'America' Tribute Series: Part III - Aruni Kashyap

The third and the final poem in this series is by Aruni Kashyap. The America tribute series celebrates poems by various Indian poets that are either inspired or, are adapted from Ginsberg's America. We thank the author for granting us the permission to use this poem.

Dear India

- A Collage poem

(A tribute to Ginsberg’s America. First published in The Sunday Guardian, 2012)

Dear India, what kind of an idea are you? Do you
bend at all? Do you sway at all, trimming
your bluish shades? Why are you
proud of a 50 year old shame?

Dear India, please do not forget the sweaters women in Assam had knitted,
the ornaments they had donated and do not forget,
that James Bond has killed 150 men and
has slept with 44 women since
the first movie came out in 1962. That is
also an important matter.

Dear India, there were few boats that night,
when people were fleeing Tezpur, feeling
betrayed after they'd heard Nehru's speech.

Dear India, please wake up.
Have some strong Assam tea (Korongoni will do but
I love Golaghat Tea too - you can get it in small
250 gram packets if you don't want to spend a lot)
and stop glorifying 1962 as it is not the only story.

Dear India, have you read A Single Man?
Christopher Isherwood's novel
set in November 1962, about a gay man in LA? Have
you heard of the book? About the Cuban Missile Crisis?
You know, I am a great fan of Lata Mangeshkar. I think she is super cool.

Dear India,
In 1962, An American Airlines Boeing 707 crashed on takeoff
at New York International Airport after a rudder malfunction
caused an uncontrolled roll, resulted in the loss of control of the aircraft
and the loss of all life on board - there are other
stories, please read some at least, India.

Dear India : go fuck yourself with your atom bomb,
with your commonwealth games
with your T-3 airport.

Dear India,
you need an education.

Dear India, why do you make me
feel ashamed so often? As if seizing the virginities
of fourteen-year olds by Indian soldiers in 90s
wasn't enough. Dear India, please pack
your bags, and go to school. It is getting late, your Assam tea
will not remain hot forever. Dear India, you might
just miss the bus - have you done your homework? Madam
will make you kneel down in front of the class if it is incomplete. Please
do not stick your arms and legs out of the windows of the bus and better
finish your tiffin today: including the bananas.








Read other poems from the 'America' Tribute Series.

'America' Tribute Series: Part II - Amitava Kumar

The second poem in the ongoing series is by Amitava Kumar. We plan to reprint poems inspired or adapted from Ginsberg's America, by various Indian Poets. We are thankful to him for granting us the permission to use it.

India (for Safdar Hashmi).

January 1999

(Adapted from Ginsberg’s America. First published in Himal South Asian, 2013)

India I have given you all and now I'm a memory.

I'm a name for a playwright killed and a movement born on January 1, 1989.

I can't stand my own countrymen's minds.

India when will we end the daily war?

Go fuck yourself with your nuclear bomb.

India, I'm not Sanjay Gandhi I don't give a damn about making Marutis.

I will write poems about tyrants spilling blood in the streets.

India when will you be a playground for your children?

When will you celebrate Holi with red flags?

When will you remind the world of the dead in Bhopal?

When will you be worthy of a single landless peasant in Bihar?

India why are the songs of Bhikhari Thakur about lean days?

India when will you stop sending your engineers to America?

I'm sick of the world's insane demands.

When can I appear on Doordarshan and shatter H.K.L. Bhagat's dark glasses with my smile?

India after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.

Your ministers are too much for me.

You made me want to be poor.

There must be some other way to settle this argument.

Gaddar is in a prison even at home it's sinister.

Are you being sinister or is this a practical joke of the Home Ministry?

I'm trying to come to the point.

I refuse to give up my obsession.

India stop pushing I know what I'm doing.

India the gulmohar is blooming.

I haven't read the newspaper for months, every day somebody is accused of wild corruption.

India I feel sentimental about Telengana.

India I became a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry.

I sing songs at town squares every chance I get.

I sit in tea-shops for days on end and talk to strangers about bringing change.

When I go to a basti we raise the cry "Halla Bol..."

My mind is clear that they're going to make trouble.

You should join me in reading Marx and Premchand.

The priests say the old order was perfectly alright.

I will not repeat the old half-truths and outright falsehoods.

I have revolutionary dreams and songs about a new world.

India I still haven't told you what you did to Manto when he did not leave for Pakistan in '47.

I'm addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by television?

I'm obsessed by television.

I watch it every day.

Its eye watches me every evening as I step inside my home.

I watch it with friends in a room in A.K. Gopalan Bhavan.

It's always telling us about the greatness of this country.

Cricketers are great.

Movie stars are great.

Everybody's great but us.

It occurs to me that I am India.

I could not be talking to myself when I say this.

Alisha sings she is "Made in India."

What happened to Mukesh singing "Mera joota hai Japani, Yehpatloon Inglistani, Sir pe laal topi Rusi, phir bhi dil hai Hindustani?"

I'd better consider my national resources.

My national resources consist of ten glasses of tea our nukkad-natak the fire in the stomach of my unemployed friends the exhaustion on the faces of those productively employed who after work put in four or more hours in rehearsals and street-performances.

I say nothing about the factories closed down, the busted trade unions, the millions who wake under the dying suns of fluorescent pavement lights.

I have abolished bonded labour in Delhi, dowry deaths is the next to go.

My ambition is to have Bertolt Brecht elected the head of each gram-panchayat despite the fact that he doesn't belong to any caste. India how can I write an epic poem in your television soap opera?

I will continue like J.R.D. Tata my plays are as patriotic as his factories more so they're also for the working class.

India I will perform a street-play Rs 50 apiece Rs 400,550 down on your Apna Utsav festivals.

India put behind bars Bal Thackeray.

India save the Naxalites.

India Avtar Singh Pash must not die again.India I am Shah Bano.

India when I was young my parents had organised mehfils in a small garden with communist artists like Bhisham Sahni and Habib Tanvir they had performed with the Indian People's Theatre Association and we started with Machine because in a factory goons fired on striking workers who had wanted a tea-shop and a cycle-stand. Comrade Mohan Lal was reminded of the martyr Bhagat Singh and Bhishamji said that a new link had at last been added to the freedom struggle the rhythm of people's heartbeats had found expression once again.

India you don't really want to go to war.

India it's them bad Pakistanis.

Them Pakistanis them Pakistanis and them Chinese. And them Pakistanis. The Pakistan wants to make eunuchs of us all. The Pakistan's terrorist. She wants to take all our cricketers hostage.

Her wants to destroy our temples.

Her needs a Qur'an-quoting Times of India.

Her wants our HMT watch factories in Karachi. Him military government running our corner bania-stores.

That not godly. Chi! Him convert our untouchables. Him need the support of all Indian Muslims.

Ha! Her make us all victims of missile attacks.

Help.India this is quite serious.

India this is the message being repeated by our rulers.

India is this right?

We better get down to the job.

It's true I don't want to train in shakhas of right-wing vigilantes or join mobs intent on demolishing mosques, I'm a Muslim and unwelcome anyway.

India I'm putting my unyielding shoulder to the wheel. 

* Note from the Author: This poem mimics "America" by Allen Gindberg. 

Read other poems from the 'America' Tribute Series.

'America' Tribute Series: Part I - Ishan Marvel

We plan to reprint poems inspired or adapted from Allen Ginsberg's America, by various Indian Poets. We start with an adaptation by Ishan Marvel. We are also happy to publish an original poem by Marvel which talks about the role Ginsberg played in his poetic journey.

India

(Adapted from Ginsberg’s America. First published in Vayavya, Summer Issue 2013)

India, I give you nothing, for I am nothing

Two balls and seventeen cigarettes. July 9, 2012

I’m beginning to enjoy my mind

But India, when will you fight another war?

When will you use that million-dollar bomb?

I can’t write my epic till you do something

India, when will you stop being a pussy and take off your clothes?

India, when will you be acidic?

When will you meet the eyes of your million Naxalites?

India, why are your bookshops full of shit?

And when will you stop making omelettes for America?

I’m sick of hypocrisies

When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my lean dick?

India, when will you move on to the next world?

Your machinery is too much for me

You make me feel ashamed of being a saint

There is no way to end this argument

I can never get to the point

I refuse to give up my madness

India, start pushing, we’ve had enough of labour

India, the onions are rising

I haven’t read the newspaper for months, everyday somebody does something bad

India, I feel sentimental about the Maoists

I used to be a communist when I was a bachelor; I’m not sorry

I avoid marijuana everywhere

I sit at my desk for days on end and stare at the curtains

When I go out, I get drunk and never get laid

My mind is made up, we need some trouble

You should have seen me reading Freud

My analysis says I’m perfectly right

I won’t stand for the national anthem

I have cosmic visions and mystical vibrations

India, you should be ashamed of the drool when Uncle Obama came over

I’m undressing you

Are you going to let our imagination run by Delhi Times?

I’m obsessed by Delhi Times

I read it every chance I get

Its pictures tempt with me all the women I can never have

I read it with my morning cigarette and shit

It’s always telling me about fun

Businessmen are having fun

Movie stars are having fun

Everybody’s having fun but me

It occurs to me that I am India

I am talking to myself again

Yoga is rising against me

I haven’t got a chance

I’d better consider my national resources

My national resources consist of twelve cigarettes

Millions of shy genitals

An unpublished private literature that goes ten fucks a page

And eight hundred buffoons at the centre

I say nothing about my schools, or the millions of underprivileged who live in my pubic jungles under the light of zero-watt bulbs

I have killed half of Kashmir, the East is next to go

My ambition is to be President due to the fact that I’m useless

India, how can I write my grand epic in your silly mood?

I will continue like Salman Khan

My couplets are as funny as his driving

More so they’re all sexually confused

India, I will sell you cantos a lakh apiece, ten thousand down on your old canto

India, I am the BCCI

When I was thirteen, Ma took me to urban Buddhist groups

They sold us prayer books for hundred bucks, and the speeches were free and full of faith

Everybody was sincere and sentimental about prayer

It was all so sincere you have no idea how much I was brainwashed

Later, I almost cried when I realized I only wanted to be cool

Everybody must have been an asshole

India, you do want to go to war

India, it’s them Pakistanis

And them Bangladeshis, them Sri Lankans, and them Chinamen

And them Pakistanis

The Pakistan wants to fuck us dead

The Pakistan’s a sex addict

He wants to take our virgins on our kitchen-tops

Him wants to grab Kashmir

Him needs a Filmfare

Him wants our grass in Malana

Her, big bureaucracy running our brothels

That no good

Her sucks up to America

Her need big, black Tam-Brahms

Him makes us all abuse our wives

Help

India, this is quite serious

This is the impression I get from looking in the television set

India, is this correct, or am I stoned again?

You’d better get right down to the job

It’s true I diss everything and write dirty rhymes, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway

India, I’m taking my bruised shoulder off the wheel

***

Remembering Ginsberg

it was the big fat book of collected poems on a friend’s bookshelf 

and dylan whining through the stereo down mandela road

all that talk of sex, hippies, and cigarettes, and the myriad ironies of our rat lives 

it was just the evening, and the time 

  

to remember that man with the crazy eyes

a big fat book of collected poems at the professor’s 

to remember how it felt reading the first lines of Howl for the first time

how the pages began to scream, drilling through years of bullshit, screaming:

boy, this is poetry too!

to remember being blown away by the reams of gibberish a madman had let loose

by cosmopolitan greetings!

the onslaught of associations and all that dope smoked in tribute

to remember the stupor of those days when I believed I could shock the world into changing

and above all, to remember thinking to myself:

man, this guy knows! this guy fucking knows!

but then, to have gotten over it

to talk of him as someone I met on a crazy trip years ago

to laugh and shake my head at the freshly ginsbuggered, and be all:

yeah, I had a phase too… yeah, he’s pretty amazing… yeah, rhythm rhythm, fuck, beat, buddha something, revolution… captured zeitgeist… kaddish and love… and howl, and love, and howl… and blah and blah and blah…

  

but today, I remember you, Ginsberg

that feeling

and the searing, heartbreaking, scrotum-tightening truths of your time and place you sang

that’s the least a bastard can give

* * *




Read other poems from the 'America' Tribute Series.