Valparaiso, Sergio Larraine, 1963. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons.
Sach chhuchha hota hai
Amitava Kumar
Editor’s note : Kumar is a novelist, photographer, artist, and, on the evidence of the Hindi poems he has been writing in the last two years, a bilingual poet. The poem below (which the author has also translated into English) is a one-off: a balanced consideration of countervailing positions that segues, unexpectedly, into manifesto. It raises a question that’s suppressed in Indian Anglophone writing: the importance of mausam, or the ‘weather’ (and everything that the word implies), to those who are mahaj lekhak or ‘mere writers’. Mausam seems to mean an aspect of the everyday. If we are to subscribe to the poem’s account of the Gandhian temperament, it would appear that most Indian liberals today are mahatmas: ‘great souls’ preoccupied with ‘searching for the truth’ who are unmindful of ‘the ringing of a bicycle’s bell’. Invoking the curmudgeonly, problematic Naipaul (on whom the website has another New Year’s upload), the poem presents a much-needed argument against the idea of the ‘great’ shortly after it pays Gandhi its respects.
- सच छूछा होता है।
- महात्मा गाँधी की आत्मकथा में
- मौसम का कहीं ज़िक्र नहीं,
- लंदन की किसी ईमारत या
- सड़क के बारे में कोई बयान नहीं,
- किसी कमरे की, कभी एकत्रित भीड़ या
- यातायात के किसी साधन की कहीं कोई
- चर्चा नहीं–
- यह वी. एस. नायपॉल की आलोचना है।
- लेकिन मौसम तो गांधीजी के अंदर था!
- तूफान से जूझती एक अडिग आत्मा–
- नैतिकता की पतली पगडण्डी पर ठोकर
- खाता,
- संभलता, रास्ता बनाता बढ़ता हुआ इन्सान!
- अगर आप सच की खोज कर रहे हैं,
- क्या फर्क पड़ता है कि
- सूरज आज शाम 6:15 पे डूबा कि 6:25 पे?
- लेकिन नायपॉल की बात सर-आँखों पर!
- अगर आप महात्मा नहीं
- महज लेखक हैं,
- आपको ध्यान देना होगा
- नोट करना होगा,
- अपने आसपास की दीवारों पर
- खरोंचे गए प्रेमियों के नाम
- छतों पर गिरती बारिश की बूंदों का अंतराल आंधी में झूमते पेड़ों की डालों का लचीलापन
- साइकिल की घंटी की आवाज़
- या फिर दंगे के बाद का सन्नाटा
- लिखना होगा,
- कैंटीन में चुपचाप बैठी युवती के बारे में
- जिसके सामने रखे पानी के गिलास में
- पूरी दुनिया उलटी दिखाई देती है।
Rules Of Writing
- Nowhere in Mahatma Gandhi’s memoir
- does he mention the weather
- or describe London’s streets
- its houses, or even a room, the crowds,
- no discussion of any mode of transport—
- this criticism has been made by V.S. Naipaul.
- But the weather was inside Gandhi!
- A solitary spirit caught in the storm
- a lone self
- walking, stumbling
- making his own moral way!
- If you are searching for the truth
- how does it matter
- whether the sun set this evening
- at 6.15 or at 6.25?
- But I do heed V.S. Naipaul!
- If you are not a Mahatma
- and merely a writer
- you will have to pay attention
- and take note of the lovers
- whose names are scratched
- on the walls that rise around you
- the interval between the drops of rain
- being blown on the roof
- the lithe branches of trees
- dancing in the wind
- the ringing of a bicycle’s bell
- the silence after a riot.
- You will have to write
- about the young woman sitting alone
- in the canteen and the glass of water
- in front of her in which the whole world
- appears upside down.
Amitava Kumar is the author, most recently, of the novel My Beloved Life. He teaches at Vassar College and is currently a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library.
