnage in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Curfew was clamped with shoot-at-sight orders for next 45 days. – The Times of India, 06 August 1978

Family Carpenter

He wheels in on an old Hind cycle

Toolbag slinging from the handle bar

Scraggy-bearded, turbaned like a whelk.

‘Come in Prem Singh,’ I say, ‘Come in.’

‘Dasso Saabji,’ he intones in vernacular.

I blurt my woes. Out spill,

Like arrows from a fletcher’s quiver,

Chisel, spoke-shave, auger, awl. In no time

He’s driven a shim into the wall

To fix the metal ring of the towel-rack, hammered home

A two-inch nail into a falling door-cleat, then

To a writing table I lead him on, on three legs halt.

That done, there awaits him still

A teapoy with a loosening welt of steel

An almirah which squeaks on its hinges

And the fractured splat of a chair’s back. His blows

Are deft and square. He shows

A shikra’s eye. He saws with piston arms.

Mending over I pay. He picks his scattered things

And, in a mighty haste to get away,

Storms out of the house like a mail-train

Through a wayside station. Do I mind

Clearing away the small

Mayhem of wood-shavings,

Splinters, tacks he leaves behind?

Weavers

They squat in a narrow pit

Below the loom

The long wool warp extends

Beyond the mud-walled room

Tied to a post through threads;

I see tufts of cotton quilted

Between coarse counterpanes

By veiled women down the lane

Beneath thatch awnings tilted.

None tell them

Nor do they recall

Waking to a rapacious dawn

When a forced seed was sown

Where millets grew; how acres

Of crying fields

Fattened Manchester mills, to spawn

Calico, chintz and lawn. – Curious

Ruck of tourists whose

Comings and goings

To them mean little –

We are two

Pictures in distanced words

Of memory and thought, and so

To be judged and sensed and caught-

Strangers who visit and leave, bereft

Of any kinship with the land, or

The folk visited and left;

Their penury we take for granted,

Who cares to understand how

A black law became a custom?

– From hand to feeding hand

The shuttle keeps on passing

Creating still the weft…..

Fuel Gathering

The low hill slopes like a soldier’s

Clean-shaven chin down which

She rolls barefoot and through the cutting

Comes upon the track, swinging

A gunny bag in her arms. Scuffs

Against the glistering buffers

Of a Pullman parked on the sidings,

Another bayline where

Rollers seesaw upon telephone wires. A loco

Skirls out steam, cantering away

Like a colt, ghosting out smoke

Which scales the evening skies. She eyes

The pointsman flag off a freight train

Into the yard, its chain of cars

Pass the gantry, brake and halt

As a green signal drops with a click,

And a red raises its arm. Poised

Atop the heap of rusty girders

She runs her eye through shunted paths

Beyond a culvert where rail-lines

Meet and part. Peers beneath

Fishplates or between sleepers

For bits of coughed-out coal

From asthmatic engines and

Stuffs her sack with half-burnt pellets

Strewn across the track –

Fuel to bunker her mother’s fires.

Bricklayer To His Son

The rich grind the faces of the poor

And that is how their wives get face powder.

But you, my child, must learn this art

Of binding mud with stone and sundering brick.

Our schools teach all except

The alphabet of living.

Wholesome are the smells of the poor

It’s against the flatulence of affluence

You must hold your nose.

See, with this trowel pack

This gruel of cement, water, sand

Into every chink between

Brick and brick and rifted stone.

For levelling, use this planer, a handy tool.

When the belly aches

Will you eat the concrete of this city?

Loathe not offal and dung,

Not the shanties that afford you shelter

But learn to shun

Bad air from big bottoms of cars

It will infect your lungs.

After you have lived as long as I,

You would understand

It’s the fetors of the rich

Which pollute our land –

The Jimsonweed that thrives

Upon the scraggy grass of the poor

And steals every morsel from its roots.

Remember, skilled hands shoo away hunger

As turmeric pecks repel ants.

Mazdoors At A Teastall Next To A DTC Bus-Stand

A colubrine queue

Wriggles into bus

Like some twisted lace

Through the eyelet of a shoe,

Leaving behind a litter

Of half-torn tickets, peanut shells,

Banana peels, and these two

Slurping tea at a bench

Outside a stall, faces

Crazed as the chipped

Teacups held in their hands.

Street Cobbler

I do not know how you would feel

Beneath a strip of burlap flap

To awl a vamp and welt a heel

Or mend a Hawaii-slipper strap.

He does it all the whole year long

What moves one’s heart is the way

How twine and two fingers fay

To make a stitch so fine and strong.

And as his forebears ages past

He sits there custom-doomed by caste

To hammer hobnails of his fate

In worn-out soles upon the last.

Srinivasa Ramanuja

God of the mock theta

Function, god

Of the prime number. Otherwise

A one-time petty

Port-trust clerk, an

Enigma to his widow’d mother

And his child-wife, and to the unletter’d

Tamilians he grew among.

Cambridge then catered

To the easy

Disciplines, the vanities

Of the colonial elite,

Social sciences and humanities,

(Remember Nehru read History there!)

Oxford gave its admission ticket

To native royalty, less for learning,

More for British loyalty,

And to play polo and cricket.

But this prince of combinatorics

Only Littlewood and

Hardy understood

And London’s Math Society –

 Not its hoity-toity.

Sugarcane Juice Vendor

In the June heat

His arms crank the cogged wheel

Of the pig machine

Which grunts and squeals.

Tickled by flies, I wait

For the foam-selvaged brew

Laced with lime and count

Notches on haulms of cane

He crushes between

Rollers of penury. Sweat streaks

His ruck-trenched cheeks. An oily vest

Silhouettes the bentback. When he

Hands me the laced juice

My big thirst eclipses

His lean frame writhing in the glass.

I down him with a tenner, and pass.

Flayers Of Barabanki

Trudging would have been better than turning

On these tiresome wheels. We melt like tallow, Kallu.

The axle creaks. The yoke sags. The thill stutters.

Our buck is crammed like a squirrel’s drey among babul snags.

Rein in the bullock under that mango tree…..Last time

Its boughs were fledgy with blossom, now

They are gravid with fruit ….. How were we hoodwinked

By those sarkari caitiffs? To make us part with our

Flayed pelts for apittance. Their deeds smell worse than all these

Unsalted hides of stripped neat!

Pshaw! Mayflies….

Summer breeds all…… Mayflies around our faces and pismires

Around our feet. …. I see a dust-storm brewing across the fields…

Allah Baksh, would he come to the mandi? Who knows? May be

He’ll buy our hides for Sahib’s factory in town…. May be not…..

But the curmurring tummies of beadles are pots

Where we are cooked. They carve us closer than we the carcases….

 And….. those thugs in Khadi ….. the less said the better.

Take the chagal out. Souse the skins.

They dry so fast in the sun. Don’t

Fail to count the hides. Three of the buffalo,

Two of the cow and katai, six of the goats and calves.

Now let’s move on.

Salim Auto Works

I see him sitting by a stack of used tyres

Pressing an airline nozzle into the front wheel

Of a two-wheeler, metering pressure with the gauge,

Shooting down upon the valve a blob of spittle

Watching for leaks.

He careens my vespa and gently drops it –

It lies on its side like a scuttled sailboat –

Then jerks it erect and jacks up the chassis,

Crawls beneath in grimy shirt and trousers,

The sun spikes his back.

When I kickstart and ride again

It’s not the rough countryside I see but the rugged,

Smudged-with-lube-and-oil face of this latterday

Machine-farrier – an endearing

Landscape of human toil.

Abattoir

Jhatka, not hallal. They

Are done in by

Abattoir Stunning. Two goats’ heads, eyes

Like fish, and scales tipping

Blood. Femur, tibia

Clean sliced under

The hatchet-stroke upon

A block of wood….. Any

Brute’s organ – kidney

Liver, heart, hoof,

Snout – you name it….. All

Are priced. Brushes

From hair, strings

From intestines, china

From bone….. But man,

The whole of man is tripe.

Grass-Cutters

April. Summer warms up. Madars

White-budded dot like stars

The sough’s bank; pale-stripped

Agaves slice the air; thorn-apples flare

Into luteous flowers and prickly pear

With knosps of pink are tipped.

Squirrels leave dreys and scamper down

Boles of shisham, chitter at sapota-brown

Women labourers cutting grass

In tussocks growing thick

Wisp it rick by rick

Haul them on their backs and move across

In saris tattered as kites caught

Among tardle of telegraph wires

Brickfaces baked in the kiln of sun’s fires.

I in my room, switch on the fan, feeling hot,

Call for a fresh lime under its circling breeze,

Soon am cool as a cicada in the trees.

Kissan

Bajra roti with green chilli

Around the year

And famine or flood

Supplant his diet of fear.

He partakes, earth-hunkered,

Those frugal fares

Without a dining table

And six dining chairs.

His belly, no politico’s

Pendulous hive,

Ingests that much

Which keeps him alive.

Marble Game

Two street-ragamuffins –

 One standing, the other

On haunches, who crooks his finger

Into a catapult, and shoots,

Eye-squinting – the nicker

Hits the taw which hits the plunker

Which rolls down the berm

Into a pot-hole – daily

They come here to play in the forenoon

And stay till the sun sets – it seems

Nothing can wean them away

From this passion, this magic

Translucence of turning strobes.

One evening, a school-bus extrudes

Uniformed boys in neckties and blackshoes,

Blowing bubble-gum. Waywardly one

Kicks the kids’ bonces, as others

Join in, and soon all the marbles roll down

Into the depths of the covered roadside drain.

A desultory cloud sizzles in the sky. Outnumbered

The urchins quiver like two weak rickers

In a strong gust of wind. But as the bullies

Slouch away towards their homes, the duo

Spring into action, and pelt the retreating tyrants

With a hail of stones — then fast disappear

Into some nebulous hovel in the neighbouring slum.

Gandhi

It’s the in-thing

To tarnish your image. They’ve made

A hero of your assassin, hiss

Tales of lechery about your crutches,

Abha and Manu.

The saint is judged guilty

Unless he proves himself innocent –

They expect the dead to rise and speak.

Stratocrats loathe you. So do

Management executives. Your simplicity

Comes in the way

Of their ostentation.

Disciples in kurta and khadicap

Bandy your name for votes –

Bellies bloating with boodle.

January and October we place

Ruitual wreaths, observe

The two-minute silence, sing

Raghupati. Do you believe us?

It is a cant of runts.

You lie inhumed

In the oubliettes of our greed.

We are a land of ingrates, and the seven

Deadly sins you once described are now

Seven times multiplied. To boot

We have scooped out new pits

To nurse our serpent hates.