Monday, November 6, 2023

Genocide in Gaza and the Taxidermied Man

 These days I am translating selected poetry of a Punjabi Dalit poet, Madan Veera, and shortly going to publish the collection. Here is one of the poems from the collection:  


 Taxidermied Man


Atma Rama

now you are neither the veheda’s Atma

nor the veheda’s soul

because in the haze of bharm

in the fog of dharm

your identity is shrinking

your existence has been circumscribed

 

You are scattering into bits

floating like specks of dust

rhapsodizing about dharm

in the rush of hollow slogans

in the hope of securing your afterlife

in the effort to break out of the cycle of eighty-four

seeking the path to mukti

you have become a dweller of the chimerical world

of dharm gurus and dharmsthans

 

Searching for moksha

you have found like many others like you

your own Sarvashaktimaan

that matches your deluded mind

Now the reins of your life

are in the hands of

your self-created Tyrant

your folded hands are bound

in your self-made handcuffs

your closed eyes enclose

self-created stale dreams

your closed lips are iterating

 a cycle of sleepy words

Now to listen with your ears

to see with your eyes

to speak with your tongue

is sinful for you 

 

Now you are no longer a

shining

burning

thinking human being

 you are a milch cow’s

taxidermied dummy

of the calf that died last month

stinking stuffed with straw

that we use

at the time of milking

---  


I wish to draw the reader's attention to the title of this poem, Taxidermied Man While searching the Internet to check if I had used the right expression, I was horrified to discover that there indeed existed a real example of a Taxidermied Man. Please read the following to experience the horror perpetrated by a white man on a black man:

        

                            Taxidermied Man            

          Man stuffed and displayed like a wild animal




 In the early 19th Century, it was fashionable for Europeans to collect wild animals from around the globe, bring them home and put them on display. One French dealer went further, bringing back the body of an African warrior. It was on display as a museum exhibit in France and Spain. Generations of Europeans gaped at his half-naked body, which had been stuffed and mounted by a taxidermist. There he stood, nameless, exhibited like a trophy titled El Negro. 

This is what one visitor says on watching the display.

'This was not Madame Tussaud's. I was not staring at an illusion of authenticity - this black man was neither a cast nor some kind of mummy. He was a human being, displayed like yet another wildlife specimen. History dictated that the taxidermist was a white European and his object a black African. The reverse was unimaginable. I flushed and felt the roots of my hair prickling - simply from a diffuse sense of shame.'


Please go to the following link to read the full story on BBC website that makes one’s hair stand on end.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37344210


This touches the lowest depth of Whiteman’s racism. Thinking of what is happening in Gaza these days one wonders whether the European man has undergone any substantial change of heart.

 Let us understand that ethnic cleansing is not new to the Western man. It has a long and continuing tradition: Cleansing of North and South Ameria, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Africa of their indigenous inhabitants. 

And why forget Europe itself. The Europeans were bent upon cleansing Europe of the Jews, having had a centuries long history of persecution of the Jews culminating in what happened around the WWII. The Europeans, after the German massacre of 6 million Jews in the holocaust, succeeded in getting rid of the vast majority of their Jewish population pushing them off to Palestine, their so-called Promised Land, and helping them to cleanse Palestine of Arabs who have lived there for centuries. Isn't it ironic that the Zionist Jews who suffered the most at the hands of the European Christians, instead of wreaking vengeance on their persecutors, are using them to persecute the Palestinians who hardly had any serious history of quarrel with the Jews.  Gaza is the latest playground of this White man's game of ethnic cleansing.

---






Sunday, September 17, 2023

DANDY AND THE CHEETAH

 

Readers might enjoy reading this poem. 


Dandy and the Cheetah

 

[Dandy:(i) a man unduly concerned with looking stylish and fashionable

             (ii) an excellent thing of its kind; the Winchester Model 37 shotgun is a dandy, at a low price]

 

 You saw him wearing a hat

and a sleeveless jacket

holding a state-of-the-art camera

as if raring to go on a safari

of course, the African

 

But he was on a different mission:

to unveil to the nation the homecoming

of the cheetah, the magnificent cat extinct long ago

 

He gently rotated a circular handle to open the trapdoor

and out came, majestically, two Nambian cheetahs

one by one, one male another female

 

But let us first focus on

the most excellent thing of the event: the hat

the cheetah the next excellent thing can wait a bit

 

What brand of hat is he wearing?

Fidora?

Homburg?

Bowler?

All three were made famous by famous men

 

Fidora, first worn by fashionable women in the US,

made a symbol of wealth and status

by Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII

became a trademark of rough and tough cowboys, gangsters,

detectives, celebrities, film stars, political leaders, jaaz musicians:

Humphery Bogart, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Michael Jackson

Winston Churchill, Eisenhower, Adenauer, even our own Raj Kapoor

And lo, even Bhagat Singh!

 

Depend on him to join these worthies

and emulate them for nation’s glory

And it was on his birthday too.

 

The whole country cheered him on this momentous occasion

The media went gaga gaga sarey gama sarey gama pa pa…

calling it another plume on his cap, rather his hat

 

Don’t be surprised if he makes another promise,

one more among his many,

to snatch and bring back the Kohinoor,

if Shah Jehan’s name doesn’t baulk him

Or may be some other spectacular feat:

His best is yet to be

 

But we have almost forgotten the cheetah,

that excellent animal of its kind: like that dandy

the excellent Winchester 37 Shotgun, at a low price

Where does he stand in comparison to

 the Fidora, the Homburg, the Bowler?

 

The pair step out, relaxed or surprised, crane their necks

to survey and feel their surroundings, the new landscape,

the new air, the new smell, the new light, the new touch

Do they like it?

They have no choice

They have to survive, procreate, multiply

to obey the compulsions of Nature

not for the glory of the country of which they know nothing

 

Their benefactor watches them through his branded camera

takes photographs, cheers them by the clap of his hands

 

But do they know who he is?

Do they look back at him?

Do they thank him for homecoming?

Or curse him for bringing them into exile?

 

We don’t know

But we are pleased, yes pleased, pleased…

The country has got its cheetah back

Namaste cheetah, namaste cheetah, namaste cheetah…

---  

 


Thursday, August 3, 2023

DRAUPADI DISROBED

                            

                             A Court Scene from the Mahabharat

 

Blind Dhritarashtra

yet secure on his throne

is now

deaf

dumb

even though

he can

see

hear

speak

 

He knows all

 

Draupadi

disrobed

molested

clawed

mocked

paraded

cries out

for help

 

Bhishma is mute

sworn to loyalty

Gandhari sits blindfolded

courtiers watch unmoved

Pandavas disabled

having gambled away

their valour

 

Krishna is nowhere near

 

Mobs run riot

 

For Draupadi

all is lost

--

 

 

 

 

--

Sunday, April 23, 2023

'How are the mighty fallen' :"OZYMANDIAS" a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley

 


The poem given below, 'Ozymandias' is a sonnet, a 14 - line poem written in 1817 and published in1818 by the British Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose name is synonymous with radical social and political change. It is among his most famous poems.

 

Ozymandias

 by 

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert … Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

                            ---

As one can read, the poem depicts two trunkless legs along with a half sunk shattered visage, the 'frown', 'wrinkled lip' and 'sneer of cold command' clearly etched out by the sculptor who carved the statue. The wrecked statue belongs to a long dead powerful king, Ozymandias, ruthless and arrogant. The broken statue lies in a desert surrounded by nothing but sand all around, both the ruler and the land he ruled over utterly consumed by the havoc of time. The words on the pedestal speak with deadly irony of the futility of arrogance of power. Time does not spare anyone.

Shelley's poem encapsulates metaphorically the outcome of the tyrannical wielding of power – no leader, king, despot, dictator, or ruler can overcome time. Overall, this sonnet paints a picture of an egotistical character who thought himself without rival but who was cruel to his people. Ozymandias is a commentary on the ephemeral nature of absolute political power. Monarchs and dictators and tyrants are all disappear sooner or later. Only their misdeeds and cruelties survive in history. Shelley's language reflects his dislike for such rulers.


The poem seems so relevant to our times when democracies world-over are transforming into dictatorships, ironically through elections, democracy seeming to be turning out the midwife of dictatorships.

T C Ghai

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Farid Ganj-i-Shakar (1179? - 1265?) in English verse translation

Here is the front cover of my new book, a verse translation in English of couplets of Farid Ganj-i-Shakar, the first Punjabi poet, a Sufi saint and divine. The verse translation is followed by transcriptions of the original text in Gurumukhi, Shahmukhi and Devanagari scripts.