A poem inspired by a little girl

Papa

“Mama, when will Papa come?”
“He will come soon”, she says
and looks out of the window
of her father’s house to watch
She has returned, a stranger.

“Does papa love us?”
“Yes, he loves us a lot”, she says
glancing at the wedding band on her
middle finger —
Even gold pales with time.

“Will Papa send us money?”
“Yes, pots of it,” and she
pushes back the yellowing strap
peeping out of the neck of her
frayed silk blouse —
Silk shines but does not last.

“Will Papa bring me toys?”
“Yes, a boxful of them”, and
she looks at her brother’s son
playing with the toy train
forbidden to her daughter —
Toys are prone to break.

“When did Papa go?”
“Only two months ago.”
She is happy that her
daughter has not yet
learnt to count —
It is difficult to count days.

“Why does auntie give apples to
Sonu and not me?”
“Your Papa will bring you apples” —
and lies rest in the vermilion
mark on her forehead —
Some marry only a dot of lies.

“When will we have
our own house,
“Your Papa will come and take us to
our own house,” she says and draws
a house on her daughter’s slate —
It is easy enough to draw a house.

“What will you do when your Papa comes?”
The little girl looks up, surprised —
since when did her mother learn
to ask questions? —
And she answers slowly:
“Mama, Papa will not come.”

A new poem

The Seventh Decade
A poem by Nirupama Dutt
The Seventh Decade
had a mood all its own
poetry was always around
The shoulder bore a
khadi Jhola and not a laptop
In this jhola were placed
the rudiments of life
Wounded dreams of revolution
Some thoughts borrowed
Some one’s own
A torch of a cigarette or two
and a Red ‘kerchief too…

Walking along mile
after mile, after mile
Turning the wheels
of the cycle was the
Hallmark of this age
No one was in a hurry
to make money,
Build a house
Buy new cars
and fill them with gas
Life was not too bad
So what if we were rather broke?

My friends of the Seventh Decade
Hummed the poems of Faiz
Arguing on the plays of
Becket and Brecht
and wished to turn
into a play or a poem
Poetry was very close to life
The pen was our pride
When it came to wooing girls
boys had the mantle of Marxism
If that did not work
they fell back on verse
The Seventh Decade was
full of wanderlust…

Well you are right in saying
it was not all hunky dory
but then that was our story
We knew how to live and die
We did not go seeking Gurus
to teach us the art to live
and the art to die
‘We’ was the key word
I , me, mine were less heard
That time we were not so alone
A full caravan moved along
The Seventh decade had
a mood all its own…

Evening in Chandigarh

This evening I will sit
with a few friends
Down a couple of rums
and turn a wee bit drunk
we will start with
talking of Punjab
and paste on the wall
shadows of friends
alive or lost
in a collage of sorts
then we will hum
a sad verse
by Surjit Patar
when the room
turns hazy with the
smoke of memories
we will move on to
folk songs
our long-haired friend
who is to be found
these days in
Kumar Vikal’s poems
will sing a song
of longing and love
Then my turn will come
I will play clown
with much aplomb
mimic a few and
crack a bawdy joke
about the Whites
friends will tire
of laughing and
our `Sufi’ friends
will want something else
Suddenly Sanjeev Gaur
the reporter will come
spinning a yarn or two
he will weave a new story
on Rani Balbir’s phulkari
Barnala’s flowing beard
Or Vijyantimala’s sari
Every one will relax
Kamal Tewari will
stuff his mouth
with a tobacco paan
and ask his Paramjit
to make him some tea
Then he will relent
to sing a Pankaj Mullick song
Music will fill the air
and he will be just a little high
Taking full advantage
I will intervene
and become the
leading lady of a play
never to be staged
recite some funny lines from
your story and mine
that is listed as
yet another unhappy
affair in the city gazetteer

Yes, this is how I will
spend this evening
and move on to
a new morn…

*This poem has the names of poets, celebs and others from the old gang.

Granny's pea-hens

A poem for my Nani who was married 9 and died at 31. Also for my mother who lived to tell me many tales till paralysis struck her at the age of 80 and then she went into the good night inch by inch at the age of 86. My daughter too who is only 22.

It is not necessary
for a mother’s voice to be musical
when it comes to
singing lullabies
Perhaps some magic
makes the voice
musical when it
reaches the tiny ears

So I dare to sing
lullabies to you,
My little girl
Sometimes I sing of
Butter, bread and sugar
Sometimes of the
old man with a whisker
Or sometimes I tell
the tale of the naughty horse
When you grow up
you will know
there are many tales
within a tale
just like the Russian
wooden doll

Lullabies too hide
many deep sorrows
in happy words
And dream of
the impossible
Singing me lullabies
My mother would want
me to be a barrister
booming in the courts
Or she would want
me to married to
Some raja of Dilli
And live in palace
that would have
a staircase of silver
and doors of gold


Now I sometimes wonder
What case did my mother
Want me to represent
in the courts?
What did she think
of gold, silver and rajas
Perhaps she had not
read history or
she would not have
sought for me a match
with a Dilli Raja

When you grow up
you will try to find
meaning to the
childhood lullaby
and song, you may
find me all wrong
Right now you love to hear
the song in which
black thieves steal
Granny’s pea-hens
And laugh at mention of the
fat policeman and
The stingy granny
But you will find
grannies are never
miserly, they drench the
deserts of the world
with streams of their milk
and in thirsty homes
they fill the wells
with their blood

A time will come
when you will look
for a peacock to
take you away
and then you will know
that all thieves
are not black
and all police men not fat


These days you
enjoy the birthday song
in which little girls
become fairies in the sky
memsahib’s shadow dances
and bade sahib’s
hat flies very high

You may blame me
one day for singing
funny songs of
peacocks, thieves and sahibs
Grow up girl and I hope
You will sing songs that your
your mother and granny
could not sing or
did not even know of…

Some more Poems

The Accused

She was the accused
handcuffed and brought
to the court
The prosecutor screamed
Me Lord, she is at fault
Over and again
she swam like a blind fish
into nets made of words
She lifted people from the earth
and set them up on
pedestals in the sky
She forgot that the human race
is not made up of characters
from poetry and fiction…
The judge allows her
to have her say but
she is silent
She will not say anything now
but after serving her term
of imprisonment
she will file a suit
against those words, stories
and poems
which beckoned her with
the promise of truth
and left her to be handcuffed and accused

Moving on

The hair that I was growing
so that the children
of your village
do not call me a Kali Mem
have been cut short
once again by the
Chinese hair-dresser

That unworn salwar-kameez
has been pushed into
a dark corner
of the wardrobe
behind the rows
of pants and shirts

Putting away the knitting-needles
on which hung
your unfinished pullover
my fingers are wedded
to the typewriter

I have told the dream of
a daughter with
your sharp nose and
small beady eyes
to not trouble me anymore
Taking out the cigarettes
from my bathroom
I blow rings of smoke
in the Coffee House
and notice that you
are not the only man
in this world…

Two of my favourite poems

I turn Vikal into a sparrow and Alok into a woodpecker

Sparrow

It is not easy to write
A poem on a sparrow
To write poems on birds
It is best to meet
Salim Ali or at least
Read his books
For only he can tell you
Which sparrow is a foe
And which one a friend
Otherwise an ordinary
Person may
Spend a lifetime
Just figuring out
Which sparrow is a foe
And which one a friend.
_Kumar Vikal

Theatre

There is no end to
A park’s bench
It just rests in a park
But is present even outside
The city
There is no end to
Lights on the bridge
My night is full of them
Even in the face of death
I will recall them
Have seen the long beaked
Wood-pecking bird
Just twice or thrice
In the past ten years
May see it again
This time in a theatre
There is no end to
Theatre Theatre is not the
Name of just one building.
_Alok Dhanva

Poems translated from the Hindi by Nirupama Dutt

An interview with Nirupama Dutt

Nirupama Dutt with Manjit Tiwana, Pal Kaur and Manju

"Successor of Manjit, Daughter of Amrita"

September 1, 2006

Nirupama Dutt on poetry and prejudice, Partition and Punjab – and the charge of being a poet of experience rather than the imagination. In conversation with Arundhathi Subramaniam

AS: “Such are the constraints of/ poetesses of Amrita Pritam’s age/ A cigarette is their only solace!” I’m thinking of that line from your poem, ‘Laughing Sorrow’. What are the challenges, in your opinion, of belonging to a generation of post-Independence Punjabi women poets? Have you had to consciously carve out a creative space for yourself in the mainstream?

ND: The curious scenario of Punjabi literature (and this would apply to other Indian languages too) was very male-dominated, with one major exception – that of Amrita Pritam. Otherwise, men would only promote mediocre writing by women and these women would be part of their camp – and very often their bedmates! A woman writing on her own, publishing and getting recognition was not something they could digest. A major talent like Amrita Pritam had to suffer many prejudices. After her, one major poet that Punjabi has had is Manjit Tiwana, now 62, and she was always a target of male wrath – largely for speaking out as a woman. In the world of Punjabi letters I see myself as a successor of Manjit and a daughter of Amrita… .
I started publishing in Punjabi, the first break coming in Amrita Pritam’s Nagmani magazine in 1980. Before that I wrote and published in English.
I came from a world that was larger than Amrita or Manjit’s. Being some kind of a ‘star’ journalist, I was ‘empowered’ and had tremendous support from my mother and other members of the family, and was also a beneficiary of a western education. Yet what I shared with Amrita and Manjit was the ‘pain’ of being a woman and constantly struggling in a hostile world.
My poetry was thus more open, fearless, and I was conscious not to see myself as a ‘victim’. I wrote less [than they did] with much of my energy being taken up by journalism. I published my book in 1995 – Ik Nadi Sanwali Jahi. This collection of poetry made an impact. Seminars were organised by different groups (to which I was invited) and a new voice was welcomed. It also got me the Delhi Punjabi Akademi award. In poetry, I feel the poet just has to write and if the poems have power, the mainstream will come to you. And if it doesn’t in your lifetime, never mind. For literature is a long process. The most important thing is that it be written.
Consciously, I tried to move into spaces left untouched by those who came before me – both male and female. In fact, I wormed my way into Punjabi literature. And now I am there to stay, with a lot of love coming my way. A letter by some student of an obscure village about my poem makes my day.

AS: You are working on a book on the post-Partition social history of Punjab. How do you think the geo-politics of the region has shaped your poetry?
ND: The geo-politics of the region have shaped my destiny as they did that of many others. Partition becomes a major point of reference. And I was the daughter of a family that had migrated from Lahore. Much was lost (during the trauma of Partition) so education for the daughters became important, as well as economic independence. During my recent visits to Pakistan, I found out that the ‘Dutts’ were the original inhabitants of Lahore – and felt happy that I was an original Lahoran. Literature is all about roots and wings.

AS: Would you like to say something about literary influences that have been important to you? Have there been any specific writers — Punjabi, or otherwise — who have moulded your poetic practice?

ND: I love reading poetry. And my youth was steeped in poetry – English, Urdu, Hindi and later Punjabi. As for the structure of my poems, I have been influenced by two male poets – Kumar Vikal of Hindi and Surjit Patar of Punjabi – but the thoughts and experiences (that my poetry expresses) have been entirely my own. Punjabi critics say that I am a poet not so much of imagination as of experience.

AS: Your poetry seems to combine a note of elegy with a strong sense of female agency and empowerment.

ND: Yes, I am proud of being a woman and I have always tried to write like a woman.

AS: How do you see the role of the personal in poetry? Would you consider your work to be consciously confessional?

ND: The personal is an important part of my politics and my literature. Confessional? Here I’m tempted to copy Oscar Wilde and say that I have nothing but my originality to confess! AS: You practise both poetry and short fiction. What for you are the challenges and rewards of each genre? ND: Short fiction and personal prose have brought me a larger audience and appreciation but it is penning a poem, and penning it well, that gives me joy.

June, 2006