The Story of My Birth

[ As told by my mother ] 

-          Manprasad Subba

 

I’d already overstayed, ensconced

In my young mother’s womb

Utterly refusing to come out

For some reasons unknown.  

 

It was the time when brooks and creeks

With excessive pride had swollen

While my poor mother’s abdomen

Had then so enormously grown.

 

Paddy-fields along the riversides

Were all hopelessly washed away.

And all the green hills and valleys

Were bruised brown and grey.

 

But I continued to stay in the womb

Defying the mighty god of time.

May be the subconscious deep in me

Foresaw my life to be coated with grime.  

 

When in this remote corner of earth

The autumnal breath was first felt,

My embryo was in its eleventh month

But still unwilling to leave that state.

 

One day I chose a dreamy moment

To go out on journey of life on earth.  

The poor young couple, my parents,

Tossed with anxiety awaiting my birth.         

 

As August gave way to September

My mother in pangs lay on the floor

To bring a new life out of her own!

A divine task she knew not before.  

 

For three long days and fretful nights

She had the bouts of gripping pain.

An old midwife came to see her,

A shaman performed the sapok chomen¹  

And as my sudden cry filled the hut

In chorus with the cock’s first crow,

With smiles on lips all eyes lit up, 

A drop of sweat fell from her brow

________________________       

1.       Sapok chomen -- A kind of ritual practiced in the Limbu ethnic group and performed by a shaman-priest for the well being of an expectant woman and the baby in the womb.

Bray and Barks : A Story

On the large public television screen

put up in the heart of the town

appeared a donkey, somewhat lean

but not too docile, and dull brown.  

A news-reporter with a microphone

provoked the animal standing alone,

eager and impatient to make it say  

something in the language of its bray.  

Annoyed, it directly faced the lens

and jerked its body for ten seconds

as if to shake off all its reticence

and the embarrassing diffidence.

But to everyone’s utter bewilderment

Its jerk caused cracks on the TV screen

that fell into pieces the very next moment

leaving behind only the borders of the screen.

And lo! Jumping out of the virtual world

the donkey stood now on the ground real, 

where all stood, the ground that’s tarred.

The audience were now virtually petrified

while many in horror retreated and cried.  

Standing at arm’s length from the viewers,

it swayed its head to the right and to the left.

Then looking straight ahead and a little upward  

it released a loud bray for one full minute.

Its bray, a little too harsh and audacious,

contrary to some enthusiastic expectations,

attracted the cacophony of ire from canines

of various hues and voices, sizes and spines.  

Leashed as well as unleashed and stray,

they all frantically barked and whined  

even at the faint echo of the bray.

To scare it away they all lined.

Unperturbed, the donkey walked indifferently

Past the crowd that stood gaping awfully

while the reporter with microphone in hand

still in the empty frame did gawkily stand.

He seemed imploring but no word could be heard

and the animal turning its head backward

brayed loudly as if it said, “O you super brain!  

“Why don’t you come out of the confining frame?”

On its head the southward sun shines

as it passes by the host of hostile canines.

And I, a witness to this strange spectacle,

hurriedly record the incident in these lines.

-------------------------------------------------------

 July 16 - 17,  2020.

Time will Come

(A Pandemic Song)

Time will come,

before we succumb to hopelessness

and we will be walking hand in hand

along the sidewalk of the busy streets

without mask on our faces,

going desultorily through the lanes

with our arms across each-other’s waists.

Time will come

when we will again step into a roadside eatery,

eat warm samosas or momos from one single plate,

and walking across the zebra-crossing,

we will assimilate like molecules

into the buzzing swirl of market place,

charged with more vibrancy

we will find our way through ever-swelling crowd,

get onto an over-crowded bus

or a fuming and spluttering Bikram Tempo

to reach some other part of the city.

[From a corner of our vocabulary 

the word 'Sanitizer' will have evaporated

without leaving even a faint trace of its odour.]  

Time will come

when we will find ourselves in a jam-packed stadium

watching a football match or a cricket match,

you cheering shrilly for one team

and I shouting support for the other.

As the final whistle goes or the last ball is bowled

we will have already been in high and low tide.

Or in an open space away from the stadium,

abandoning ourselves on the dusty ground like many others,

we will be enjoying the sleight of hands of a street musician.

Raising our fists high up 

in a surging and boiling protest rally

we will be shouting slogans thunderously.

  

Time will come

when we will be joining wedding parties

vigorously shaking hands and hugging each other.

Drawing aside from the assemblage,

some invitees in pairs will be whispering intimate words

inhaling each-other’s breath.

Time will come

when we will be gathering in the neighbourhood

where death has occurred,

paying the deceased our last respect,

bidding him / her a decent final farewell. 

And on the same day in the evening,

we will be in a birthday party

singing in chorus – Happy Birthday to you !

+

But for now 

let us just be virtually happy 

for our virtual meeting

that hangs in-between illusion and reality.  

And who knows

even the day we have been waiting for

may just be a virtual one?    

____________

July 12,  2020.

I Can’t Breathe…

-          Manprasad Subba

George,

the three words you laboriously uttered

before you ceased to be  

beneath the avalanche of snow-white knee,

now thundering in the sky of America and everywhere,

loudly echoing even in the southern hemisphere --

I Can’t Breathe…

And the streets in chorus are singing the dirge-

I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe…

The difference between your neck and his knee ---

your neck was black and all the time throbbing with fervor  

while his knee weighed down as hard and cold as white boulder.

Your blackness shone like a smooth black stone image from antiquity

while under the cover of his whiteness

some blackest designs were lurking.

His white skin is not as white as your teeth

that would shine bright whenever you grinned,  

nor as much white as your bones under the black skin,

nor as white as the sclera of your eyes.

O Big Floyd,

we’d seen all your soul’s brightness

when you vigorously sang rap in Houston.

You rapped in colourless voice

gushing out through the same throat

that the cop’s white boulder knee pinned down.

Today

every single word in black ink says -

if the whiteness of avalanche

falls so crushingly on the neck of time

I can’t breathe ..

And the words have come out of the confinements of the books

rallying round you, O George Floyd,

singing dirge in chorus – I can’t breathe…

Lockdown

-          Manprasad Subba

Hadn’t been accustomed to the word lockdown,

that sounds burdensome and makes us frown.

I am rather familiar with the word lock-up;   

have seen innocents also falsely locked up.

On some occasions I, too, nearly landed in the lock-up,

but for a leader’s favours the matters were hushed up. 

The smart guy’s allegiance to the party in power

made all in the locality astonishingly cower. 

But it’s the phrase ‘lock-out’ that is too insolent

standing akimbo in the way of the innocents.  

On seeing this, the tea-bushes turn stupefied

and all the trails across the garden go to hide.   

Only a giant Lock with cold indifference hangs

from the nose of factory gate that’s deaf to pangs.

The factory wears the look of a closed museum.

The manager’s bungalow keeps deafening mum.

Mute goes the powerful vocal cords of the siren    

and the garden with all its greenness looks barren.  

And the green-gold workers, without the siren’s whine,

are suddenly overwhelmed by the super-surplus time.

Then the poor folks are at their wit’s end

knowing nothing at all how to spend

such an overwhelming wealth of time

beneath which quietly they lie supine.    

They are haunted by the ghost of the Lock

that defies being exorcised by the endless talk.

This recurs every year when dry season is near.

Yet to them these tea-bushes are truly so dear.  

(But why should these lines play such a rhyme

while telling about their too harsh a time?

 But what if rhyme forms on its own accord

and the footfalls of rhythm want to be heard?)

   

And now this ‘Lockdown,’ so unfamiliar a word,

has come to distance individuals from the herd.

Unlike the notorious lock-up or lock-out 

this Lockdown swells with the stories of doubt.

But Lockdown is the only, only weapon left

with human beings who’re now suddenly bereft

of their craft, cleverness and super intelligence

and they’re now piteously pushed to the fence.   

----------------------------------------------------

May 02,  2020.

 

  

To My Friends Far and Near

-         Manprasad Subba

Hello Tolang didi, are you still in Wuhan?

I believe you’ve survived the most dreaded virus

as you did the trauma of deportation

from this side of the Himalaya over to the Great Wall.

(That was but when you were in your early teens.)

The virus that sneaks through the ancient Wall

and strides all the mountains and the oceans on this planet

says nothing about your innocence traumatized during the war.

But my memory of you is greater than the war and this pandemic.

*

Dear Norbert,

you must be safe in the isolation ward of your own art-studio,

depicting in somber colour the monstrosity

of Corona on the canvas of your widening forehead.

Is your present home Madrid any safer than your native Munich?

The pain of mighty Spain is heard so loud everywhere.

I wonder how those street artists are doing under lockdown.

I miss your letters that would smell the blended breath of German and Spanish.

*

Alberto,

I haven’t heard of you since the pandemic outbreak in Italy.

You recently owned a home in the outskirts of Rome.

But all I am concerned about is your well being.

I imagine you looking out of your dormer window

down on the street lined with hundreds of coffins

Well, you have the formidable hope of redemption in Pope.

But the moment you wake up, pray to yourself in isolation.

*            

Dr. Rowland, my poet friend,

you, who keep shuttling between Ireland and Australia,    

haven’t responded my e-mail I wrote last evening

and your silence gives me eerie feelings.

Are you okay? Where are you now?

In Ireland? In Australia?

Or in Istanbul where Turkish translation of your poetry book

was supposed to be launched?

But the ubiquitous virus is everywhere every time in wait

If only the mantra of poetry could ward it off!

If only the music could charm it into an eternal slumber!

*

Alex, you must have slipped into isolation of your own cosy Sonnetina.

Your Infinite City, with one hundred small cottages of Sonnetinas,

is far safer than the cities of Sidney, Melbourne, Brisbane  

When everything appears to be extremely finite

I take refuge in your beautiful Infinite City.

*

Hi Bharati Gautamjee, Govardhan bhai, Hari Adhikarijee,

I hear the loud bubbling of the great melting pot of America

Alarming is the sound from across the Atlantic and Arabian Sea

So vibrant you all were a couple of weeks ago

Now your vibrancy is quarantined in each concrete pigeon-hole

O Mr. President!

Befuddle the Virus in the labyrinth of your words

so that it die of fatigue.

O my Dears! Stay safe, stay safe, stay safe.

*

And you, Remy and Bhushan,

just a few hours’ drive from my isolation centre,

but the distance all the while distancing from itself,

distancing endlessly…  

And we were denied even our humble wish

To pay our last respect to Purnima ma’am who expired last week.

*

And Sudesh, Diksha and many others like you

now laid off in some corners of Bengalore, Mumbai, Delhi…

hanging Trishanku in the space,

paper kites stuck on the microwave towers,

I’m sorely worried about you all

But we are in war

and in war and love everything is fair…

Take care of yourselves is all I can say at the moment.  

_______________________________________

-         April the 14^th, 2020.

[Infinite City is the collection of 100 sonnetinas by Alex Skovron,  a Melbourne based Australian poet.

Sonnetina is 10-line experimental form of sonnet propounded by Skovron.]

Notes on the names or the characters used in the poem “To My Friends Far and Near”:

1.        Tolaang : The name of a Chinese girl, then living at Pulbazar, Darjeeling, who along with her parents, was deported to China in the wake of the Indo-China war in 1962.

2.        Norbert : Full name Norbert Ostendorf, a German painter, later migrated to Spain making Madrid his permanent home, is a friend of mine. We used to correspond to each other for many years, but later working as a German tutor to the Spanish students, he gradually lost his ability to express in English, and the correspondence between us stopped altogether.

3.        Alberto : An imaginary name for an Italian character.

4.        Dr. Rowland : Full name Dr. Robyn Rowland, a poet who divides her time between Ireland and Australia, a friend of mine since 2010 when we met in the World Poetry Festival, Calcutta.

5.        Alex : Full name Alex Skovron, a well-known Australian poet, a friend of mine since 2010. His book Infinite City, mentioned twice in the poem, is a collection of his 100 sonnetinas. Sonnetina is a 10-line shortened form of sonnet, an experiment by Alex.

6.        Bharati Gautam, Goberdhan (Puja), Hari Adhikari are well known literary persons from Nepal, now based in America.

7.        Mr. President is obviously the present President of the USA.

8.        Remy and Bhushan do represent some of my young close friends in the plains down south of the Darjeeling Hills. .

9.        Purnima Ma’am : Mrs. Purnima Pradhan, wife of Dr. Kumar Pradhan, a noted historian and critic. She passed away a week after the lockdown was enforced nationwide to contain the deadly virus .

       10.  Sudesh, Diksha are imaginary names representing those migrant workers from the Darjeeling Hills   

An Unwritten Poem  

-         Manprasad Subba

You ask me to write a poem for you

when all the words are dissociated from one another

and each of them has gone into isolation

Not a line takes form and I am utterly out of wit

The words that busily walked along the streets and lanes,

the words that commuted in buses and trains,

buzzed in and around the markets and shopping malls,

sometimes took to the streets in protests,

have now gone quietly into their dungeons

The words that sweated for their daily wages

the words that the parks and beaches teemed with

the words I was one with since time immemorial

are today quarantined in their individual cages

Now, how can I string lines with those words

That would convey my intimate feelings?

At this age of intricate interdependence

these poor words have been cruelly separated,

not like the islands that are constantly caressed by the hands

of murmuring sea-waves from the other shores

But these words are rendered lonely islands

with voids in between them

and light-years away from each other

utterly deprived of warm touch

How can a poem be born in such a lifeless void?

The Facebook wall invites, too, to write something

when each of the words is mercilessly exiled in distant isolation

In fact, I want to write poem

not only in the language you and I understand

but also in Chinese, Italian, Persian,

Spanish, German, French and many others…

But wherever I turn to I see the words quarantined

with lower half of their faces hidden in masks

So, my Love,

please, accept this blank sheet of paper

and feel upon it the heartbeat of a poem left unwritten

Or, stare with your eyes closed

at the blank screen of my Facebook wall

which is but the dark blank space

left by those poor departed souls

*********************************************

[Dedicated to those who succumbed to Covid-19 and also to those suffering from the same dreaded pandemic]