Kalachakra

As intuition catches »temporality,« translations here seem to halt. Take a deep, deep breath in and fill up with as many particles and emotions as poetically possible – then release. While releasing, forget markers with (intuitive) clear messages, and somehow recall almost divine signifiers.

As we pursue our translations of »temporality,« blurred, accommodating locally grouped imprints emerge everywhere – unaccountable superpositions with endless contributing authors. Resolving temporal looping upon loops, we know it as काल/Kala¹ – like an entanglement of looming (of time, of death, of everything othered), keeping safe of spaces, objects like its own bodily extensions, reciprocating to existence at great poetic depths, evoking glory, भक्ति/devotion², Shringar³, and everything and the othered …

A language prescribed (no)map for familiar strolls. of waiting, of delays; of restfulness

As poetry cultivates a subatomic throb, a glaze of almost omnipresence – at the (contrapuntal⁴) हिंदी/here and now of things, we try to locate viewpoints, their tussles, harmonizing with what could create a jam. Notice focal points of bygone time spooking poetic presentism, yet still tickling primordial percussive (time signatory) pleasures. 

Voices emanating from arches of temporality land us shapes in timely emotions, in the elsewhere of things, possibly bringing us together in different temporal exposures. Probing language’s ideals and ultimately simulating a rest, navigating through temporal fevers offered by poetry, rests within poetic rests, through discourse in prose, without a set course, or a predecided notion of evolution. The poems are picked from the pauses in their surrounding temporality. 

Thick blots of resting on the seemingly unidirectional timeline of this poetry have rested multidirectional poems within them. An implosion seems so regular; a yearning to reappear every time someone new reads them, they read themselves. If in विस्मृति/disrememberment⁵, they move away and into different times, then how do we help disremember?

 

और पकना लौटना नहीं है जड़ों की ओर  -केदारनाथ सिंह (रोटी) (1934–2018)   उस विकट सुखाड़ में सृष्टि पर पहरा दे रहे थे तीन-चार पत्ते –केदारनाथ सिंह (1934–2018)

And ripening Isn’t coming back to roots –Kedarnath Singh (Hindi Poet, 1934–2018)   In an abysmal drought, Watched time over cosmos Barely three to four leaves –Kedarnath Singh (Hindi Poet, 1934–2018)

 

करत-करत अभ्यास के जडमति होत सुजान । रसरी आवत-जात ते सिल पर परत निशान ॥ –कबीर (1440–1518)

Through practice intellect garners subtlety To and fro of rope creating smudges on the likes of rock (in an image of a कुआँ 6/well) ` –Kabir (1440–1518)

 

We enter this realm with devotion slacklining, arms attached to long, feeble, superimposing, sticks of waiting⁷ as our primary support system. Destined to be let go soon after(?). Devotees’ amnesiac – while walking on the rope we pray, requesting the sticks to reappear ontologically, magically trolleying spacetime to some of its halts. 

Poetic ounces help us bounce into meeting their infinite projections and help hold each frame. Distributed equally among seers of ropes, are some tools – for freedom of reappearing —disappearing – erasing – blurring – hinting – for god resided, granular in all states …

 

*

 

वह घाटी नहीं तलहटी थी जिसे हमने खोद निकाला था – और जिसे खोद निकालने की धुन में हम सैंकड़ों साल पीछे गड़ते चले जा रहे थे इतनी दूर और इतने गहरे की अब हमारी खोज में हमें ही खोज पाना मुश्किल था. शायद वहीं एक सभ्यता का अतीत 8हमसे विदा हुआ था जहाँ साँस लेने में पहली बार मुझे दिक्कत महसूस हुई थी और मैं बेतहाशा भागा था उस ज़रा-से दिखते आसमान, वर्तमान9 और खुली हवा की ओर जो धीरे-धीरे मुंदते चले जा रहे थे. इतिहास10 देखकर जब वह वर्षों11 ऊब गया उसने अपने लिए कब्रनुमा एक कमरा बनाया और एक बहुत भारी पत्थर को ओढ़कर सो गया.  –कुंवर नारायण (1927–2017)

It was a foothill not a valley Which we had dug out – And so engrossed in digging it out We kept being etched back hundreds of years So far and so deep That now it was difficult to even find ourselves on our quest.   Maybe that is where the very past of a civilization departed from us Where I found it difficult to breathe for the first time And I had run recklessly Towards that barely visible sky, towards the present, and the gale wind – Which were slowly shutting down   For years, looking at history, it lost interest Made a grave-like room for itself Shrouded itself with a boulder and slept.  –Kunwar Narayan (1927–2017)

 

A viscosity in revealing language’s awareness, consciousness-ing mistakes, slips, tones, collective breaths, in the blink’s and language’s REM cycles. Language’s body often camouflages into grains, derived from the intermingling rates of temporal breaths. But in the midst of breaths with their own moods, where does one look for self? In dainty crevices, where past-like spheres promise conjuring an everlasting glue? In believing so seamlessly in the history of our absence, our abstinence to choose which stones have pores breathing towards vanishing into infraredness? The vastness of temporal breaths engulfs poems, text twists as slowly as stones, and we catch our breaths to capture the rumbles.

 

धीरे-धीरे12 रे मना13, धीरे सब कुछ होय, माली सींचे सौ घड़ा, ॠतु आए फल होय। –कबीर

Steadily-Steadily, Oh, Mana, steadily all accomplishes, a gardener waters with a hundred more pitchers, fruition settles only with the season’s coming. –Kabir

 

Temporal peace, arrives so very scattered, like deserted inter-almost-planetary beings, transforming towards devotion – as if they were garlands with flowers disintegrating in a standstill’s glaze¹⁴. The end of sentences brings gestures, indications that a disillusionment here opens doors to seeing elsewhere. A gesture that identifies what learning about parallels can do to mirror images. When-where statues are firmly placed, mirrors crack discreetly, so how does one trace these routes to parallels, to discrete-time? The devotional era is accompanied by the bass of meditations in fifths – पा-सा-सा-सा¹⁵, a noise machine, looping without a willful signature moving in glee onto another – a verse-ailment hardly ever prescribed without a song. Exceptional poets here, exceptionally patient, and the other party immovable, aching anthologies …

 

कोई कहियौ रे प्रभु आवन की। आवन की मन भावन की॥ आप न आवै लिख नहिं भेजै बाण पड़ी ललुचावन की। ए दोउ नैण कहयो नहीं मानै नदिया बहैं जैसे सावन की॥ कहा करूँ कछु नहिं बस मेरो पाँख नहीं उड़ जावन की। मीरा कहै प्रभु कब रे मिलोगे चेरी भई हूँ तेरे दाँवन की॥ –मीरा (1498–1546)

Someone tell of the prabhu’s (god) coming. Share of this  enchantment. Neither they come nor send letters, keeping me forever tempted has become some habit of theirs. Like rivers in monsoons. my own eyes won’t listen to me.  A lack of wings is now disarming. Meera’s Prabhu! When would you meet? I feel submitted to your (timely) bets! –Meera (1498–1546)

 

If hundreds of years of war poems were immediately followed by hundreds of years of devotional poems, and together they eventually unfolded into a sloshed emotional oceanic lake, which migratory birds did time have in mind? A geomagnetic poetic mapping, which somehow managed to burrow itself into poetic DNA, and so mutations upon mutations still carried ligamental memories which nails can’t seem to scratch.

 

दूर दूर दूर… मैं वहाँ हूँ!… …मैं संघर्ष हूँ जिसे विश्राम16 नहीं…  …क्योंकि मैंने डर नहीं जाना है।…  मैं अभय हूँ, मैं भक्ति हूँ, मैं जय हूँ।   – अज्ञेय (1911–1987)

Far far farther… I am there!.. I am a struggle which has no rest… In fact, I have not known fear… I am unafraid I am devotion I am victory. –Agyeya (1911–1987)

 

बेटा जाए क्या हुआ, कहा बजावै थाल । आपन जावन ह्वै रहा, ज्यौं कीड़ी का नाल॥ –कबीर (1440–1518)

Such loud celebrations over birth of a boy, Coming and leaving (through multiple births) like worms of a drain –Kabir (1440–1518)

 

Threaded by bodies with undecided spans conversing in tilts, neither the flame goes for long walks, nor do those who carry within them the subtlest strings to measure the wind, that is those who keep an eye

like a waiting in and out of ephemeral moments holding quantum leaps. An awaiting which entangles without the support of shared life-spans.¹⁷

 

जब यह दीप थके तब आना।  – महादेवी वर्मा

Come, when this lamp tires. –Mahadevi Verma

 

दीप पत्थर का लजीली किरण की पद-चाप नीरव: अरी ओ करुणा प्रभामय! कब? कब? –   अज्ञेय

Lamp of stone Skittishness of rays Silent sound of steps: Oh you! Radiating, Karuna18 (dawn) When? When? –Agyeya

 

*

In a hanging network of ropes laid to dry, meshes – lucid, unopaque – are layered with angular curves so minor that these roundabouts in poetry look through possible temporal wavelengths, arguably directional free-falls. Here one continually quakes in a matter of time’s cloaks, residing in its seams, yet asking the peripheries to let in, asking, whose tempos are these? One mimes temporal presence while shuddering at the losses managed by a system of bodily tributaries.

 

काल, तुझसे होड़ है मेरी ׃ अपराजित तू— तुझमें अपराजित मैं वास करूँ। इसीलिए तेरे हृदय में समा रहा हूँ सीधा तीर-सा, जो रुका हुआ लगता हो— कि जैसा ध्रुव नक्षत्र भी न लगे, एक एकनिष्ठ, स्थिर, कालोपरि भाव, भावोपरि सुख, आनंदोपरि सत्य, सत्यासत्योपरि मैं—तेरे भी, ओ ›काल’ ऊपर!… –   शमशेर (1911–1993)

Time, I am contesting you: Undefeated you – In you undefeated I reside. And so, I am embodying your heart Like a straight arrow, which seems frozen – More so than stars, constellations, A faithful, unwavering, transcending time Faith, faith transcending Prosperity, joy transcending Truth, morality transcending I – transcend over you, oh, time!… –Shamsher (1911–1993)

 

वर्तमान ही मेरे शरीर का एकमात्र प्रवेश-द्वार है।  –  राजकमल चौधरी (1929–1967)

The present is the sole entrance into my body. –Rajkamal Chaudhary (1929–1967)

 

Sitting with plexuses open, breathing, breathing long, breathing short, condensing breath like milk, and biting, without teeth. A temporal consolation. 

Brick walls allotted to withholders of delayed¹⁹ »everything« a place to segregate »own,« and meditate upon private innumerable timelines. Documenting jitters through the language, while rubbing shoulders, unveiling a temporal curve in slo-mo, काक, वक्र, उक्ति.²⁰

Hindi is without capital letters – signaling it’s time to stress, time to stop, time to start another. Without these markers what does a (meta)body lacking in capitalization stress? A potential to sleepwalk? A body emanating in endless peas without signaling which ones are the heads, where are the tails – ingeminate garlands sweeping, towards knotless-nowheres, a sustained loop of delays.

 

हमें इतना दिलासा भर है कि अपने समय में भले न हों, हम अपने घर में हैं। – अशोक वाजपेयी (1941-)

We have but the consolation that We are »in« our home, even if we may not be in our times. –Ashok Vajpayee (1941–)

*

…उदय21-अस्त22 दिनकर का, तिमिर-हर के अंतर से तिमिर का उद्गम और तम के हृदय से निशानाथ का प्रकाश, सब है स्वाधीन…   -निराला (1896–1961)

The risings and settings of sun, From the heart of every mirk The origin of mirk And the marking light From the heart of darkness, Each is independent…   –Nirala (1896–1961)

 

कालचक्र²³, जीवन चक्र, दुश्चक्र, सौर चक्र, सुखद चक्र, दमन-चक्र, अग्नि-चक्र, वणिक चक्र, ब्रह्म-चक्र, नेत्र चक्र, ऋतु चक्र… चक्र²⁴/ Cycles²⁵, of the legs, of the brain, of the ovaries, of the wind, of the ocean … them too – independent.

 

…जैसे इन जगहों में पहले भी आया हूँ बीता हूँ. इन बनती-मिटती छायायों में तड़पा हूँ किया है इंतज़ार दी हैं सदियां गुज़ार बार-बार इन खाली जगहों में भर-भर कर रीता हूँ रह-रह पछताया हूँ पहले भी आया हूँ बीता हूँ – कुंवर नारायण (1927–2017)

… As if I have come to these places before as well passed before. Have suffered in these emitting-elapsing shadows Awaited Have traversed centuries Time and time again Have voided in these vacant places Have regretted ever and anon Have come before as well Have passed before. – Kunwar Narayan (1927–2017)

 

A hypnotic familiarity encircles dizzyingly, walks alongside shadows, echoing – buzzing, like fingerprints buzz engraving onto callouses, as if a wooden shaft disintegrates yet the engraving lives on – साया.²⁶ These places/points of disorienting disenchantments hardly ever engrave their own memories upon us, leaving only a sense of making-unmaking relaying to origin points not of this world, lucidly coexisting with ours, dreamscaping in a wake-centric civilization.

यदि किसी दुःस्वप्न के कारण ही नहीं तो जब सुबह जागते हो तो इस तरह स्मृतिहीन जैसे उसी क्षण जनमे हो अतीत वर्तमान भविष्य27 के अहसास से अपरिचित कभी-कभी तुम्हें ख़ुद को और अपने आस-पास को पहचानने में देर लगती है लेकिन चंद लमहों 28बाद पिछली शाम तक का सब कुछ धीरे-धीरे लौटता है और विस्मृति आकार लेने लगती है जिस तरह दवा का असर रहने पर विज्ञान-कथा का नायक स्वयं अपने को आईने में देख नहीं पाता लेकिन जब विलीन होता है उसका प्रभाव तो धीरे-धीरे प्रकट होती हैं उसकी कोशिकाएँ धमनियाँ मांसपेशियाँ उनमें बहता रक्त उसका पूरा शरीर फिर जैसे उस पर एक नई त्वचा आती है सारे उसमे नुक़ूश बनते हैं इसी तरह रात को ऐयार क़ुमक़ुमा सूरज के तिलिस्मी लख़लख़े से उतरता है सब लौट आते हैं हहराते हुए सारे कृत्य हासिल और सिले सारे उपकार कृतघ्नताएँ क़र्ज़ और भुगतान सारी असफलताएँ सारे अपमान एक ज़िंदगी की तमाम कुरूपताएँ गोया तुम्हारी समूची जीवनी और तुम पूरे लौट आते हो और बचाव का कोई रास्ता नहीं सूझता किसी घिरे हुए जानवर की तरह मुकम्मिल बन जाने के बाद अपनी इस संपूर्णता से चमड़ी बचाने के लिए तुम क्या कुछ नहीं करते…  – विष्णु खरे (1914–2018)

If not by a nightmare When you wake in the morning and so unremembering Like born in that moment Unacquainted with the sense of past, present, and future Sometimes you’d take time To identify yourself and your vicinity But only in a few moments Everything until last evening Comes back steadily And oblivion learns to take form Like under medication a protagonist of a sci-fi tale Can’t see themself in the mirror As sedation fades their cells, their veins and muscles, flowing blood, their entire body, slowly collects itself and begins to appear Then as if a new skin emerges In it, all become face-lines Similarly at night a clever bulb Steps down from the talismanic censers of the sun Everyone comes back trembling All acts acquired and stitched All benefactions ingratitude debts and pays All failures all insults All ugliness of a life, your complete biography And you come back wholly And find no ways to defend Like an animal surrounded Upon accomplishments  To save your skin from this perfection/entirety What all do you not do…      –Vishnu Khare (1914–2018)

 

*

Does time merge into an anecdotal framework – at once real, unhindered by the quotidian, forgettable when unsettling, when aging (once) mothers become anamorphic, atmospheric beings? Roaming anecdotes, growing into an evolution of unfamiliar chances, old-ing into familiar displacements, aging recurring bouts of a collection of hasty thoughts – to be listened to, to be told to, to be kept to oneself, to be kept aside, to not be kept at all – all hinging at cusps of decades.  

 

मैंने तो देखा है— ज़्यादा बूढ़ी औरतें दौड़ भी नहीं पातीं भगदड़ में! माँ, तुम बूढ़ी मत हो जाना कभी!   –   अनामिका (1961–)

I definitely have seen Very old women Aren’t able to run in stampedes Maa*, don’t you ever turn old!   –Anamika (1961–)

*

To make journeys between lamps and bulbs, electric debris from the future shaped in the form of cities settling inside the mechanics of single-stories, erupts like a storm of fireflies – a benevolent insomnia, a promise of many mornings simultaneously. 

 

शहर पुकारते थे बीस बरस पार से हमें बस की खिड़कियों से दिखता था भविष्य ऊँची बिल्डिंगों की तरह एक अदद सपना था कि टूटता नहीं था एक अदद रौशनी बुझती नहीं थी एक उम्मीद ख़त्म नहीं होती थी  अच्युतानंदन मिश्र (1981–)

Cities would call From twenty years across the future Through the windows of buses We saw the future Like tall buildings A sheer dream That wouldn’t break A sheer light Won’t go off A hope Wouldn’t last  Achyutanandan Mishra (1981–)

 

Objects in the language are haunted by denouncements, from the inception of documented poetry feebly present – there are active buyers, looking away from the archive. Every time they meet, timelines interact and traumas are triggered, they go to different places or the same, on the way they mimic gestures, subsequently, an oscillatory microtemporal rest acquires them both warningly.

 

मेज़ इतनी पुरानी 29थी कि उसका कोई वर्तमान नहीं था। हमारे बच्चे इतने नए थे कि उनका कोई अतीत नहीं था। –   –   गिरिराज किराडू (1975–)

So old was the desk that it had no present, So new were our children, that they had no past.   –Giriraj Kiradu (1975–)

 

खंडहर/ruins³⁰ (as temporal devices) carve space for very specific futures here, for there are continual physical gestures of acceptance upon change elsewhere. Ruins – the carriers of memory no one else truly remembers, are sites where pores aren’t disturbed or filled in with anxieties of perfection, and so they expand, and they tire (light has shown us this).

Beaming into these pores are losses – sustaining tensions of things put together, then put aside-to find in futurity – an ease … nonexistent ruins speaking with each other …

 

वह एक दृश्य था जिसमें एक पुराना घर था जो बहुत से मनुष्यों के साँस लेने से बना था उस दृश्य में फूल खिलते तारे चमकते पानी बहता और समय किसी पहाड़ी चोटी से धूप की तरह एक-एक क़दम उतरता हुआ दिखाई देता अब वहाँ वह दृश्य नहीं है बल्कि उसका एक खंडहर है तुम लंबे समय से वहाँ लौटना चाहते रहे हो जहाँ उस दृश्य का खंडहर न हो लेकिन अच्छी तरह जानते हो कि यह संभव नहीं है और हर लौटना सिर्फ़ एक उजड़ी हुई जगह में जाना है एक अवशेष31,एक अतीत और एक इतिहास में एक दृश्य के अनस्तित्व में इसलिए तुम पीछे नहीं बल्कि आगे जाते हो अँधेरे में किसी कल्पित उजाले के सहारे रास्ता टटोलते हुए किसी दूसरी जगह और किसी दूसरे समय की ओर स्मृति ही दूसरा समय है जहाँ सहसा तुम्हें दिख जाता है वह दृश्य उसका घर जहाँ लोगों की साँसें भरी हुई होती हैं और फूल खिलते हैं तारे चमकते है पानी बहता है और धूप एक चोटी से उतरती हुई दिखती है।  – मंगलेश डबराल (1948–2020)

This was a scene with an old house in it Which was created from the breathing of many human beings In that scene, flowers bloom, stars shine and water flows and time, just as sunshine from a hilltop appeared to descend step by step Now that scene isn’t there anymore, but a ruin of it You have long been wanting to go back where there’s isn’t a ruin of that scene But know well that it’s not possible and every return is a going back to a desolate space To a vestige, a past and a history To the absence of a scene This is why you do not go back but forward Probing through the darkness aided by imagined light Towards another space and towards another time Memory is another space where suddenly you see that scene, its house, filled with people’s breath and flowers blooming, stars shining, water flowing and sunshine appearing to descend a peak. –Manglesh Dabral (1948–2020)

 

 

सिर्फ़ शव पूछता है प्रश्न हर युग में सिर्फ़ शव जानता है सत्य हर युग में वही भोगता है क्लेश स्मृति का वासना का अंत के बाद भी बार-बार खड़ा होता है वह स्वयं से दूर जाने को बेताल32 की तरह सिर्फ़ शव है जो दूर नहीं जा सकता अपनी देह से और पूछ सकता है प्रश्न सिर्फ़   –   गगन गिल (1959–)

Only a corpse questions In every era Only a corpse Knows truth In every era It endures the misery Of memory Of desire Even after the end Over and over again It stands up To recede from itself Just like Betal It is only a corpse Which cannot recede Away from its body And can ask Only questions.   –Gagan Gill (1959–)

 

A language steadily resting/consolations of rests/within memories/a reader knowing

of insistence (among repetitions)/collecting time

devices and notes/a semantic congruency metamorphosing into glitters

of looming temporality/ an awkward stand (rethinking implosions and rarer implosions)

befriending hosts of things.

 

ऎसा तेरा लोक33,वेदना नहीं, नहीं जिसमें अवसाद, जलना जाना नहीं, नहीं जिसने जाना मिटने का स्वाद!… …रहने दो हे देव! अरे यह मेरे मिटने34 का अधिकार! – महादेवी वर्मा (1907–1987

Such is your world, No agony, No precipitate, Not knowing to go through flames, not knowing to have known the taste of erasure!… … Let be, oh, God! Oh, this right of mine to be erased! –Mahadevi Verma (1907–1987)

 

www.bariyastudio.com

Pratyush Pushkar and Riya Raagini a.k.a. BaRiya is an independent emerging transdisciplinary artist, poet, and writer duo from New Delhi, India. Navigating disorientedly/poetically, BaRiya assumes art as an organ to dissolve/dwell through the remains of marginalized spirituality, create a vocal consensus with biospheres, meditate all through the gender spectrum, and probe (quantum) compulsions: while truthfully acknowledging the binary and racial barriers questioning intimate spiritual inventions.

We have to thank सदानीरा – Sadaneera (sadaneera.com) for seeding in contemporary Hindi (and us), an openness towards the (translating) times of other linguistic realities, for bringing together progressive frameworks and artistic sensibilities, and for practicing a poetic detachment towards the lines which separate mediums and genres. Our friends at हिन्दवी – Hindwi.org for their efforts towards the ardent preservation of Hindi poetry’s archive, and forays into regional Indian literature. Our ›Hindi poetry allies‹, Poets – Avinash Mishra, Sudhanshu Firdaus, and Shayak Alok, mentors at poesy – Anamika, and Devi Prasad Mishra, for not only motivating a temporal rereading but also for helping us dwell into and understand the very fabric landing these curves and shifts. We also have to thank Eduardo Navarro, contemporary artist and soulmate, with whom we have pondered upon magnified droplets belonging to the vast expanse(s) of temporal beingness, a solar dial, and plays where time’s non-violence and pace had us sit cozy and childishly-earnestly guessing.