The river’s soul is slashed: its five fingers
Fractured and dammed with an imaginary border. The wind
Crosses back and forth the ancient land, unhindered.
The saint has departed.
Sweet Indus, flow gently, till I sing again.
The river bears no blood stains, partition papers,
Silk flags, passports, blue or green
Or other remains of dark midnights. The saint has departed.
And their successors, the drifting souls of the subcontinent;
The departed have left only their words of wisdom.
By the lost waters of Sarswati I sit down and weep . . .
Sweet Indus, flow gently till I sing again,
Sweet Indus, flow gently, for I tread rough terrain.
I hear explosions in Pokhran
The split of the atoms, shockwaves ripping the world apart.
Violent storms blew through the desert
Drowning villages and cities in sand
While I was strolling at Bandra Bandstand
On a hot summer evening in Bombay
The desert shook again, this time in Quetta
While I was grazing a cowherd in Balochistan
Dust rose in the sky turning the day into night
And the dry hot winds from the desert destroyed
All the sunflowers from Peshawar to Kanyakumari.
But from time to time I hear talks of sunflowers
Being revived or of planting a new crop of similar kind
Which will grow as fast and shine as bright.
O the sun shines bright in the desert
And there is no water
We drink only milk and eat only dessert
Sarve bhavantu sukhin, sarve santu niamayah
Sarve bhadrani pashyantu, ma kaschit dukh bhag bhavet! 1
Ram Ram Sita Ram
Hare Krishna Hare Hare
Ishwar Allah Tero Nam
Sabko Sanmati De Bhagwan 2
Eternal City
Under the smog of a November noon
Mrs. Kaul, the Civil Servant
Bright as ruby, in her finest Sari
Woven in Benares by Banke Bihari,
Invited me gently in Hinglish
To dine at the India International Centre
Followed by a luminous night at a five-star hotel.
At the midnight hour, when the world sleeps
Turning and tossing in beds, when the humanity recuperates
Like a frog hibernating in winter,
I, Lord Mountbatten, though blind, swinging across the subcontinent,
Partitioned with a pen on paper, can see
At the midnight hour, the sun setting over the British Empire
Heading homeward, as the sailor returns home from a sea voyage,
It’s teatime in London, time to make one’s own breakfast, light
One’s own oven, and to open canned tin food.
Of the vast empire
Over which the Sun never set,
What has been left?
Souvenirs, loot, kohinoor, and maps?
I, Mountbatten, now an old man with wrinkled skin
Foresaw what was coming, and left the scene—
All awaited that expected moment.
Nehru, the impatient man with the gift of gab, arrived,
The last Englishman, Macaulay’s true son,
One of a kind the British could trust
Someone who could speak the language, a confidante.
The propitious hour arrived at midnight, as he agreed,
The Raj ended, India woke up from centuries of slumber,
for its tryst with destiny
but broken and limping.
Partitioned and bleeding, assaulted by invaders
and tribesmen heavily armed;
inviting immediate response,
that made a substantial difference.
(And I, the Time, have foreseen it all
Enacted on this same ancient land of Bharat;
I have fought in Kurukshetra and Karnal
And walked among the dead after the great war of Mahabharat.)
I, Mountbatten deliver my final farewell speech,
And grope my way, after the sunset (on the Empire), to the sea . . .
India heaves a sigh of relief and looks in the mirror,
Fully aware of its new found freedom;
Its numb amputated body feels a streak of terror:
It must move on: now what’s done is done.
When even great men stoop to folly and
Commit despicable acts partitioning the land
It wipes tears with its tender left hand,
And sobs silently alone at dawn.
A new music plays in the Moghul gardens
And along the Rajpath, up the Central Secretariat.
O Delhi, O Delhi, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public monument at the India Gate,
The pleasant sounds of the common people’s choir
And cooing and wooing
Of lovers under the moon: where the soldiers
Of India martyred in Mesopotamia, Persia, Flanders
East Africa, Gallipoli and France shine in splendor.
The Yamuna drains
Darkness
From Delhi’s soul
With the downpour
Of Monsoon
In August
Flooding parts of the city.
The blood bath
A sea of refugees
At the Kingsway Camp
Past the Delhi University.
Waheguru, Waheguru
Ishwar Allah, Ishwar Allah 3
Men and women
Beating their chests
The boundary drawn
An imaginary line
In ink and blood
Spilled on paper
Rippled the lake
Monsoon wind
Carried across the subcontinent
The wails of children
Men and women
Waheguru Waheguru
Hare Krishna, Hare Ram
Sare Jahan Se Accha Hindostan Hamara.
Hum Bulbule Hain Iski, Ye Gulsitan Hamara. 4
Syed Ahmad Khan conceived a new Gulistan.
Iqbal sang a new Tarana and Jinnah undid me.
My heart in Hindukush, and my feet in Arunachal
My hands stretched from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.
After the partition I wept. They promised a new dawn.
I kept silent. What could I say?
On Siachen Glacier.
I cannot link
Anything with anything.
The frostbitten bodies of my sons.
My humble sons who expect
Nothing.
Ram Ram
To Rajghat then I came and saw the saint
Burning burning burning burning
Hey Ram Hey Ram
Sabko Sanmati De Bhagwan.
Sarswati is a lost river in the Indian subcontinent.
Pokhran is a site in Rajasthan where nuclear tests were conducted.
Quetta is a site in Balochistan where nuclear experiments were conducted.
“May all be happy, may all look great, may there never be sorrow” is a thought from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
