‘The translator runs vagabond on a taut rope’: A new book of 21st-century Hindi poems in translation

As It Happens

by Vishnu Khare, translated by Tanuj Solanki

When I see my special acquaintances
those whom I consider to be knaves
conversing with those friends of mine
who didn’t know them from before
then later, even if those notable associates of mine
make the familiar claim
that my dear ones now like and regard them better
than they like and regard me
I say nothing.

Who knows if I consider them knaves
because I too have in me that kind of
knavishness left to identify them.

Why shouldn’t I believe
that when they’ll be speaking to my friends
with their wholly temporary goodness and charisma
that they would be presenting the best of their personality
and then, wouldn’t they really be becoming all that just a little bit?

Give everyone a full chance
even if only momentarily, to be seen as kind, honest, meritorious
and be understood as such
if not for a lot then, for those atomic moments, at least, let this world be
better, beautiful and believable.
Who knows, it might become that wholly, as it happens.

All these worldly trappings will go

by Uday Prakash, translated by Carol Blaizy D’souza

For you have come, so you will go
I will eat roti and rice

You will dig for iron and gold
I will till my field with plough

You will trade in precious stones
I will water luscious trees

You will click selfie photos
I will wring tattered clothes

You will fraternise with the police force
I will study the pages of scrolls

You will flaunt your rising growth
I will smile from down below

You will race the stairs to heavenly abode
I will be the sea and carry on to flow

You will from cannon tops roar
I am pitter-patter water; I will pour

You will indulge in royal meals galore
I will eat meagre meals as before

All these worldly trappings will go
When you will meet your end as every joe

You will ring temple bells and into conches blow
I will sing the couplets Kabir composed

You will brandish your branded brow
I will visit the doorstep of Khusrau

You will persist in persecuting the poor
But it will melt away – your iron core

For you’ve gained, you will lose so
I have lost, so I will hit the motherlode

Sunk In the Heart

by Gagan Gill, translated by Vidya Bhandarkar

Sunk
In the heart, swims
A boat

A boat
A twig
A dead swimmer

Asleep
In the heart, glides
A fish

A spider
A web
A crocodile trapped

Weary
Sleep wanders
Inside the head

Black moss
A ripple
Gurgling of a lost affair

A life
Snuffed out, slowly
A resolve

A thirst
A desire
An offspring

Sunk
A shadow
Flutters

A figure
A maiden
Dead in her own skin
A mermaid

I wonder who?

Translation

by Mahesh Verma, translated by Tuhin Bhowal

The First Showers Between the Advent of Summer and Monsoon

by Parwati Tirkey, translated by Dibyajyoti Sarma

The first showers before monsoon
had already begun.
Rivers were being born
from the wombs of the mountains.

The rivers gave birth to fish.
Those fishes now
carried eggs
the way forests had only begun to flourish
from the earth’s belly
as tender
as infants.

That’s why until they grow up
the villagers have been forbidden
to trespass the forests.

Don’t marry me off so far away, Father

by Nirmala Putul, translated by Nidhi Singh

Father!
Don’t marry me off so far away
that to travel there to see me
you’ve to sell your goats

Don’t marry me off to the land
where more gods dwell
than people

Don’t bind me to a place
where there are no jungles
rivers, hills

Absolutely not there
where on the roads
motorcars outpace your thoughts,
a place with tall buildings
and flashy shops

Don’t knot me to a house where
there’s no open courtyard,
morning arrives not at the call of the rooster
and in the evening from the backyard
you can’t see the sun setting upon the hills

Don’t choose a groom
who’s often drunk with
po-chai and handia

Idler, loafer
an old hand at running away with girls,
don’t choose that groom for me

Because a groom’s not a bowl or a dish
I could change later on
if it chips

I don’t want someone who promptly
talks of whacking and thrashing
pulls out his bow and arrows or an axe,
leaves for Bengal, Assam or Kashmir on a whim
Don’t give my hand to such a hand
that never planted a tree
that never grew a crop
never carried a load
that can’t scribble “hand” for “h”

If you marry me off
then marry me off to a place where
you can visit me in the morning
and walk back home by the evening

So that if I cry out of sorrow on this bank
you could hear my wail
as you bathe at the other

So that along with strands of mahua
and date jaggery
I can send you a message,
so that I can send with some passer-by
gourd, pumpkin, squash, green beans
time after time for Mother too

So that on my way to the haat
I could meet someone and ask them
about home and village
about the speckled cow’s new calf
as they go down this road

Marry me off to a place
where people outnumber gods,
the goat and the lion
drink water on the same bank

Marry me to the one
who, like a pair of pigeons or the panduk bird
always remains by my side
and works with me in the house, at the farm
sharing happiness and pain until the night

Choose such a groom
who plays the flute sweetly
who’s fine at playing the dhol-maandal

The one who in the springtime
brings palaash flowers
for my hair bun

The one who can’t bring himself to eat
if I’m hungry,
marry me to him

Excerpted with permission from Perennial: The Red River Book of 21st-century Hindi Poetry, edited by Sourav Roy and Tuhin Bhowal, Red River Press.