Three Poems by Shikha Malaviya
He Came Dressed in Yellow
What type of devotion
does this art demand?
Who do we sing for and why?
It is the same answer
century after century
told through song and story
the difference between
celebrating spring
and being spring itself—
Phool rahi sarson, sakal ban
be the mustard field that blooms
ambva phutay, tesu phulay
the mango that buds
the tesu that blossoms
be the spring that arrives
for those dead inside
like Amir Khusro covered in battle dust
who finds out his Auliya has wrapped himself
in grief after losing his beloved nephew
nary a nod or hint of a smile could be raised
out of the mourning Auliya that all looked up to
Khusro, one of his dearests, wondered what to do
when what should he spot but a group
of women adorned in yellow, their hands
carrying fruits and flowers of the same hue
along with songs, harbingers of sunlight
It is Basant, they answered, when Khusro asked them
where they were going, we go to the temple
to thank our Gods for all this new color and life
And Khusro knew then what to do, rushing to his Auliya
a poem on his lips, draped in yellow, some say
he wore a saree, some say a veil, yellow like
the stripe of a bee, flowers tucked behind his ears
garlands around his wrists, announcing himself
as the maiden of spring, swinging his hips
nizamuddin ke darwaze par
at the door of Nizamuddin
who smiled as he ushered spring in
A TAWAIF SIN(G)S LIKE NO ONE ELSE
After Gauhar Jaan, Jankibai Allahabadi, & Zohrabai Agrewali
Ustad ji warns me
the gramophone is a djinn’s ear
not only will it trap our voice
it will pull our soul in
But how, I ask?
if a soul is like a kite string
someone might have plucked it long ago
It is not as fickle as one’s virginity
And if this is the case
isn’t this whole world a gramophone then?
How interesting that a soul's measure
is three and a half minutes
and spins on a shellac disc
that a white man records
I’m not afraid to give the gift of my voice
to the rest of this world. I'll serenade
all the spirits, good and bad
Aaja saawariya tohe garwa laga loon
Let the arms of my voice wrap around you
Hear me say my name at the end of this song
Know this bai, this jaan, this gaane wali
Let the djinn of music possess you!
A COURTESAN COMPLAINS—
They call us ‘singing and dancing girls’
our years of riyaaz
sa, saresa, saregamagaresa
one sur tripping over the next
now reduced to titillation and sex
no consideration of all those early morning hours
when the ustads came to our kothas, instruments in hand
our breaths measured out in bol, baant & taanas
glasses of milk to give us strength
which we plugged our noses and reluctantly drank
repeating each swar with coins in our mouths
to make sure we sang with clarity & strength
and our feet struck the floor so many times
grooves in the stone carved from our flesh
wrists slender from all the mudras’ twists & flicks
eyes lined with the burnt skin of almonds
white clouds with smudged linings from sweat
they don’t know the difference between a thumri
and a kajri, a tawaif and a randi
nuance is not a word in their dictionary
they call us bazaari, women of the market
though we are covered from ankle to neck
with silk and jewels dazzling with intensity
the little skin we show too expensive for them
they say bawdy yet attend our soirées
they say gaudy and tax us, making us pay
putting us at the top of their civic tax ledgers
the East Indian Company fattening their coffers
scratching their heads when they see
how these ‘singing and dancing girls’
are wealthier than all the men.
Shikha Malaviya is the authour of Anandibai Joshee: A Life in Poems and Geogrpaphy of Tongues.
Tears on a Breeze by Lopamudra Basu
Dakhina Batashe mono keno kaande?
“Why does the southerly breeze
make the heart weep?
why does the heart weep?
I don’t know
why the heart weeps.”
A young Sharmila Tagore sings in a 1964
black and white film
lip syncing to a song composed
by Salil Chowdhury
set to Raga Gorakh Kalyan.
My mother sang it in the canteen
of the women’s college in Gariahat
and at her music school, surrounded by
young friends demanding repeats
She sang it in the drawing room
of the Lake Place house with its
red oxide floors and wrought iron railings
amidst tea and sandesh, when my father
came to see his future bride.
He kept asking for another song
and she did not refuse—
I heard she sang four ragas that day.
The other family members asked
if she knew how to cook
or change the wheat to flour
at a mill, questions she could not answer.
She sang the song of the southerly breeze
from the veranda facing Calcutta’s man-made lake
Then, plaintively in the house in Behala
between cooking the afternoon and evening meals
for a year in a house with no electricity.
She sang the song in a little rented flat
in Jorhat, where she became a mother
still clinging to the tanpura, now
with no tabla player
to accompany her daily riaz.
She sang of the southerly breeze
in middle age in hot Delhi summers
When two daughters left home
to make lives in new cities.
Why does the southerly breeze
make the heart weep?
And her daughter heard it oceans away.
Her husband heard her sing for more
than fifty years, knowing every note
even though his ears were untrained
And he could not keep a tune.
Did he hear her sing
those last days tethered to a respirator
in a Calcutta Covid ward?
When his heart stopped suddenly
after his lungs could pump no longer
did he see her in flash of light
as she sat on a terrace on a load-shedding night
singing “Why does the heart weep?”
Now in her flat on the fringes of the city
the tanpura and tabla gather dust.
as that voice can no longer hit the notes.
Her daughter turns on Spotify
and listens to the old song,
Why does the southerly breeze
make my heart weep
I don’t know why the heart weeps.
Dakhina batashe mono keno kande?
Lopamudra Basu is Professor of English at University of Wisconsin-Stout. Her poetry has been published in journals like Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Barstow and Grand, Dhaka Review, Postcolonial Text and in the anthologies Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahitya Akademi) and Best Asian Poetry 2021-2022 (Kitaab) and the Poetry Calendars of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. She reviews poetry, non-fiction and fiction for World Literature Today and India Currents. She lives in Eau Claire with some family members while also visiting India every year to see other members of her family. She is currently working on a book of poems on Covid to memorialize the many personal losses she encountered as well as to change the absence of Covid memoirs from India. She is also co-editing a volume of poetry by South Asian women on trauma.
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