Poems
A poem from British Museum which was commissioned by the Mansio Project in 2016
Daljit’s commissioned poem for BBC1’s The One Show originally on 30/04/13
The first extract is from Daljit's version of Ramayana published by Faber & Faber
The second extract is from Daljit’s second poetry collection Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger-Toy Machine!!!
Hadrian's Wall
Around the old blown names
Birdoswald, Cawfields or Vindolanda,
each fortress and straight line of stone
partition was built by a zealous emperor
to keep out the barbarous.
I’ve come to this wall crowning England,
this symbol of divided man,
to honour the lineage of our tall ideals;
to ask, the more stacked, the more shielded
a haven, the cleaner the blood?
Where will our walls finally end? In
the gigabytes of our biometric online
lives, in our passports? To keep us
from trespass, will our walls be raised
watchful as the Great Firewall of China?
The Vishnu of Wolverhampton
I always be Laxman the hobbler
who leave the open sewer, the lemon trees
at India's independence
for a mill town of Kamloops
and onwards for the middle of the motherland.
Till they joke how far a mere hobbler is
stretch his legs
from one to the other end of the English Empire.
So what can it mean returning home?
Yet only yesterday I see a pink cloud lost
and though I never before -
I wave to it! I think it is my wife
Padma who passed away a life ago.
Padma come from the homeland these days
to check if I hang out my washing,
when I point to my handkerchiefs on the line
she is a beaming cloud with silk lining.
I always dream of the marriage night with Padma
how we never before have met
how we're locked in our bedroom by the villagers
and the young girls in bare feet
who are all huddled and listening from the veranda.
How I'm trying to stand up proper manlike
but outside I feel is all one ear
even the jackal is quiet and ready to laugh.
And my bride stay sitting
on the side of our bed-to-be.
She is stick of bazaar-candy-pink,
from head to toe, I feel in my heart
she is pure, too pure.
And not very manlike am I
when I, when I drop my chaddar
and out come sticking my
legs, my hobbledehoy legs.
But my bride loosen her sari
and calm as Mother India,
Come to bed husband. I will love your legs.
Your legs are now my legs.
And in our love-trying and chuckling
she understand why I start to cry. I cry I love so much
my father. To win a wife for his cursed son
he become a man on his knees
and when he come up from the begging ground
he come up holding
this Padma-jewel.
She is a goddess I swear for any Rajah
but is happy with only Laxman the hobbler!
These days I am widow-white haired
and all my family have passed away:
cloud-cut for the monsoon mansions,
and in my dreams of Vishnu
I am ready to leave this skin for other skins.
My friend Ramlochan say, All gods is dead.
It always bastard rain!
I say, My dear Ramlochan, you always coming up dry.
In the eyes of our partition peoples
did we not have kismet of Rajahs?
Why you expect in Wolverhampton a heatwave?
Only this, I pray:
on my last day, my peoples
will light my sandalwood pyre.
From my flaming body at dawn
my soul is rise and rising become a pink cloud
flying to India where my Padma
is also a pink cloud hovering for me.
Just before our watering down into all-time waters,
for a long-time-no-one-seeing-us moment,
above a bank-side, above a fork tree
where the gods once straighten a cripple child,
Padma and I will come together.
One double-big
chum-chum pink
chuckling cloud!
Ode to Harrow
All shades to the good in my heartfelt Harrow
with its Metropolitan Line for the sticks or the city!
Look at us side by side and mucking-in for the graft
for Harrow's no one's centre - everyone's home!
Harrow is stalls bustling with enormous gourds,
aubergines and plantains! Harrow is Polski Sklep,
seasonal matzos, and the daily splash-island-song
of pomegranate, guava, melons and mangoes!
Harrow is ball-clacking shinty, cricket, bowls
and a workout for zumba, bhangra or freestyle!
Harrow is Diwali, Eidh, St Patricks, Channukah
alongside summers of jazzy razzamatazz melas!
These sepia shades of tall-trees and slant-parks
were home for Romantic Lord Byron, home too
for India's jewel of Independence Jawaharlal Nehru
and we'll fight on the beaches Winston Churchill!
Home too for our time-bending Roger Bannister -
imagine him pegging-it down the lanes for school
at Vaughan Primary where nowadays my daughters
are at home in the countries and continents of tongues!
May my children and all the children of Vaughan,
all who claim their origins from over the rainbow,
learn to love whatever is kaleidoscopic or contrary
in our youthful Harrow with its arms flying in the air!
An extract from Daljit's forthcoming verse-novel, Ramayana
(Publisher Faber & Faber in October 2013)
from Prologue Get Raaaaaaaaaavana!
The Gods seek help from Vishnu after Raavana, having won great powers (boons), becomes destructive.
Lord of the Cosmos, Vishnu,
was brought back to heaven
from a stellar meditation
by many gods now stooped at his feet.
Said one, semi-stooped in the saffron light,
'O Lord, whilst we in thousand day prayers
for peace are bent
Raavana is bishboshing our kingdoms!'
Another god butted in, 'O Lord, with only a
wink
he splash even our oceans into a coma.'
No wonder the gods were gurgling with collywobbles -
Raavana was toasting
their earthly and galactic worlds!
By soaking the energy from everything he nulled
Raavana was now a supreme being becoming!
But who was this scallywag, this goonda?
Lord of the Cosmos, Vishnu, flashed
umpteen visions to the gods
that showed Raavana's path to glory.
In the first flashback, Vishnu displayed Raavana
being born with ten heads
and ten pairs of arms!
Then he showed Raavana, the teenager, on a hillock,
meditating
for so many non-stop years
that smoke was issuing from his head
and dulling the heavens!
The gods were constrained and had to grant Raavana
with great mental and physical powers
known as boons.
So many boons empowering Raavana
that he could fly through the air
on the power of a thought alone!
Yet Raavana hankered after more boons,
so many boons that even Vishnu, according to the laws of nature,
had to hand them over.
Vishnu showed Raavana earning these boons by
fasting
atop a mountain
dining only on the air's moisture
for a hundred years!
Boon-packed rock-hard Raavana was
now shown standing on a toe
without shifting a muscle
through heatwave or
whirlwind! One
tough-nut
toe
whilst simultaneously
reciting Vishnu's beloved mantra
ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
for nine
hundred
solid years!
No surprise, in Vishnu's next vision, Raavana was losing
his mind
and was holding a blade
to cut off his own ten heads.
Vishnu, from on high, stopped him by asking
what he is wanting.
Raavana boomed back,
'Am I not a worthy King of the Universe, Lord!?'
Vishnu must have hoped Raavana would become
pure shanti, a bit like himself,
yet soon as Vishnu's divine engine
touched
across each Raavana atom
in a somewhat unparalleled way
Raavana went bonkers!
His ten heads, his ten sets of arm, trapezoid, rump, knuckle
and whatnot
juddered tsunami-volcanically
into a hardcore fierce firming-up!
His every milli-inch was muscling -
pinnacling with indestructibilitiness!
Roaring Raavana
simply leapt through
a spatial portal and
pegged it straight down
deep into the seventh
and lowest underworld,
the Swarga Loka,
to break free the bulk
of his raksassy race!
Vishnu's final vision displayed Raavana
and his raksassy chums
lording it from an earthly island.
The gods pitched in chaos, chorused,
'What is to be done, Lord?'
Vishnu revealed a loophole in Raavana's boons.
It's true Raavana sought immunity
from demons and deities but he never
sought immunity from mankind.
So who's to say a man
can't make him meet his maker.
from The Balcony Song of Raju & Jaswinder
RAJ
...won’t you come downstairs I’m caught in the rain
and I’ll stay here all day with my box of matyai
though your mum might be shocked by this shoe-caste boy
who’s squats in her oak by her bright golden gates.
JASWINDER
Go away dirty boy, yoo is bad bad lover
we danced in di car to Bally Sagoo
on di way from Henley to Sutton Hoo
and I luv it up di flumes ov di Alton Tower!
Vut a summer it was when yoo teach me to kiss
or to walk wid yor hand and not blush in public,
den I hear how yoo bin through di ladies
like a rickshaw round New Delhi!
RAJ
Well it’s true I went round the block with Bulwinder
I went with Kuswinder
I went with Subwinder
I even went to the mela with Ramwinder!
But their skirts were too short
and they loved their alcopops
they all chewed gum
and they swore too much
so none of these girls made me feel right inside.
Then one day standing out of the temple
the one to turn me fundamental
her hair was beehive’d
in a honey-coloured sari
it doesn’t take much to realise
it was you Jaswinder - you’re my Bollywood hotty!
Even though you’re the star of the landowner caste
only you take me back to my past.
JASWINDER
Yoo is cute, such a cute, such a cute cute lad
but yoo act wid no bezti. And here in di West
can we be all one caste? If I speak to my dad
he may fast get me feathered in di uncle’s nest
in Baluchistan or in Pakistan
in Hindustan or in No-Woman-Staan!?
RAJ
I regret my name was the cause of sharam
my honour is lost, I’m as foul as a harem,
a moral for randy young bloods
who go hot off the press when their fun is undone.
I regret getting stuck in the thickets with Mukjit
getting locked in the wicket with Jamjit
running up burns on the benches with Scarjit
being stung pulling thorns out of Bungjit.
So no more Puldeep or Sagdeep or Bagdeep
and no more Lukveer and no more Hotveer
only one name is true and it’s my Jaswinder!