My Song: Kaun Hai jo Sapno Mein Aya

Aghori Poems

Aghori Poems of Hemang Desai (1978)

(1) Aghori
the natural nudist wearing the apparel of sky
tangly matted hair
a shock of stringy dusty beard
purdahing twin-baby pregnant belly
male-turned-female breasts’ nipples peeping,
emerges like an earthworm
from the prehistoric hollow he had crept into as
he loathes light
ephemeral and illusory
loves dark
all-pervading and permanent

he is an absolute sucker
-not in that derogatory sense-
but in that he sucks well
there he sucks a cigarette
with his lugubrious lingam
hanging loosely down his crotch
like a shriveled drumstick
he has trained it in sucking
first water, then milk, then ghee
and in a climactic crescendo
quintessential fire of a fresh womanhood
but without falling as
he preaches the gospel on the public pee-wall
“Every drop of semen shed, has a part of your youth fade”
thus abiding by the ancient adage
“Renounce what you want to pounce”

the holy ash on his body is
his armor against everything worldly
once subverting the sexual law of man losing, woman attaining
he snapped his bond with arousal
to avoid even an adventitious fall
chose cave over consort
to worship Lingam –the archetypal phallus- uninterrupted
however the earthworm performs staggering feats
pulls a car, lifts a heavy stone
and faith fertilizes barren women.

cross-legged he sits at times
staking his tarnished trident beside
-from its tip glides down the sun
cuts itself into a crescent moon-
poised on one leg like a crane
he does penance at other times
smoking a legitimate ganja chillum,
the devotee of Nataraja
sways and swoons in frenzy
and rocks the world
with the tremors of his thumping feet
at still other times.

(2) Aghori Penis
Engraving on my mirror
The prehistoric stone inscriptions
On the slimy skin of the snake
Run over in the middle of a meandering road
Wriggling with the lust of a sex-starved nympho
I get astounded
And become
The eighth immortal on earth
A postmodern crucified Christ
Gauging the length of the nails driven in my palms

I share the relation of keetbhramar
With the rusty nails
Half-hammered into my blue hands and gout feet
And one day, I’m sure,
It will metamorphose me into
A half-steely Duryodhana who
Knew dharma but couldn’t live up
Knew adharma but couldn’t give up
- Would the same helplessness have got
The better of the tough warrior when
going naked to his blindfolded mother?
What nervous thoughts would have made him
cover his loins and
have them smashed with a foul blow
in the final feud? -

My aghori penis will be granted a place
In the serpent yoni then
And
With the hope of fixing its fangs in Nilakanth’s throat
And sucking the cosmic poison
It will coil round a lingam-shaped stone
For days, months, years and
Even centuries on end
Until it is not transformed into a hard relentless lingam
Until milk and water are not poured over it

But the Takshak
Let loose and later nailed down
In the palm of my left hand
Does not budge an inch
Even after being scalded
Like the female serpent sneaking up my mother’s back.
The pie-bald dog fucking the bitch of obstinacy
Does not growl scared of going to dogs by starvation

Meanwhile
I, too, creep into the well-hymened hollow of darkness
Covered in dense nakedness
To have a foul-mouthed slut
Do oral sex for me.

Wooing the Mistress of Translation

In the male-dominated Renaissance society, critics and artists comapred translation with a woman : faithful when they are homely and unfaithful when they are unfaithful. And i am surprised to learn that even in the allegedly post-modern society the pretenders to art and criticism does not seem to have altered their opinion diametrically. Actually translation and woman analogy obviously enough unearths the conspiracy towards summarily marginalizing this dynamic and challenging activity, one which sissies maintain an arms length from. Such patriarchal sissies prefer to have a homely, faithful wife who can heaten up his bed every night irrespective of the fact that she is ugly and offputting to begin with and secondly he does not love her at all. The only theoretical premise which facilitated their coitus is the idea of her faithfulness to him (the source text). On the other hand, the transcendeantal singnified of the source turns immemsely displeaased with the curvacious beauty of the mistress as there is no guarantee that she will remains faithful to him all his life.

Interestingly enough, this chauvinistic attitude of the source texts accurately represents the mindsets of the self-styled evaluators or proofreaders of translations which include publishers and their sidekicks. Quite ignorant about the complexities invovled on the act of translation, these machos become custodians of the source texts and whine their lungs out if the mistress avatar is presented to them. No doubt, they can't help leering at buxom beauty and wish that they would possess and ravish her. However, they keep up the moral facade of promoting faithful wife archetype and banish unfaithful mistresses from the domain of readable literature.

Idiom, or what these asses call diction (of poetry?), and semantic ambiguity are a few of the reasons that they memorize by keeping awake all night and cite in the morning as a character certificate to the translation. In so far as poetry is concerened maintenance of semantic ambiguity in the original is looked upon as a positive trait in the translation. Post structural theory has established it very clearly that any attempts at arriving at the right or definite, determinate meaning in a text are self-defeating, futile and political in nature. Thus if a translator cliams to know the meaning of intentional or unintentional ambiguity in the source text, he is either a fool or a seasoned politician. Further, if he tries to simplify or lucidify the ambiguity, he is perfoming nothing short of a rape on the translation. Secondly, the problem of idiom, or what they call diction, is certainly unsolvable to the best of my knowledge. What a translator can aspire for in such matters is the closest possible approximation of sorts. When i say closests, it can even be a thousand miles in terms of linguistic idenitcalities. These baffoons easily forget the fact that languages are located in space and time and operate in the socio-cultural exclusive globe that they formulate around them.

Well in face of such fancies and literary fantasies of my dear friends, the ghost of a seminal poet is waiting on the threshold of Gujarati Literature. And i am surprised to learn that my friendly excorcists are already on the way to welcome a fresh ghost from the same language into their literary slaughterhouse. May god bless the ghost who would already be rolling over in his grave.

Hum Bomb

Allen Ginsberg's poem with the above title perfectly put the government befuddled musings over devising or restoring a stringent law to bridle the terrorism into clear perspecive. While the terrorists have Ginsbergian clarity about Whom to bomb?, the Indian Goverment still flounders in the dilemma over identifying their target. To a government for which oscillation has become the signboard for strategic and administrative trajectory, the issue of unchecked terror attacks is definitely a haul over coals issue. The same UPA government that connived at the restoration of POTA until now, is shooting wind about devising a tough law to tackle terrorism today. It goes without saying that the touted law will have no kinship with POTA ot its distant cousin. Inspite of having clear proofs of local involvement in all recent terror attacks, the UPA is waxing eloquent over crushing the terror menace with iron hand. More than being fake, such claims sound disgusting in a fraidy cat democracy that take decades on end to give a stiff sentence to any crimimal offence, thus giving the criminal enough time to either plead to the President for a waiver of sentence or to tell his outfit to hijack people or planes to work out a rescue barter. Laws however stringent and effectual in nature cannot curb a problem as complicated and multi faceted as terrorism whether it be Terrorism in Punjab or in Kashmir. The mission of ending terrorism in Punjab earlier was realized by a flawless implementation of binary strategy: taking the locals in full confidence and hitting the terrorist nail right on the head. Mr. Ribeiro who was involved in curbing Punjab terrorism, recently revealed that there was not dearth of stringent laws then but unlil the military earned full faith of the natives who were willy-nilly supporting the terrorist, no law could work any wonder. This was what the most important thing to do. The next thing Mrs. Gandhi meritoriously did was to strike her 'iron fist' with full force onto terror hubs and terrorist once clearly identified. UPA government just as their predecessors failed on both this counts. Neither could they win the confidence of locals nor could they take the culprits behind the bar to task. Journlists and editors may name this attitude as thinking within the ballot boc but to me this is the most glaring example retarded thinking. Had they been a whit serious about ballot box they would have hanged the masterminds of Ahmedabad bombblasts within hours of their seizure. If at all they had the keenness to come to power again they would have paid an ear to the grumbling Muslims of post-Godhra carnage. The tragedy with Indian populace is that they don't have any promising party or politician to look up to. However as the famous adage goes "Every nation has the Government she deserves."