As I hear news about the serial blasts in Assam, I am reminded about something similar that happened in Hyderabad… yes, serial blasts…
I am publishing the words of a good friend, Parnab Mukherjee.
CHORUS: I took the shortest route through Belief’s sad country
where archangels. on the Word’s command, slew my word
Aga Shahid Ali
CHORUS:
Please don’t slice the sky
Dip your dissenting finger in this pock-marked landscape
Make Che a little more than your T-shirt
Yes,
it is secular list
so said a political leader in Rabindra Bhawan
after the Hyderabad blasts
yes, one of the many in politics
who feasts on that old rhetoric of “our” and “their” divide
for heaven’s sake let’s not dig this scrutiny and surveillance trenches anymore
somewhere cowards who have programmed
a Prince quartz clock
to let go at 7.40pm at Lumbini Park and 7.50pm in Koti
must have drawn up their private secular lists
too
Sir,
I am looking at the list
and feeling ashamed
you must have a self-congratulatory smile on your face
CHORUS: I don’t think artists can avoid being political. Artists are proverbial canaries in the coalmine.
When we stop singing, it’s a sure sign of repressive times ahead
Theresa Bayer
And looking at the images of photographers shooting the lonely shoe
and also the passerby who keeps flower at Gokul Chat
Yes,
the list is out approximately 45 killed
or rather between 42 and 45
approximate lists for approximate human beings
about 60 injured
numbers do matter in preparation of secular lists
don’t they?
I know how the stake knife is sharpened
and how the little blood clot forms at the tip of this knife
I know how blasts rip apart our consciousness
how bodies fall like nine-pins
how dead bodies roll on the floor
gets collected in a heap
before you throw a white sheet over them
I know how we die
how we eat splinters
as they explode and implode
how bombs enter and change the nature of our gullet
I know
that’s why I bleed
We all know
that’s why we all bleed
Gokul Chat in Koti
Lumbini Park overlooking Hussainsagar lake
series of blue benches
headless bodies, legless bodies, lonely shoe, pool of blood, buckets of blood,
new blood, old blood, stale blood, trickle, downpour, drops…
all kinds of blood make dying look so easy
dying was never difficult
as bombs ripped apart our consciousness
claiming, reclaiming, declaiming
at the end of it all add a “y” to make the word blood
bloody
I mean add a “why”
WHY
mangled real
mangled surreal
Time kills. Time heals. Gaping old scars. And the eyes that grow inside the scars.
I know now why cold blood is called cold blood
hot blood is hot blood
I know that beyond redemption
forgiveness
hell
there lies a zone called
burning ghat
burial ground
crematorium
and out there somebodies become some bodies
motionless
still
stone tablets that proclaim that you once lived
I know so I bleed
We all know so we all bleed
I can see that you see my wounds
And you can see that you don’t see yours
Small doses of blood
that turns into experimental playground of dynamite sticks
Neogel 90 with ammonium nitrate
I know how the stake knife is sharpened
how the edge drips with blood
how blood takes it’s own shape
how we realise that we bleed
that I bleed
why hot blood is hot and cold blood is cold
yes
there’s still this bomb that never went off in the Dilkhushnagar area
then the saga
of
half-burnt bodies,
half-baked hands,
half roasted legs,
half-barbecued upper parts,
half-fried lower
would have had more names
Names do matter to those who draw up secular list
CHORUS:
A secret turning in us
makes the universe turn
Head unaware of the feet,
and feet head. Neither cares.
They keep turning
Jalal-uddin Rumi
blood bandage
bandage blood
What do i do as a theatre person?
sentences after this are never straight
they become curved, crooked, grammatically incorrect with disorienting imageries
sentences that float mid-air
sentences with lost alphabets,
missing vowels
sentences that rebel
each phrase slugging it out with another
sentences fight
sentences meander
sentences tell me
about the sentence that I cannot write
at the relative anonymity of the drawing room and chat rooms
we still shed crocodile tears
smile crocodile smiles
and write crocodile small cheques for solidarity fund
Hyderabad,
I can see a pile of solo heads becoming the neck of the Necklace Road
headless, neckless, limbless, bodiless spectre
visit me
in my insomnia
I can see death in conversation with dead
deliverance in conversation with hellish redemption
And life re-asserting itself amongst the mounting stockpile of private sorrows
a pool of dried tears
an art gallery installation of small wine goblets filled with red-ink to signify blood
and as artistic tributes flow in
Buddha laughs
Buddha smiles
at the Hussainsagar lake
dead people grapple with the memories of dying
the lonely shoe on the road
the lonely pair of glasses
red stains amongst the white sheets used in the morgue
all add upto the jigsaw
why
who
why
whowhy
who
whywho
why
why so much blood
as whys multiply
poem becomes a cliche, death becomes numbers
the lonely shoe is packed up as evidence
it will remain as one
till the time
it withers
fall apart
flying comments
fly like papers all over
typically out of a Guru Dutt frame
CHORUS:
The fences have grown to a jungle
now how can I tell my children
where we came from
Tenzin Tsundue
raw skin brushes against the sky
open wounds
does not want to be covered
Hello Hyderabad
the new and the old
the one with three colour-halftone-zinc
and the one with digital
the hi-tech
and the sepia
the liberalised new distancing
from the old
the new trekkers and the old
ones who lost way on the zigzagbad
all of you
all of us
and most importantly all of them
It’s time for another a play
we have to invoke Cherabandaraju
and talk about the otherness of the body
locate Buddha smiles, lonely shoe, dead sentences, dead captions, dead lines
please don’t talk about secular lists
sir,
death is a death
ashes are ashes
tombstones are tombstones
crocodile tears are crocodile tears
lop-sided development between the old and the new parts exist
any death is a death
any loss of life orchestrated by those who bulldoze humanity
must be condemned
and in our extreme nowhereness
let’s just raise a silent toast to
our shamelessness
And be ashamed
CHORUS:
And be ashamed
I have been associated with Parnab during my theatre experience. An excellent orator, an artiste and a great person. I had done a play “The Otherness of the body” – a performance based on a series of poems by Cherabandaraju and other Telugu writers interspersed with some of his texts
This was a piece of his production “Finding Hamlet”, and was written immediately after the August 2007 Hyderabad serial blasts.