A red ombrelle

From archives :) Feel like rewriting it, so doing so.

Love is ageing
Its hair; grey and falling

A dry awakening
after getting wet
in a thunderstorm's show'rs.

But still, sometimes
when no one is looking
love is a red umbrella
behind which your pink lips…!

Sunita Singh's new translation of the above :
प्यार अब बूढ़ा हो रहा है
उसके बाल, सफेद और झड़ रहे हैं

एक शुष्क जागृति
तूफानी बारिश की बौछारों में भीगने के बाद

लेकिन फिर, कभी कभी
जब आस पास कोई देख नहीं रहा होता है
तब प्यार एक लाल छतरी होता है
और उसके पीछे ‌
तुम्हारे गुलाबी होंठ...

New transcreation of older version by Satbir Chadha

प्रेम की तो उम्र हो चली

उस आँधी ओ बौछार में
तर बतर हो कर

भीगी सी नीँद के बाद के
कोहरे, और धवले केसु

जैसे पतझड़ के रहते
ख़ुश्क सवेरे का एहसास

फिर भी अकेले में कभी कभी
पनाह लेता हूँ
तेरे गुलाबी अधरों के
शोख़ साये में

Ampat Koshy

April 29, 2018

A poem of mine translated into Hindi by Sunita Singh

Third one by her. It had appeared in English in Learning & Creativity-Silhouette Literature & Cinema

Honoured :)

Love is aging
Its hair is grey and falling
Love is a dry awakening
after getting wet
in the showers of a thunderstorm
but still, sometimes
when no one is looking
love is a red umbrella
behind which your pink lips meet…

प्यार अब बूढ़ा हो रहा है
उसके बाल कम हो रहे हैं और सफेद भी!
तूफानी बारिश में भीगने के बाद
प्यार अब एक शुष्क आभास है!
लेकिन
कभी -कभी जब कोई नहीं होता है
तब प्यार एक लाल छतरी बन जाता है
जिसके पीछे तुम्हारे गुलाबी लब मिलते हैं!

If they were ever there

The light of every star
reaches me
faster
than the light
of your eyes
gone away, my love
into the past, now
if they were ever there

The cry of every curlew
circles
the lorn beach
far more times
in echoes
than your moving lips
loth, anymore, to say
the words
I long to hear

This must be the night
where there, it is still
bright
but its silver
shine
in the ripples
of my lake
is as if just to say
things are not what they seem
as reflections and shadows
are like kisses in my dreams
and memories are only
your whispers
drowned
in screams.

Some random thoughts on this poem En Route To Bangladesh etc

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56919/en-route-to-bangladesh-another-crisis-of-faith?fbclid=IwAR1UUvMwMVXnjd141TvIDaKmSa1JAHZxXqWeRu_eqGl8wY0mUEzOm5KB4JA

Ampat Koshy I can link it with Dickinson and Henry James but the most interesting word here for me is star, suggesting that the crisis is this strange feeling that she has become a kind of a 'Jew,' as well as more fortunate, and going back is almost like going to a concentration camp, and the star also refers to the American flag, hence the title. The blood makes it feminine and the muscle is the background which is where there is a gender contrast. There is an identity crisis as well as faith crisis in the poem.


As regards gender her views are well put but typical. She is stared at and not surprised when she stares back to find the men do not drop their eyes but continue to stare back. She sees men as a dark, damp horde - meaning a threatening presence. This refers to them as predatory.

As regards race, she is caught in the presence of knowing she is taught to privilege the whites, blonde hair, but fighting against it, yet, finding herself unable any longer to be just body like others in the queue

Regarding identity she is torn apart between the ancient that has now become cliched of the Arabic past, the golden leaves, the blue perfume bottle etc., and also the American which is the Coke and the Lays. This is very Jamesian as Henry James compares the decadence of Europe against the innocence and naivete/foolishness of America as in the lady Isabel Archer in Portrait of a Lady and Chad in Ambassadors. But here it is more ambiguous. Also the refrain of because and the hyphens remind me, rightly or wrongly, of Dickinson's famous poem Because I could not stop for death, making the transit point like a carriage and Death being also like Tagore's Homecoming, a bit, a mystery in that it may be life in death, to put it in Coleridgean and Yeatsian terms.


Regarding faith, she is in a crisis and I already dealt with it. America has tried to deracinate her but affected her most in this matter of faith which is why this poem verges more on rebellious and blasphemous according to me than the faithful.

But the most interesting parts of the poem for me are not the questions of gender, identity, race, class and faith but of her ambivalent relationship to her own femininity or sexuality - shown by wanting a hair of the blonde woman, and the licking off of the fat and salt from her lips of chips, the cup near the seat, where thighs have sat, hers and hers and hers and body that is not like her body but unashamedly body - these and her ability to describe so beautifully make her poem a feat to admire than to analyze.




https://www.poesi.as/cv18020501.htm?fbclid=IwAR1chjwoWGG6TVqcOR23VXSeVIfHhOFdM4F7GsJVvjJIpQ2ATe6Z-Ltj5UA