SURFACES Poetry Reading & Chapbook Launch

Below are some of the poems I read on Aug 9, at Sarai Cafe, CSDS, Delhi, for the SURFACES Poetry Reading with Three English and Three Hindi Poets & Chapbook Launch (moderated and curated by Vivek Narayanan).

Apart from the couple that have been published, the rest have been written during my Associate Fellowship at Sarai-CSDS, 2010. The residency spanned July-August. The poem "AHALYA'S WISH" is included in the SURFACES chapbook, a handmade art collection boasting the work of co-fellows of mine.

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Tea with Reza

By Nabina Das

Little glasses warmed by steam

Posing ballerinas pirouetting in silver holders

Glassy eyes too from steaming tears in

Tea-colored eyes

The kettle whistled Reza said, like

The train whizzing past his little

Iranian township that sang

Khoshbakhtam, khoshbakhtam!

Where poplars grew tall, very tall

Reza’s arms ceramic and

Bent bow-like from his time in jail

In a dark cell where he wasn’t given

Books to read or

Newspapers but just lashes and blows

Now and then for reading Marx

At the university

His tealeaf eyelids brimming up

With that memory …

He handed us glasses on silver holders

Held them tender, candles during prayer

The Revolution was not for my

Heart and soul, Reza cried

O my dear comrades, O my friends…

I came to be with you for freedom

And manifestos and democracy

Talks showering morning’s calm

On poplars I loved, my friends loved

Friends who were lost and gone

For singing The Internationale

Their arms bent too, cracked ceramic

Backs scarred, resting in unknown graves

Sometimes letters from prison came

Once a year, till they stopped, mentioning

The smell of tea freshly brewed

Just like this, verses of aroma

Coiling over us during our tea

With Reza one nineties evening…

He still waits in exile.

First published in Mad Swirl

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Waiting on the News

By Nabina Das

Come Aitaa

we must discuss before time if we want radishes in this year’s garden

green gourds climbing a common fence, sure, you can have some

also coriander to sprinkle on the pitika for a late afternoon meal

bhoot-jolokia that no one will eat, the army fancies it now we know

the newspapers have it all, the tea shops get their fortune told

Come Aitaa

Let’s talk about the one-legged pigs and calves born this year

the ducks that won’t stop chasing the hens even if you yelled,

about the corner-shop Bipin I’m not sure, his ma died crying

for he was gone in the forest, they say, to become an insurgent,

but the mother said… to find the old dog Gela of the mangy coat--

to those stories Aitaa, my answers are slippery feet on oil

Come Aitaa

Let’s walk down the paddy lanes just till the town bus stand

While you wait for aunt Moromi; I’ll tell you why Aslam won’t sell

His fish cheap even if you swear on the hungry-mouthed floods

forsaken huts and the fungal pots pans we won’t ever throw away

but if you wonder why the one-eyed Harekrishna didn’t return

from the big market of Ganeshguri, no ID, no whereabouts

Aitaa, I swear on my loveless luck I’d have to invent a new fairytale.

This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship

**

The Woman from Both Sides

By Nabina Das

When they came home they praised

Her for her naked room, the swiped floor

Kantha-stitched cushion covers and a neat

Tulsi plant doing a dhamail in the breeze

When they arrived at the garden gate they

Marveled at the roses she grew after meals

The verandah with old cane stools dozing

Before evening gods would arrive for alms

When they were asked to say a few words

They saw her brass urns glint on shelves

Filled with partition stories, re-invented,

Re-told with new metaphors washed clean

With her starched chemise in this side’s sun

They wept to see her calmer than usual

So, they sat down by her body’s silence

When they looked at her all wrapped in white

Sandal scents holding on tight to a gray lock

Tucked behind the right ear, they also saw

Her fingers soiled from that side, maps of tales.

This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship

**

After the Show

By Nabina Das

We were on the paddies

we walked gingerly

toes to toes to heels

against toes

they said someone

might be following us

We were on

the rails of words

we spoke less

just squeezed

proverbs like stress balls

or mother’s hand

We were inside night’s

armory where

owls sharpened our

verbs of anxiety

skunks clawed at rising

codas of our breaths

We were sweaty

after our show

each one of us done

with our roles

entering a new theater

with the summer mist

where our faces

were terracotta

against the thuds

of rifle butts someone

said would follow us

till the journey’s end

We were deep

inside a language

whose dialogues

rang in a darkness

bright as the ancient

demon’s teeth

its beastly innocence

shone through our flak

There were flowers

red and green

there were the gods

fallen face down

songs about how

they all became

absent mannequins

also songs the grain-

thrashers sang

in the split of

old war stories

then we rehearsed

another new scene.

This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship

**

Ahalya’s Wish

By Nabina Das

Her visit made everyone run

fetch her special seat, water glass

a separate special plate, later scoured

separate, after her after-work snack

We kids ran in a tumult to see if

her teeth were different in number

than the last time, slurpy betel

juice soaked, scary monster-red

Mother made chitchat, served her

coconut candies in summer

black sesame sweets in winter

with jaggery or handmade bread

Aunts poured her water slowly

careful not to spill, not to mop

once she cleaned the outhouse

a relic from an unknown rural life

Once she cut the shrubs, weeded, threw

the dead skunk in a ditch and cleaned

up, we kids asked her to pick a name that

she’d like to be in her dreams so she

could be allowed to play with us

make us clay dolls of earthly shapes

Her dark forehead gleamed, no sindoor

the sari-end bunched at her sagging breasts.

Her instant candor still rings in my head:

“I’d like to be made flesh, don’t know the name,”

she said. “Feet first, I will touch everything.”

This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship

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"Wood-Story Before the Millennium and Now": New Poem in DM 34

Brand new poem on DANSE MACABRE XXXIV's all-poetry April issue "Belles-Lettres".

This is from a series I am writing under my Sarai-CSDS fellowship "The Migrant City". You can read it here or below:

Wood-Story Before the Millennium and Now

This is a table where we used to keep a glass vase in the nineties

the sun a syruping gooseberry often tumbling out of it reckless

a wooden table, smooth-plank body of a tree dressed for our

weekend dinners. Some clutter as it happens with faces clustered

coats of varnish and heavy-lashed lacquerware, dead-white ceramic

this will still be the same surface where we will spill the gravy

push the sparkling tea across, lick any fallen crumbs with thumbs

**

Keep the fast, it gives long life

to your husband, those elderly

women will implore and

let the table carry ornate

plates of offerings you won’t easily touch

only after the moon does first

its shadow on the water on your silver tray.

And then the table can sing like a cricket

all that crockery clattering

we will eat everything before

the moon-shadow devours the mind

ignoring what the women say.

In fact, you will know, I only cared

about just crickets because they

love the blackness of soul just as I do.

**

When I close my eyes I see my aunt lissome and dark with her braid

long like those thick twines for hauling country boats to shore

she smiles and shows a tooth we were told is of the elephant, rare.

I see her on her back on the bed tossing a red plastic ball over her chest

lob and drop and lob and show the gajadanta smile while my uncle

sits two feet away on a table, the one they never dined on, used as a shelf

for things, littered for the most time. He dangling his black-shoed feet as

if he is a kid watching the unbelievable enchantress woman’s trick

of lobbing a red-desire ball high up; the head of the old-fashioned bed

preventing him to leap forward, also because I zip into the room

looking for my cousin as uncle shifts, legs undangle, the table creaks.

**

The life story of woods

when they come from

forests of greenness

tells of more lines and stars

than found on our palms.

**

I don’t remember when Habib Tanveer or Gangubai the siren throat died

when was it bringing home wads of cash that quick dirty jobs paid was cool

money for home, food, electronics, but no song or lines; but I do remember

rehearsing one afternoon with Habib for a play we would perform in a street

where racketeers and launderers ran their shops; they watched, we stood

on the dust as if on breadcrumb crusts strewn on a table top, hewn uneven

because no one cleaned; a china cup stayed back, the old tea leaves telling

a tale of the millennium as they should, like all things emancipated and sweetly old.

This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, New Delhi.

Image from Danse Macabre literary journal

"The Limbo" -- Essay Published in Troubadour 21

The Migrant City, my writing project supported by an Associate Fellowship from Sarai-CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) is a collection of essays and poetry.

Most recently, the essay "The Limbo" is published on TROUBADOUR 21...

Under the series titled DILLIGAF (I know, I know!), it is set in Delhi -- the city of djinns and jagged edges ...!

Here's a teaser:

"The Ferris wheel sways up and down in a maverick fashion. Faces bob and bait me. Men in kurtas, humid tees and even unwashed shirt collars. Women a multitude of colourful heads – pink, red, ochre – covered with sari pallavs or transparent salwar-kameez veils. Kids walk between adult knees. Flower petals fall down crushed in fervent hands and the invisible vermillion powder in the hot air suffocates me. The auto sputters, barely moves.

“I need a smoke,” says my driver. “But someone might be offended.”

I contemplate walking down but remember what happened once. Devotees pushing; someone’s hand in my pocket quickly scrounging for material items; another hand even on my butt, pressing and persuasive. But all this should be Maya. Or magic. You can’t see who does it and how."

Read it in full HERE.

Image from the Internet: Vehicles on Delhi road.

Sarai-CSDS Associate Fellowship 2010: What I Propose to Do

My associate fellowship with Sarai-CSDS's "City as Studio" has started. It's an exciting, artistic endeavor, to continue till July-August 2010 when all the fellows meet and share their work in a workshop in Delhi. I'd be happy to share part of what I wrote in my proposal, essentially my thought process that is evolving as I write and create. A few things will therefore change down the line. In all, it's a highly integrative work that accords plenty of creative space to us participants. Being the only writer in the team I look forward to learning from the other fellows who are performance, digital and media artists, each with interesting projects.

Jajabor: The Migrant City

Someone once said: writers have a soul that cannot even stay in heaven; it will journey on. As a writer, I see my nomad self traverse myths and histories, and idioms and images from the cities of my origin to the cities of my dreams. What I encounter in the process is, “Jajabor – The Migrant City”, my proposed project.

The Migrant City walks with millions. It is my studio, my study.

Dr. Bhupen Hazarika’s Assamese song “Moi eti jajabor” (I am a nomad) is perhaps known to a significant number of people at least from its lilting tune. The universal appeal of this melodious song lies in the fact that it exhorts the urge in every human to undertake journeys through difficult climes and terrains. From the banks of known rivers to unknown city streets, we trek with the song until the beauty of the world unravels itself for the seeking soul, tired by her sojourns.

However, putting aside the romance of the nomad’s journey if we look at timeless works such as Pather Panchali, another aspect of the universal truth emerges. Poverty and suffering has constituted the age-old paradigm of migration, forcing populations to leave their ancestral homes. What befell Harihar-Sarbajoya-Apu-Durga in Satyajit Ray’s classic movie is a fate many carry even today, in conditions worse than ever, given India's monumental caste-class problems. While the city waits to receive them, it turns into a migrant itself. With the migrant feet that have journeyed from village to town to city, and in turn from city to city in their endless quest for life and love, the city too has followed the migrant souls, temporally and spatially. Decade by decade and block by block.

My work speaks about waves of population coming and receding from the city, while the city itself changes its landscape, its borders and barriers, and its topography of urban dwellings. High-rise blocks dot housing areas that earlier flaunted old-world asbestos-roofed homes; pavements appear or disappear; mushrooming shopping malls come to exist with the crowd milling around in flea markets where migrants bring in their fare of beads, crafts and colours. A view from below best illustrates this. It indeed shows us how the marginalized and her search for a life of respect in the urban jungle affects the entity of city itself. Shops, bazaars, slums, construction sites etc. come up and continue with the migrant’s evolution or doom. A fascinating journey indeed, the Migrant City walks from a temple town to a city newsroom to a First World seminar room and even back.

A bilingual born and brought up in Guwahati, Assam, my city for me was a conduit for my double-edged heritage. The born-into heritage of Assam and the cultural-political influences of Guwahati from the ‘70s to the late ’80s prepared me for a longer haul ahead. Also, the inherited legacy of an undivided pre-Partition Bengal-Assam whose part my parents were, made me look back every now and then in search of idioms I want to re-create for myself. Sylhet, Sunamganj, Dhaka, Guwahati, Tezpur, Kolkata, Delhi – the train of cities in my experience does not obliterate one another, but supports the link each provides to the other. Often I felt that I have watched these cities, including even my birthplace, from the archway. The centre never held on.

Later when I moved to Delhi, standing at the threshold of the city and not truly belonging to any ONE place enhanced my “city” perception in a particular way. There I saw the imaginary city juxtaposed with the so-called real one with its spaces of "to-do’s and not-to-do’s", it signage of "the allowed and the disallowed", and its collective of "the walled and the un-walled". A Migrant City!

The migrant city in fact, walked and ran with me and even flew across the Atlantic to North America where I witnessed the City and the Inhabitant interact in very special ways – ties of work, specialized training, globalised trade, new culture orientation, economic and knowledge aspirations, etc. bind the Migrant City to its population – whether it is a university town in rural America or the coasts or the Big Apple itself.

Through my poems Dialogues with Delhi (published in Kritya, India), Questionnaire (published in Omega journal, Howling Dog Press, USA), Narrative Limits (2^nd Prize winner in 2008 all-India poetry contest under HarperCollins-India and Open Space, published in the collection 'Borders' from Talking Poetry), Her Gardens in Two Hemispheres (published in Muse India), Battery Park City, Sem(an)tics and City Siblings; and the essays Pariscope (published in Troubadour 21, USA) of the ongoing “Euro-series”, and the work-in-progress Felinity of the “Assam-Delhi- series”, I want to bring alive the Migrant City in its different aspects.

Three tentative segments seem viable under the main project “Jajabor: The Migrant City”:

1. Text and the City: my poems that dialogue with the City and the Inhabitant – this will result in a workshop with other artists/participants
2. Hands and Hemispheres: my essays that follow the life of the City and the Inhabitant in their reality and fictionality across continents, as I see these elements from the periphery of cities – this will result in another interactive workshop possibly with oral stories of migrant experiences
3. Within-Without: poems, essays, haiku on “City Memorabilia” – songs, videos, advertisements, monuments, street signs, restaurants, slums, bazaars, skylines… – this could team up with a partner artist’s presentation, one who has highlighted similar “city memorabilia”.

I'd love to hear my readers' suggestions. The creative effort is an interactive process, so come on, give me your ideas!

Image from Internet: Elephant on Delhi road; REUTERS

Selected as an Associate Fellow, SARAI-CSDS project, City as Studio

I am selected as an Associate Fellow by Sarai-CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) for their exciting project "City as Studio". Here is the list of all the selected Associate Fellows, an interesting mix of artists from various media.

The blurb about me appears like this:

"1. Nabina Das, Delhi
nabinamail at yahoo.com

Nabina Das is a poet, writer, editor based in New Delhi.
Her novel, 'Footprints in the Bajra' is forthcoming from Cedar Books (Pustak Mahal), India.

Nabina's explorations for the Studio entail working on a series of poems that dialogue with the City and its Inhabitants, resulting in a workshop with other artists/participants. Her project is tentatively titled, 'Jajabor: The Migrant City'. She will work with other artists, writers, studio participants on creating poems, essays, haikus on “City Memorabilia” – songs, videos, advertisements, monuments, street signs, restaurants, slums, bazaars, skylines…"

The project runs from February to August 2010. A workshop in July-August will require me to be present in New Delhi. A final report will be submitted to Sarai-CSDS by November.