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…