POOJA NANSI

dadaji

 

In his eighty-three years, my grandfather never

spoke unless absolutely necessary.

 

I always wondered if the quiet crept up on him

slowly, over the years,

till it drowned his thoughts in its depths,

 

or if in those hours that he would stand

by  the chalk-plastered railings of the same house 

he had inhabited for fifty-five years,

he was actually

reconstructing memories.

 

Remembering how my grandmother looked

in her wedding sari or some incident

from his school days.

If, perhaps, he was recalling the smell of

purple chemical inkstains on his hands

from working in the factory,

trying to stitch together the picture of his life.

Rearranging, realigning the fragments,

from left to right,

trying to find the best sequence of events.

 

I was told my grandfather had a twin sister who

died when they were four.  Maybe that is when

he started feeling the need to talk. They say

twins sometimes communicate without the need

for words.

 

So maybe silence was his natural way of knowing,

feeling, talking, allowing life to visit him.

 

Maybe it was not the depths of the quiet

that drowned his thoughts,

but the vastness of his experience

that was too much for noise to express.

 


POOJA NANSI

 

“The Inadequate vocabulary I learnt from Enid Blyton, Ted Hughes and Jane Austen”

 

You are expecting

A rainbow of a poem

That deals with Kamasutra linguistics.

A poem shrouded with mystery metaphors like a bride

With her gunghat covering her face

 

Because I am Indian,

My words must fulfill the prophecy

Of being exotic,

My poems must be crafted

Out of words

Like saffron and tumeric.

I must talk about any kind of sensory overload.

 

Somehow, I have grown to love these strange shapes

My tongue makes with more fluency than it can handle

The words my great grandmother used.

But which language has not been the oppressor’s tongue?

And when did poetry start to discriminate?

 

I cannot in good faith mine a syntax

That my brown skin simply arranges me into.

I do not want to write a poem about the Taj Mahal,

Or the sound of glass bangles

Because I cannot encapsulate,

Cannot explain

Cannot diminish this tradition

With the inadequate vocabulary I learnt from

Enid Blyton, Ted Hughes and Jane Austen

 

If I am writing in English,

Then this is my owned language

Even if it may not be my own.

And I do not want my poems to be your exotic,

Do not want them to be your erotic kohl lined

Veiled girl singing raga puranas, sitar in hand.

 

I will not turn Hindi and Urdu into yet another

‘new-age phenomenon’ with a soft tabla soundscape.

You see, we can both speak in English you and I,

But it will never be the same

Language.


POOJA NANSI

 

listening to mukesh

 

Driving to your block,

I slide in my father’s cassette

 of old Hindi songs and

 

I am humming in twilight

to the legendary

playback singer’s baritone

releasing those sounds in that

language that makes me feel like I am

home. In the back of my throat, 

I can taste my grandmother’s

translucent thin chappatis

that as children we would
hold up

to the light,

the dough so evenly rolled out

by her hands that not

one lump would show.

I never appreciated them till her hands
shook so much from Parkinsons,

she could no longer grip

the rolling pin.

 

I hear the children from the slum
that emerged behind my grandparents small

two-storey apartment block.

They are swearing

in that deliciously punctuated rhythm

only the born-and-bred tongue

can dance to.

 

I am home for a while.

I can smell dust and kerosene

in the air and hear
high-pitched devotions to the gods

blending without objection

into the stone thud bass
of the latest film song.

 

Jamming my brakes at a traffic light,

I realise home is supposed to be these

dustless streets and the smells

are alien culinary concoctions,
like pigs’ knuckles and chicken anatomy,

that my migrant tastebuds
cannot migrate towards.

 

I have taught my tongue

to like the garlic sting

of Hainanese chili paste

and form some Hokkien curse words.

It even enjoys the harsh bite of it,

but it is not

a taste, a language

that makes my heart sing

like these notes on my

car stereo.

 

Jaoon kaha batayen dil,

Duniya badi hain sangdil

Chandini Aiyen Ghar Jalane

Sujhe Na Koyi Manzil.

 

Tell me where I should go

in a world filled with indifference.

The moonlight filters into my house,

But I do not belong,

neither can I think of a destination.

 

(Pooja Nansi)

 

POOJA NANSI

a rant

 

I want to hear a poem about Singapore.

About this multi-racial island

untouched by thin lines of segregation

too faint to see.

 

A poem about why there are four races

when I see at least five

different shades of brown

eveytime I walk down the street.

One of the kids in my class said

“Most lawyers are Indian because Indians are articulate”,

and then ten minutes later agreed

he had never seen a mama shop run by a Chinese.

 

I want to hear a poem about

why our national pledge says

regardless of race,

language

or religion,

but in Primary One I was ushered to the

Tamil class because I was Indian.

It was determined that was my mother tongue.

As a 6-year-old,

I could not get them to believe

I did not know this foreign language

the teacher was rolling out

between her teeth.

 

Give me a poem about why
we talk about integration and diversity,

and then explain why

when my parents came here in 1983,

they could not find one

decent Hindi movie on TV.

 

I want to hear a poem about our education system,

and our premier institutions that churn out

genius children who have never spent time

trying to ride a bike downhill without brakes

or read a book just for fun

because they spend 18.9 hours
a week on tuition.

A poem about why we need campaigns

telling us how to read,

how to speak,

how to smile,

how to eat,

how many children to have,

how to love our families.

 

Why are there no poems telling us to

think think think dream dream dream

 in crazy unpredictable free verse,
not in strict sonnets with rules or structure,

harping on what should be

like a broken record.

 

I want to read a poem about the National Day Parade

where people in blue and red merge

and the voiceover tells us,

“These flowing colours represent the

harmony and love present in our

diverse population”,

while somewhere at the National University,

a clerk calculates race quotas.

 

I want to hear a poem about Singapore.

A poem about confusion

and the wheels of change.

A poem about how our soul

is a shopping centre

and our opinions

are out of range.

 

A poem about how alien

poems are in this country,

how our national day songs tell us

every creed and every race

has its role and has its place.

 

What is mine?

 I have lived here
twenty-four

out of the twenty-five
years of my life

and I

do not identify.

I haven’t quite got

my ground on my feet.

 

I want to hear a poem about my country.

You know,

something that represents me?