Saturday, February 11, 2006

Nadira

Translation of a marAThI poem, which appeared in daily sakAL today as a tribute to her.
original poet: praveeN Tokekar aka British Nandi, my favourite columnist till date.

You are lying down quietly
On the cold iron cot
In the cold hospital room.
Though you don't care now -
There hangs a cloud
Siverish-blackish-gray
since long... around
your worn out, aged and now lifeless frame.
It has sucked in your misty past by now,
And all of the acid that was inside you.
Just like a wet quilt drawn
Over the winter crops on a receding night.

Your guile, your mood.
Your airs, your demeanour.
Your youth, your proud dash
something of a fire..something of ash.
Your upturned eyebrow
The craft in your gaze
Lips lightly casting out
A round smoky haze.

You'd make the hero turn around and look back -
mud mud ke..
Even as he was sinking deep in the tears
Shed by a (more) beautiful lovestruck lass.


You displayed perfectly
The spite of a snake-queen
Picking up the miniscule traces
of her prey..and the male of the species.
But my dear queen, in the end
It turned out to be, literally, 'made up'.
You never had the prey within your reach.
All your life, all that you kept picking up
were some stubs of loneliness.

You were an unadulterated anguish.
An ache.

This final ovation
To your comely villany
No...to that immortal agony.

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