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The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City: An exclusive excerpt
BOMBAY by Akhil Katyal (b. 1985) .
Look at the VT in the mornings for the rush of Bombay,
look at the black ocean at night for the hush of Bombay.
If you haven't been on the Evening Local from Bandra
to Virar, then you haven't yet felt the crush of Bombay.
You carry back the sea-gulls, the breakers, the waves,
you wear the sea like skin, feeling the brush of Bombay.
There was once 'a tower whose top was in the heavens' like
Antilia, off Peddar Road: Bible warns The Plush of Bombay.
When his eyes met mine, the Local slowed down at Dadar,
the whole world halted, turned red in that blush of Bombay.
You would never, Akhil, like your kind before you, 'leave the
streets of Delhi,' then why like a lover, do you gush, of Bombay.
.
MARINE DRIVE by Ranjit Hoskote (b. 1969)
There's a colour whose name I've lost
to the ash fleece of cloud, the grackled light
of a monsoon sky seesawing in the gaze,
unframed, a trap for the sailboat wheeling in the bay:
this colour that hovers between tenses,
some call it violet, others squeeze their eyes shut
when it surges through slate-grey folds of water,
either not-yet or too-late, never tame at your heel.
But look, the rocks are coming into view,
dazed seals resurrected from the waves.
The tide's worked itself loose of the shore
and drifted out. There are no explanatory notes.
What's left behind is not the remainder.
There's a colour whose name I cannot speak.
.
MINI INDIA by Thangjam Ibopishak (b. 1948)
(Translated from the Manipuri by Robin S Ngangom)
Have you heard a parrot speak Urdu?
I have, in my friend Zahiruddin's house.
A mynah talking in Hindi?
Even that, in my friend Nimai Singh's house.
What about an ass reciting Sanskrit slokas?
Yes, very often in Agya Gokul Shashtri's garden.
A cat speaking Bangla, meow meow, ki bolo ki bolo
A dog mouthing English
A goat conversing in Meiteilon?
Yes, inside Tomaal Chatterjee's house
In Professor Haokip's drawing room
In Chaoba Meitei's cowshed.
They all live in neighbouring houses
They can comprehend each other
They exchange cuisines
They don't lynch people for cuisine;
They befriend each other, lovingly like a garland;
This neighbourhood is a tiny Bharat, a mini India.
.
THE FLUTE by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
(Translated from the Bengali by Subhoranjan Dasgupta)
Kinugoala Lane:
A two-storeyed house:
An iron-grilled room on the ground floor
Facing the street.
Crumbling wall,
Peeling mortar,
Rain-stained patches,
A picture—removed from a cloth-piece—
Of the Success-Bestowing Ganesh
Stuck on the door.
Another being shares my room
Covered by the same rent—
A lizard.
The only difference:
He doesn't lack food.
Pay: Twenty-four rupees,
A junior clerk in a mercantile office.
I'm fed by the Duttas
For coaching their son.
I spend the evening
In Sealdah Station
To save on electricity.
The hoot of the whistle,
The bustle of passengers,
The roar of the engine,
Shouts for coolies—
It is half-past ten,
I return to my room, to solitary, silent darkness.
My aunt's village is on the banks of the Dhaleswari river.
The girl, her brother-in-law's daughter,
Was engaged to poor me.
The hour for our wedding
Was definitely auspicious.
And sure proof of that—
It became the hour of my flight . . .
Well, the girl was saved,
So was I.
She who never came to my home
For ever comes and goes in my mind,
Dressed in a Dacca sari,
In her hair's parting, the bridal vermilion.
Dark, dense rain,
Train fares go up,
Wages go down.
The lane is littered
With rotting mango peels, jackfruit kernels,
Scraps of fish bones,
Dead kittens—
All kinds of rubbish.
My umbrella is full of holes.
Like my pay, after they've cut the fines.
My office dress?
Rain-drenched
Like the heart of Gopikanta Gosai wet with elegant wit.
Dark shadows of rain
Enter my damp room.
Like a beast, trapped in a machine,
Fallen in a faint,
Day and night, I feel I am
Chained hand and foot to a half-dead world.
Kanta-babu lives at the end of the lane,
Long hair carefully combed,
Large eyes—
A bit of a dandy.
His hobby is playing on the cornet.
Occasionally a raga rises
In the fearful air of this lane—
Sometimes in the depths of night,
Sometimes in the half-light of dawn,
Sometimes in the glittering twilight chiaroscuro.
Suddenly in the evening
The Sindhu-Baroan raga is heard.
The sky rings.
With the eternal sorrow of lovers parted,
And that moment reveals
The futility of this lane,
Like a drunkard's ravings
It suddenly flashes on me—
The essential oneness
Of the clerk Haripada and the emperor Akbar.
The mournful flute unites
In the same paradise
The royal parasol and my torn umbrella,
When the raga is heard,
And the sunset hour of wedding seems unending.
The Dhaleswari flows,
Between the tamal trees, throwing deep shadows.
And in the courtyard,
She is waiting
Draped in a Dacca sari,
The bridal vermilion
On her brow.
(Excerpted with permission from The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City, compiled by Bilal Moin, published by Penguin Random House; 2025)
