Nelly Furtado- Childhood Dreams
Two poems from Third World Studies that really spoke to me/touched me.
Kamala Das- An Introduction
I don’t know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them life
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with
Nehru. I am Indian, very brown, born in
Malabar, speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one. Don’t write in English they said,
English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak
Become mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half
Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It Is as human as I am human, don’t
You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my
Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing
Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it
Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is
Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and
Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech
Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the
Incoherent muttering of the blazing
Funeral pyre. I was child, and later they
Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs
Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair. When
I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask
For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the
Bedroom and closed the door. He did not beat me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.
The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me. I shrank
Pitifully. Then…I wore a shirt and my
Brother’s trouser, cut my hair short and ignored
My womanliness. Dress in sarees, be girl
Be wife, they said. Be embroiderer, be cook,
Be a quarreler with servants. Fit in. Oh,
Belong, cried the categorizers. Don’t sit
On walls or peep in through our lace-draped windows.
Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better
Still be Madhavikutty. It is time to
Choose a name, a role. Don’t play pretending games.
Don’t play a schizophrenia or be a
Nympho. Don’t cry embarrassingly loud when
Jilted in love…I met a man, loved him. Call
Him not by any name, he is every man
Who wants a woman, just as I am every
Woman who seeks love. In him…the hungry haste
Of rivers, in me…the ocean’s tireless
Waiting. Who are you, I ask each and everyone,
The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and,
Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself
If in this world, he is tightly packed like the
Sword in its sheath. It is I who drink lonely
Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns,
It is I who laugh, it is I who make love
And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying
With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner,
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys which are not yours,
No Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.
Makarand Paranjape- The Magic Lantern
In the darkened room,
The impoverished slide show was rigged up.
One of the walls, in pale pastel,
Serve as the screen. At the other end,
Beside the bed, I was put in charge
Or the old projector. A battered cardboard box
Overflowing with slides was dumped beside me—
‘There, see whatever you like…’
The other huddled near by, pulling up
Chairs from the dining room
You were such a chubby baby,
A real cuteums and cuddleums
Just like those fat and contented babies
On Lactogen tins. In your father’s
Arms, you looked like a smug kitten,
And ‘Kaka’, as you insisted on calling your father,
Himself was so handsome in his tweeds,
Almost like a film star. He had those smooth,
Appealing look.
There you are, a brat of five or six
With a mad gleam in your eyes, hair disheveled.
Both sisters, framed in their mischief, like
Two little monkeys. No wonder, you still
Break into giggles once in a while:
You always had that lunatic fringe.
Here are a few family portraits—some common
aunts
Ranged together with their babies. There’s my
Mother, behind, looking very pregnant,
Yes, it was me she was carrying—
And there you are, a baby again,
Nestling in the arms of your mom.
Our parents look marvelously young and energetic,
So confident, so full of like. And you and your cousins look grumpy and cross
Alike, as you sit on the terrace
Of your grandmother’s house in Pune.
The slide show ends abruptly:
The power’s failed again. I draw
The curtains aside and observed an altered world.
All your cousins are married now,
With children of their own.
I marvel at the passage of time and generation…
Are our lives going to be all that different?
Well, we had to stop reviewing the past
Before you reached adolescence. Your father said,
‘Anyway, there aren’t many slides of the girls
Grown up. I lost interest, you see,
And the hobby had become too expensive…’
So are we overtaken by life at some point
That we no longer have the luxury
Of sitting back and recording the passage of time.
Sharing your childhood has been a rather spooky
Privilege: an intimacy almost incestuous
And rather silly thoughts arise in my mind
Unawares: ‘So, all along you were growing up
For me, to be mine!’
Guiltily, I look around
And observe the furrowed faces
Of your parents, whole lives are no
So many framed negatives in the box.
Our parents…they are all old now,
Their generation had moved up into
The senior citizen’s slot, leaving the ambiguous
Pride of place to us. In them I see our future
Just as in their past is our present
We have extended our relationship back
Into childhood, before puberty, and sexuality.
Romance and passion pass away:
This, our present relationship
Is therefore not the norm, but merely a phase.
Yet this is what the world calls love,
And celebrates so exhaustively.
I realize, inadvertently, that our ties are
Deeper far…and then cleverly, I begin
To create a mythology for us. You were
Born, and then you called me down…
In your absence, your home has yielded
Its secrets to me one by one. While
Your mom and dad sleep in their bedroom,
I lie awake in your room on your childhood bed,
Possessed in more ways than one, by you.
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