Poetry begins as a rivulet and completes as an ocean

The Boat by Mayank Chhaya

Poetry begins as a rivulet and completes as an ocean.

It falls and crashes over rocks and traverses long miles before finding an ocean to merge with.

What begins as a single and distinct drop, vanishes in the fathoms of ocean waters, forever indistinguishable. Or so poets like me delude themselves into believing.

This wholly unnecessarily ornate beginning is to merely make way for some new Urdu/Hindi verses and poetry I have written in the last couple of days. I remain fascinated by how randomly these thoughts emerge in my mind and arrange themselves into verses with a fair bit of cadence and rhythm to them. Also, their content is so very different from each other. Let me cite a few here.

It strikes me that this short preamble also serves as a warning that you are about to be ambushed by my occasional poetic self-absorption. So if you choose, you may leave at this point.

 

Pandit hoon mein bas pelta hoon

Jo bhi khel ho woh khelta hoon

Badboo bhi hoon aur khushboo bhi

Mein to bas failta hoon

Duniya ek thela hai

Jisey mein roz thelta hoon

Phool ya patthar job hi naseeb

Hasta hoon aur jhelta hoon

Pandit hoon mein bas pelta hoon…..

(Mayank Chhaya, Dec 8, 2012)

Now the translation or something approaching that. Excuse the fact that it does not rhyme in English. It is too much work to rhyme it on a Sunday morning:

The pundit that I am, I like to spin

Whatever the game, I am there to play

I am malodorous as I am fragrant

Spreading is what I do

The world is a pushcart

And I like to push

Bouquets or brickbats

I endure both

The pundit that I am…..

 

This morning, I was struck by these thoughts:

Bekhayaal ghumta hoon

Phulon ke rukh chumta hoon

Jo miley us ka jashn

Jo na miley us pe bhi jhumta hoon

Behkhayal ghumta hoon…

(Mayank Chhaya, Dec 9, 2012)

I wander about without a care*

Kissing flowers

I celebrate what I accomplish

And also relish what I don’t

I wander about without a care…

(* Bekhayal is not without a care but it works in this context)

And finally, on the heels of the juvenile romanticism and my characteristic detachment of the verses above, what followed spontaneously was this street level versifying.

Aap hi ke ishq ki garmi se nikla hai pasina

Rumal to le aao, hasina

(Mayank Chhaya, Dec 9, 2012)

It is the heat of romancing you that is causing me to perspire,

Would you please fetch me a handkerchief, you fetching beauty

 

I don’t know about you but I feel uplifted. Self-absorption is like helium. It untethers you from reality.