A Drought Land Ageing Backwards

I

some say this is an ailing land 

of water-borne demigods sent into exile 

for forsaking their rectitude

          a horde assembles –

a jaundiced blotch of stiff-necked

plebeians holding court

against ancestral felonies

          their assemblage a dust bowl

upturned over a grief landfill

in the midday sun

 

this is not a gathering for prayers

and amendments

          they have come to wait in silence

for a land to find back its benevolence

 

the waiting births a wariness that spreads 

like mist over water 

painting a portrait of a cataclysm –

in a plate is a mountain of rice

                                          rice collapsing

in a sea of lentils

                 lentils devoid of salt

                                            salt devoid

of its memory of the sea

 

life remains trapped in this Sisyphean loop 

in servitude to the flesh that refuses

to thaw even when put inside

the acidic underbelly of hunger

 

II

There you were, bird-willed, in a world that

had forgotten its songs. The ghosts of abandoned

longings assert themselves on what is denied 

 

a recognition. The mouth still welcomes the 

unknown; is a derelict neighbourhood housing

fond remembrances of things past, a steady

 

deposition of cadence upon the tongue.

The body drifts, raw-throated, a watercourse

dredged of its visceral appetite of girlhood.

 

The memory of the sweetness of this 

embryonic dreaming still holds onto 

soft-hearted mumbles of promises you 

 

only faintly remember now that your bones

are turning to relics. The continuation of

this lingering dream is what sends you to

 

sleep. Curious as you are, you still have to 

learn the ways of mothering these aching limbs, 

the unnamed branches of bygone times. 

 

You fumble in the darkness of the immortal nature 

of this zygotal catatonia. You have found a place

to store your dreams and timeless wisdoms.

 

III

They are like newcomers in this culm-jewelled

Land of phantasmal purveyors,

A truth long protected, a cluster of invisible

Stars stiffened behind curtains.

They don’t understand pilgrimage,

Nor the need to seek a god that stays 

Somewhere faraway and measures the lands

Through another’s steps.

The prayers become a tally of accusations

Resting on the bend of the spine of 

The horse that sleeps, unbending, 

Limbs facing the direction the body cannot bend.

You think of humpbacks and the women

Who grow them –

Like dunes on a plateau teaching herds 

Tricks to tread on without tripping 

On their two restless feet.

This knowing comes in silence,

The hands that weave it into a garland of 

Literariness to be passed on to their children 

Still blind in the womb

Know that the place we sit atop is an

Unaccounted Faultline. 

Who is to plough what hasn’t been mapped?

Who is to cleave the earth’s crust to excavate 

The constitution of grief packed tightly

Within the land’s cemented skeleton?

Who is to bring down the close-mouthed 

Sky with her milk ducts shrivelled and emptied?

Who is to seek shelter where the wind

Doesn’t lift the dust of yesterday’s frustrations?

Who is to answer the questions of the wise men,

The enquirers with foreseeing eyes

Looking for confirmations of a history 

Hurriedly written –

“When did it last rain?”

“When the god was last awake.”

“When was the god last awake?”

“When he last lived.”

The last of the gods left behind an army

Of cocooned critters with heads larger than 

The bulbous wombs of empty granaries –

A lesson for men who want to age immeasurably.

We pray so we can last, and

To last for long is to see existence 

As a ceremony for death.

 

Author's Note: The string of poems have been written as a leitmotif for community gatherings in the rural settings. Palamu district, where the images are set in, falls in the rain-shadow area, and a fear of drought looms perennially over its residents. The accompanying poems are formulating portraits of meetings held with both conjoined and domiciliary purpose of conflict resolution, recreation, and discussion.

Image details: All images were taken between the years 1985 and 1995 in the Hussainabad subdivision of Palamu district of Jharkhand (then Bihar), and belong to the author's personal archive.

Pushpanjali is a native of Palamu district of Jharkhand, and is currently pursuing a Masters degree in English Literature. Her writing has appeared in More than Melanin, gulmohur quarterly, Narrow Road Journal, and elsewhere. Her work chiefly explores lasting impressions of her own rural Indian identity.