Canto II
A
dream: a poem that sounds like a warning —
Seidel’s
The Sickness, which ends on Eighty-Sixth
Street,
near the Park, one ordinary morning:
An
early soubrette, a fuming bus: a fixed
Routine.
In this dream, there’s nothing to do for hours
Till
the Met opens — what draws me there is always
The
same: the Egypt exhibit, the Sphinx that glowers
Knowingly,
Pharaoh, Anubis, the Hebrew slaves
Who
etched the scallops in each gryphon’s wing —
The
spectacle of God’s chosen people at slaughter —
Courtesy
Cecil B DeMille, presenting
Charlton
Heston in a skirt, while Pharaoh’s daughter,
Anne
Baxter, and her maids, fretted in Technicolour.
I
begin there, in New York, or there, in Egypt.
Anywhere,
you might say, but here, in duller
Light,
and an obscurer story, where the whip
Played
the starring role, and often still does.
So
I’d better get to it: there are still fields
That
remember the mud between the forlorn toes
That
threaded furrows, behind the iron wheels
Of
oxcarts pregnant with cane-stalks, and whispered
Bhojpuri
curses beneath acidic breath,
Or
love poems – whatever came through the blistered
Betel-stained
lips stank of violence, threat.
Then
evenings, on dirt floors swept with palm fronds,
The
oiled joints of tawny bodies squatting outside
The
smoke-blackened tin-roofed barracks, murmuring songs,
Low
and primal, smooth rum, bhang, the slide
From
history into the samadhi state,
Gazing
at the saffron-faced horizon
Where
black-limbed havan smoke hung frozen, in wait
For
the haughty Aryan gods to realize an
Offering
had been made, then coaxing them
With
tears and music, but they never came,
And
the whispered strophes dissolved into pablum.
The
blue-skinned gods were stunned by shame
That
ten million fierce-moustached kshatriyas armed
With
the Vedas, fed by the headwaters from Shiva’s
Top-knot,
could be effortlessly damned
By a
hundred thousand chinless, blue-eyed reavers,
And
they pretended not to see the havans
That
flowered from the lonely Caroni Plains
In
fragrant ghee, or hear the plaintive bhajans
That
wavered like the flickers of wood-torch flames.
The
slender, manicured nails slowly grazed
The
indigo chins, as they lounged in Indra’s demesne
And
wordlessly the mercuric eyes blazed
Assent,
like jewels in velvet: sudras weren’t men.
And
left them to diabetes, uxoricide,
And a
thick-fingered crushing boredom, whose cure
Was
ganja, rum, the Manas, a child bride.
They
took a century and a half to find the door
Out
of those fields, and god knows how much more
To
forget them.
So
much for history.
You
could still see the cane fields from our
Back
porch as late as the 80s. By then the mystery
Of
the rough-edged past had become a silky fetish,
And
you saw the younger coolie doctors in Koortahs
And
heard the tinny music, and felt the rush
Of
memory incarnating Hema and Mumtaz
As
Sita and Parvati, invoked and worshipped
Every
Wednesday in the Hylite drive-inn,
When
they let coolies in by the carload, and slipped
Them
fliers for yagnas and satsanghs — the hives in
Which
their droning could meet, mingle and multiply,
Like
the accordion folds that wheezed the mournful
Melodies
that softened the strophes from the dry
Epics—as
penance for the indulgence in scornful
Lowbrow
peasant leelas, where Amitabh
And
the crooning, fair-skinned Bollywood simulacra
Were
molecules, dancing to re-form the drab
Barrack
compound, so coolies could re-make a
A
gold-leafed pastoral, with devas in brass,
And
bestiaries of Aryan-animal hybrids.
The
gods became works of art in the age of mass
Reproduction
— an orgy of eyes and limbs on all sides,
Oozing
the pink-skinned beauty peasants crave;
The
sapient sadhu became a hedonist
Decked
in organza and tulle, as he traced the grave
Ash
on each forehead, the sacred thread on each wrist;
And
they brought the robed charlatans from Bharat
To
babble the Sanskrit words, as they fed Agni
The
ransom, and petition for a new concordat
For a
New World. The gods blinked and weighed the sagging
Clouds,
heavy with gold bibelots the peasants
Offered,
like a low-born lover offers stars,
Then
laughed a little; the coolies were like infants.
Heaven
had changed after an age of wars
And
only fragments of their magic remained:
The
prayers, offerings, and flags were mere ornaments
Now.
They’d grown bored, the epics had become mundane
And
kingdoms of stone and magic dwindled like incense.
But
the robed charlatans, the scared thread
And the
offerings to Agni, now properly proffered,
Had
to be honoured. They stirred, sighed and bled
Their
ichor into the ether, and prepared to suffer
A
final, absurd round of incarnations
To
walk the improbable spaces of crumbling Maya,
Near
her navel, in those far-flung stations
Where
their lost children sat, drunk and crying.
But
in the profane cane fields, the peasant body
Could
not practice austerities, was too enmeshed
In
the syrupy world; avatars became godly
Satyrs
whose immanence succumbed to flesh.
I
remember Hanuman, the monkey god,
In
the body of a red-eyed government clerk
Who
carried a flask in his back pocket. He would
Caress
the bottle’s curves and complain about work,
His
children, his wife, Ravana’s ugly sister
As
his breath became coarser, his words thicker,
Until,
in tears, he would kiss, then choke and twist the
Bottle’s
neck, and dream of how to trick her
Into
taking the children and leaving forever,
Giggling,
splitting the human face apart
For
instants, as the liquor strained to sever
The
monkey’s laughter from his stubborn heart.
Every
day, I passed by Ram who beat
The
gold-skinned Sita bloody, but she stayed,
And
Lakshman who staggered down the main street
Sometimes
at night, singing, unafraid,
Of
the marigold faces of trembling peasant girls
Whose
fathers, enflamed at night by spirituous fires,
Consumed
the innocence spun in the whorls
Of
petal soft cheeks, and crushed them into Apsaras.
The
older women understood the words
And
shook their silver-streaked heads; some cried a little
And
would never say why. These instants were the surds
Etched
on the veils of a karmic joke, the riddle
We
lived in – a fragrant island of neon, afloat
On
black water, a Republic of smoke
Ruled
by a white-masked god with a black-skin coat
Where slant-rhymed heroic couplets deposed the sloka.
Where slant-rhymed heroic couplets deposed the sloka.
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