One should walk, looking down to the street

One should walk,
looking down to the street
Then only he could see
half burned matches,
crushed cigarette buds,
ashen sweet wrappers
And the lottery tickets
of the unlucky ,
under his feet.

One should walk
looking down to the street
Then only he could hear
the remindings of the street
that this earth
is the churchyard
of the dumped

 Translation : Sanal Sasidharan

Being and Nothingness

I saw children,
pretending to be ghosts,
trying to scare away a cat.

May be they think
that the dead are
more powerful than the living.
If not ,
how could they
march against an enemy
they are afraid of?

They should be right;
Things that are not
are more powerful than
those that are.

Dreams that are not,
grandeur that is not,
so on,
those abode on non entity
are more alive
than the living

The flight
of a bird that is not
the stature
of a tree that is not
the stare
of a man who is not
the clamour
of voices that are not

No,
Things that are
will never stand against
things that are not;
things that are
are afraid of
things that are not.

 Translation : Manu(Gupthan)

The Fugitive

Dreams were the prisoners -
Job, love, house, food, clothes
There were many like that
Among them, one facing capital punishment
Escaped today morning, jumping over the jail walls
 Advertisements appeared in all the newspapers
Policemen all over sent messages to and fro
In their walkie-talkie.
Stopping vehicles playing in all directions,
They searched all the bags and baggage
Couldn’t find.
They combed all the aerodromes
But didn’t even a get a speck of evidence
Then they declared it fugitive
And puzzled people
Offering lakhs for its head
In the end, they learned the lesson:
Some dreams never give up.

 Translation : C.S Venkiteswaran

Vacating

The balloon asked the air
that was rushing out of the balloon:
‘What is the supreme sorrow?’
The wind answered thus:
I can vacate myself from you
But the supreme sorrow
Is the inability to vacate from oneself


 Translation :C.S  Venkiteswaran

The wisdom of Butchery

The marked one,
You face death with equanimity
Your equanimity saddens me.
Poor beast, you will not know
the butcher’s knife awaits
your neck.


You are an animal.
Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions,
You know in advance .
Yet, oblivious you remain
as the one you served a lifetime
is about to take your life.

Such is the mystery and pain of betrayal .

TRANSLATION :GIRIJA CHANDRAN

Oh,Life

Oh, life that departed..
Many a bad smell
Di d you keep within you
For so long.
Now, all those bad smells
Are coming out breaking their chain..
Oh life,
Were you merely
A watch man of bad smells?

 Translation :C.S Venkiteswaran

Four moments from the last moments of Sunday’s life

Moment  One

I went looking for Sunday’s house
at the far end of the street.
He wasn’t  home. Suffice to say
the man, sporting a palm fibre moustache,
scooted soon as he spied me.
His son, a brat cucumber, wedged open
the door a bit to say his papa wasn’t home.
I saw his wife with shaggy hair from the kitchen
throwing a look in his direction as he fled.
I froze that moment at that point of time
and left. Never went back again to his shack
made of tin sheets painted yellow.


Moment Two

Another day,
walking on the street,
I found the man, with the palm fibre moustache,
cobbling footwear.
Women stood around him
with broken sandals.
The only view he had was of the legs.
He might say that the city is a river of walking feet.
He sat on its bank with a fishing rod.
There may be among them legs that wore
the sandals that he mended.
He crouched so that his dark belly bulged out.
In the middle of it was his protruding belly button.
Spying my feet approaching him,
He scampered up and ran away.
The women standing around him
looked at me astonished.
Chasing someone to catch him is not my method.
Let that moment stay.
He running away from me
and the women stunned.


Moment Three

One day I detect
Sunday, with his palm fibre moustache,
smoking a beedi, seated on the parapet of a bridge.
It wasn’t  clear what he was looking at -
the gushing river or
the sky with scattered clouds.
There is a thought at work within him that
seeks to betray his own blood.
He doesn’t know that he is caught in its grip.
I went close and grabbed his shoulder. He looked up
and soon as he spotted me shook off my grip and
jumping into the river swam away till he vanished.



Moment Four

Sunday, with his palm fibre moustache, is
ambling along the street. On his way back from
a cinema. Slightly tipsy too.
He didn’t scurry away when he saw me.
He waited there hesitantly.
I laughed. He laughed back.
Then, all those moments that I had kept frozen regained their mobility.
I drew the knife that I had kept ready
And stabbed his bulging belly.

Soon as I stabbed,
He of the first moment fell down in the kitchen limbs thrashing about.
He of the second moment fell by the street limbs failing about.
He of the third moment stabbed on the bridge toppled into the river.
The man, with the palm fibre moustache, stumbled back stabbed in the street.

We can now hear the screams from the four moments.

His wife with shaggy hair and the brat
Scream from the first moment.
Their yellow painted home screams.

From the second moment, the women who came to mend
their sandals are wailing. Sandals repaired and yet to be, are wailing.
His tools are wailing.

From the third moment,
The stub of the beedi detached from his lips cries.
The bridge and the parapet cry.

From all the four moments,
The man who was stabbed in a single thrust
Howls in his death throes.


Meanwhile,
From his ripped belly flows blood forming a river.
It washes away, in its surging current, me and the people who
witnessed the murder. It carries away all the burdens
of all the shops in the street.

Same time, from the other three moments,
rivers of blood originate and combine
carrying away his house and his tools
and, emptying out this street,
flow down to the river alongside the bridge.

I had to walk alone on this desolated street. I walk by tearing asunder
the darkness and forcing out some light. The blood of that
nice man Sunday flows and flows
till a strip of the calendar
stays all red.

 Translation : Ra Sh

Narration of an obscure and mysterious incident

Spectacle One

Or,
How did Melinda Kurian,
the sales girl,
find herself alone in the showroom?

Who emptied out the city into
the trash can of a baton wielding police assault
or a suddenly descending `shutters down’ call?
It was crucial that the city be vacant.
Learned people have said this for long
That everything is a conspiracy.

Whatsoever,
howsoever,
Melinda Kurian was alone
in Merriment Textiles.
The showroom owner Shafeeq
gave the keys to the girl,
rolled down the shutter
and sped off on his bike.

She was putting clothes
from a new type of fabric
on three male mannequins
named Leo, Deo and Rio.

All of a sudden,
the male mannequin named Leo
laid his hands on her shoulder.
Soon as she looked up shell shocked,
he lifted her and carried her to the store.
The other two mannequins followed them.
When she cried for help,
the mannequin gagged her mouth.
She was laid on top of the clothes in the store.
Then, the mannequins took turns….
They were real mannequins.
Yet, they carried out their duty
as males.

Spectacle Two

An hour passed. The city came alive.
The showroom owner Shafeeq returned.
(Can’t be `shutters-down strike’ for just an hour.
Must have been a crackdown by the police.)
The shutter was rolled up.
Now, draped in a new sari,
Melinda, the mannequin,
stands in the display booth
of Merriment Textiles.
She is a real mannequin
made of fiber or some such stuff.
The showroom is packed.

Leo, Deo and Rio
are the three sales boys
attending to the customers.
They are not mannequins at all.
They keep displaying clothes
in many design patterns
with beatific smiles.
They are three real men.

Affidavit

This, my affidavit
as an eyewitness.

In the first situation,
it was as a sales girl
that I saw Melinda Kurian.
She was a real woman.
But, she is raped by
three mannequins named Rio, Deo and Leo.
Though mere mannequins,
they did gain mobility, most amazingly,
out of the blue.
But, they still retained their plastic bodies.

In the second situation,
Melinda is a true mannequin.
There is no evidence in the second situation
to demonstrate that Melinda had been a woman.
For example, the shop owner Shafeeq
is not even mildly surprised.
The customers too don’t show any sign that
anything untoward had taken place.
Leo, Deo and Rio, all the three, are men in every way.
They are not mannequins or plastic-bodied.

What I did as a writer was to
cobble together these two perceptions
that cropped up in two situations.
If this created any puzzlement,
I can only say for now
that this uncertainty is the reality.


 Translation : Ra Sh