Jaggery

Not far from where we played
cricket, with a hollow plastic ball that was heavy
and hurt the shin terribly when it hit,
they, whom our fathers called 'labour,'
would be making jaggery in a large heated disc.

We were the children
of state-government employed agricultural scientists,
of oxymorons, you could say,
living our childhoods in government houses,
playing our evening games on government land.

On some occasions our game of cricket would stop,
excessive and irrevocable cheating by one team over another -
a false run out; series of wides that were not wides,
a four that was declared a six; some obstruction while running -
and in a manner of agreeing to disagree
we would all, this team or that,
carry ourselves and our bats
to that place that smelt of burnt burning sugar,
and gape at a 'labour' turn a huge ladle
through that brown viscous thing
that our parents preferred us to eat
more than the candies they sold in the market.
Standing there silently, watching the process,
we would not be thinking of the candies,
but of the heat of the jaggery,
of the impossibility of putting in a finger and tasting it,
and perhaps also of the possibility of a game without cheating.

Of course it was winter.

27

This year I'd a night when I was lost in a jungle,
with dozens of school kids, seventh grade,
and everyone had a torch to make out the thorns.

Also a night in which when I turned in a circle,
the farthest thing to see was the horizon, everywhere.
The starry sky was packed with constellations and their stories,
and it covered the blue landscape like a bowl.

I saw Jupiter through a telescope one night
and it looked to me like a speck of light reflected from my own eye.

In those nights I often thought:
these are the only kind of nights I want.

Today, now, it is some minutes past midnight.
I'm 27 years old and closer to the fact
that life is only about the lies we tell ourselves.

Everything is not a possibility.
But that makes anything impossible.

Between days

A day passes,
humdrum, slow, eventually,
and I think:
One more like this wouldn't hurt.

Is this happiness?

Or is this that which
the world abhors in me?

Imagining Formulae

Inside the perpetual evening of this room
I sit, gazing at fifty-odd Physics books on the shelf.

Some of these books used to be important.

There is an interminable novel in my hands,

and a gritty, elusive one in my head.

I think I'm making notes for both.

You are a lost character in my novel;

your absence is central,

and this has a relationship with reality.

And I'm its absconding implied author;
some construct has to step in for me.

This too has something to do with reality,

some relation with how all that I make gets made.

If you were here, I would not be elsewhere like I'm now.

I would be skimming through Mechanics then,
imagining formulae as a ball tumbles down a frictionless plane..

baba batesharnath by nagarjun
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

From Pastoral to Political

One more Hindi novel goes waste in trying to proselytize, in trying to turn itself into an idealism.

Three young men sleep under a hundred year old banyan tree, and the tree manifests as a humanoid in the dream of one. It goes on to enumerate the history of the listener's family, conjoining it with the history of the village. 19th century pastoral life in what is today's northern Bihar, rife with superstitions and calamity, is evoked. Feudalism is bashed. Even Hindu tradition is bashed. One likes the novel here, likes its naivete and its simple execution. A passage from the novel will exemplify this:

मनुष्यों की बलि चाहनेवाले यक्ष-गन्धर्व, देव-देवियाँ और ब्रह्म अब बाहर नहीं रह गए -- मोती जिल्दोंवाले पुराने पोथों की बारीक पंक्तियों के अन्दर आज वे नज़रबंद हैं। राजाओं, पुरोहितों, सामंतों और तीर्थकरों की बातों का बढ़ा-चढ़ाकर बखान करनेवाले बहुत सारे विद्वान सुदूर अतीत की उन क्रूर घटनाओं पर अब भी पर्दा डाले हुए हैं; वह उन लोगों के लिए सतयुग है, स्वर्णयुग है ! साधारण जनता का स्वर्णयुग तो अब आने वाला है बेटा !

But then the novels takes a historical turn - it zooms out of the village and acquires a nationalistic tone. India's struggle for independence is given as a crash course. One wonders why one is reading a compression like this one - till one realizes that Nagarjun's desire is to move the entire discussion toward a political ideology. Suddenly the novel becomes disingenuous; it loses its earlier qualities.

Ultimately the political aim becomes clear. The banyan tree falls in an area that can be understood as a commonly owned area. With the fall of the old-Zamindari system, such lands are also up for grabs in the market. What was public property is on course to become private. The novel thus proposes, as a counter to this post-feudal effect, Socialism through its tool of Socialist Realism. The establishment of pseudo-communist Kisaan Sabhas is posited as a synonym for progress. While there is no real problem in this per se, one has to evaluate it considering the effect it has on the novel - for Nagarjun chose the medium of the novel and not of the essay to say what he had to say. The novel fails, because it wants to do too much. It remains simple throughout, but that innocence that it needed to strengthen its simplicity with, is shed somewhere in the middle. And when that happens, the novel just becomes silly. In the end, the idea of the old banyan tree dying and a new one planted in its place, while meant as a sign of progress, falls flat as bad propaganda.

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Agyatwaas by Shrilal Shukl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

श्रीलाल शुक्ल के उपन्यास में कई विषयों को छुया गया है। सोशलिज्म की यलगार माँगती सोच, कभी न जाने वाली जाति से उगता उत्पीड़न, एक विभाजित समाज में विवाह की जटिलता, सच्ची मित्रता की कटाक्ष करती जिह्वा -- इन सभी पर इस लघु उपन्यास ने प्रकाश डाला है।

अज्ञातवास को अंग्रेजी में क्या कह कर समझाएं। शायद यह अंग्रेजी का शब्द ओब्लिविओन है। शायद यह अंडरग्राउंड होने की बात करता है। यहाँ, इस उपन्यास में, मुख्य पात्र रजनीकांत का अज्ञातवास है उनकी आत्मीयता का वो सच, जो उन्ही से दूर बैठा कहीं छुप गया है। उस धुरी की बिना जो भी व्यवहार में उजागर होता है वो एक रूप मात्र है। रजनीकांत बड़े अफ्सर हैं, सालों से विदुर हैं, एक बेटी के जिम्मेदार पिता हैं, मित्रो के मित्र हैं, परिश्रम के आदि हैं -- इत्यादि। पर क्या इन्ही सब से उनकी व्याख्या हो सकती है? क्या हम इससे इतना भी अनुमान लगा सकते है की यह आदमी काबिल-इ-तारीफ है या दण्डनीय । वो अतीत की पर्चियाँ ही तो हैं जो हमें जवाब दे सकती है, जो हमें बता सकती है की किस समाज से किस समाज तक की दौड़ लगाई रजनीकांत ने, क्या साथ लिए और क्या छूट गया। पर अतीत के घुरमुटों में तो हमारा सच अज्ञातवास पाता है, अतीत में ही तो वो है जिसकी हमारे वर्तमान को समझ नहीं, न ही समझने का माद्दा है।

श्रीलाल शुक्ल अपने चरम पर हैं जब वो चार दोस्तों की व्हिस्की से खनकती शाम का व्याख्यान करते हैं। तब भी जब वो वर्जिनिया वूल्फ की तरह अपने पात्रों की मानसिक उथल-पुथल को स्पष्ट करते हैं। उपन्यास जब तक इन्ही हल्की अटखेलियों से खेलता है, तब तक रचना के उत्कृष्ट पड़ाव पर रहता है। धीरे-धीरे, एक मॉडर्निस्ट इंटरनेशनल उपन्यास से यह कृति एक भारतीय उपन्यास बनने की डगर पर चलती है। समाज घुसता है, जाति घुसती है, शहर और गाँव के बीच का अलगाव घुसता है। कुछ देर लगता है की ये उपन्यास भी सोशल रेअलिस्म की भेंट चढ़ जायेगा। पर लेखक इसे भाच लेते हैं। क्यूंकि वो डरते नहीं। क्यूंकि वो उस बलात्कार के दृश्य से भी नहीं घबराते जो एक समाज दुसरे पर करता है, जो दाम्पत्य में एक हिस्सा दुसरे पर कर सकता है। हाँ, ये सच्चियां अतीत के साथ ओझिल हो जाती हैं, पर अतीत अज्ञातवासी ही हो, तब भी क्या वो झकझोरता नहीं?

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Hands

Someone should have told us,
that in a world hands make nothing but words and wordlessness,
that hands are barren flesh.

Night

Beyond this glass also the world is silent.
There are rectangles of light in the sky
and the trees are drifting.

Human nature

We're all
Unctuous anfractuous.
Snakes in the fur of words.

Distance

There is a yours and mine in suitcases now.