Professor K. Satchidanandan (b.1946 May) is a major Indian poet and critic of national recognition writing in Malayalam and English Professor Satchidanandan has won several awards and fellowships for poetry, criticism and translation including Kerala Sahitya Akademi awards four times (for poetry, drama, travelogue and criticism), Mahakavi Ulloor award, Mahakavi P. Kunhiraman Nair award, Kumaran Asan award, Odakkuzhal award, Pandalam Kerala Varma award, Bharaitya Bhasha Parishad's Samvatsar award, Gangadhar Meher award, Kerala Varma Sahitya Puraskaram,Vayalar award and Bapu Reddy Literary Trust national award for poetry, Oman Cultural Centre award, Baharain Kerala Samaj award and Sahitya Sree by Delhi Hindi Sahitya Sammelan for total literary contribution, Srikant Verma Fellowship for Poetry Translation and Senior Fellowship from the Department of Culture, Government of India.He has been given India –Poland Friendship medal by the Government of Poland and Knighthood of the Order of Merit by the Government of Italy. He has been honoured by Ganakrishti, Calcutta, Government of Kerala and Kalidas Academy, Ujjain and awarded the Best Public Observer Prize by the YMCA for his response to social issues. The countries he has visited as a writer include Pakistan, Dubai, Oman, Abu-Dhabi, Bahrain, Syria, Singapore, Thailand, China, Russia, Latvia, Croatia, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, England , France, Italy and U.S.A.
 

The Shrine


When a bitch gives birth to
three cute pups in the patio,
the shrine becomes holy.

When a snake moults on
the tender grass by the sanctum,
the shrine becomes holy.

When the first drop of summer rain
thrills a grain of sand in the backyard
the shrine becomes holy.

We no longer need
the vedas and the idols;
prayers and rituals are not
Holier than these.

(Translated from the Malayalm by the poet)


ANGELS


Angels do not live on moonlight.
They know nothing about relativity.
They make light of the law of gravity.
Since they have wings in place of hands
They cannot properly handle even a cup of tea,
count change or set a blown fuse,
not to speak of sending an SMS.

Angels hate to take part in funeral rites.
All that stuff about their standing guard
to the sick and singing lullabies for
those sleeping on the streets
is nothing but bluff.

Their relationship with God is in jeopardy.
In fact they were banished from Heaven
for their lethargy and indulgence.
Names like Gabriel and Raphael
they picked up after they were
abandoned on earth.
They are suffering from diabetes and B. P .
as they had long been on
an excess of manna.
Human drugs have failed on them.
Veterenary doctors think
their wings are fake.
But they are real as they
get entangled in microwave towers :
it is their wail that
we just heard on our mobiles.

Angels envy men :
thought is anathema to them.
They survive only as they are gay.

Once I saw a wingless angel
riding the back of a local train.
Its eyes were no more than sockets
and the cheeks had no cheeks in them.
Seeing it try hard to sing aawaaraa hoom *
with its sooty lips
to the accompaniment
of the train’s whistle,
I wept.

( Translated from the original Malayalam by the poet)

awaaraa hoom : a Hindi film song popularised by the actor Rajkapoor, the words mean, “ I am a vagabond”.

THE LAST GOAL


I, Zinedine Zidane,
the stranger you feel like stabbing
as the French sun dazzles you (1),
one with a different face and a different build
still hoping in vain to be
one among you,
one who drank molten steel to
cultivate his muscles so that
you might love him
one who ran along sharp-pointed nails
to grow nimble of foot,
sharpened his Algerian gaze
looking for stars yet to rise ( 2)
and his brain by grinding it
on French’s whet-stone and
rasping it with Arabic’s file.

I was shown the red card long ago:
during my disgraceful childhood in that
squalid suburb of Marseille (3)
and my rebellious adolescence.

Pardon me if for eight seconds
the raging blood of my wounded race
hunted down from New York to Gujarat
rushed into my head I bow only for namaz
Pardon me if the tears of my
acid-soaked motherland rose like a
tidal wave to engulf the venomous
heart of my public abuser
Pardon, for having infused for eight seconds
the illusion of the playground with
the bitterness of reality,
for having subverted the soft rule of
the game with the harsh rule of life.

There were no spectators before me,
no cameras : only the wrinkled face
of my mother, all mothers, in exile;
only the last chance history gave me
to avenge every disgraced being on earth
by a single bloodless gesture.

That, pardon me children,
Was Zinedine Zidane’s final header,
his last goal.


(1)Remember Albert Camus’s The Outsider.
(2) Zidane was born to Algerian immigrants.
(3) He grew up in La Castellane, a suburb of marseille in Southern France.


OLD WOMEN


Old women do not fly on magic wands
nor make obscure prophecies
from ominous forests.
They just sit on vacant park benches
in the quiet evenings,
call doves by their names
and charm them with grains of maize.

Or, trembling like waves
they stand in endless queues in
government hospitals
or settle like strile clouds
in post offices awaiting mail
from their sons abroad,
long ago dead.

They whisper like drizzles
as they roam the streets
with a lost gaze as though
something they had thrown up
never returned to earth.

They shiver like December nights
in their dreamless sleep
on shop verandahs.

There are swings still
in their half-blind eyes,
lilies and Christmases
in their failing memory.
There is one folktale
for each wrinkle on their skin.
Their drooping breasts
yet have milk enough to feed
three generations
who would never have it.

All dawns pass
leaving them in the dark.
They do not fear death,
they died long ago.

Old women once
were continents.
They had deep woods in them,
lakes, mountains, volcanoes even,
even raging gulfs.
When the earth was in heat
they melted, shrank,
leaving only their maps.
You can fold them
and keep them handy :
who knows, they might help you find
your way home.

(Translated from the Malayalam original by the poet)

MUMMY


Those who make
horror films about mummies
hardly know our loneliness.
I am alone inside this huge pyramid.
No, I ’ m not yet deaf and blind:
just now a nightingale’s song is falling
on my ears , the visitors’ whispers,
and the rude sound car tyres make
as they rub agaist granite.
Children stare at me in terror ;
they don’t know I was not merely
a queen, but a mother too.

The day will pass like this,
with the sound of footsteps
and peels of laughter.
But nights leave me sleepless.
I don’t like men’s new ways a bit.
The whole night I am haunted
by the noises of motor cars
and mobi
I want to sleep in comfort,
without nightmares,
free from the armour and the crown,
being just a woman,
in B. C. E.

(Translated from the original Malayalam by the poet)