Do you see?

FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA a "first in Indian writing in English"

2011-01-31T20:00:00.007-05:00

INDIAN LITERATURE (IL, 259), the flagship journal of Sahitya Akademi (national academy of letters, India) recently published a nice review to my book "FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA". The book completed one year on Jan. 20 and so, this bit came as a good gift.

The attempt made by FOOTPRINTS, said the reviewer, "it seems, is a first in Indian writing in English and must be considered very seriously..."! Nice.

There is no online version. So here are not so good jpegs of the scans:

But good people are more in number in this world. So, here is a link to Saborna Roychowdhury's blog where she posted the pdfs of the same review. The two tiny links above the article are those pdfs, yes.

While at all this, I also urge you to read another review of FOOTPRINTS on Hansda Sowvendra Sekhar's blog. Very detailed, very astute.

You should check out both the blogs for more literary fare. Good stuff for new or 'old' writers.

Sketch Poems in FULL OF CROW

2010-12-05T23:38:00.003-05:00

If you haven't yet, go check out this cool online journal called FULL OF CROW, Winter issue 2010, VOID. Lots of good writing -- both poetry and fiction -- and beautiful sketches.

I have three sketch poems that editor Michael Solender loved (he did, I know!). You will too, hopefully. See them in the downloadable journal here.

Reviews by me -- Sudeep Sen and Abha Iyengar's collections

2010-11-24T00:31:00.005-05:00

Two poetry collection reviews of mine are up on Mascara Literary Review and Pirene's Fountain, both very sophisticated literary journals.

Sudeep Sen's collection of translation poetry "Aria" is an astute piece of work. The range covers from Hindi, Bengali and Urdu poetry to Hebrew, Greek and Persian. It's been a long time that I enjoyed poetry in translation, delicate work that made me want to read the original and marvel at the music of the created work. Read the review HERE.

Also, I reviewed Abha Iyengar's first poetry collection "Yearnings". Abha writes with the ease of a shaman or a clever lover, adept at splitting open emotions of her subjects and planting her own desires within the lines. Read this review HERE.

Featured poem in "Durable Goods 28"

2010-10-24T22:57:00.004-04:00

EVENING THINGS is featured in Durable Goods issue 28, published by Aleathia Drehmer, poet and publisher from Upstate NY.

I think a lot about the home we left behind in Guwahati, Assam. My parents moved from there, and with it a large chunk of our childhood and growing up years.

DG 28 is only in print. Read the poem below:

Evening Things

By Nabina Das

5 p.m. The trees invite blue china clouds

They forget the sun cannot light the lamp

5 p.m. You are drinking tea with honey

Inside a penumbra by the Radhachuda tree

You can wait, then bring the oil lamp out

Circumnavigate the non-existent tulaxi

The Namghar’s 5 p.m. silence will soon erupt

Its tranced kortaal dueting with the khol

5 p.m. You will know that time has struck

Gooseberry dreaming the shadow of a home.

NOTE: I realize there are some words in the poem that are not from the English language and hence need explaining. However, I don't like giving glossary.

Image from my photo album

Non-fiction Piece published in BAP Quarterly

2010-10-15T20:28:00.005-04:00

When I wrote it down recently, I thought this non-fiction piece of mine read more like a story. It is one no doubt, considering how dramatic real life could get for some people. And I find myself going back to such themes again and again, whether in essay or poetry -- the quest for defining borders, the urge to un-map oneself and the discovery that confines are within our own minds.

THE WATER GIVER is published in the current issue of Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly. The theme for this edition is "New York City". Exciting, innit!

Here's an excerpt:

"He had seen us through the crowd. Lunch time. A 15-course buffet and the smell of mustard oil I cannot miss. Jackson Heights is an ant hill of colors – white, brown, black. White faces, black arms, brown legs. The United Colors of Humanity flag flapping in the glee of an autumn New York breeze of 2007.
He has worked under the roof of this un-glitzy Bangladeshi restaurant for decades now. He has hummed Amar Shonar Bangla in the beginning over cauldrons of boiling oil or milk, dreamed of dazzling green paddy, and then slowly forgotten everything. His education was meager, not enough to earn him a stable job back home in a newborn nation. But the money to the middleman “bhai” was just what he could pay for a better life as a New Yorkistani. After all, there was no family, no ties. Why even stick around to be prodded by the police and hear comments from the neighborhood maulavi for not having grown his beard long enough?"

Hope you have fun reading it. For the direct link, go here.

Image: BAP Q cover "Worship Me" by Farras Abdelnour

"Redness" wins a prize

2010-10-07T21:52:00.006-04:00

It was nice to know I was awarded the 1st prize for my entry "REDNESS" by the UNISUN-Reliance poetry contest. That poem is special to me.

Here's the text:

Redness

The summer storm bloomed on an eastern sky

the west looked red

roses of anger heaped on a bush stuck in its thorns

smarting faces, hatred.

You were watching Caché in the living room TV

blood squirting from slashed up necks

headless chickens scattered in an ungainly race

backwards, forward, again back.

My finger touched a tomato skin shedding light

of a red ink, darklike –

wasn’t this what my father’s revolutionary friends

brought in, a newspaper wrapped tight

So not everyone would know how words tumble

red and angry on our roads?

I thought I saw a word flutter open again, a hue,

not a name or mundane things like odes.

You thought we’d lost our tongues, our attitude

piled under the redness of shame

peripheral to storms, deaths, news of constant ruse

and I realized, a color doesn’t need a name.

(By the way, someone asked with chagrin why I enter contests and I said, "To pay my bills". That is partly true. I want to break even one day and take a cruise somewhere. Is that bad? At least I don't want my poetry to be just read in tiny groups that'll only say "awww". I want poetry to sit in the bazaar and yell and gesture at passers-by... Ah, okay.)

Image from Internet: pop art

Director Onir on "Footprints..."!!

2010-09-16T14:27:00.007-04:00

It makes me immensely happy to receive this comment below on my novel "Footprints in the Bajra" from one of the best known young directors of Indian Cinema. Onir Anirban is definitely the most pertinent new face of film making in the Subcontinent today. The I AM series directed by Onir promises to break new grounds in cinematic approaches.

I met Onir first at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in 2009, where he showed us the work-in-progress version of his first I AM series -- "Omar". Soft-spoken and passionate about the topics at hand that he is, the film came across as a new take on LGBT issues, at once sympathetic and questioning.

I thought it would be rather unfortunate if I did not send my book to Onir. He's a busy director, and this is the only way I could send him a gift! So, this is what he said, after reading "Footprints...":

"Finally managed to read Footprints in the Bajra. Compelling reading, lovely drama and great texture. Enjoyed reading very much. Thank you for giving me your book to read."

Yes, I am happy!

Here's a poster -- I AM OMAR -- from Onir's new series:

Waiting on the MFA

2010-09-14T23:58:00.002-04:00

What's going on these days? Well, I am in an MFA Poetry program at Rutgers-Camden. Two poetry workshops, one fiction workshop and one pedagogy class. Plus teaching two sections. That pretty much sums up my life. Writing? I am writing, a little bit. Revising more because i want to take the advantage of my workshops for all the pile of writing I have done for the last three years.

Sitting in my residence hall room where I share the kitchen with two Law students, I can only wonder what new writing will emerge from my pen. Others are watching, and so am I.

"Footprints" review in Business World magazine

2010-09-05T23:00:00.003-04:00

Another review appeared in May this year in the top Indian biz mag BUSINESS WORLD.

"This is bitter-sweet, if a rather longish tale of a modern-day Maoist revolution and the seeds of destruction and betrayal that lie embedded in it.

http://www.businessworld.in/bw/2010_05_17_Life_In_Red.html

SURFACES Poetry Reading & Chapbook Launch

2010-08-17T11:29:00.008-04:00

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.

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

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

Book Interview in THE SENTINEL -- All About "Footprints"

2010-08-15T11:00:00.003-04:00

KARUNAMAY SINHA's interview about my work and book FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA in THE SENTINEL. Please read and air your comments! Personally I am happy to re-connect with The Sentinel where I had worked as a cub sub editor and reporter once upon a time :)

The paper copy has some nice photographs I had sent them. The e-paper has this ordinary layout.

Review of "Footprints..." in THE STATESMAN

2010-05-23T23:02:00.005-04:00

THE STATESMAN, Sunday Supplement "8th Day" of May 16, 2010, has these words about "Footprints in the Bajra".

'"If you misrepresent you, they'll abduct and kill you," says Muskaan, our hostess, who swats my attention as though it were a distracted fly bumbling over a new odour"" goes the first line with which Nabina Das settles everything about her novel -- style, subject and pace... Excellent plot line; wonderful detail. A beautifully crafted book."

My Father Tells a Story -- poem in "Indian Literature" (Sahitya Akademi)

2010-04-29T17:16:00.008-04:00

"MY FATHER TELLS A STORY" is another poem from the four recently published in "Indian Literature" from Sahitya Akademi, the national academy of letters in India. I thought of putting this up on my blog especially because the question of roots, origins, and nationality always interest me a great deal, and a recent rendezvous with Edouard Glissant's talk and a documentary film about his Poétique de la Relation. (Poétique III; Paris: Gallimard, 1990) fanned some more introspection in this regard. For the strategization of language and identity to be either a linear entity or a parallel to a certain historical/atavistic notion is something all of us tend to seek. But stories are different as you inadvertently have to peel the layers, often subconsciously. For a 'colonial to a post-colonial' identity, a poem such as this cannot be seen as an exercise in a uni-dimensional "root" adherence. The "story" -- told many times over through someone to my father to me and to others who have experienced similarly in diverse histories, not just the Subcontinent -- lends itself to further re-telling, an enhancement in terms of linguistics and historicity.

MY FATHER TELLS A STORY

The young girl in a sari

Was walking to the library

She naturally didn’t see

The truck creep up behind her

Stuffed with soldiers wearing

Leafy helmets, false implants in

The heart of that shell-shocked

Macadamized Bengal town

Her face a sorry storybook

Quite a few pages torn

When they found her by

A garbage dump, stared at

By the ancient panhandler

The poor bastard refused arrest

Shouted abuses, got suitably

Thrashed by the police

The young man whispered

Show me your palm your

Red henna peacock from

Last night’s festivities

Then she read him a poem

About crocodiles in snare

Until they fell asleep in

Each other’s arms, dreaming

There was a river, grass and

Flowers shrouding its banks

Its depth unknown, but easy

For the rebels to swim

The same night Yahya Khan

Made quick plans to strike

Universities where students

Danced to songs of Tagore

That was a night when nervous

Sirens screamed on, his

Would-be bride was picked up

And thrown. Folding up

Maps that fooled, didn’t show

A country of hearts, he left

A peacock mourned for her

And him. No country yet for them.

Image from the Internet: Jamini Roy, Untitled; gouache on paper.

"Footprints in the Bajra" reviewed in Pioneer newspaper

2010-04-28T15:39:00.007-04:00

PIONEER, a newspaper from Delhi, has the latest word on my novel FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA.

In case it opens up, here is the PDF or the e-page on the "Books Agenda" page. You might have to scroll for the page.

A six-column review, it says a lot of things. However, I must add as a comment that I am not per se interested in the "reform" of a Maoist and that was not what I intended in my book with the protagonist Muskaan. The end is, in my opinion, more nuanced than what prevalent political interpretations are whenever it comes to topics on Maoism and the parties engaged against the ideology or in solidarity with it.

If you so not wish to see the link, read the review below:

Reform of a Maoist

Footprints in the Bajra
Author: Nabina Das
Publisher: Pustak Mahal
Price: Rs 175

Shwetank Dubey says Nabina Das ably recreates the milieu of Maoist-infested regions of India

Reform is always good, especially when it concerns someone who has been misled, used, lied to and then forsaken by those who she thinks are her well-wishers. The only thing that such a person can do is give back what she got, albeit with much more intensity. Everyone has to wake up some day or the other and smell the coffee, and that is what Muskaan, the protagonist in Nabina Das’ novel Footprints in the Bajra, did. After feeling betrayed by her mentor, she finally took refuge in the advice given by her student-activist friend from New Delhi and decided to chart her own life, for once.

For anyone who comes from the rural areas of Bihar, Chhattisgarh and parts of West Bengal, Maoism is nothing new. It has been there as a part and parcel of their lives since decades. Illiteracy being a common curse in such regions, it plays a very important part in helping Maoist rebels build an army to fight against the administration and the Government. The simple villagers are made to believe that they are better off fighting the Government than supporting it. And that is what the main villain in the novel, the village teacher, Suryakant Sahay aka Comrade Suraj, cashes on. With the help of his second in command, Nirav Saxena alias Comrade Avadhut, they perform the most unsaintly acts of attacking and killing the Chaudharys of Chabutara, the upper class village, as well as devising strategies against the Government.

Since time immemorial, landlords have been touted to be major oppressors so much so that the divide created by the upper castes has led to even a greater help to the Maoists. As Nabina Das puts it in her novel, with the help of the Internally Displaced People (IDP), Maoists built a strong army. Such IDPs were made to fight for the “cause” and inducted in the Red Army. After a lot of investigative journalism, as well as the changed stance of the Government, it has now become common knowledge about how uneducated people in rural areas, especially those living in places where the Government and administration takes a lot of time to reach, have been cheated by the Maoist brigade since decades, in the promise of a better life and “revenge” from their erstwhile oppressors. Added to this is the fact that farming also underwent a drastic change wherein grain crops were replaced by poppy fields. This turned into a major funding device for the Maoists. All this has been quite prominently woven into the story by Nabina Das.

Everything undergoes change, and so does Muskaan’s life. The various upheavals in her life, right from being a child soldier, being held captive by the Chaudharys, being kept in a safe house, to joining the non-Government organisation Shaktishalini and pursuing higher studies and, finally, of closing the entire chapter by being an “emancipator” of the masses, are few things to be reckoned with.

Being betrayed is a very heart-breaking feeling and Muskaan faces this throughout her life, till she decides to hold the reins herself. Her first lover, Palash, decides to break up with her after she is abducted by the Chaudharys after an attack by the so-called Hunting Brigade formed by the upper castes with the help of the administration to quell the Maoist menace, the details of which are revealed much later in an emotional outburst to Nora.

Nirav and Sahay use her for their own interests in furthering their cause. After their group is disbanded, they find it in their best interests to tie-up with the Maoist brigade from across the border in Nepal. They realise the Red Brigade in India is mismanaged and there is no common thinking or a leader. Moreover, for their cause to survive, they decide that the best option is to adopt the stance taken by the Nepal Maoists — take to politics. Muskaan plays a very important role in this (as a pawn for Sahay and Nirav) after she joins Shaktishalini. The NGO is hacked by Nirav for his tie-up with the Nepal Maoists, while Rehana (who runs the NGO) thinks that she has found the perfect mentor for her cause of upliftment of women.

Nabina Das has chosen the first person account of narrating a story from the main characters of the novel, Nora the sheherwali (urban dweller), Muskaan the rebel, Suryakant Sahay the crafty clandestine planner and Avadhut the frontrunner of all the operations. While the narratives are quite detailed when read from the perspective of it being a scholarly article (footprints of good education and reading prowess among the main protagonists are inadvertently displayed), there are various other details that could have been made clearer. The motive of people like the headmaster and the businessman for joining such a cause is a bit muddled.

However, the book deals with something that no urban resident is bound to know on his own — the life and times of people living in Maoist infested areas and why do they give in to the temptation provided by the Red Brigade.

SIX-MILE-CREEK: A Postcard-Poem

2010-04-21T18:04:00.007-04:00

Former Tompkins County Poet Laureate Katharyn Howd Machan, also a poetry instructor at Ithaca College, had organized an "arts for all marathon" at the Community School of Music and Arts in 2009. The idea was to engage area poets on a common project and to raise funds for CSMA programs that would mainly benefit children and youth.

The Arts for All Marathon was a 26.2-day postcard-poetry project. Great fun and immense education.

"Six-Mile-Creek" was chosen by Katharyn and has been printed on a postcard along with poems from other writers. This one was a favorite of mine as soon as I wrote it down! While I write letters to friends on the poetry-postcards (I have two sets so I can keep one bunch all for myself), read the poem below:

SIX-MILE-CREEK

Sleep is a sharp river bend
Geology too, on a face-smooth rock
One that climbs up the banks

From the creek that flows
Behind my hill on a cascading street
Called water, silent at night

They say the trout should
Flock after this neon winter passes
And now only sprigs float

Below the dam after six miles
Where half-nude youngsters jump into
The liquidy sheet ignoring signs

That say “don’t”. They still do
With their sudden laughter waking up
Us who sleep on the rocky shore.

Image from the Internet: Six-Mile-Creek, Ithaca, a painting by John Clum

Reading from "Footprints in the Bajra", April 17, 4-5 p.m.

2010-04-15T09:40:00.007-04:00

I shall be reading from my first novel FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA on Saturday, April 17, 4-5 p.m. at Buffalo Street Books in downtown Ithaca. See the event details here.

If you are in the area, please come for the reading. See a review of Footprints in Danse Macabre journal (USA) and a book interview in Daily News and Analysis (DNA), Bombay.

I must mention, my neighbors at Maplewood Park, a Cornell University housing area, where I have lived for 7 long years because Mr. M did his PhD here, have been very sweet to invite the residents to this reading. They even made a poster of the event!

Photo courtesy: Maplewood Park staff Priyanka Bangale.

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

2010-04-09T17:48:00.007-04:00

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

Interview: Footprints in the Bajra is a portrait of Muskaan, a Maoist rebel from the age of 13

2010-04-01T21:41:00.005-04:00

Daily News and Analysis (DNA), a prominent financial newspaper from Bombay, published my book interview in their Sunday Mag, March 28. You can go to the digital link here or see the PDF page here. Or read the interview in full here below:

Footprints in the Bajra is a portrait of Muskaan, a Maoist rebel from the age of 13

By Uttara Choudhury

In her debut novel, Nabina Das writes about an India where social divides stand taller than multistoried shopping malls. Footprints in the Bajra, inspired by what she saw while touring the interiors of Bihar as part of a travelling theatre group, inquires into why the Maoists have an influence over a large section of Indian society. Das talked to Uttara Choudhury in New York about her book, and its protagonist Muskaan.

What prompted you to take up such a complex issue in your debut novel?

On a primary level, my interest in socio-political movements with a current portent, especially in India, goaded me to tell this story. The complexity is not regarding Maoism per se, but the state’s inability to offer a cohesive system for its people.
On a deeper level, I am interested in lives. The novel is really just a slice of life story, about Muskaan the young Maoist rebel, and Nora, her friend from the city. Maoism is mentioned in the background only to paint these lives. In no way is the book a primer on Maoist philosophy.

As a journalist and NGO worker, I have had access to lives affected by Maoism and the state’s actions. Bloodshed and killings were the only gains these people came home with. Those stories stayed with me as examples of harsh reality outside the TV screen and disposable newsprint. I felt compelled to let these characters speak in my book.

Your novel delves into the life of a Maoist recruit — a teenage girl named Muskaan. Did your research for the novel point to the fact that young women are drawn to the Naxalite movement?

It is a fact that in ‘modern’ India young people from regions with little development find themselves on the sidelines. Their anger with the system has percolated upwards. The recent mining claims in Orissa sparked off huge protests, not just in the villages but also among city folk who until recently had no idea about the Kondh people — Dongria, Kutia and Jharania — and their ways.

Generations of caste and class atrocities together with government apathy has helped mobilise ranks on the side of the extreme left. Sometimes these young rebels don’t know what being a Maoist means. I had once asked a person in jest who proudly called himself a Maoist, whether he was happy not to be called a Stalinist. He promptly said if being a Stalinist helped avenge his people, he’d happily be one.

These are my characters in Footprints. They live in Durjanpur, Banka or Patalgarh — names that are linear views, hence negative in connotation.

For the marginalised, the situation is stark. Muskaan is a Maoist recruited as a child soldier at 13. She is an example of how these ‘renegade’ movements use young people as a staple for propagating their adventurist tactics. We have examples of such far-left movements in other parts of the world, like the Shining Path in Peru.

Would you say the Maoists are a greater threat to India than global or cross-border terrorism from Pakistan?

Sadly, what gets lost in the debate is the plight of a huge chunk of people. Maoism or Naxalism does appear to be an option for the disadvantaged, especially Dalits and tribals, although I am aware of people who are striving for alternative movements away from guns and gore.

When it comes from the government, the word “threat” certainly is the key operative here. Whether Maoists are delighted at that labeling I have no idea, for I’m not a practitioner of the movement. But calling Maoism a “threat” helps situate the public view about this far-left movement. Threats justify the forming of counter-attack groups and human rights negligence. This precludes any investigation into how the poorer swathe of India eats, works, sleeps and dies.

The threat works well for the government in distracting the people. Meanwhile, deaths and displacements continue in the middle plane whether in Kashmir, Manipur, Orissa or Chhattisgarh.

Do you think American audiences will be able to relate to Muskaan and a story about a slice of rural India?

American writing is rich and diverse. Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz and Nam Le have successfully drawn readers into worlds outside their own familiar confines. Muskaan’s India may not be familiar to a lot of readers even in wealthy, urban India.

Since you live two lives, shuttling between the US and India, will your second novel be cast in India or America?

I plan to work on a book based on Assam, my home state, and the upheavals it has witnessed. Tentatively, it’s called “The Boatman of New York.” It would be a generational story across continents.

Snoetry Video on Crisis Chronicles Online Library

2010-03-31T00:16:00.003-04:00

My Snoetry Video is up on Crisis Chronicles Online Library curated by poet and spoken-word artist John Burroughs.

We went up to Erie, PA, on Jan 16, for the Snoetry: A Winter Wordfest (see entry and photos here) where more than 40 poets had gathered from many US states. I was one of the featured poets.

You can also see the video here on You Tube.

The poetry, music and bonhomie took place in Last Wordsmith Book Shoppe, formerly owned by Megan Collins, another friend. John made all the videos on behalf of Lix and Kix Productions.

Luit On Our Tongues -- One River-Story Poem in Print

2010-03-26T12:10:00.010-04:00

Four poems are out in the latest issue of INDIAN LITERATURE, the flagship journal of Sahitya Akademi (the national academy of letters in India). You have seen some of these poems workshopped here and there...

My river-stories are not always pastoral. Having grown up in an Assam that has seen much strife and struggle, the Luit (Brahmaputra) is my man-river in different roles -- a friend, a cradling solace, or an injured mad god (how could a god be injured you may ask, but I bring my poetic entities to live my life, ergo, a human life...).

Read this river-story:

Luit On Our Tongues

We were five or six, men and children

in a tempo, that rackety raucous vehicle

With three capricious wheels heading

towards Sonitpur, our vacation, where

Mangoes had ripened summer’s belly with

the monsoon’s heavy showering grace

The usual route was flooded, abandoned

Luit had licked it wet, fungal, even after

The water receded; this was our Old Luit

father kept telling me how the Red River

Has its liquid name from the colour red

after a battleaxe washed itself, lots of blood

Now there are bridges that drown currents

hurrying us in buses and cars in a riverine flow

The Bodo teacher sitting just next to us said

the river does actually speak the curious hue

In gurgles by his village sweeping in a chant:

Bhullum-buthur. He smiled. Bhullum-buthur

Bubbles in the head, the mad water’s dance

the Brahmaputra in news and TV he knew

It still gurgles day and night, another man said

like human voices when slashed, when spent

Gasps bhullum-buthur in river tongue, the dead

so did our Luit, took stories along and lives

Between conversations from the diverted route

we saw the faraway river gone red-eyed with mud

The blood all faded, perhaps the colour of the red-

ness entrenched like the leftover evening sun.

The other titles published in IL are: "No Country, No Names"; "Gandhari's Eyes", and "A She-Ghost can only call Names".

Image from my computer: Setting sun on the Luit (Brahmaputra), Assam.

Sketch-poem in Graffiti Kolkata Broadside, March 2010

2010-03-17T19:27:00.006-04:00

My sketch-poem is in GRAFFITI KOLKATA BROADSIDE (March 2010) published by poet-artist-bookstore owner friend Subhankar Das.

Subh believes in poetry as a movement and makes all effort to take it to every nook and corner of the city of Kolkata where he resides. To every sidewalk, to all alleyways, to each market place. Personally I find the broadside to be an innovative venture. It embodies art, songs, protest, music and that wonderful uniqueness of being that comes from understanding that poetry is voice.

You can see my poem DOORS VS. DARKNESS and the accompanying sketch in the top right corner. Also read it in its original form among the other sketch-poems I wrote here.

The one published above is slightly altered:

DOORS VS. DARKNESS

Silent waters upon door frames of words:

the choice is the clarity of shards that

pierce

My face splatters like meters: a welcome

chant in verse

"Disgrace" & "The Kite Runner": What the Body Brokers

2010-03-14T20:49:00.011-04:00

Quite a few movies this last week and the weekend. Not a binge, but it is something that happens once a while. You need the wide screen of human happenings to take over your senses. There was a time when I used to sit down and write about each and movie I'd watch, whether at the cinema theater or on the TV screen. That urge has become selective. And after this recent movie-melange, the two that stuck to my mind are THE KITE RUNNER and DISGRACE.

Not apparently similar, the two movies slammed me with their overtones of violence, a proximity of ideas. Violence on the human body. As a means of change, as a means of indicating change or forcing change.

The little Hazara boy being raped/sodomized by the teenaged Pashtun Afghans is a motif carefully nurtured in The Kite Runner. Identity and nation is the subject of "change" here. Ironically, it is the Hazara -- perceived as ethnically the "other" -- who stays back in a Kabul ravaged by first the Soviet-Afghan war and then by the excesses of Taliban, and struggles to bring up a family until he is killed. Most other Afghan characters, the 'accepted and identified' ones, reside either in Pakistan or the US, having run away from the nation's all-pervasive infamy. The protagonist's reclaiming of the offspring of the Hazara character (the protagonist's half-brother -- see how the kinship links gray the 'identity' canvas?) through his father's illicit affair with the servant's wife, completes the circle of acceptance and closure.

Disgrace is more complex I think. The arrogant and suave (definitely elderly) professor's seduction of his young student, the resulting suspension from his university, and the generational disconnection to his surrounding (other than his own passion in Romantic Poetry) in a post-apartheid South Africa followed by his country-settled, lesbian daughter's rape by three young Black boys, again point to the ideation of the still-troubled nation. Its supposedly recognizable signs, its noncommittal position of identity formation (the daughter gets pregnant from the rape), and the relative notion of shame or disgrace.

The professor finally seeks a closure with his surrounding, that too by euthanizing stray dogs, dogs that he is so used to set upon the "other", the Blacks who have become the 'new' owner of their own nation. Before that he has been on his knees asking for the forgiveness of his aggrieved student's family. All this while, having no qualms about prostitutes of color on their knees imparting him the sexual favors.

South Africa, Afghanistan, post-Apartheid, post-colonial, post-war, mixed-race, multi-ethnic. The stage evolves.

Pretty much like the peace brokered between the violated-daughter (which one, you ask, the White or the "cappuccino") with either a marital contract with her Black neighbor or with the race-symbolism of a college play. It could even be the freedom to fly and run kites, with roles reversed.

In other thoughts, there's this joke about "paternity accidents" I heard the other day. Americans have great interest in tracing back their ancestry (probably common elsewhere too). And that mostly by paternity. One could be a descendant of the King of England or the Arch Duke of Prussia, but no one exactly knows what might have happened on the Mayflower to momma dear. The topic came up during a dinner and movie (it happened to be my birthday, March 13). I was mentioning a "family tree" scroll that my father has in his possession. More about that later!

Image from the Internet: from The Kite Runner

"The Limbo" -- Essay Published in Troubadour 21

2010-03-08T19:08:00.005-05:00

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.

First "Footprints" Review Published

2010-03-07T14:40:00.003-05:00

A review of my novel "Footprints in the Bajra" has been published in DANSE MACABRE XXXIII by Priti Aisola, author of "See Paris for Me" (Penguin India 2009).

Also, excerpts are up on that literary journal for you to sample.

Here's a portion from what Priti writes:

"The book has a very assured beginning that draws you into it rapidly. The very first image where Muskaan ‘swats my (Nora’s) attention as though it were a distracted fly bumbling over a new odour’, gives ample evidence of the writer’s confident craft as she adeptly thrusts you forward through the sharp turns in her story. Set against the backdrop of the bajra fields for a large part, these fields become a major multi-faceted character in the story – with a singular voice, mood and an eventful terrible history. While the bajra provides nourriture, it also hides death. It is life-sustaining; it is treacherous. It harbours miscreants and also gives refuge to the wounded. It is green; it is blood-stained. It is ‘verdant’; it is ‘murky’. It is ‘a sea of murmur’, ‘a dark green flood.’ It is alive – it breathes ominously; it murmurs, whispers, rustles, speaks of bloody insurgents, their unrelenting armed struggle, killings, and equally heinous reprisals by the landowners. Yes, it is ‘the bloody bajra fields where life and death overlap each other’, collide with each other.

The bajra field is a ghastly ‘womb’ which brings forth only noxious fruit. Yet, it will change. It has footprints of those who chase, hunt out and those who fall prey. Yet, it will change by and by. It will bear other footprints (not traitorous ones) and yield a more wholesome harvest, we hope. Nabina Das delineates all this beautifully in the complex symbolism of the bajra fields. There are other fields of action too – New York, Delhi, Patna, and two or three villages – and in each of these the characters leave their footprints. Hopefully the ugly ones will be effaced. The Delhi chapter is called ‘Footprints in the Sun’ – a fresh, evocative image.

Footprints in the Bajra is a serious book that moves at a smart uncontrived pace. It voices deep concerns about how and why the deprived and the marginalized in certain parts of our country join the Maoist ranks; how they adopt desperate and often terrible measures to wrench justice and to make their voices heard. And this sets in motion other reactions, often violent and punitive. Personally, I liked the first half of the book better because it is more imbued with atmosphere. The second half is more theatrically eventful. Dialogue is Nabina’s forte. Written with relaxed ease, it is true to life and character. This novel will lend itself wonderfully, readily, to a script for a movie, serious and engrossing at the same time, with the right mix of ideology, romance, friendship, murder, retribution, artful scheming and social welfare, to make it a good watch."

Hope you can get a copy of FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA for yourself. Right now available on Rediff for ordering in India and on Cedar Books' parent company website for international purchase.

Holi Hullabaloo!

2010-03-03T15:02:00.002-05:00

March, one morning. Spring festival on my university campus. Holi. Colors -- powder, water balloons, water guns, even buckets of colored water...! Friends finish a quick breakfast and rush out to meet on the Jhelum Lawns. On the open stage teams are assembling to sing and parody -- it's the "Chaat Sammelan" (sorry, no translation!). We've already had the traditional bhaang drink from the kitchen staff who'd soon take the day off, and we're getting high with the riding sun forcing open flower buds. Someone's got sweets from home. We eat. We throw colors on friends and even a few strangers. We sing. Loud, boisterous. Clap and dance too. The lawn becomes a pink-red-yellow-green cloud. We float on it. It's spring, so some loves are sworn. Some are spurned too. Later, our group flocks to professors' quarters to wish them. We get more colors and some more snack to nibble on! By late afternoon, we want to shower and sleep. One lone guy, still high on the cannabis, sits under a tree and beats a drum.

Even I can't stop humming : Chalat musafir moh liyo re // pinjrewali muniyaa // udd udd baithi panwadiya dukaniyaa // beedey ka sara ras le liyo re pinjrewali muniyaa //...!!

A song about the 'muniya' bird enticing travelers, pecking off on sweets and coloring its beak with the taint of 'paan' -- double entendre all the way!

Image from the Internet: Brent Lewin

About Aribam: Telling my Manipur Story in Inertia Magazine

2010-02-22T20:10:00.004-05:00

The full form of my short story in INERTIA MAGAZINE, Issue 8. Many of my readers asked for the full version here... but I assure you, the magazine site is delightful too.

Why I wrote this story? Manipur is a place close not only to my life geographically but also politically speaking where issues of human rights and basic aspirations are concerned.

About Aribam

Throughout the morning session I couldn’t have him speak more than two sentences. My name is Aribam Ngangom. I work for Manipur Times.

“Like Aribam Syam Sharma!” I quipped.

It was meant to be a compliment. Aribam Syam Sharma was a celebrity. A film-maker and artiste from Manipur.

“I’m Nalini Datta.”

His eyes were cold steel. Like the one he said later he once held in his hands.

It was a cool 2001 March morning on the first day of our Annual North East Media Fellowship Seminar in the wood-scented northeastern hill town of Shillong. We took in the view across the lawns of Hotel Pinewood, one of Shillong’s finest. Of the twenty gathered, Mr. Sharma, Sumana and I were the organizers. We gorged on our English breakfast early. Plenty of bacon and ham, usually not a staple if the seminar were to be elsewhere in India. We Northeasterners, often touted as omnivores, were pleased with the menu although there was aloo paratha and lassi, too.

Nine o’ clock’s introductory session was where we all formally met. I delivered a small speech to the participating journalists after Mr. Sharma, our chief program coordinator, opened with a keynote address. About forty, 5'5'', with a conical face, Mr. Sharma was of tardy speech. His lips pursed even the longer, rounder vowels but he made his point clearly. If he ever needed to raise his voice he raised his thick eyebrows. That way, his conical face looked further elongated. He always dressed semi-formal.

My colleague Sumana was thirty-ish, dusky and pleasantly pixie-faced. While she smiled even during trying times, her black eyes sought out any problem before solving it quietly. She always wore cotton saris neatly pleated, and loosely tied her shoulder-length hair, even while rushing to work. I was about her age, a year more or less, and could easily furrow my brow under pressure. But because she was a good one-arm taller than my five-one height, she treated me like a kid sister and advised me generously.

Sumana nudged me when Aribam Ngangom spoke those two sentences and went silent.

From ‘the jeweled land’ – on India’s map you can see Manipur’s shaped like a teardrop pearl – Aribam had one of those faces where you couldn’t tell whether he was thirty or forty. But his low-pitched voice was heavy like a mature man’s. The prominent lines on his face could have come from overexposure to the weather, as if he had lived a hard life in the villages. Later, I saw that a couple of lines were scars; one on the left cheek, the other high on his forehead close to the hairline. He wore his hair short, almost like an army buzz cut.

Sitting one spot away from him in the conference room, I saw that his locked hands were rough and blunted as though used for chopping logs, not filing reports. If I thought Mr. Sharma excelled in sporting a completely expressionless face, here was his competitor. With his clean-shaven wide square-ish face, Aribam’s eyes were beady and still like a coarse brown paper bag, with two dark dots on it. Just about 5'7", he appeared well-muscled.

“We’re all rice eaters!” I said to him during our lunch break.

He didn’t reply. Instead, piling rice high on his plate, he eyed me once or twice.

The afternoon waned. Of the seventeen journalists with dreams of breaking the 'big story' one day, Aribam and another were left to speak.

“Mr. Ngangom, it’d be a pleasure hearing you,” Mr. Sharma said.

“I came to Manipur Times after my village schooling.”

“He speaks a lot!” Sumana nudged me again with a whisper.

Aribam rambled slowly: his rural upbringing, education in the town, his writing. Said he took a break for some ‘field work’ before getting back to reporting.

“Please tell us more, do,” the usually unruffled Mr. Sharma said with interest.

Aribam’s face appeared puffy. He probably reflected hard on this. Journalists often have unique experiences. In Manipur, we knew life was sometimes difficult and dangerous: insurgency, unemployment, and seasonal calamities. Aribam spoke of living inside forests, braving floods and landslides, building homes in ravaged villages. When he complained, his voice rose protesting how the “mainstream media” barely focused on life in India’s backwaters. We agreed. Cricket, politics, films and fashion constituted the daily menu in ‘mainstream’ newsrooms. Rural struggles and developmental issues had little oomph value. That’s why we were here, inside Hotel Pinewood’s conference room, working with dedicated journalists to help set the alternative agenda. We shared Aribam’s concern. Yet, looking upset, he mumbled that in the name of controlling insurgency, the army and paramilitary were clamping down brutally on his people. No one said much about this. These were controversial issues even among conscientious journalists.

I hardly got a chance to speak to Aribam the next one and a half days. Too much work too fast. Sumana’s help kept me going. With the media fellowships and citations awarded – Aribam among one of the winners – things came to a rapid close.

We were having a going-away party until the next annual meet. In a log cabin by the majestic Lake Umium outside Shillong town, plenty of good food and liquor made everyone happy. It was like a college party. Because I knew quite a few participants personally, I also knew who could sing, recite or tell a joke.

“Ah, look who’s talking!” Sumana said. “I know you sing Nalini. Get started now!”

Everybody else goaded me on, too.

I hesitatingly sang a boatman’s song that seemed to make an impact. The assistant editor chimed in with a song he claimed to have learned on a fishing village trip after a devastating cyclone. The political correspondent recited a tribal lore with couplets about a woman’s plight. Normally shy, Sumana sang a Bollywood song where a peasant praised his ancestral land. The gathering got boisterous. On a second request, I sang the lore of Lord Krishna from Assam, when he deceives the householders into meeting Radha, his ladylove. “He’s a liar, he is divine/he's a thief, he is mine” – thus gasped Radha. Alcohol-infused and relaxed, everyone cheered this one wildly. Love stories don’t fail, especially if they are about gods who behave like mortals! At the last refrain, there was very loud applause. Aribam was clapping with his coarse heavy hands, ignoring the stares. I noticed earlier he was barely drinking. Unlike the others he didn’t get stuck like a fly on the sweet rum and the kebabs and pastries. Then he started singing in his language, which I guess was Meitei, of which I knew a few words. He sang throatily and kept beating on his thigh clumsily with one hand, smiling for the first time. Sumana and I joined in, keeping the beat. Then the others followed. What a party.

“My wife was raped by the paramilitary,” Aribam said, unceremoniously on our way back.

Party over, we hit the road. Evening light wasn’t dead yet. Two big vans they called ‘Matadors’ in these parts, had been hired. Aribam sat next to me. His mouth was near my right ear, so hearing him was easy. The breeze from his window blew my long hair into my eyes.

“They flushed the village and questioned my wife. They told her I was a terrorist, an insurgent. I was late in coming back from buying charcoal from the nearby town. They dragged Ranja away. I spent months hiding inside the forest. They kept coming back, picking up many others. This was when I’d just started as a rookie reporter with the Times.”

He glanced at my cheek. Gently disentangled an errant strand of hair.

“They caught me later. Locked me up and beat me bad.”

His face was distorted in the falling light. Voice heavy and angry.

“Here are the scars…”

He swerved with the Matador, and drew away respectfully.

“Later someone bailed me out. Gave me a gun. Ranja’s pain had made me a madman. I killed one of those dogs. Now no one came after me, I hunted them. Staying away from writing was painful too. I resumed my reporter’s job a couple of years later.”

Aribam looked through the window. It was dark outside now.

“Nalini, don’t bun up your hair. You look better this way.”

The road from Shillong to the plains was not treacherous. Not very serpentine. But these Matadors were vehicles with impatience. They tended to hurtle down the hills with us topsy-turvy inside. Like life does sometimes.

Copyright Nabina Das

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

2010-02-14T17:25:00.010-05:00

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”:

Text and the City: my poems that dialogue with the City and the Inhabitant – this will result in a workshop with other artists/participants

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

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

3 "Sentimental" poems--in progress

2010-02-06T15:58:00.008-05:00

Every now and then I have been gently nudged to write "sentimental" poems by several people. These poems are still being written and re-written. No idea when they'd be finished. But here they are anyway, hopefully sentimental:

1. Afterglow

5 p.m. Yellow bees invite blue china clouds

They forget the sun cannot light the lamp

5 p.m. You are drinking tea with honey

Inside a penumbra by the Radhachuda tree

You can wait, then bring the oil lamp out

Circumnavigate the non-existent tulaxi

The Namghar’s 5 p.m. silence will soon spew

Its tranced kortaal dueting with the khol

5 p.m. You will know that time has struck

Gooseberry shadowing the home of a dream.

(Sentiment: my parents sold off their own house in Guwahati, Assam -- where my brother and I grew up from pre-teens till we went to the university -- and moved away. Tulaxi is a sacred plant; Namghar is a worship house; kortaal and khol are musical instruments cymbals and narrow drum)

2. Morphologia

My mother’s litheness has melted

on to a lump of thin muscles limp

her skin a silken furrowed Kabuki fan

she’s not plump anymore, my Ma

those breasts once like mountained pies

now they whisper each other stories

of passion that hangs loose, peeled

her mouth’s cinnamon is browned

and her hair more jasmine than kohl

the white roses at the porch know

have seen the bloom fade, with years’ trim

and she worships more her favorite

man-god, feeds him like an infant

now that she can’t have us on her lap anymore

Seeing distant rivers on the TV she starts

off about the playground by the Surma

and the tea gardens where jhumur

was the first step she had learned

My mother's city was not her friend, she

loved it only from the Xarania’s top

by its aloof white dome, her brown eyes

mapping the Moha-baahu’s breadth

for a lore she sung us from her past

Now afternoons pass, evenings flower

with incense in their hearts, she lies

from the long day of her godhuli life

bundled and river-clay-soft on her bed

as if no bones or flesh make that body

it makes me utter in a nervous even tone:

"Ma will you wake up, shall I get you some tea?"

(Sentiment: my mother is aging pretty well and fast. Xarania is a hillock in the city of Guwahati, sort of a scenic observation point; jhumur is a tea-garden dance; Moha-baahu is a metaphorical name for the River Brahmaputra; godhuli roughly means 'dusk or twilight'... actually none)

3. Eight-and-a-half

(I have shared this on FB too, but feedback is welcome because this has changed some bit...)

No midnight lamp or noisy page turning

no dawn-time clanking Corelle bowls of sudden hunger pangs

no cheeky slip-ons sitting scattered pretty on my rugs

no demolished cushions from hours of crushing

no shaving foam while I pick up the morning toothbrush

no mixing up of towels or ‘oh yours smell like hell’ time

No fancy breakfasts, no standard lunches

no chasing the tail of time, let the sky wither

no saying ‘but I said so, and you should know ‘

no dipping finger in the sauce to taste, how cheap!

You were not there

so more it seemed

the dreams were truer

than their interpretations

you are back, a watermark on my waiting

no more peeking out at the Canada geese

from behind my closed window blinds.

(Sentiment: Mr. M was gone for 8 and half days across half the world... )

Image: from my computer -- My Mother.

Short Fiction "ABOUT ARIBAM" in Inertia Magazine 8

2010-02-02T12:24:00.005-05:00

I have a short story published in Inertia Magazine -- ABOUT ARIBAM.

After clicking on the story title, see my name listed under 'fiction' on the left-hand bar and click for the text.

A bit of backgrounder: I used to work as the media coordinator for National Foundation for India, a grant-making body in India directly funded by Ford Foundation. We indeed had a media program that I took over from a wonderful senior, and ran my flagship media conference one time in Shillong, a beautiful city and capital of the northeastern state of Meghalaya in India.

I indeed met my protagonist at that conference. But this is largely fiction that showcases those moments of life that fail to provide any explanation about their rationality or exactitude of occurrence. And given that I am a neighbor of Manipur and it's beautiful people, something spurred me to write this piece.

Do enjoy the story and tell me what you think!

Image from Inertia Magazine cover, Issue 8, February 2010.

FOOTPRINTS Cover Kitsch...

2010-02-01T10:41:00.015-05:00

Some of my friends have perhaps seen my older post "My Sketch and the Fun I have with it!". In that post stuck some versions of a sketch I've been doing for a few months ... until now that it has become something palpable. The cover of my novel FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA.

But I just thought it'd be interesting to see those sub-sketches again alongside a few cover options that were thrown at me, by the publishers as well as my dithering mind. But I soon realized what I actually wanted, and I rooted for it, successfully!

This was one photographic option, but I realized these are paddy, not millet, in a parched land!

This was definitely pearl millet (bajra), but this option looked very boring too me; even with the ominous red sky, it seemed to have no soul or drama. People who know me, they know I prefer both!

This photo above is the same when I was tinting it red-pink...

Cedar sent me this photographic option. A girl walking through some crop field. But the locale looked non-Indian, certainly non-Bihar, and not even remotely any closer to my story and the protagonist/s. Too stiff, too transliterated, too predictable. Nope!

These ones below are the versions of the Madhubani drawing I was starting to visualize as my cover. So you have upside down, truncated, full drawing...

Oh, don't miss the gun! I had to labor HARD to make it look like a country gun!

And of course, what you see below is the original B&W sketch when I started working with it ...

Images: from the Internet; drawings: by Nabina Das

Bajra (PEAR MILLET) in my book FOOTPRINTS...

2010-01-31T18:22:00.006-05:00

PEAR MILLET in my book FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA:

"ಸಜ್ಜೆ (Sajje in Kannada); கம்பு (Kambu in Tamil); बाजरा (Bajra in Urdu,Punjabi and Hindi), बाजरी (Bajri in Marathi), సజ్జలు (Sajjalu in Telugu)

...
Pearl millet is well adapted to production systems characterized by drought, low soil fertility, and high temperature. It performs well in soils with high salinity or low pH. Because of its tolerance to difficult growing conditions, it can be grown in areas where other cereal crops, such as maize or wheat, would not survive.
...
In its traditional growing areas in India and many African countries, pearl millet is consumed in the form of leavened or unleavened breads, porridges, boiled or steamed foods, and (alcoholic) beverages. In the Sahel and elsewhere in West Africa, pearl millet is an important ingredient of couscous. The stalks are a valued building material, fuel and livestock feed.

...
India is the largest producer of pearl millet. It is primarily consumed in the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan"

My book describes a little bit about Bajra swathes in Bihar, in the fictional north Bihar village of Durjanpur. For fact, Bihar has only some areas under millet cultivation, where erratic irrigation programs and vagaries of weather largely impact the output.

Info from Wikipedia; Image from Wikipedia.

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

2010-01-25T12:59:00.005-05:00

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.

FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA: My Novel is Published

2010-01-20T18:39:00.015-05:00

Good news! My novel FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA is out!

Published by Cedar Books, India, Footprints is about an India that is too strange to believe, yet is a reality for thousands of its citizens crouching at the margins.

A story about a slice of rural India, it is written from an urban perspective, mainly from the point of view the two main protagonists, while each chapter is a first-person narrative voice from the chief characters.

Footprints looks into the life of a young Maoist recruit -- a teenaged girl named Muskaan -- the way it spirals through bloodshed, retaliation, deception and yet, brings out her elemental dreams of life and love.

Maoism has been repeatedly touted by many in India as a greater "threat" than even the global (read, Al Qaeda) or cross-border (Indo-Pakistan) terrorism, with the government not quite able to get its head around the phenomenon. Maoism, the allegedly romantic refuge of the country's rural denizens, is not exactly a path strewn with roses for the socially deprived and the segregated. Centuries-old injustice, flawed government policies, flagrant violations of the basic human rights and deep-seated official apathy even in a "modern" India, have driven the poor and the marginalized to turn to Maoism, only adding to the statistics of death and destabilization.

Call it a scourge, malaise or wrong judgment, it is also a terrible reality that Maoism in India has sheltered swathes of disgruntled populations that have perhaps little or no idea about Mao or Revolution. All they look out for is social justice in their own terms. The civil society is perhaps divided on if this is right or wrong, but there is no denying that lives have been torn up on all sides.

Below is the cover of my book. I am happy to say that the cover art is also by me, adapted from my favorite Madhubani painting style of Bihar!

The idea was to present a so-called rough and rustic appeal, in the way Madhubani derives its colors from vegetable and rock dyes, and in the way the symbolism of a tree, the sun and the thick outlines form a cohesive whole with burnt red, ochre and deep green tones. It is a world of idioms, myths and moving accounts that my art tries to capture.

This is the standalone front cover:

I sketched the motif on paper with pencil and ink and later went on to color it with ordinary marker pen! Following the scan, Cedar's design team helped improve the resolution.

The sun in the underbelly of a human-like form (a twisted imitation of "the tree of life") with a bloodied root-sprung head was my idea of the unstable "system". The green pearl millet or the bajra is present in a "semi-circle of life" as opposed to the "circle of life" concept popular in Madhubani art.

This is the back cover:

The book will be on Amazon (worldwide) and Rediff (India) for purchase later on. Right now, it goes to the 19th New Delhi World Book Fair 2010, Jan 30-Feb 7. Updates to follow!

Reading at SNOETRY: A Winter Wordfest 2010

2010-01-20T17:53:00.009-05:00

SNOETRY: A Winter Wordfest took place in the historic town of North East (Erie), PA, on January 16, 2010. What a bash, what an energetic gathering and what poetic lineup! I was a featured poet among the 40 or so (we had brilliant open mic-ers too) poets from diverse states (see the fabulous poets' list here). And oh, music too, with two bands adding to the soaring spirit!

Poets Dianne Borsenik and John Burroughs of "Lix and Kix" poetry event from Cleveland stormed the show with their lively emceeing and reading. Snoetry took off in the dazzling and artistic bookshop "The Last Wordsmith" run by friend Megan Collins, of North East, PA.

Among the poems I read were Finding Foremothers; The First Apple Sings a Ruba'i; Tea with Reza; Conversation, etc.

Here are some pics of me with John, Dianne and Megan, and myself in the exalted reading pose (see more pics here)!

"Footprints in the Bajra" Goes to Press

2010-01-08T13:52:00.005-05:00

January 8, 2010. It is an important date for me. My first novel "Footprints in the Bajra" went to press today from Cedar Books, India. Updates to follow.

Innuendo in the Cinema Theatre - Prakriti Foundation poetry win

2010-01-05T20:01:00.011-05:00

This is like flashback. Going back to recount something from 2009. And a good thing that brought my 2009 to a enthusiastic close. My poem "Innuendo in the Cinema Theatre" won the 2nd prize for the 2009 Prakriti Foundation open contest. Prakriti Foundation, Chennai, is

"interested in hearing the many voices of interest that make up the diverse culture of India. The foundation wishes to share information and wisdom that many of the giant scholars of India and abroad have to give us"...

The contest was part of its Poetry with Prakriti program. You can read all the three winners here.

My poem is pasted below:

"Innuendo in the Cinema Theatre"

For Robert Hass

This a story of two opponents

who face each other, count

silence with just an ‘ahem’.

One guesses very well

something hanky panky

went on indoors, curtained;

while the sheepish other

is embarrassed but sure that

his mate of henna beard

has cheated behind his back.

They believe, she can see,

love and kingdom is a game.

The trot of the horses and

the thundering canons are

only a few of the things

that make her chest rise

higher than the hillside on

the tremulous silver screen.

With this scene where

Satyajit Ray’s chess player

is caught unbuttoned

after returning back to

the game from a quick

love tiff with his silly wife,

the girl knows there will

never be such parables

for her even in the twilight.

In the story, trumpets play

in technicolour hands

hundred horns hoot away.

The magnificent blare

ascertains someone has

cheated and yet, has won.

Men and parodied mules,

women fleeing with babies,

roll like a carriage song.

It remains unclear who

will blink first to disentangle

overtures with their hands.

The script is in a language

she speaks but is remote

for an innuendo in her heart.

Elephants in gold brocades,

climactic chatter, tingly rosewater,

turn her lips butterfly wings

because she will see them

again and again on a screen

of her unbridled dreams.

Lastly, the soldiers march

in and the players stare:

two split fish stranded

unable to remember any

moments of lovemaking

or cheating on a pawn.

They half-rise, she waits.

Her lover leaves through

a door he takes with him:

like shadows mingling dark,

countries drawn in lines,

the two separate.

I wrote to Robert Hass in utmost excitement through his poet wife Brenda Hillman and this is what he wrote back after seeing my poem (my dedication refers to Hass' poem "Heroic Simile"):

"Thanks for your dedication and congratulations on your prize. Your
poem is very poignant to me. It gets at something about the way movies
place the world before (us) as a source of meditation, at the same time that
we are helpless before the way its images enter us. Good luck with
your future work.
Robert Hass"

That's a good opening to 2010 I guess, since his reply came on Jan 4. And know what, Trillium Magazine, where I had submitted nearly a year ago, suddenly sent me a mail saying they'd accept all the poems I had submitted. Now more on that later.

Image from the Internet: film poster of Shatranj ke Khiladi (The Chess Players) by Satyajit Ray

Editorial in Danse Macabre "Internationale" Issue

2010-01-04T14:55:00.007-05:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The first Internationale Danse Macabre has been released. I have the honor of opening this issue with an editorial followed by contributions from all over the world.

Here's the text of the editorial but I encourage you to read our international writers by clicking on:
Internationale Poetry
The Road
Internationale Erzählungen

... and more!

It is the end of the year, a classic snowy afternoon in Upstate New York, and I am tapping away at the keyboard, a little nostalgic. Among many things, I am reminded of a 10-year-old girl clutching her copy of a novel, a story collection and an abridged version of Oliver Twist while traveling with her family. Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) in Bengali was a neat volume I had just started reading after my favorite Burhi Ai-ir Xadhu, an Assamese collection of folktales and fables, and Oliver Twist. In fact, reading Pather Panchali was deemed absolutely appropriate for a girl who was young enough for fairytales and fables, yet old enough to understand how reality traversed universal boundaries, whether it was an orphan boy in 19th century London or a poor Brahmin priest migrating from his 1920s Bengal village in search of a better life. This has been etched in my head forever as an opening moment of my diverse literary engagements. Three languages, perhaps three countries (depending on how one treats the partition of Bengal), but one epic outlook.

As I have the honor to open Danse Macabre's (first) Internationale issue, I can only rejoice at connecting this memory to the bevy of writers from countries like France, Vietnam, Ireland, Canada, Italy, Bangladesh, Britain, Iran, Russia, India, and Germany among several others that our readers would savor in the New Year. It is a delight to come across so many new and established names jostling for attention in one single literary journal. To extend Mohamed Nasheed’s quote above, all these writers bring their poetry, fiction and essays from varied perspectives of their own cultures and countries, each of their words carrying a whiff of their diverse histories and memories.

And if Benedict Anderson convinces us that nation-states are often ‘imagined communities’, I then find solace in the ‘imaginary congregations’ defined by our own literary times with the tag “international”, where nations and countries mingle in one single train that is truly inter-national. If physical boundaries are indeed frozen in time, all that we are able to view as ‘imaginary’ could only offer possibilities and changes that writers and artists hold so dear to their hearts. Whether it is the subtropical winter sun of the South Asian Subcontinent, the festive liveliness of Quebec, the serene rivers of Vietnam, or the Northern Lights of Russia, what we offer for our readers in our Internationale carries the watermark of a high order of imagination and creativity that surpasses the fixity of geographical borders.

I just watched Atonement and I feel how spiraling it is in its haunting-ness, like a poem. What is it that made sense to me in that assemblage of film footage about a story that wracked lives and flamed imaginations? A story that traversed the boundaries of a nation called England and a continent called Europe and finally spilled out like the Dunkirk scenes, agonizing in its quotient of human misery as well as intellectually frightening. Watched in any corner of the world, it is bound to evoke a Dostoevskyan anxiety and questions of culpability and justification, Tagore’s vision of the need for a serene one world of many nations, and resonate with the poems of Dennis Brutus (1924-2009), a glorious voice against the South African apartheid regime. This universal tone can be found in literatures in all corners of the world if we are ready to explore them. Much of it also comes from oppressed confines of the world that often have a blurred boundary of ready identification, given that secret torture camps and war zones abound even today.

Danse Macabre Internationale brings you a slice of this ‘epic outlook’ of restlessness, love, floundering and hope – the words rally out in search of readers, to twist the well known Pirandello title – in the earnest wish that our words can inherit for us a world of joy and honor and also show us how the “world wags” for all times to come. Happy 2010 dear readers!

Image from Danse Macabre: Artist -- Mahdi Travajohi

Poem in Shalla Magazine's print issue

2009-12-18T18:25:00.005-05:00

My poem is included in the Winter Blooms print issue of SHALLA MAGAZINE. Here's the cover with the name of yours truly with other eminent ones. Will post more on this later.

Image: courtesy Shalla Magazine

3 Poems in Unsere Winterreise -- A Danse Macabre Poetic Collaboration

2009-12-14T19:45:00.008-05:00

Did you read my poetic takes on Wilhelm Müller and Franz Schubert's grand collection known as Winterreise (Winter Journey) which is a cycle of 24 poems in all?

Well then, rush off to Danse Macabre literary journal to read about this wonderful collaboration between several poets to write along the themes in those 24 pieces.

The themes on which I wrote 3 poems were (harking back to my dear man-river Brahmaputra in Assam; my first snowy winter in the US, and an interesting look at ravens/crows that behave absolutely the same way anywhere in the world... !):

-- Auf dem Flusse (On the Stream)

The river, usually busy and bubbling, is locked in frozen darkness and lies drearily spread out under the ice. He will write her name, and the date of their first meeting, in the ice with a sharp stone. The river is a likeness of his heart: it beats and swells under the hard frozen surface.

The River on a Pyre

Eyeing the Brahmaputra flowing with its whale-body

and the faraway banks smoking

she thought death stood quiet

quietly performing the ritual

of mouth-fire for her own,

the bodies that once talked

laughed and spread guile.

Eyeing the strong-arm river’s sweep of red ripples

carrying unsuspecting dolphins

and last night’s smoky limbs

from the pyres she watched

across her verandah over the

winter’s damp dribble.

She searched out the smell –

ashes in the wind stuck like the stunned river’s pride

the look of a living face smoke-screened in the twilight.

-- Einsamkeit (Loneliness/Solitude)

He wanders along the busy road ungreeted. Why is the sky so calm and the world so bright? Even in the tempest he was not so lonely as this.

Wintered Hourglass

First a feather floats in

does a swirling dance around the lawn

then it drops, softly in my foreign home

one by one

they come to invade

the throbbing serenity

around the little playground, swings and all

knowing kids are asleep, dreaming of riding over white slopes

And they tiptoe, little elves

remind me of the lanky cotton thrashing man who

traversed our hometown streets in summer’s white heat

when called, he set up

a white storm with

cotton for quilts

We loved the magician’s ruse

soft downy puffs flew out

helter-skelter from his old brown gunny bag

with musical whippings he caught hold of each –

one by one

then they swirled and swept

tamed tots

his veined swarthy hands twanged on

The rhythm sang an ode to the floral dance

white and careless, while they dropped

kittens on the loose, all over

the roof, a fidgety fleet

now outside my

lonely doorstep it is all fluffy, full and laden

Wait, the next eager batch rushes in

around the porch, driveway, my little garden seat

they take over the yard

beckon me in this cool shale-

colored noon

where the only music is their descent

they drop float fly

one by one.

-- Die Krähe (The Crow)

A crow has followed him all along the way from the town. Is it waiting for him to die, so that it can eat him? It won't be long, let it keep him company to the end.

Conversation

Ravens talking in earnest is wondrous

The way they don’t want to share food

And are hyperbolic about their flights

Across fallow farmlands, brown fields

Of spent ammonia, and gassy old bogs.

They have compass heads, curt motions

When they talk, ignoring the mauve sky

Of the thunder-bound clouds over a lawn.

Ravens like a drink or two with a peck

Here and there while the light dances

On their twisty heads, darkening against

A screen of sunset silk with no outlets

For ravens to fly out. So they just spar over

How many worms each of them clinched

Or how long then can keep me company

The ravens talk through my unvoiced gaze.

A familiar sight, but who’ll question them

About melting as silhouettes on our eves –

Not a good thing confronting those beaks.

Ravens herald guests. So for my granny’s sake

I have to wait and watch, although all I see

Them dropping from their mouth’s corners

Is rotten stuff in their callous cawing prose.

Read my friend Priti Aisola's X-mas essay in Danse Macabre here.

And NEWS! I am to be Editor (India) at Danse Macabre, and work to promote the journal's broad international appeal.

Image: River Brahmaputra in Guwahati, Assam; pictures from my computer.

5 Poems in OMEGA 7--Assam-Bengal Legacies as I see Them

2009-12-01T21:41:00.012-05:00

OMEGA 7 journal (Howling Dog Press) has been released (November, 2009). Five new poems of mine are featured among the many wonderful ones from an array of writers. The magazine, completely edited and designed by Michael Annis who selected the accompanying artwork by Henry Avignon, in one word, is stunning! Read my poems from Pg 190-193 here.

The five titles are:

Dead River Longings

For Sukanta

Questionnaire

History Lessons: 1950

The Korobi Song

No. 1 and 4 are Assam-themed. Insurgency and civil unrest cannot escape any writer who has grown up in Assam in the 1980s and 90s. "Dead River..." and "Korobi" are testimonies to that fact. Terrorism, secret killings, abduction, muffling free voices -- much before the global media started hyping up their own stories, Assam has been experiencing all of that. And even today, Assam, and most of northeastern India, remain scarred. Born and brought up in Guwahati, Assam, to me these moments in history never leave my consciousness.

"Sukanta" harks to the poet from Bengal I devoured as a teenager. For a hugely talented writer who passed away at 21, just a few months before India gained Independence in 1947, Sukanta Bhattacharya's voice was a clarion call to arrest imperialism, capitalism and warmongering (I use this word in my poem to a slight objection from poet and friend Nikesh Murali, but he said the poem was otherwise fantastic!).

Last but not the least, "History Lessons..." is almost personal history. My father was a young 'political prisoner' in Rajshahi Central Jail (in the erstwhile East Pakistan) for Leftwing activities. A firing was ordered on April 24, 1950, to quell unrest among the inmates. Seven died and several were injured in that tragedy, among them my father. Read the account in his post "Twentyfourth April". He blogs at Old Man River.

In a salute to my twin legacies I'm posting these two poems out of the five here:

History Lessons: 1950

From rag-wearing villages

of Bengal, they crossed mustard fields, dark

swamps, small rivers in crowded

ferries with a bit of Mars attached

to bodies, a crater from that 1950’s day

of becoming history books

when they rattled

metal bowls & glasses

told the masters there won’t

be any compromise.

Won’t listen

Won’t eat

Will want

all rights to be restored

to dialogue, to be heard

they spoke & they smirked

handholding their tiny fates.

They stood behind iron bars

with backs to a faded

wall uninvaded. Stood in a

Eight by eight

Feet cell, angry

Tired as hell

That was when, his cheeks

smelled of fresh lime leaves

the beard on his chin grew hard

like lotus stalk the soldiers knew

from childhood (they swam with

them in lotus ponds), yet

they fired. Left uprooted trees,

piles of jellyfish drying on a deserted

seashore. The molten moon falling in

a swift swipe, between porous

pebble & muck, he saw

the inside of his thigh a Martian

blotch. A bullet. A red-hot cave of

history lessons the land still hides.

(From my father’s recounting of the 1950 Rajshahi Jail Uprising in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, where he was one of the participants)

Dead River Longings

That was a poet who pined for a sickle-curved river

Golden perhaps or emitting a glitter through its ripples

The river name evoked glinted crop crowns; he wrote about

Jade paddy fields sliced by crow yells and bloodied streams.

That was a poet who walked the morose city streets alone

Uttering words usually unspeaking, like flow and tide;

In stumps of concrete habitats he did graffiti of a rising sea.

In such forgetfulness, some say drunken stupor, he died

Cut by a car when street cleaners came dusting the morning.

Or was he beaten unconscious and thrown by the police?

Out on the dirt, because the bugger wouldn’t stop chanting

About his mist-shadowed river of dying ivory dolphins

That buried incoherent songs in soft mud made softer by

Human waste. What haste hides is that he came back after

Moon’s wane, on his lips: that river, ujani, is still my bride.

NOTE: The poem "Questionnaire" is a legacy of my own global mishmash!

Image from the Internet: Sukanta Bhattacharya; Korobi or yellow oleander.

PARISCOPE -- a 2-part 'city' essay in Troubadour 21

2009-11-20T14:58:00.008-05:00

My 2-part essay PARISCOPE is published in "Troubadour 21". Click on the post title or on "PARISCOPE" to read.

Here's a sneak peek:

"PART I: SIDEWALKING
The Notre Dame looks proudly clean in the summer sun of 2006. The rose window stares at us with a Da Vinci Code wink.
We have just finished learning how to make a baguette inside one of the tents that dot the precincts. This is the Notre Dame fair, unleashing midway on and has kids and adults yelling at each other in French. Of course, this is Paris. A
two-toned pavement, the city elongates and vagabonds with our bohemian tastes.
My partner counts the concrete blocks, I mentally color those that seem plain.
An hour ago, while I rolled the dough, the baguette-master (that’s what I name
him) urged me to fist the plump white elastic form hard, even harder. His
rambunctious “Allez-y” had already allayed my fear that I would remain
forever uneducated in bread-making skills, especially, of this kind."

and from

"PART II: EMPARKED
I tell her goodbye at the turn of Canon de la Nation. Folks still eat there at 11.30 p.m. Mint tea pours to tingles and trickles. Granny’s golden-white hair and the pup’s coat match, tells the light.

“Say ‘bye’, come on, say it Kiki! Give her your bises!”

The whiskered one doesn’t, instead she whimpers. It is too late for her on the road, so what we remain night walkers. It is another night that has crescented over the road."

As far as writing is concerned, the essays came up rather fast but they had been cooking inside my head for a very long time. I have written a few "Delhi" and "Upstate" essays under my proposed CITY series. "Paris" was a pretty logical punctuation in that bunch. So far, two parts. More might be added later, we'll see.

Images from my Paris album: Notre Dame cathedral fair; SIDA rally at Bastille; at Cafe Kleber in Bir Hakeim

The Message Tree- a Poem Inspired by "Ijaazat"

2009-11-07T14:19:00.008-05:00

The November 09 issue of Muse India is out. My poem "THE MESSAGE TREE" is published in the special Hindi/Urdu Literary Cultures section. Do take a look, click on the title of the poem (or the post title)!

Sukrita Paul Kumar, the editor of this special section, writes:

"…Thus the focus on Hindi-Urdu in this issue of Muse India. The continuum of the beautiful attraction between the two justifies the ongoing debate on the kind of relatedness Hindi and Urdu have. Their origin and development, the quarrels between them as much as their marriage engage the attention of many a scholar. In this issue therefore, we chose to offer also a glimpse of this debate. Writers, translators and scholars working in these languages often discuss this ever-engaging subject.
...
And, Nabina Das is motivated to write poetry thanks to her reading of Hindi and Urdu poetry. Bollywood plays a big role in popularizing the Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani language across the country and abroad. Don't we, the people, speak in reality that very language, and not Sanskritized high Hindi or highly Persianized Urdu?"
**
Well, now, if you still haven't read the new poem here it is:

(From a series inspired by Hindi/Urdu poetry and 'Bollywood' movie songs.)

The Message Tree
(Ijaazat)

You'd passed on some words to me that
quickly got splayed on sunny clotheslines
washed crispy clean like new handkerchiefs
stiff at first, starchy, then sudden wind floats

kites that were eyes, your eyes.

I tied words around your wrist, threads from
archaic ceremonies, unknowing how I tied
up nerves in jasmine bunches hanging over
our garden shades as you casually chewed
sugarcane sticks taking back lost letters or
words that meant a new beginning for us
**
Our love story was like growing up in a
house with no telephones just soft knocks
true, I had a home like that far away from
glossy shop magazines, no sudden ringing
tones of familiarity that jolted my listless-
ness when I rested under a pool of sleep

tasting sweat with my swoon.

**
Look, I've grown branches now like it
happened in a Bollywood tale once upon
a time! I'm a message tree, my twigs just
hang where white post-its make a beeline
at the showroom flat-screen that belches out a
song and we dance around the message
tree talking in un-said tones.

Image from the Internet: movie poster of IJAAZAT (permission)

MOLOCH -- New Poem in URHALPOOL Bilingual Zine

2009-10-27T16:46:00.008-04:00

My poem "Moloch" is published in Urhalpool, a bilingual online literary journal. Read it here or at http://www.urhalpool.com/oct2009/index.php?lang=eng&pageid=nabina_das.

Nice to find out I am published along with Meena Alexander, Hassanal Abdallah, Yuyutsu Sharma et al!

When I first started reading Urhalpool, I was struck by its sophisticated content, the beautiful covers and the phenomenal span of its writers from the US to India to Bangladesh and many more in between! "A contemporary Bengali-English bilingual webzine," Urhalpool is published periodically from New Jersey, USA. The editors are Gautam Datta (Chief); Catherine Fletcher and Shawan Sarkar (English), and Pinaki Datta (Bangla). You can read the Bangla edition here (Current Edition: Oct 2009, Vol: 2, Issue: 3).

Goutam Datta was recently in Ithaca to conduct a literary workshop with the stellar Indian writer Sunil Gangopadhayay who was visiting Cornell University for a distinguished lecture series. Invited for the first general session by Goutam, needless to say, I ran my fastest to Best Western University Inn, not so much eager about the workshop as about simply getting to meet Sunil Gangopadhayay! He is a dear old man with a youthful demeanor. I blurted out to him how much I was in awe of his "Neera" poems as a teenager --not to speak about the sweep of his stories and novels --that I even identified myself with that name and wrote a few "Neera" poems myself in Bengali! When I left he actually said, "Let me know when your book is out and show me those poems too!"

Oh, by the way, if you still haven't read the poem on Urhalpool's site, here it is!

MOLOCH

- by Nabina Das

It’s been long

letters did not arrive

in my name

like time infinite

I packed lunch, tied shoelaces

set out to work

pointing to a bush

on my way, casually saying,

it’s a goldfinch!

Just when I eyed star fruits

in the tropical backyard

a crow ate them up all

Such diligence wavers

my daily dithering

for it’s been really long

Lenin (perhaps) had asked Krupskaya:

do we need kids dear?

The Revolution is our verse

Likewise, it’s been long

I haven’t given birth

my verse has devoured my own.

Image: Courtesy Urhalpool cover art; THE BLUE SAREE - Painting by Jogen Chowdhury

Vanaprastha 2009 - a Poem

2009-10-21T21:43:00.005-04:00

"Vanaprastha 2009"

Lenin’s angular profile studies the ceiling’s corner
Raised stiff, suitably elegant and intellectual
Photo-framed on the freedom-sky-blue wall

Lacquer bowls, Russian, with puckered faces not
Able to see their own paint-smeared smooth bellies
In a melee of scores of seashells nestling in them
Short changes from long-ago family holidays

An office union calendar, don’t know who got it
Hangs urgent and fluttery in the semi-spring breeze
Mondays, Sundays, paydays, all days organized well
As in a spreadsheet, boxy dates to enable scribbles
About meetings, reviews and occasional lockouts

My parents did not have the heart to change the TV
The color tube’s a bit busted, spills green more
But the screen beams in Nat Geo & History they watch
In a silent slump from re-painted couches of Assam cane

The brass xorai is not for praying. "True is it, your dad’s a
Red?" A neighborhood uncle had asked me, "doesn’t pray."
Do I know? I also know dad waited with us for prasad
From mom’s puja evenings of camphor, Lakshmi’s calm

That’s her favorite chair, those his books, cobweb
Under curtains long unwashed, my embroidered
Dancers, brother’s rickety racket, the portly phone
Awaiting the ring of our brawls. Where will it all go?

We all laughed, sang, ate and told each other stories here

One of those about this house of memories now on sale.

Images from my computer: "The House of Twining Roses" where I spent my teenage years

THE FARRIER- A Short Story

2009-10-12T19:54:00.011-04:00

THE FARRIER (First published in The Cartier Street Review, April 2009)-By Nabina Das

Was Russet to live her life between the legs of horses? She could get kicked sometime, although I’m sure Russet never expected that. It’s a job she had for a long time. Russet had big hands. Her hair cut like a duckling’s tail caught in a twister. She was a farrier. With an uncommon but musical name – Russet. That’s what she told me.

We spoke while rummaging through old books on sale downtown where they’d let us take a bagful for a dollar. Shivering in the line outside on the cold concrete, for it was late November in this little Upstate New York town, I rubbed my bristly palms inside fleece gloves to a frigid drop falling from above, listening to the drone of a man explaining to someone the intricacies of a Russian fireplace. Once inside, we rummaged and I saw she held this Alberto Moravia I wanted, Two Women. Like a predatory animal I eyed her. Silently pointed towards the Moravia. She eye-browed towards the flat thin book I was holding.

“Horses.” She said. “You like horses?”

“I don’t mind them.” I said. Why talk of horses? This isn’t a farm fest. It’s a book sale.

“You’ve a horse here,” she said, leaning over and touching the book I was holding. Tock tock. She knocked on the cover twice.

The flat thin cover indeed had a horse snorting in a yellow-green cornfield. I had no idea if horses liked corn. Suddenly it hit me why horses were the topic.

“Okay,” I said, sheepishly. She handed my book to me. “This is about women,” I explained.

“You like women?” She asked the same way she had asked if I liked horses.

Yes. No. What do I say? I’m a man! I nodded. I liked women only because they are there, all around. Not in the same way I’d adore a race car. It was tough to explain.

“He’s a European writer, this Moravia. He must like women a lot … he writes a lot about them,” I said.

“In Europe they make cheese at home,” she said tilting her funny looking head to one side. “They also name their women Nana.”

“No, that’s Zola.” I said, trying to be polite, adding, “A writer by the name Zola called his heroine Nana. In fact, his book is called Nana.”

At that point she abruptly announced that she was a farrier.

“What’s that?” I was sure I had heard the word but I’d never met a farrier before.

I noticed she had big hands, a bizarre hairstyle, plus she walked with webbed gait and the stolid expression of a bored farm animal.

“Russet,” she said, holding out her right hand.

I thought she was talking about the evening sky, which we couldn’t see it from inside this book-filled musty hall.

“Fall evenings are great, especially evenings,” I said. “Do you take walks with your horses on russet evenings?”

She looked at me as if I were a silverfish worm who eats away old book pages. Tiny slithering insects you want to thrash whack whack whack, until you’re satisfied not a single one exists among your priceless collection.

“I spend most evenings working with horses,” she said. “And my name’s Russet.”

I squirmed like that silverfish worm. Oh, that was her name.

Before I could say my name she spoke about the evenings she had spent under and between horses’ legs, shoeing them. This triggered some strange scenes in my mind. Horses’ legs were spindly and long. Not human-like. They even had hooves. Russet could get kicked. Between human legs it was different. Humans didn’t require shoeing. Still one could get kicked, even with humans.

“But of course,” she said. “I could get kicked even between human legs!”

I didn’t comment. We roamed the hall filling our plastic bags. I noted her choice of books about farming and automobiles. She told me she drove an old truck and managed a farm alone. I pictured this slightly Mohawk-haired woman on a farm, grime and mobile oil all around, the hay smelling of horseshit, and her banging thud thud thud on a horseshoe.

“You do that for a job?” I said. “Shoe horses?”

These were horses whose owners found them too old or useless, she explained. Farm horses that’d never again pull carts. Racehorses discarded after they got burnt out. Show horses whose mane grew coarse. Russet made them shoes to walk in and gallop and play and she didn’t mind as long as they didn’t roll on rain-soaked hay for her to clean too often. There were days when she drove to the city to browse shops. She wore her old work jacket because she had no dates these days. Her twister-caught hairstyle didn’t have to be trimmed because there was no one to appreciate. Coming to rummage book sales was the only thing she had permitted herself in a long time. Books made her put aside her grubby boots and stack away her ‘Fresh Corns’ sign at the roadside. Driving down the winding road, doing a casual fifty-five over the forty-five-mile per hour, swerving by blackened squirrels stuck on the yellow dividing line, she came down here for books. Meanwhile her horses lounged or dozed on fresh hay that had been spread out that morning while waiting to feel her big hands. They enjoyed sniffing her and responded in charged hee hee hees. While she worked between their spindly legs, hay stalks cut her fingers, mosquitoes bit her buttocks and ear lobes, and sawdust rose in little clouds due to hammering and hitting. And the horses neighed happily. What if the horses kicked her head or chest, I imagined, shuddering.

“I like it alone,” she said.

She had a man for six months. A man who preferred worn out camel leather gloves in winter and a lime-stained jacket smelling of wood rabbits. He didn’t like horses. “A farrier’s job doesn’t pay,” he grumbled. He wanted to sell horses, the cornfields and the truck to go do city jobs. He drank and fell asleep when she was off to town doing chores. The horses went hungry many times and the two fought bitterly.

“It had to be him or the horses,” she said. “I chose my horses.”

Her four-legged friends – brown and mustard and chestnut, a few velvety black, were joyous about that decision. Russet’s horse book reminded me of Le Cheval Blanc where the white horse looked painted green. Maybe Gauguin too had lived near a green cornfield.

“What’d your type of women do in this situation?” Russet asked me abruptly.

‘Your type’ sounded like she belonged to another world. This was my chance to tell her about my world, a college professor’s world. Well, my kind read made-up tales. Zola, Moravia. Normally, my type of women would want to keep a man. They’d try very hard. Shop for pretty dresses, colors for their cheeks and tiny shoes – human shoes – to please their man. For a man they’d re-do their entire life.

“Of course, they wouldn’t know the difference unless they kept horses for a few years,” I said. Quasi-apologetic.

She eyed my trimmed hair, my pleated professorial pants and my leather moccasins, my cheeks still fragrant from my morning shave. I knew she could smell my powdered chest – we stood so close– and feel my elbow brush her hard sides. Her eyes were wide realizing that a man like me, a reading and college-teaching type, was not someone she usually met. That hurt me. I pined to tell her I loved hay, but on a painted canvas. And horses were okay as long as I didn’t have to wash or shoe them. Le Cheval Blanc wasn’t to be touched and sullied.

“Yeah, it’s different elsewhere,” she said, as if farriers lived by a separate book.

I tried convincing her otherwise, this woman with big hands who could be made to feel good and wanted. A woman named Russet, like the fall evening. Our plastic bags were full and we’d part having spent only one dollar a bag. The conversation was several more bags full.

“Mind if I invite you?” She threw the words out of her mouth with the invisible stuff she was chewing. “Bring your Moravia book to my farm. Will ya?”

I stood on the wintry sidewalk not saying anything. Her truck spewed smoke in a volley of vroom vroom vroom.

She yelled: “Can I call you Vandyke, after one my horses?”

“My name’s Ludwig,” I yelled back and saw her gesture.

“Where did you get that? That’s a horse name too!”

Suddenly unspoken warmth surrounded me. Ah, she was joking. In a good way. All my life I thought my parents were silly to name me like that. As if they knew for sure I was gonna be a sad little professor.

The women in my life and in the books I read kept cats or dogs. Fluffy, silky creatures bathed in lavender shampoo. Coats combed to a perfect gloss, fancy ribbons tied round their necks. The women talked to them in foreign tongues – oh mon petit chou. Made love while their pets watched. None of them lived by a cornfield and heard neighs all night. Alone.

“So long Vandyke!” Russet sped up.

The pickup disappeared around the bend. A russet sun gobbled it up. Her hammer striking new metal, raw and chiming, the farrier would have a visitor soon.

**

Please download a high resolution print quality PDF file for only $2.50 at CSR April 2009 Edition

Image from the Internet

POETRY IN OUR TIMES -- four Sketch Poems

2009-10-11T01:05:00.007-04:00

My Sketch Poems are still experimental unless someone thinks otherwise. These are NOT visual poems and so read them as complementary pairs.

Poetry in Our Times

1. Utterance from an Urn

Only when we looked around we saw

A subliminal longing, in an unaccustomed mouth

Birth of lettered rhymes.

2. "A Face Like Ours"

Poetry is a face inviting a peek

A thought that carves the Ajanta grace – a smile, a pause

Poetry’s guest. Liberated words.
3. "Doors vs. Darkness"

Silent waters upon those door frames

The choice is of clarity of shards, not darkness

The face splatters like meters. A welcome chant.

4. "Airborne, We Sing"

Our times is a kite for our hands

To say nothing of the birds. Alphabetic. Soaring

The face, this poetry, defy disbelief of metaphors.

Images: sketches in poster color by me, on paper and then scanned

Two Poems in MANORBORN collection--"Shuddhi" and "lotuses"

2009-10-07T13:24:00.006-04:00

Recently I had 2 poems published in Manorborn 09 Collection (Harford Poetry Society) on the theme of "Water". "Shuddhi From Every Living Thing" and "and I saw lotuses out of season" were my contributions.

"Shuddhi From Every Living Thing"

My faith gave me shuddhi
My ritual of being awash
In ideas that cowered on
Some porches scared to be told
Don’t touch that, don’t sit there
Be a shadow of no one ever

My faith gave me shuddhi from
Thermal springs sprung from myths
Full moon dips in ammonia streams
Avoidance from our liquid beliefs
Of impurity and the five elements

I won’t drown like Ophelia for sure
For my faith poured clear shuddhi
The water from every living thing
As they lay dying in heavens’ corners
Wishing for a stream of reasons to
Reverse course, enter them unsullied.
****

"and I saw lotuses out of season"

with the rain that collected like eyes
over city roads of many vigils and wrangles
with long lines of handholding kids and adults
the line punctuated with buckets, pots, jerry cans
with monsoon’s bloom of festering holes that deceived
a splash or a sip and diluted rivers of freshness to flow clogged

I saw lotuses out of season ready to take on the clouds.

****

Manorborn is an annual print journal published by the Harford Poetry and Literary Society (MD). The anthology features poetry, fiction, memoir, essay, and black and white art and photography. See the table of contents (theirs is print-only journal) here and you can order the copy here. Nice thing that my work appears in the same book with poems by former Tompkins County (where Ithaca, NY, is) Poet Laureate Katharyn Howd Machan! What a feeling :).

Image: Manorborn 09 cover

CITYSPEAK -- a Poem (for once I thought I became a city!)

2009-10-03T17:13:00.005-04:00

This was my last contribution to poet and activist Dustin Brookshire's Project Verse. Something that I wrote in a tearing hurry between power outages and a summer of 100 F + heat outside in Delhi. While I sweltered and wrote, my mind went back to New York and Chicago, mostly experienced in cooler climes :), and what they appeared to my not-too-accustomed eyes in relation to my six years of residence in the US. Actually I cheated a bit. This poem is written from a sketchy draft I already had in my mind, had probably even written down somewhere... I just resurrected it. The exercise was about metaphors and similes.

Why is the speaker a city? Why is there reference to cities as siblings? You tell me. I'm an unabashed city-lover and dweller so my opinion may be biased! Here is the poem:

Cityspeak

I didn’t have half brothers or sisters, now I do

Siblings in angst, about who grew up faster, smarter.

Macadamized heartbeats, belching, lying in the sun

bristling in the smog of hyperventilating rush hours

toenails curled inwards. That’s how we are.

Brother Chicago, from my labyrinth of freeways

I’ve seen your billboards flashing its psychedelic lure

your finger slow-motioning from the cloud tops

entwining me to your belly button deep and bright.

Your other brother or sister – that gushy half-sibling

New York is Woody Allen. Worried, glib! It arcs

a sharp tongue across Manhattan’s cacophony

rips off the rootedness of our shared metro mangrove.

Laying with its jaunty back of a brooding T-rex

Chicago squints at the waterside, not ready to budge

polishes its towering whiskers – unperturbed even in the snow.

New York slams me for calling out its name

for even thinking I could write these words –

its skyline a lost ship that hopes someone will come

anchor in its teenaged grudge. Well, let it gnaw!

Listen two cities. Don’t tell Kafka, I’ve turned into a city

unyielding, aching and stymied. Forever looking inside.

A silently gregarious square tucked into my seams.

Image from my computer: Downtown Chicago

My Sketch and the Fun I have with it!

2009-10-02T12:59:00.007-04:00

I pencil-sketched a Madhubani-style drawing recently, thinking it might be of some use relating to my writing. "Madhubani-style" because the difference is that Madhubanis have stumpy figures and well-demarcated black outlines for each object. Also, smaller etchings are executed usually in fine black strokes. In this sketch, the outlines are smudged, the small leaves are melting into the background and the stumpiness is taken over by rather freeflowing forms. Besides, the circle of trees have a modernist bloody head, symbolizing roots, and the sun rises below, a spatial anachronism. The border is a series of "footprints".

This is the initial B&W drawing:

Then I colored it with marker pen:

I thought the sun rising from the 'netherworlds' could be cropped for some effect!

And then I flipped the scanned image! Looks like a juggler balancing a "wheel of trees" and a spidery sun...

Not sure what I'll do with the drawing. I had a specific use in mind. Tell you later.

Reading at Poetry & Pastry, an Evening of Near Eastern, Mediterranean and Ithacan Poetry

2009-09-30T13:44:00.011-04:00

The poetry reading at Poetry & Pastry, an Evening of Near Eastern, Mediterranean and Ithacan Poetry at Cornell University on Sept. 29, went off very well. I read quite nicely despite my initial nervousness. The Guerlac Room at A D White House was full chock-a-block! Here are some pics.

Translations of "Moonlore..." and "Wasafiri" into Bengali and Assamese

2009-09-27T15:24:00.010-04:00

These are the Assamese and Bengali poems, translations I did recently, that I'm going to read at a small poetry gathering to be held in Cornell University on the 29th of this month. The Bengali one is a translation of "MOONLORE FROM THE EAST", first published in The Toronto Quarterly. The Assamese one is a translation of "WASAFIRI", first published in Muse India.

These are scanned images, hopefully clear. My handwriting is pathetic of course!

My Years With Rabindranath Tagore

2009-09-22T20:36:00.007-04:00

Activist and poet Dustin Brookshire's Project Verse gave us this assignment in the initial round -- "your first poet". This was my contribution, tell me about yours:

My Years With Rabindranath Tagore

Little Boy Courage. The Old Banyan tree.

You came to me Rabindranath
(tough name for a kid)
as playmate Rabi

On a horseback through our
childish woods of romance
mixing the monsoon rains with tunes
of leaf floats making off to the Seven Seas
between homework of grammar and spelling.

Here, Rabi, hold my hand
write that stanza
I’d read even years later
for every year the drummers are out
(still underpaid, they now sell
fake branded accessories)
teasing absent-minded autumn clouds.

Tall palm with winged-desire. Camelia my Girl.

So who said he wore a solemn beard?
Not on my book cover!
Duping the elders we must remain green –
exactly the way he called out:
My little greens, my little young shoots
and those lines are still the first to ring
the way it once did
candle-blowing sleepiness on
a power-outed summer night.

Reading Tagore in bed, living inside
the crumpled book leaves
I frolicked with my playmate Rabi
soared above static and din
(father loved Tchaikovsky
on old Radio Moscow)
also cried when
the Pilgrims drowned at sea.

Here, Rabi, take this line
let my first eyes remember that time

A drop of water. The leaf shivers.

Image from the Internet: Tagore and Einstein

inside the body of the verse - a Poem

2009-09-20T18:07:00.007-04:00

A poem from a set of 5 words -- "zany, velvet, debonair, limp, & exculpate". Activist and poet Dustin Brookshire's Project Verse, now reaching its end, is where I first wrote it. Here's mine, write yours!

inside the body of the verse

Bring, the velvet and the
Mousse of your hands, tell
My verse yes we are
In love with this body
Yours and mine, with our
Zany nights that jerked off
Emotions and plights

Hold, just hold tight on
To the limpness of rhymes
Before we arouse slowly again
This turn of flaccid limbs
Your flourish into the dawn
My frenzy hay-rolled just
As in old-fashioned silver-
Screen tales of our body
Our verse so debonair

Give, give me that strophe
Stroked by your lips and set afire
This song of Moulin Rouge
The body of phones in sweet pangs

Say, just whisper into my ears that
You exculpate this ecstasy spent, so
Free from glare, you and I can curl
Up in pleasure and love the words
Off pages growing on our chests.

Comments/suggestions/critique welcome!

Image from the Internet

The Bollywood Belief System - "New York"

2009-09-13T17:39:00.012-04:00

I watch films and read books mostly when the euphoria and the spate of reviews are over. And I watch Bollywood too, because those creations are sometimes useful to see how certain belief systems work, to my surprise or chagrin.

One such recent view was New York (2009).

Two things:

1. Suddenly Bollywood's "overseas" interests have started including the 9/11 commentary, after these many years have passed. While New York seems incapable of any analyses about 9/11 as an event in history, the Naseeruddin Shah-directed "Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota (2006)" presented a deeper psychological insight into the people who might have unfortunately been caught in 9/11's turbulence. New York simply seems to be another chance to shoot in New York City, with the campus scenes resembling Chapel Hill (how quaint we never see such flora and fauna in a "state university" in New York) and the cobbled city streets incorporated from some Upstate town topography perhaps...!

2. In New York, Muslims take charge of their own "involvement" or "implication" in 9/11. This has become such a popular notion with the Hindu, upper-caste, middle-class majority (why blame the rightwing?), as pointed out by M. They should, it is argued eloquently, sort out their "own mess". Even a well-known newspaper editor went on to argue recently how secular, liberal Hindus can no longer defend the credentials of the Muslims. And so on and so forth for Dalits, Tribals, and the "others", following a similar logic. Reminds me of Martin Niemöller's lines!

Postscript: In the very last portion of New York, the 'self-absolved' Muslims (the government-appointed one who has helped terrorists see the path of nonviolence and 'we-are-globalized-type oneness' through his own experience of interrogation, torture, and killing, and the independent one who had probably seen the path, but couldn't quite get on to the globalization fast track fast enough because his girl was taken away, because he had to kill, etc.) keep fawning upon the orphan kid (the dead terrorist's child) as the "new Muslim" kid laden with virtues like love for eating pasta, excelling in American football, tolerance etc. Made me laugh. Where did Bollywood get the notion that this "breed" is breeding only NOW, after thorough 'self-absolving' by the older offenders? Talk about belief systems and a sense of historicity!

Two Poems in Mascara Literary Review

2009-09-08T13:41:00.006-04:00

Australian journal Mascara Literary Review has published two of my poems in its latest edition in a section titled NEW WORLDS. You can read the poems ALEPH and LIVING ROOM HOMILY here: Nabina Das

NEW WORLDS is a new section to showcase writers from the "neo-antipodes and diasporas".

Editor Michelle Cahill writes in one e-mail:

"We are really delighted to be publishing your fine work in Mascara Literary Review. It will be as part of a section titled "New Worlds", featuring work from the states/northern hemisphere."

and in the other:

"Your poems are wonderful. Do keep in contact. You may wish to consider writing a review in future."

In the main Poetry section, there is my favorite Indian poet Keki N Daruwalla's poems and Sukrita Paul Kumar's work as well. Really feels good to be in Keki's company! My friend on Facebook, Anuradha Vijayakrishnan's excellent poetry is also there.

I love ALEPH and so let me reproduce it here too:

Aleph

The first sound uttered is always forgotten
Possibly it is never even a word. Just
An interjection that derives from faraway
Fears or an anxious rhythm of speech.
The first sound can be heard quite clear
When groans and grunts are taken care
Of with mighty sweep of authorized
Hands that also stifle songs and smiles.
If you were a baby or a doddering pair
Of legs, your first word would be despair
Not a calligrapher’s delight in dusky ink
Blinking away in the heliotrope night.

In one little fable the first letter was
Meant to be the first word of wonder
But no one wrote it down and so later
The ocean took it with fish and dead matter.

New Review in DANSE MACABRE

2009-09-07T19:21:00.006-04:00

Danse Macabre journal has my review of Yuyutsu Sharma's collection ANNAPURNA POEMS in its latest Totentanze issue.

So, entrée à Danse Macabre and read the review at Trek with the Buddha Bard or at Nabina DAS where you can also read my response poem "THE QUATAQUATANTANKUA" and enjoy the art by Tyson Schroeder, reproduced here.

You can find some of my other work that appeared in Danse Macabre earlier at DM 23 Une Nuit à l'Opéra.

Mnemosyne Lit Zine Features My Poems, Q&A for Extra Fun

2009-09-07T12:11:00.011-04:00

Jen Pezzo-Kerowyn Rose's *Mnemosyne* Literary Journal is a cool place to meet emerging and well known writers and read their work. Jen and her co-editor Christina Brooks recently featured some of my poems you can find on http://mnemosynepoetica.blogspot.com/2009/09/nabina-dass-feature-links.html.

The featured days were:
Day 1: Intro / Bio / Poem: "The First Apple Sings a Ruba’i"
Day 2: Poem: "Othello's Path" / Interview Question: "When did you first have an interest in poetry?"
Day 3: Poem: "Moonlore from the East" / Short Q&A
Day 4: Poem: "A Few Things of Consideration" / Short Q&A
Day 5: Poem: "Finding Foremothers" / Short Q&A
Day 6: Interview Questions for Nabina by Tim Buck

I enjoyed every bit of my exposure and interaction on Mnemosyne, made good friends and read wonderful writers. Check out *Mnemosyne* Literary Journal

My Review in "Birthdays of Poets"

2009-07-30T01:22:00.005-04:00

Poet and friend Joy Leftow has very kindly posted my review of Basanta Kar's collection THE UNFOLD PINNACLE on Andrew Christ's energizing blog birthdaysofpoets.blogspot.com. Basanta is the author of two published poetry books and is currently Directer, Care India, a nonprofit organization.

Read (again!) :

THE UNFOLD PINNACLE by Basanta Kumar Kar – A review by Nabina Das
The Turbulent Top: Marginalized Women’s Voices from India

THE UNFOLD PINNACLE by Basanta Kumar Kar– A review by Nabina Das

Discussion generated on my poem "Langston...": writing about skin color

2009-07-27T01:33:00.006-04:00

Recently I posted a link on Facebook from my blog -- my poem "When Langston Hughes Visited My Home", one of the two published in the Guntur National Poetry Festival anthology released on July 2. Like the other one "Finding Foremothers", this too was appreciated a lot and generated quite a few comments.

What I always look for in the comments from my dear friends and readers is that keen eye for details about my poetic craft and the general topic in question.

One of them came from poet and friend Jen Pezzo Kerowyn-Rose who runs the literary journal "Mnemosyne". In her eyes, 'Langston' was not only a well-crafted poem but also an interesting exercise in looking at race/color/ethnicity through my eyes, trained for the most part as Indian eyes.

This is what she wrote on my blog -- "I love this poem. It is such a contrast to the way many Americans' view skin color, even today. The title is perfect. My favorite stanza is the first one. I like the imagery. What an artfully crafted piece of work. :-)".

With this thread we started off a discussion that has left me richer than ever. And I'd like to share some points with the others here...

1) Did I address the fact that I was writing about LH from childhood memory as part of my individual 'color' consciousness?

2) was it incorporated into a cultural universe where color/race was noticed/pointed out quite deliberately and as a tool for derision of the 'other' or just as an innocuous observation? That I wrote "dark-limbed poet", is it because as a child I was inherently aware what 'dark' and 'fair' meant to a 10-year-old?

Jen's observation that an American would speak/write differently (I believe some times, never) about skin color was a delight and I'm glad Jen and I went on to have a long discussion on a topic many would simply avoid.

-- 1) I THINK... back then I didn't have much of an 'individual' awareness or consciousness about skin color or what it might or might not mean... All I was aware of is that Rama or Krishna were blue/dark, Shiva too after wearing that ash coating all over and all that's because it seemed a special quality possessed only by special gods! Ah, and Draupadi, the heroine of the epic Mahabharata too was "krishnangi"! And a beauty.

-- 2) As for my upbringing in a certain cultural universe, I grew up in a liberal household with a spiritual mom (all Krishna worshippers on her side of the family) and a commie father (many commie uncles and an aunt who's like a Joan d'Arc to me...) although paternal grandparents were diehard Shakti (goddess) followers, mostly believers of the Tantra or the Lokayata school of philosophy. Color (as a marker of race) was probably the least discussed aspect at home. I say the least, because when it came to describing individuals, often it went like this -- "oh our neighbour, the dark gentleman with a moustache..." or "X's new bride is quite fair although her dark sister is prettier... ".

No doubt some folks employed a certain bias based on these indicators but as a child I saw and heard very little of it from my folks. Then caste, that Indian social monster, was pooh-poohed at all levels because it popped up everywhere even if you didn't believe in its rigors. Religion and creed/faith was a private affair, even for the older members who frowned upon the commie brigade!

So a child's mind registered things it saw/read with a question/surprise:

"...why the smaller typeface said:

Poems by a dark-limbed poet, a collection,

I had no idea then"

The editors of the book put that blurb in there for an obvious reason, now I know better. It was not about racism or commenting about skin color, it was an assertion "Poems by a dark-limbed poet" (krishnanga kobir kobita -- in Assamese). Jen rightly pointed out that this was really special, to be able to write/speak about a people in terms that were celebratory.

Celebratory it was. Krishna the god is 'krishna' (literally means dark), so is Rama the King of Ayodhya, and so is Queen Draupadi (nicknamed Krishnaa), whose best friend is Lord Krishna!

However, a 10-yr-old is still surprised to encounter the "krishna"-ness among mortals:

"Dark limbs were not seen

On our book covers

Only limbs were, but then

Krishna is just not a word

For a god, it dawned on me

But skins and cheeks and

Strong arms of poetic force

On my table"

The word "krishnanga" (krishna + anga = dark limbed) in my child's consciousness had signified the entry of a new entity. It was all about a celebrated name called Langston Hughes, the reference to him an assertion by those writers/editors/publishers who championed the cause of avant-garde literature, protest poetry and songs, alternative discourses and exhorting the sun to rise in a new direction -- "hey xurjo uthi aha" in Assamese... and this bit I understood much later when my adult mind realized:

"Also the end of crowing nights

When a poet came home

Inside the covers of a book, smiling:

"That day is past!""

Just as today we celebrate 'Jewish poetry', 'Asian-American writing', 'South-Asian fiction', I am immensely proud that some of these vernacular literatures in India had long ago opened up their doors to the world in order to celebrate the "Krishna" or "Krishnanga" poets and writers.

Thank you Jen, for inspiring this lively discussion!

Postscript: After finishing this note I found this picture of Goddess Kali in Wikipedia. Kali literally means 'black' but it is also believed the etymology includes the Sanskrit word 'kaal' meaning time or eternity. As a child I saw different statues of Kali in different shades -- midnight black, deep blue, dusky etc. -- with different names as well, like, Smashaan Kali (goddess of the cremation ground); Shyama Kali (the dark/blue Kali), and Bhadra Kali (the householder's goddess)

Image from the Internet (Wikipedia): Goddess Kali

Do you see?

FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA a "first in Indian writing in English"

Sketch Poems in FULL OF CROW

Reviews by me -- Sudeep Sen and Abha Iyengar's collections

Featured poem in "Durable Goods 28"

Non-fiction Piece published in BAP Quarterly

"Redness" wins a prize

Director Onir on "Footprints..."!!

"Finally managed to read Footprints in the Bajra. Compelling reading, lovely drama and great texture. Enjoyed reading very much. Thank you for giving me your book to read."

Waiting on the MFA

"Footprints" review in Business World magazine

SURFACES Poetry Reading & Chapbook Launch

Tea with Reza

Khoshbakhtam, khoshbakhtam!

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

The Woman from Both Sides

Book Interview in THE SENTINEL -- All About "Footprints"

Review of "Footprints..." in THE STATESMAN

My Father Tells a Story -- poem in "Indian Literature" (Sahitya Akademi)

"Footprints in the Bajra" reviewed in Pioneer newspaper

SIX-MILE-CREEK: A Postcard-Poem

Reading from "Footprints in the Bajra", April 17, 4-5 p.m.

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

Interview: Footprints in the Bajra is a portrait of Muskaan, a Maoist rebel from the age of 13

Snoetry Video on Crisis Chronicles Online Library

Luit On Our Tongues -- One River-Story Poem in Print

Sketch-poem in Graffiti Kolkata Broadside, March 2010

"Disgrace" & "The Kite Runner": What the Body Brokers

"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:

First "Footprints" Review Published

Holi Hullabaloo!

About Aribam: Telling my Manipur Story in Inertia Magazine

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

3 "Sentimental" poems--in progress

Short Fiction "ABOUT ARIBAM" in Inertia Magazine 8

FOOTPRINTS Cover Kitsch...

Bajra (PEAR MILLET) in my book FOOTPRINTS...

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

FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA: My Novel is Published

Reading at SNOETRY: A Winter Wordfest 2010

"Footprints in the Bajra" Goes to Press

Innuendo in the Cinema Theatre - Prakriti Foundation poetry win

Editorial in Danse Macabre "Internationale" Issue

Poem in Shalla Magazine's print issue

3 Poems in Unsere Winterreise -- A Danse Macabre Poetic Collaboration

5 Poems in OMEGA 7--Assam-Bengal Legacies as I see Them

PARISCOPE -- a 2-part 'city' essay in Troubadour 21

The Message Tree- a Poem Inspired by "Ijaazat"

MOLOCH -- New Poem in URHALPOOL Bilingual Zine

Vanaprastha 2009 - a Poem

THE FARRIER- A Short Story

POETRY IN OUR TIMES -- four Sketch Poems

Two Poems in MANORBORN collection--"Shuddhi" and "lotuses"

CITYSPEAK -- a Poem (for once I thought I became a city!)

My Sketch and the Fun I have with it!

Reading at Poetry & Pastry, an Evening of Near Eastern, Mediterranean and Ithacan Poetry

Translations of "Moonlore..." and "Wasafiri" into Bengali and Assamese

My Years With Rabindranath Tagore

inside the body of the verse - a Poem

The Bollywood Belief System - "New York"

Two Poems in Mascara Literary Review

New Review in DANSE MACABRE

Mnemosyne Lit Zine Features My Poems, Q&A for Extra Fun

OTHER INDIA STORIES: Dalit Women's Venture and Deep Joshi's Magsaysay Award Trampled by Rakhi's Swayamvar and Other Enlightening Stuff

My Review in "Birthdays of Poets"

Discussion generated on my poem "Langston...": writing about skin color

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 ...!