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 Keki
Nasserwanjl Daruwalla was born in Lahore in 1937. He was
educated at Government College, Ludhiana. He Is the author of
Under Orion (poetry, 1970), Apparition in April (poetry, 1971),
Crossing of Rivers (poetry, 1976), Winter Poems (poetry. 1980),
The Keeper of the Dead (poetry. 1982), Landscapes (poetry,
1987), a collection of short stories, and the editor of Two
Decades of Indian Poetry 1960-1980(1980). He won the Sahitya
Akademi Award in 1984. He is a member of the Indian Police
Service.
2
Dust spurts as
the first rains come
gaunt and spindly.
Winter was dying’
she says, shivering
‘till this . .
pointing to the drip outside.
‘Near my village, In the foothills
It must have hailed,
killing the mango blossom.
But July, you must come then!
There is a different feel about things —
the earth oozing with black treacle,
fat grubs, white
as intestinal shreds,
fireflies like blood cells of the night;
even the hiss of the scythe
In the wet grass
Is different!
When I tread the leafmould,
and the soot-black earth
gives way under bare feet
then alone I feel
I have not been carved out
of a patch of dried blood.’
Why not go in the rains then?
‘Not in the rains,’ she said,
‘by no means in the rains!
What will the women say?
The bleached woman has come back
to the green grasses!’
3
Through the night we
drift apart
and drift into each other.
Overhead the night roars.
Our blood soars and jack-knifes,
burns and then drifts away
on the cry of a bird.
Next morning she is a coriander leaf
newly plucked,
rain-washed.
A feeling leafs, branches out
like a baby arm
across the webbing that cocoons my ribs;
a feeling softer than skull-membranes.
And I reach over for her
soft and willing and naked
and slowly rhythmic.
The toddlers are around now
or I would have rested
my head on your thighs
and buried my face
in your soft belly.
Whence this ache in the eyelids,
the forehead, the lips, this
sudden ache for being belly-smothered?
I close my eyes and dream the moment away
this flash-flood in the veins for you,
you, soft and yielding.
4
In the afternoon I am alone
with beer and salted snacks —
she is busy with the children.
The hail cannonades on the roof-tiles,
and then the wildcat wind.
It is now that the spasm gets her:
cough and sputum
and even a little blood.
‘In our village, the wind
Is not a beggar,’ she says.
‘It comes riding on the hooves
of wild horses
or shrilling on the cry of a bird.
Not like and Agori*’ gritty and alone
while children watch
Cowering from the windows.’
Let’s go,’ she said,I'll park
the children with my cousin.
Let’s go!
The place must be
ablaze now,
the bougain swarming
over the roof!
The semul tree
The flame of the forest !‘
*Sect, among sadhus, which is not exactly known for its personal
hygiene.
5
This, she said, was the well of the goddess—
but if it was the well of the goddess
the rust on this Persian-wheel
would have been temple bhog1 by now;
and these hooded oxen
ploughing through eternity,
round the well, circumambulating,
they would have stored merit enough
to be gods in the next birth!
But as a shadow drifted across her brow
she added, which heaven can afford
a milllion kine-gods?
6
‘When the semul tree
flowers with embers
that’s the time the cough gets me.
It’s the flower-dust, I think.’
‘Pollen’, I corrected her
and read dismay in her eyes.
‘How will you ever write, my love!
Poetry is written with
the wrong words, don’t you know?’
7
The jackals sink their fangs
into the veins of the night.
Their cries herald
the death of the wilderness
the passing of ghosts.
I look for hairline
fractures on the glass panes
as the wail of the jackals,
riding the wind
crackles against the windows.
For a moment I am amazed
that the almond tree
all dressed up in white
does not sway on its black roots
in the wail and the wind
of these vulpine hungers;
but stands there petrified.
a white shadow
etched on the darkness,
its white flowers tattoed
on the body of the night.
8
In March, the women say, ~A spirit
inhabits her.
Don’t you see the flush spreading
like bracken fire on her cheeks?’
And I tell them I am not
a vine that starts leafing
only in spring.
Whenever you are near me I flower.
9
The wind outside Is still
and shadows freeze like dogs
awaiting their master’s commands.
For an hour now the cough
has shrilled and rasped around her
.like a jackal-pack.
When I can stick it no more
I take her in my arms.
The cough does not subside
but she says: ‘One day
I’ll die like this,
on your shoulder, coughing!’
Shadows come scrambling back, although
the branches of the semul tree
do not move across the window.
Have I a touch of the acid-god?
One month with me, and she is
already talking of dying!
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