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' Essay
by Navtej Bharati Poetics
of unfinished poem
Painting
by [Harjinder Singh] Sidharth. 2005
his
is about a poem I have left unfinished. Something happened. Though things
do happen when I write---an ant zigzags through the letters, light goes
out in the room, thunder bangs against my window---they hardly disrupt me.
But what happened last week, late morning, was different. Surinder, my
wife, came to the door—she rarely does during my writing---and gestured
me to come out. There was something mysterious in her gesture. I followed
her to the kitchen window that opens to our backyard. And there he was,
standing twenty feet away under the mountain ash tree: an adult deer, ears
up, big eyes fixed on us and left hind leg slightly bent with the hoof
half-planted on the ground as if hurting. In his brilliant light brown
coat, he looked like a reincarnation of Ramayana’s golden deer. Surinder
stood agape; I was mystified. The moment I looked into his eyes I could
see nothing else; they bewitched.
‘He and I’ were gone, the ‘who sees who’ became
indistinguishable. We were ‘dead’ in the seeing, both of us. The
memory of Ishar flashed in mind, as he unbricked an old ruined well in my
village some sixty odd years ago. A cobra had suddenly appeared before
him, flexed his head two feet high and stared deep into Ishar's eyes.
Ishar froze, eyes wide, unblinking. His hand, holding a trowel, hung
midair. How long he remained in this trance, no one knows. Finally,
Ishar's trowel fell on the snake’s head. The snake died, in the seeing.
Ishar fell ill, convinced the snake was one of his ancestors or else it
would have struck him. For two days he could see nothing but the
‘ancestor’ gazing at him. Ishar too died, in the seeing. The
deer was still gazing at us. Camera! Surinder whispered to me. As I rushed
back with the camera he was already on the run jumping over the fence. I
couldn't capture him. The golden deer had eluded me again. I guess he has
never trusted me since the time of Ramayana. I felt sad, Surinder more. He
would have stayed longer if we hadn't The
deer left me musing why he came to our house and gazed at us. I couldn't
shrug it off as a coincidence; curiosity kept nibbling at me.
This
house sits between two others on a six acre parcel. Once it was a farm
house. It had some wilderness around when we moved in twenty-four years
ago. At the back was a large stretch of land dotted with trees, shrubs,
puddles and mounds. Rabbits, groundhogs, cats freely roamed, trees hummed
and birds sang. The city had not yet spread its jaws towards it. A
kilometer south, ran a river called Antler river. The river still runs but
is now fenced on both sides. Centuries
ago this area was home to Iroquois Indians who danced to celebrate corn,
strawberries, and seasons; talked their pains to trees and wore masks to
frighten evil spirits. Some miles further, the Ojibwa Indians celebrated
snow shoes in a circle dance; their long black hair fluttered, drums
thundered, wooden flutes sounded and their wild
calls enchanted the sky. Here grandmothers nursed their children with
age old wisdom told through ancient tales while deer drank from the Antler
river. And
I thought perhaps the deer had come to visit what once was his home land;
to drink from the river that nourished the thirst of his ancestors. Now he
had to jump over fences and risk injury to enter.
He didn’t know that the trespassing of a private property is
illegal, that it can be fatal. My neighbour gestured the pulling of a
trigger when I told him of the deer. We
don’t know how the deer remembered that this was the place to which he
was to come. We don't know how memory flows through things or whether it
flows through humans only. People have always thought of physical objects
as having something mythical in them. And have felt that some things are
more mythical or sacred than others: Bodhi tree, Ganga, I
was shocked to realize that I had never felt this place living with memory
as deer seemed to have. I have lived here for more than a quarter of a
century, have relished apples, cherries and pears from its trees, grown
vegetables on its soil, sat under the shade of its mountain ash and
written poems. I have watched snow fall and the fall colours every season.
I have raised my two children here, watched Sumeet chase butterflies and
Subodh dunk the ball. Even
a mysterious encounter ten years ago failed to shake my sensitivity. It
was a summer evening, shadows were growing darker and longer when an old
man, pony-tailed, wrinkled, suddenly appeared at my door. He seemed tired,
perhaps from walking. I went to him, gave him a chair, offered a glass of
water and remained silent. I knew the natives use silence in conversation
the way they use words; they leave long gaps between sentences so the
words permeate into "Do
you know where my children are"? he finally asked me. Astonished,
I replied: "No. I am sorry I don't. Were they left here around my
house by chance?” He
looked at me in disbelief; his wrinkles got a touch darker. Scratching his
forehead, he said: 'Someone from this city has stolen my children; you
live here; and you say you don’t know who has them?" I
now realised why he had a look of disbelief in his eyes. He must have
thought that all people here must know each other as villagers do. I told
him people here don't know each other, even when they live in the same
building. He stared at me, with eyebrows raised, as if checking to see if
I was really of his kind. "How can you live together if you don't
know each other?' he asked. In fact he meant: you can't live at all, let
alone together if you don’t know each other. Then he stood up, looking
more tired, and stepped out of the room without looking at me, without
saying bye. I couldn’t see his pony-tail; the evening had grown too
dark. He disappeared. I sunk into my chair, saddened, helpless. The
man with the pony-tail, who came to me ten years ago, was from the same
people who once danced here to celebrate snow shoes; and the golden deer
was from the herd that once drank from the Antler. Both came to the place
that was once their home, the home I Suddenly
I stumbled into understanding why I have been dead to this place; why it
has withheld its soul, its memories from me; Occupation. No place shares
its memories with the occupier. And the occupier, on the other hand, tries
to replace them with its own. Thus the Antler becomes the Thames river
while the Mohawk phrase tkaronto, meaning "where
there are trees standing in the water"
becomes The
genocide of memory has no calculus. Ideological pragmatism aside, Incidentally
the poem I was writing last week was on occupation; The
poem had become a quicksand from which the deer had rescued me. And in
fact, it had done more; it uncovered what I call a “thousand-headed
shesh naag” that is occupation: occupation of air, water and sky; of
mind, body and consciousness. I realized that there is nothing that is
occupiable and is not being occupied. This is a Mahabharata of our time,
more annihilating than the mythic one. Even
my unfinished poem was not spared; it was occupied by the Israel/Palestine
conflict. It had to jump out of its own fence to grasp its own bondage.
The quagmired can't really see the quagmire. I
left the poem unfinished. Perhaps not. It is being written in other forms
and by others, including the man with ponytail, and the golden deer that
jumped over the fence. I wish I had a poetics to understand how an
unfinished poem is never unfinished really. • The author Navtej Bharti has got the Rs 2.5 lakh Anād Kāv poetry award for
2010. He is to share it with his poet brother [Courtesy:
South Asian Ensemble. Vol. 2 Number 3. Summer 2010]
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