Fragrances, Memories, Cameos From New Delhi 1979 Poem by Ananta Madhavan

1.

Her bangled arm half resting on his torso,
That helmeted rider of the scooter-steed;
Her free arm smites the billowing sari.

At India Gate the flame of memorial
Burns vigil over our indifference.
How green upon the water is the scum.

The pedestal is vacant. The statue of a King
Had cause to abdicate some decades back.
Apt is the void under the pink stone canopy.

In the stubble lawn keen cricketers
Are playing on four pitches. Buses bulge
And list and scrape around the Hexagon.

Rajpath is a ramrod on this land,
Down which floats the annual parade
In republican splendour and monotony.


At the eminence, architect Lutyens
Left edifices of Britain's Mughal Raj
Which we inherited, paying full estate duty.

The fortress of the Secretariat
Has walls two feet thick, impregnable
Alike to urgency and pity.

At dusk, after the offices empty out,
A troupe of monkeys takes over the blocks.
Babies cling to mothers' undersides.

The guards are friends. They will bring out
Their charpoy beds with mosquito nets
And drowse through all the watches of the night.

The night sky thickens with a crowd of stars,
Enough to keep the sure astrologers
Pinned to square houses through three avatars,

Except where Indra-prastha's power plant
Smudges with soot the sidereal show.
The night sky wheels to wisps of misty dawn.


The jagged wall of Purana Qila
And stagnant moat defend no citadel,
But serve as backdrop for the zoo,

Where cranes alight en route from North to South
And touch with other life a capital
Whose ingrown memory suspires in tombs,

Like Safdarjang, a stained surprise, a dome
Whose curvature assures the grateful eye
Of geometries enduring through the dust;

Like chapters from a history, the avenues
Whose leaves are Akbar and Aurangazeb,
Laid wide enough for a coach-and-four to turn,

Strike radial from hubs of roundabouts;
One has a diameter eighty paces long,
Landscaped into a garden by a firm.

Bungalows brag in 'compounds' thick with shade
Of noble casuarina, neem and gul-mohar,
The servants' quarters over-populous:


The dhobi's clan, the driver's and the cook's
Are strangers to the house, allowed to coexist
In co-excluded orbits round the sun.

Mater Dei, O Mother of God, your schoolgirls throng
And clamber out of buses, cars and auto-rickshaws,
Young limbs in uniforms of mauve 'kamiz';

They fall-in round an alabaster St. Mary,
They cheer the week's toppers, sing the anthem
And file-out to a band tune on a record.

2.

Perfectly circular, our Parliament House
Resounds with mighty voices much concerned
With India's greatness in the scheme of things.

Down Janpath is a row of curio stalls
Kept by impassive Tibetans whose wares
Of brass and beads and 'tankas' fascinate

Sandalled whites in 'jibbas' or in shorts.
Youths with matted locks and bra-less girls,
Questing for life a hemisphere from home.

Jantar Mantar, site of surreal forms,
Huge spirals, swirls and stairways to the sky,
Raised by a star-struck monarch, now remains

No instrument to plot the equinox
Or calculate the eclipse of the moon,
Only a jumble of science-fiction shapes.

3.

Khan Market is a concourse bright and brisk,
Crammed corridors of shops, where fruit sellers
Spill into verandas with vegan squelch.

On Yamuna's bank, Mahatma Gandhi sleeps,
In-folded in the city where they shot him;
And Nehru's absence is a museum.

A blaring band approaches; gas lights come,
Borne on dark shoulders, wedding guests
Herald a pony with a turbaned groom.

Lights blaze around the one-night 'shamiana'
Where dazzling ladies ladle out the sweets,
And gossip vies with music for the ear.

4.

Past Delhi Gate is Daryaganj, connecting
Old and New Delhi, history and the future,
Where Mughal perfumes entice the curious.

Here in an open courtyard tourists dine
With local gourmets on 'tandoori' meals
And 'naan' and 'dal' with pickled onion.

The older city lives an older life
In Chandni Chowk, Jama Masjid, Red Fort,
Whose fretted 'durbar' left bereft of gems.

Life burns on. The merciless heat
Must be defeated by strategies of sleep,
Which may be practised under any shade;

Or lounging by a pavement 'paan' shop
For an Indian Cola, a smoke or a chat
With local ideologues who may be passing by.

The news is known, the future is with us
To foretell or to prevaricate,
Why predict the past? A funeral ahead.


Mourners look on; pundits chant
In a dead tongue, fire crackles, smoke
And speckles, ash and cinders, burnt lives.

- - -
November 1979