कौन

वो कौन है जो वक्त कि अन्तिम कन्दरायों से आवाज लगा जाता?
छोड जाता एक सिसकी मन मे, सिमट जाता सुबह कि तरह एक
अन्गीनत भीड मे, चिपक कर मेज़ पर फिर खेलने लगता मेरी
कलम-दवात संग एक रंग का खेल, तेढ़ी-मेढ़ी लकीरें उभार देता
मेरी दीवारों पर और शब्द छोड जाता खिड्कियों पर, टपकती रहती
जहाँ निरन्तर एक सांस.

मै सोचता चलो सांस तो है, एक गरमी कि तरह उभार हि देगी एक
चेहरा. फेरा करता उन्गलियाँ नित् रोज़ रात्रि के अन्तिम प्रहर मे,
पर खिड्कियों के पाले थर-थराने लगते जब गुम हो जाती वो आवाज
एक दस्तक के साथ, बुला रही हो जैसे एक अबेध्य सुनसान शहर मे

हाथ थाम कर मेरा खींच लेती उन सुनसान गलियों मे जहाँ लगाता वह
चक्कर बार-बार लगातार, खोजती आंखें केवल किरनो का चक्कर हि सहेज
पाती जहाँ फिसला था मौन इतिहास मे कई बार

पर कोइ तो नही, हाथों पर छुअन फिर किसकी बाकी रह जाती?
साये का वह कोना क्यों निहारता जैसे अजनबी मै कोइ इस शहर मे?
शायद कोई नही, यह मै हि हूँ. दफ्न सपने, खामोश अभिव्यक्तियाँ तलाश्ता
गुम मुस्कुराहटओन मे. 

In search of the letter

I will distill my senses 

melt it in the early winter snow 

and cast it in iron mould of memory 

to carve a little needle to stitch small 

threads of hope for the eternal summer 

winter owes me time for hibernation, 

fogging the only street I knew 

rolling the mist over the only window 

with a view, turning icicles to the only 

breath I could touch, suspending to dreams 

the only memories I had 

Spring will yet melt this winter 

sending letters in green envelopes 

to addresses unknown and yet I without a name, 

an exile of summer, would keep turning over 

the dead bodies, searching the coats for 

a letter to deliver my name. 

कि वह सो रही है

शब्‍दों को मत धकेलो 

कि वह सो रही है

और रात अब भी उसकी आँखों में सघन है

जरा उसके पास बैठो और उसके सोफे पर भटकते हाथों पर नज़र फिराती उन आँखों  को निहारो

वह क्‍या सपना देख रही है

क्‍या सूरज के अंदर झाँकने 

और ड्रेगन फ्लाई के लिली पर मँडराना शुरू करने के बाद भी वह उसे याद रहेगा

 उसने एक बार मुझसे कहा था

सपनों की कोई समृति नहीं होती

उन्‍हें छूने मत जाओ वे तो सर्वोपरि होते हैं

उन्‍हें क्षत- विक्षत सड़क पर बारिश के नन्‍हें चश्‍मो की तरह सोए रहने दो

 .............................................................................

translation of my poem "She is sleeping" by Pramod Ji. You can read his poems on his blog http://samandarkesapanomechaand.blogspot.com/

She is sleeping

Do not push words

for she is sleeping

the night is still dark

in her eyes

just sit near her

and watch those eyes

move around to her hands

as they wander around the

couch

What is she dreaming of?

will she remember after

the sun peeps through

and dragon flies

wander around lilies

she once told me

dreams have no memory

don't touch them

they are sublime

let them rest like

small puddles of rain

on weathered roads

Parting

when will these distances collapse

or everything will melt in the silence of words?

I never knew, my parting in time

tore away the words which forgot to weave

the muse of longing

the last dangling thread will it not weave me to you

in the unforgotten essence of being?

or would I again seek forgiveness in the waiting, when

death threatens to take the two of us apart from the only

spaces we never shared.

In forgetting lies a home

Some crystals disappear in thin air

as another winding circle opens its root 

to be lost forever in the concentric circles of time

as I send flowers of the dead, in honey colored bottles

Aren't this gifts for the 'other' in you? 

the 'other' we will never know, yet muse after 

muse searches for the song which broke 

the silent melancholy of waves and untied 

the threads of a mute sky 

My gifts have forgotten all the colors 

tears of clouds choked the veins of a 

rainbow I dreamt last summer , yet 

traces of mist cling to my ceilings 

revealing brick by brick, a home 

I never had 


In forgetting lies a home, 

where the birds fail to fly

after the last sky, and time

like the featherless storm 

begs shadows of future, a pause 

to sweep me away. 

भूला-बिसरा प्‍यार

क्‍या वह पूनम की नशीली रात थी ?
कि तुम गमगीन, सरल और जटिल प्‍यार की
शिकायत करते मेरी बगल में आ बैठी

नकार से जन्‍मे दुख में और
जीवन के उन क्षणों में जब सब कुछ खालीपन में खत्‍म होता जा रहा था  

एक-दूसरे के निकट आते हुए दो प्रेमियों ने समय के और स्‍मृति ने प्रेम के खिलाफ 

अपनी एकाकी जंग छेड़ रखी थी

this is a translation of the poem "Forgotten Loves" http://imprintsonthesandsoftime.blogspot.com/2011/07/forgotten-loves.html by Pramod ji. Thanks again for the wonderful translation.

साथ

साथ है या नहीं शून्य की दीवारों से टकराकर तुम जान लोगी
फलक पर बीछे इस अंतहीन सत्य को समेट लेने तो दो
जीवन का गोद खाली मिला क्यों छलकती आसुओं से पूछ लेने तो दो
खलिश न रहेगी मुझसे, इंसान को बटा हुआ जब पाओगी
बटे हिस्सों के आदि-अंत जब तुम देख न पाओगी, सिमट कर
मेरी याद को नए पंख लगा देना
इन्ही लाशों में जलकर नया जन्म लूँगा मै तुम्ही से

कल्पना कि उड़ान

क्या कल्पना कि उड़ान मुझे भी बेध कर अपने आपको मुक्त कर पाएगी? 

या फिर एक खामोश उदासी का सत्य हि मुंह बाए खडा रहेगा

निर्लिप्त आकाश गंगाओं के असीम विस्तार में? 

क्या स्वप्न की उस घड़ी मे कोइ न होगा

जब टुकड़े चुन-चुन कर आईना एक चेहरा उभार रहा होगा? 

क्या यह अन्तिम रहस्य की शिला भी उजड जाएगी 

अपने अस्तित्व को जानने से पहले? 

एक अजनबी मौसम

एक अजनबी मौसम, एक अजनबी होता शहर और एक अजनबी शब्द का साथ. रात कि विरानीयों को तलाशने के लिए और कितने आवारा दिन अपने कंधों पर लादे फिरुंगा. फफक कर आँसु ही क्यों  नही छलक आते? कुछ यादें बिफर हि क्यों नही जाती? कुछ लम्हें टूट हि क्यों नही जाते? 

Voices

When will these voices inside stop listening? 

Keep a turn to the rusted spring, a ruffled winter 

quenches not thirst of feathered innocence

The mirror has a hidden face, memories of centuries 

and painted dreams will not reveal the shades of ash 

laden stink of twisted minds 

So gently amble in the corner of the dark, touch 

not the tears of the fog, will you confront the 'I'

quivering and trembling as the one who never 

wrote this poem? 

Veil

All around me a sea of noise

I, a lost fog, unable to veil 

the sound, tear away the last dew 

draining from ur eyes in 

hope

A dark will descend as I 

envelop you as the last veil and 

the deep pores of a sorrow long forgotten 

keep tugging at the noise of the people I

will never know 

Some seem familiar for they are the stories 

I have told myself, some I will tell myself 

in the last attempt to bracket this world 

Forgotten loves

Was it a drunken night of a full moon?

you sat next to me complaining,

of inconsolable simple and complicated loves. 

Coming close in a grief born in negation

in moments of life when everything was dying 

in emptiness, memory waged its lonesome battle

against love and two lovers against time. 

Half a pause

The sunshine and a smile

lost on half a track in the

rattling of the rails, a few

escape to the flower in your hair

opening up a deceased song, a

few stink like half dead 

carcasses from which poems 

of love refuse to be born. 

A few are lost in the sea 

and in its hands carrying the 

heaviness of millions of memories

only to drown itself in the 

forgetting where the rotting 

forgiveness will be washed on the shore. 

And you who walk

cautiously, yet tragically on this 

shore of time, a time knowing no 

history of immortality, what do you 

collect in your hands, why do you 

make this bag heavy for yourself? 

Did you yet find half the song

buried in those shells when your 

breath touches it? Did not you 

find a wail, a half cry, or a trembling dream 

there? Why yet you 'being' keeps walking? why yet 

you rails keep moving? would you know till the last, 

what moves when the tracks don't? 

what sings when you don't? 

who cries when you don't? 

And you the 'being', the born and 

'half a life' yet know not.

have a pause, a silence 

wait a moment, slow this time 

and this run, for

you and me

A dying word

A word dying in my hands
stuck to my pen to reveal
its last breath by not writing
but opened up inside me
bit by bit, inch by inch
like a slow pain and the
scorpion crawling inside
crafted a web trapping lost
forgiven memories, devouring
a love I never had

ज़ख्‍़मी शब्‍द

मैंने एक ज़ख्‍़मी शब्‍द चुना और उसके इर्द-गिर्द रचा अर्थों और
किरादारों का एक घरोंदा
भर दिया फिर उसे आधे जले गीतों 

और बिखरे टूटे रंगों में
वक्‍त बीत चला यादों के कारवाँ के साथ
और साथ ले चला अपने उसका नाम
हाँ शायद वह मेरा बिना ही खुश है
मेरा आँसु , मेरा प्‍यार

• 
  
  This translation was an outcome of a dialogue, as most  translations are. This was possible with a dialogue with my friend Pramod who zealously reads my work and creates a new work in translation itself. 

A wounded word

I picked a wounded word
built a home of meanings and
characters around it
stuffed it into half smoky muses
and weathered storms
of broken colours

Years passed, memory played its game
and remembrance took away its name.
perhaps its happy without me,
my tears, my love. 

Words

Slowly verses will die down 

as mist trickles through the ashes 

we will not remember that day where 

dream was covered by a passing snow flake 

and the last tourist forgot her destination 

A melancholy settles down in my song 

as the rattle of rail tracks awakens me 

in the dead of the night and the last flickering 

lightening threatens to reveal my shadow and 

the lonely wandering cat gives me a lone stare 

knowing not my purpose 

I am slowly forgetting you as my 

fainting memory struggles to rekindle 

a dream last shared, as my words refuse 

to reveal the last muse etched for love 

A Hero's tale

The light at the end of the tunnel was dimming 

when she held my hand and said this was the time 

to dive in the netherworld of experiences 

move beyond you and me 

where we will never be the you and me 

but perhaps there would be one 

who would refuse to join in 

pulling out at the last time 

from the crevices of hope 

for history to fill his story 

with certain myths 

He would be the hero 

who never joined the turn of the 

road when it swirled around breaking 

narratives of the day to day life we lived in 

he would never know the last fairy tale 

which lulled the yet unborn to sleep

In these labyrinths of never ending tales 

he would never know the sun 

which used to wake before us in the dawn 

and cuddled us to sleep in the dusk 

or of the river which refused to carry our memories 

 the snow which melted to remind that it 

was never late for a spring in life 

or of the tiny boy which was me 

who never knew the tree he rooted in the soil 

will turn up to devour him one day

Will he ever know that there was a small girl 

born on the day he refused to come home 

who never wanted to play with her toys

but just hold on to her gun 

for in her dreams she still saw the monster 

which curled under her bed even before 

the threads of innocence could enamour her

Perhaps he was just a hero to be 

as all heroes are, born out of a myth 

for they sustain the myth which we see 

all the day in the mirror 

a mask which we dont acknowledge 

a tale which will dominate on all those lips 

of grandmas who never relieved a dream 

never created a tale of their own, tied and 

crumbled and crushed under the bounds 

of social


 Yet you would be born with 

the same story in your mouth not knowing 

drying lips and dying dreams crushed under 

the smell of gunpowder and receding imagination 

of a grain lying in the shallows of nourishment 

In the dimming light there lay a creation 

between you and me 

not of a hero to be 

nor songs which will die down when the 

music sings but a secret caravan of beauty 

which starts from desires of being 

of what lies as the shadow of towering 

images dominating my stories 

and as skyscrapers filling the contours of 'beings'

where you and me used to lie around forbidden waters 

तुम और मैं

मेरी कविता (You and Me) का एक और अनुवाद देव्यानी द्वारा....

तुम्हारे और मेरे लिए धरती सिकुड़ रही है 

यह बासी रोटी का टुकड़ा नहीं मिटा सकता किसी कि भूख  

बंजर हो चुकी हैं कुछ उम्मीदें 

कल्पना करना मना है 

निर्जीव मनुष्यता के इस शव के पास 

जम चुका है लहु जिसकी शिराओं में 

कदाचित इस असार में 

जहाँ कथाएँ भाप बन कर उड़ जाती हैं 

भुला दिया जाए तुम्हें और मुझे 

चलो मेरी प्रिय 

स्मृति के उस गढ़ में चलें 

जहाँ ठहरे अंतिम स्वप्न और अंतिम आंसू 

ढुलक पड़े शायद अंतिम याद की तरह 

गुमशुदा मासूमियत के बगीचों से 

तुम्हारे लिए और मेरे लिए 

और उस तुम के लिए जो मुझमे है 

वह तुम जो मेरी कविताओं, और खुद मुझ में 

इस तरह समाहित है 

मनो ठान लिया है यहाँ से कही भी न जाना 

जब प्यार भूलना भूल जाता है स्मृतियाँ पीछा करती हैं 

चलो मेरी प्रिय यह अंतिम डग भी लें 

प्रेम में उदास होना नहीं जानता 

दुनिया की दूसरी उदासियों को 
इन अँधेरे उजाड़ों के बीच चलो हम चलें उस अंतिम यात्रा पर 

मैं और तुम

जीवन के उस कसैले फल में स्मृतियों से भीगी कांपती रूहों के बीच 

उम्मीद कि गुप्त चेतना कि दीवारों से बाहर छूट गए विस्मृत बचपन कि ओर चलें 

चलें मन कि अंतहीन अदृश्य दुर्गन्ध के पार 

यह शब्द जो सहलाते हैं 

उन्ही से उधार में लिए हैं 

जिस प्रेम को हमने जिया उसकी स्मृतियाँ 

उन्ही कि कर्जदार हैं 

यह पंक्तियाँ जो बह निकलती हैं 

जिन्होंने कभी तुम्हारे होठों को छुआ 

तुम्हारी आँखों को सहलाया 

और गुदगुदाया तुम्हारे कानो को 

यह उनके रोज़मर्रा के अस्तित्व के संघर्षों के बीच 

सार्थकता कि तलाश के गीत थीं  

तुम और मैं

मेरी एक और कविता (You and Me)  का अनुवाद प्रमोद जी द्वारा 

तुम और मैं

भूखों का पेट ना भर सके ऐसी फफूँदी ब्रेड के
जमे हुए रक्‍त के आस-पास एक मरी हुई मनुष्‍यता केक्षत-विक्षत शव के चहुँ ओर 
जहाँ कुछ उम्‍मीदों को बधिया कर दिया
और कल्‍पनाशीलता को नकार दियावहाँ तुम्‍हारे और मेरे लिए जगहें  सिकुड़ती जा रही हैं 

भाप में तब्‍दील होती जाती कथा की इस खाली जगह में
तुम्‍हें और मुझे भुला दिया जाने दो, आओ हम खो गई मासूमियत की
भूमि में अंतिम स्‍मरण के तौर पर
जो लुढ़क आएँगे उन अंतिम समय के आँसुओं
के अंतिम सपने व चीख की स्‍मृतियों के किले में चले जाते हैं 
तुम्‍हारे लिए,  मेरे लिए और मुझमें बसने वाली तुम्‍हारे लिए जिसने मेरी कविता और मेरे भीतर से जुदा होना नकार दिया उस तुम्‍हारे लिए,  जब प्‍यार क्षमा करना भूल जाता है तब जकड़ लेने वाली उन स्‍मृतियों के लिए,
दुनिया के गम को कम समझने वाले उस प्‍यार के गम के लिए
हम यह अंतिम उपाय करते हैं प्रिय!

जीवन रूपी इस 'कड़वे फल' में इन स्‍याह घने विकारों के बीच
उम्‍मीद की गुप्‍त चेतनता व समझ की अनंत अदृश्‍य दुर्गन्‍ध से घेर दिए गए
उन भुला दिए गए बचपनों की यादों में
मनहूसियत के साथ लेटी उन काँपती हुई आत्‍माओं के बीच
अब तुम और मैं इस अंतिम यात्रा पर निकलते हैं,
वे शब्‍द जो उकेर दिए जाने के लिए बेचैन हैं
उन्‍हीं से उधार लिए है, जिस प्‍यार की स्‍मृतियों में हम कभी रहे
वह उन्‍हीं की ऋणि है और जो कविता तुम्‍हारे होठों को छू लेने के लिए,
तुम्‍हारी आँखों को सहलाने और कानों में सिहरन पैदा करने के लिए प्रवाहित हुई,
वह उन्‍हीं की अपने अस्तित्‍व के रोजमर्रा के संघर्ष के बीच
अर्थ की तलाश का गीत थी. 

Betrayal

Presented below are two poems of my friend Pravin Kumar. While poem questions hope, the other enters into the terrain of hope to create new horizons for the children to come and yet to be born...and here we enter the everydayness and the banality of hope, how do we leave it and yet live with it...

I won’t shed single drop of tear on my cheek for my past…
I will use this history to craft a sword..
I will cut today’s chains with the sword…
For a new sun to arise, for my children yet to come


Betrayal

Hope, you betrayed me
I blame you to keep me wretched …
You made me docile, kept me living in tomorrow,
Now I have realized,
I need to kill you, I ought to rebel,
I must live my day today…. For tomorrow

You and Me

The spaces are shrinking for you and me
some hopes castrated and
imaginations denied around the decaying
carcasses of a deceased humanity lying around
the frozen blood of the stale bread that could
not feed the hungry


Lest you and me be forgotten in this void
of evaporating narratives,  lets enter the fortress
of memories of the last dream and cry for the
last time tears which will descend down
as the last remembrance in the garden of
lost innocence


For you and for me and for the you in me
you the one who refuse to depart, from
my verses and from within me, for memories cling on
when love forgets to forgive, lets
take this last step my dear, for the sorrows of
love knows less the sorrows of world


Lets take  this last journey me and you
among the dark disorders, in the 'bitter fruits' of life
among those trembling souls lying
wretched in memories, of forgotten childhoods
being walled out of the secret conscious of hope
and through the endless unseen stink of the mind

For the words which itched to be etched on

was borrowed from them, the memories of 

the love we ever lived was owed to them and 

the verse which flowed out having touched your 

lips, caressed your eyes and tickled your ears 

was a song of their quest for meaning 

amidst a daily struggle  for existence. 

बर्फ के टुकड़े

एक लम्हा ही
उस बर्फ के टुकड़े में अटका पड़ा था
कभी जिसे कुरेद कुरेद कर
हम अपने ग्‍लास भरा करते थे

हाँ लम्हा ही तो था वो

जिसमें पहली बारिश में

हमेशा उन बर्फ के टुकडों  का ही इंतज़ार रहता 

यही एक खेल था

जिसमें बाबूजी मेरे साथ शरीक हो जाते 

एक आँख में इच्छा थी,
एक में अजीब सा सूनापन
और एक फासला  मजबूरी और जिज्ञासा के बीच 

आज जब तुम आई 

वही बरसात का इंतजार है 

वही सूखी धरती अपने ताप से फिर पिघला देना चाहती है 

तुम हाथों में गिलास लेकर खड़ी हो जाती
एक टकटकी के साथ मुझे देखती
उस परदे के पीछे से
जैसे ये बीत गए साल केवल एक पटाक्षेप ही है 

तुम्हारे लिए समय कितना स्थिर है 

ठहरा है अभी भी
उन दो टुकड़ों के बीच

मगर फासलों में बँटा इंसान 

कितने ही खंडित क्षणों को समेट चुका होता है

Immortality 2

That is what is

of what was not

for history was for victors

to create the immortals

while the poets wrote for

what lay at the margins

as the shadows

for the dark disorders 

 

It is in their grain

that I spring and

in their music I sing

its in the fleeting beauty that I lie

for that is all I have

nor desires to capture, none to conquer

to leave imprints on sands

to be blown away in the wind

for immortality was a desire

to be forever known through what they did

through what they wrote

to always etch themselves on the hands of time

 

My song was what I took from you and you and you

you who were all around me,

you who were born before me and will live after me

you who will live in me and through me

you which was the nature and the songs of birds

colours of rainbow and tranquility of moon

the sparkle of the dew and the coolness of the rain

the cry of the new born and the sobs of mother lost her child

you who lived torn, divided

burnt asunder and taken apart

by nationalities, by greed

by hatred, by forsaken loves

destinies unfulfilled, hopes denied

you who lived inconsolable griefs and still trudged on

still sung the song when everything was falling apart

still stuck by the last straw to create hope

you, the forlorn child of the decaying humanity

you who were caught like dangling leaves from trees

in the violence unimaginable

 

For you I write and like you I am

a mortal and like you I will

be burnt into ashes or turned into dust

for immortality was for victors 

 those who wrote history

and those wanting remembrance

and it was wars and violence in the end

 

Humans know mortality to feign immortality

how long will we play the game of ignorance?

The last harvest

Whose path did we cross to come this way?

 in the blind turn of the road

we will never know

whom we met for the last time

 

The curling smoke around those

mist laden valleys have stories to tell

of you and me

sitting in the dark night

stoking the fire of passion

drying around those lips

 

Whose flicker were the last words?

we will never know in dying memories

crystallising in the myth of time

 

We will never know the last leaf to fall

the last snow to melt

in the never remembered winter

 

Disparate time passes under those lips

like  waters of different summers 

tracing paths along banks of remembrance

 

In the smoke filled valleys

of wilted flowers and dying dreams

we will never know the last lily

which smelt not of gunpowders

 

Histories bind when centuries disappear

in moments of immortality

I and you

before we kiss it adieu

lets send a tear filled letter

to this last cloud on the horizon

whose moistness will dance

for the last time among the waves

before it rains down

for the last hands to caress

the last harvest, the last existence

The Smell of sense, the smile of life

One of the early poems that I had written. I don't know why I put the title the way it ended up being written and what was in the mind when one was writing and what starts as something will never end as the same thing. It always waits to transform itself and with a lot of water flowing down the river, one wants to hold on and pause for a moment and look back for what it was when it began and was it worth afterall. It is not an exercise in self-judgement or self-criticism because every work in itself is that act of criticism of itself, of emerging through different dilemmas in one's own mind and differen revisions and conceptualisations but yet some of the writing resist being re-written and revised and are written at one go.....they might not express the beauty of words, nor the beauty of expressions but sometimes just a beauty of spontaneity...to qualify it from a sign post in time, to look back one just wants to be with it and in that being tries to be with the time itself..it neither arises out of nostalgia, nor out of a revival of memory but out of pure forgetfullness of chancing around something which was deemed to be lost or repressed some where deep within and failed to be acknowledged in the certain circumstance.

I know you are a mirage, a mirage of senses worth exploring

I know I live in dreams, but dreams of eternity they are

You are the dream of the summer, where the yawn of the day meets the sleep of the night

You are the tranquil reflection of the moon

The still calmness of water, the movement of the stream

The silent cacophony of the night

The perennial spring of eternal hope, where in the valley of flowers arises the aroma of life

Where the snow-capped mountains reflects the beauty of the soul

Where the desirous destination is not the journey, but the journey is itself a destination

Love flourishes in the hope of hope, in the timeless journey of the selves

Transcending the destinies of mind, I keep to thee, revel in thee, imagine in thee and trace myself

परतें

मुझे कभी शब्दों का साथ नहीं मिला
जैसे विरासत में मिलती हो वो पोथियाँ
जिस पर समय अपने भूलने की परत छोड़ जाता

ना ही मिलीं  वो लोरियां

जिसमे नींद के अंतिम प्रहर का इंतज़ार करते करते 

शब्द थक कर खुदबखुद सो जाते

  

बस मिली एक खामोशी 

एक अविश्वास में बैठी इंसानी परवाज़  

भीड़ में सुनी पड़ती सड़के
और ऊंचे होते  मकानों में
कुछ उखड़े हुए लोग

 

मिला एक साथ अधूरा सा, एक गहराता शून्य
और सपनों से पथराई हजारों आखें

खून में डूबे हुए कुछ हाथ
और अँधेरे का एक वीभत्स नाच

 

भाषा की अंतिम गलियों तक सोयी

एक विरक्ति भी  मिली

एक अभिन्न सी छुअन

जैसे सदियों चलता हो

लुका-छिपी का खेल

जिसमे निरंतर बसा एक डर
अपने पकडे जाने का

जिसमे धीरे धीरे उधड़ती परतें

एक उधार मांगे  जीवन का एहसास ही

छोड़ जाती थीं

Translation

The dance of the words on those lips

reminds us of the strangeness of language

what remaines our own

when adorned and left our lips

seemed strange when I see only

moving lips creating a strange

kind of poetry

inviting into a world

till thus unknown

waiting to open its arms

yet strangely

yet with suspicion

but with a nauseousness

of a friend too

Suddenly I see myself

drowning in this chaos

where words are not mere words

and yet they are words

where contexts dont mean

and things appear 

not in their images

nor in representations

but just by their

being in the world

When words are let loose

they acquire wings,

characters and

prejudices

that we owe to ourselves,

dreams to transcend our own

meanings.

Life dreams in this other

where the other is not me

and me in the other

always finds the other in me.  

शब्द और रंग

वो जब भी पास बैठती एक
साया अक्सर ही छोड़ जाती
और तैरती रौशनी में वो
साये  कुछ धुंद की तरह  छटक जाते

मै हमेशा सोचता  उसे एक  ख़त लिखूंगा
 स्याही उस साये  से ही  मांगूंगा
 मुझे पता है वो मना  कर देगी

 उसे मै बहलाऊंगा
 पुचकार कर  एक नाम दूंगा 
वो अड़ी रहेगी मेरी मेज पर चिपके हुए
घंटो निहारती हुए मेरे टेबल लैम्प को
 फिर घंटो तक चलता
रहेगा शब्द और रंग का
सिलसिला

वह रंगों में खोयी रहती
मेरे कैनवास के कोने पर  धीरे धीरे पसरा करती
 ब्रुश से आख मिचोली खेलती 
और अक्सर ही एक तस्वीर उधार दे जाती

मै शब्दों में डूबा रहता
उसकी एक एक नरमी
को कैद करता रहता
उस  कविता में जो
अभी लिखी  जानी  थी

शब्द और रंग का ऐसा मेल
शायद प्यार नहीं कुछ और ही
था

लकीरें

हाथों का क्या है 

लकीरों में शब्द छीपा

लेते हैं

बस इन शब्दों के नाम

नहीं होते

गुमनामी में अकसर

राह भटकते, गलियाँ छानते

जाम तलाश करते ये शब्द

अक्सर अपने  को भूल

बैठते

भूला शब्द साथ छोड़ जाता

और हर छुटता साथ

लकीरों कि गहराई

Tales of love

I am often amazed
at the tales of love
where eyes dream,
heart desires and the
greens sing a song
of the beloved

Caught between the
sighs of the moon
cuddled emotions
flare up memories
and slowly, with open
arms, those stories
 embrace one
which waits its turn
to be etched in shifting
sands of remembrance

who said love will bless
you, believe in love
for love needs patience

and yet looking
at those eyes with half
moons peeping out under
the shadow of clouds
I know that love is a
struggle against memory

Passion

I always touch even when it whispers,
peeping through closed windows,
and names it knows not..
sometimes I hold it long for it's fragile
and slips through my fingers like sublime
for it's passion

मिस्र पर एक नज़्म

हमारे मित्र जिया खान साहब ने एक मिश्रा पेश किया है मिस्र के ऊपर इस नज़्म में कुछ फैज़ की रवानगी भी है और कुछ उनकी अपनी दीवानगी भी. मुझे नहीं पता उन्होंने पहले कुछ लिखा भी हो, मगर मेरे ख्याल में ये उनकी पहली नज़्म है, जिसे मै अपने ब्लॉग पर पेश करना चाहता हू, उन लोगो के लिए जो अपने जीवन के लिए संघर्ष कर रहे है, जो स्वतंत्रता के लिए संघर्ष कर रहे है और जिया भाई की ये नज़्म भी उसी की तरफ हमारा ध्यान आकर्षित करती है. क्या हम अपने घरो में चिराग नहीं जलाएंगे, क्या उनके घरो के चिराग से ही खुश हो जायेंगे...क्या मिश्र एक होगा या फिर अनेक मिश्र अभी होने बाकी है..यही सवाल हम पूछते है. पेश है उनकी ये नज़्म.....
........................................................................................................................................

क्या मुमकिन है के जो लाज़िम है?
तुम कौन सा मंज़र देखोगे ?
ऐ अहले शिफा, ऐ महदूद-ए-हरम
औरों की शहादत तशरीह कर
तुम खूब तमाशा देखोगे.
...
ये ज़ुल्मों सितम के कूहे गिरां
क्या रूई की तरह उड़ जायेंगे?
खुशफहमी है दिल जोई है
कल वक़्त-ऐ-सुबह बतलायेंगे

कल खुदगर्जी की, ख़ामोशी की
तहरीर चलायी जाएगी
लालच और मुनाफे की
ज़ंजीर बनाई जाईगी
जो मह्कूमों के पाओं में
तुम खुद पहना कर आओगे

फिर तर्क-e-सितम कानूनों के
मशवरे बनाये जायेंगे;
जो समझ गए सो समझ गए
कुछ खामोश कराये जायेंगे!
जो अब भी मिस्र का आधा मिसरा है
कल आशार तुम्हारे झुटलायेंगें

कुछ तख्ह्त गिराए जाते हैं
कुछ ताज उच्छाले जाते हैं
फिर अम्रीका का हिकमत से
कुछ इस्रेल की चाहत से
मेमार कराये जाते हैं
और अगर ज़रूरत आन पड़ी तो
अक़ल-ऐ-लौह से UN के
इराक़ बनाये जाते हैं

जब मिस्र का मोमिन लड़ता था
तब हिंद का दहका पिटता था
तुम्हें उनकी शहादत खूब लगी
पर अपनी सदाक़त भूल गए

जब तक न गुल-ए-ताहीरी को
हर बाघ का बुलबुल हासिल हो;
जब तक न नारे जुम्बिश को
हर मुल्क की बेदारी हासिल हो;
जब तक न मिस्र की हलचल से
दुनिया का समंदर उमड़ेगा
जब तक न कल्बे सियाह ख़ामोशी से
इन्साफ की चीखें फूटेगी
बस नाम रहेगा हल्ला का
जो तब भी था और अब भी है
तो क्या मुमकिन है की जो लाजिम है
तुम वो ही सवेरा देखोगे?

जब सर्द रगों में आशिक़ के
एहसास रवां हो जाएगी
जब इश्क का मतलब बदलेगा
क़ुरबानी वफ़ा हो जाएगी
जब तनहा मिस्र के शम्मे को
हर मुल्क का बाज़ू थामे गा
मुमकिन है की तुम भी देखोगे
वो दिन का जिस का वादा है
जो लाजिम भी हो मुमकिन भी
Ziauddin Khan 

तिनके

उस अंतहीन सड़क पर
कहीं तो एक नीम का पेड़ भी होगा
जो रोज़ उस चिड़िया की राह तकता  होगा,
जो सरहद के उस पार से
तिनके चुन कर
मेरे आँगन में बिखेर जाती है

मैं रोज़ उन तिनको को
घंटो निहारता,
उन पर पड़ती 
एक एक किरण चुरा लेता,
उनकी गर्माहट समेट लेता अपने कण-कण में, 
जेब में छुपा ले जाता कुछ
निश्चल - निविड़  रातों के लिए, 
उन्ही तिनको  में खोया,
अक्सर  मैं
अपने आपको उसी  नीम के नीचे पाता

आँसु

एक शून्य की तरह दर्द अपने को  फिर से गढ़ता है
एक स्वप्न की तरह अपने कपडे बिखेरता जाता है
तुम्हारी कामनाओं के अंधेरे कमरों में

तुम उन्हें अपनी इस दुनिया में क्यों नहीं बुलाती
उन आँसुओं से लिखे  बर्फीले ख़तों के ज़रिए 
जो कब के सूख चुके है?

Tears

Like a circle, pain reinvents itself

like a dream it sheds its clothes

in the dark antechamber of your desires

why don't you invite them into this world

with frozen letters from the tears

which have long dried out?

बारिश

मैं उस गंध की कल्‍पना करने लगता हूँ जो बारिश होने पर धरती से उठती है
वह अलहदा सी गंध जो सूखी माटी को प्‍यार करती है
और ज़मीं अपने ताप की सुस्‍ती को उतारने लगती है
इन क्षणों में महसूसने लगता हूँ कि काश अपनी कभी ना खत्‍म होने वाली यात्रा में 
सारे सपनों से कागज की नाव को खेता हुआ 
मैं अब भी बच्‍चा होता
और उम्र के इन बीतते सालों ने मुझे जिस उदासी के नीचे ला छोड़ा है
उसे उतार फैंकता

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Another brilliant translation of my poem rain by my friend Pramod and I can't be thankful enough for this. It renders the poems beautiful and new images appear before me which makes it appear new and while the original stays it faints before this...Thanks Pramod ji.

Monsoon Shadow

He stared at the reflection of his shadow as if that was the only thing that was left with him. Where was he heading to he didnt know and he didnt know whether he existed. He had to prick himself but did not feel the pain and he could not even see his own self reflection in the mirror…….where was he lost. Lost or dead in his own memories, within his own self……he kept staring ….the wind was blowing in his face and all his hair just fell on his face and was fighting for the attention with the reflection but neither the senses nor the memory touched him. And strange as it was, the reflection fell out through the shining floor of his house and the mirror just shunned him, refusing to accept his face. Only his shadows were visible through the reflection. The shadow of a person without a body. He kept staring at the shadow trying to look for his body, tried to find the pain ……..the body having shunned him, senses deserted him he petered out like a river fighting for its existence in the dreary desert slowly swallowed by the sand but merging too at the same time……..his own identity ……the dying shadows lay glaring, cast on the eyes like a spider about to catch its prey…..slowly he was numbing of remembrance of her.

In life he had lived to see, touch and feel love. A love which was not his. The love which was so much outside him for which he groped in deathly silence.  The emptiness which had so much tried to find the inner self and like the roots trying to reach out for its eternal succor in the soil, emptiness just reached the nadirs of his life. The completeness which his life was trying to find through love was to leave him in eternal dark like the dark mountains staring at emptiness, providing spaces for ever widening sorrows. A love which defines itself in the search for the other which tries to merge with the other to create the high seas on which the souls transcend to the end of the horizon always searching for spaces unbound and times unknown. That was he creating spaces for himself and for his existence through his writings, creating and at the same time destroying a virtual world in which he wished to live, creating a hope. Love was vision for him, writing for him, a journey through which he experienced himself, understood his self, destroyed his self and then recreated it too……this process was a continuous explication of a desire of existence itself.

Rain

I imagine the aroma which comes out of the earth while it rains

  that distinct smell which adores the parched soil

 and the land shedding its tardiness of the heat

In moments like these I feel I could still be a child,

 to roll out a paper boat with all my dreams

in a journey never to be finished

and shed all the heaviness which

 the passing years of my age have put me under

Shadow

I conceal a shadow
wrapped in my blanket
stolen from the shivering eyes
pleading warmth from the sole
street lamp, strewn on which
were numerous eyes
lying across those narrow alleys
crossing along where lay
my destination

The cushioned cuddled environs
of my home, plays out the shadow
staring at empty coffe mugs and
long drawn out book shelves
with politics smelling out of them

But in dark nights when lamps
quizzically stares at my rough weathered papers
and words long to be etched on
emptiness devours these shadows
and I ask myself if it was
another betrayal?

I talk a lot (part 2)

How difficult is to start from where one left off and to carry the stream of thought which made what it was in the first instance? Is it really possible to construct and create something out of the ruins of memory which one just left behind when the context was different and the intensity and the desire to understand was also different? To live in the same context is not possible and to create similar conditions would be a desire of an artifice, a selfhood which I would not like to fake. But something has to be traced back and something has to be followed for if I have to be true to the title then it has to be a continuity if not in the original sense which it was meant but in the sense I construct it now. I would not be so relativistic to say that its not possible at all to go back and find those meanings to where they belong since those have already been etched and there are traces which are left on bits of paper, an act of writing which one can still go back to.

So this is where I start, having denied to a great extent any possibility of psychoanalysis in talking why do I go back to writing. Here I would neither do any sociological, political or philosophical analysis but just try to understand the stream of thought which the idea of talking would then imply. The idea of talking is then linked somewhere to generation of ideas which arise out of the intersubjective experience which manifests itself during a conversation. It is this intersubjective experience which makes one go back and reflect on those ideas and then create something out of it, here then one reflects on ones memory and all those symbols and history and traditions and culture which one carries within. But most of the time either this reflection only turns out as a blabber which would be more like coming from memory or just as an attempt to show to the other what one possesses and yes I have done that too, at times when one relates to a context which is not particularly relevant in those circumstances one is only trying to do that. Just exposit what one knows, at times one does it quite consciously at times unconscious since this is the way one would have pictured oneself. It might also be becuase one who expects a moment to come to talk would like to say all the things at once and in this saying one just moves away from the context. But is it also not in the nature of a conversation to sail away from where it all started, to grab all the tails and the tangential moments which keep on coming to be in a realm and a domain of its own and then one of those self styled moderators would have to pitch in and say 'lets focus on the topic in discussion'.

Not denying the fact that at times we generate hubris in a discussion and at times its all ugly chatter and blabber which might have an importance of its own, at times just to amuse oneself and the other or just have some fun or it at times throws issues which one would not have expected would actually arise and this is what interests me, certain ideas which stick which play out which seem to challenge age old theories and where it seems the old adage of wine and philosophy stick together. But then the question which haunts me and which at times people remind me of is this 'when you have amazing ideas when you talk why dont you write them down and let people take notice of it'? In this they are actually assuming that the written word  has a primacy over the spoken one but was it really so always not so as the ancient greeks and the indians would so. In the ancient greek tradition according to my knowledge writing was not considered a good thing, reasons are beyond the discussion I want to have here. But then does the idea of talking a lot also masks a reality of not being able to write? I would say not really. but then does this precludes also a sense of not owing a responsibility of reflecting deeply on one's own thoughts, well this is also out of the way since we have seen that even in talking one does so but it might be quite possible that some aspects of thought might be left out while other vistas open up. so both genres have their own perfections and imperfections. But then the question would still remain whether writing is a more responsible act than talking, specially when one talks about oneself and not when one is talking about public speech which can still be quoted and people can still be reminded of what they said and what they promised but then by the act of denial which we quite hear more often than not from the politicians and what often we do ourselves in lives when the contexts sit heavy on us or the memory does not recall what we would have said or just the act of forgetting something or wanting to forget something, in those instances we do see that writing would be more of an act for what one can be held accountable for but talking is something which one can deny and is thus temporal while writing in this sense can be eternal. So an act of not writing would also mean to exist in the dimension of time rather than escape into eternity and still protect onself from being judged across different time dimensions.

But is it really wrong to be judged across time dimensions and even in speech we are akin to be judged across time but the only difference we see is that then we are playing with memory recieved and memory preserved and memory nurtured by ourselves since we have seen is what we really have are interpreted memories but then writings also dont exist only in the realm of facts but are also interpreted and then they are also interpreted in the different contexts which presents themselves, so in this instance both the genres fall in to the same issue and then do we still try to put one over the other? I would not be sure at this point.

One of the points which I would also like to explore that talking a lot would also somewhere hide silence, somewhere that part which misses out when one talks. it can be the silence of the other, whose silences we are not able to decipher or the silences of our selves or those silences which we are not allowing to be developed in ourselves. It has been a matter of great speculation for philosophers and mystics alike of what silence does actually represent and what does it hold for us? It is said that in silence lies the mystery to self understanding and self realisation, while the conversation one opens up different vistas of that intersubjective self, it is only in the silence that one really knows what that experience is and how that self is being formed all the time. It is only in those pauses where silence live that one becomes conscious of our selves but then it is also a matter of speculation whether silence lives in pauses or conversations do and what would be the most authentic means of existence. One can be tempted to say in this world where we are always surrounded by information which does not get processed at our end, one needs silence to interpret those observations and to keep oneself away from being manufactured. Its like a mass which one is surrounded by which manipulates, creates and recreates all the time to deny what it created in the first place and in this deluge of the mass one does not know what one really is and it was through discussions with many friends of mine where hours and hours I used to keep saying and they used to listen peacefully as if I had everything to say and I had all the problems in the world or its interpretations which had to be shared but the virtue of silence with which comes the virtue of listening was missing. In this way I was also doing injustice to those who listened since I never understood what they were in this chatter though they all the time quite understood what I meant. So for me it was not really an intersubjective shared life but a life which I was only presenting to them in my own ways and in this process I was making it more incomprehensible for themselves as well for me for it took them more away from me. For one does not only want to listen but also listened to, for one does not want only other experiences but share theirs too and in this I think came the question where pain makes one speak more, scream more or to reflect more. I guess its that person who screams who understands pain for the first time for those who see it at close quarters dont scream but as an artist go on creating something out of it. Here I am not talking about pains which arise out of material deprivations for those require screams to be heard, to manifest themselves for those causing them dont understand them. For those this pain is not what creates the self for how can it? or even if it creates it there are two layers at the level of the self it is understood in the silence and at the level of the social it needs to manifest itself through scream for this pain is not absurd, this pain is material,  is artificial and arises out of the structures in which we live.

I am talking about the other pain which needs to be understood through silence and silence is what it tries to teach me through those conversations for it tells you that these are the ones who understand but they still need to be listened to and not only spoken to and maybe talking a lot hides this fact............never know where it takes.......