What bond brings you here?
That day, to hear my heartbeats,
You needed to play your stethoscope.
From that day itself, in your doctoring
I’d lost all faith.
A serpent around your neck, it seems to me.
Whenever it touches my chest,
It leaves something poisonous in your ears.
It turns the lub-dub of my heart
Into the percussion of a war-drum.
The closer I call you towards me,
The farther you seem to go away.
Why touch my forehead? Go!
I won’t open my mouth in “aa”.
By trapping mercury in this glass,
You’ll measure the heat in my body,
But what will you do about that glass
In which I daily see your face and burn?
I’m being dramatic?
No, no, miss. I’m just a poet.
Looking at one who hasn’t eaten in four days,
I don’t just prescribe Cyproheptadine.
I sit down with them.
I ask them what sorrow plagues them.
It should have been clear by now.
There is no sickness
That sits enslaving this body.
If something, it is simply that the man inside
Has not yet been coffined in a white coat.
Don’t talk of Potential. The price was too high.
Rubbing into me?
“For old time’s sake?”
What memory brings you here?
I hope it’s not those moments
That have ripened on our memory tree.
It would have been best to pluck them young.
The taste would have been sour, of course,
But we wouldn’t have hesitated to spice it up.
Today, we can neither pluck them overripe,
Nor can we see them turn to mush.
There’s a fear now of peeling them.
Who knows what cough will strangle us.
The bitterness of your medicines has settled down –
Now even a sweet truth doesn’t go down the gullet.
Translated from my Hindi poem, also titled For old time’s sake
For old time’s sake
kis rishte se āye ho?
jis roz se meri dhaDkanen sun-ne tumhen
Stethoscope chalnā padā,
us roz se tumhārī dāktarī pe se
bharosā uTH gayā thā mujhe.
gale kā sānp lagtā hei wo chīz.
jab bhī CHātī CHūnta hei,
kuCH zehrīlā CHoD jātā hei tumhārī kānon mein.
mere dil kī Dug-Dug ko
na jāne kaunsā dankā banā detā hei
ki main jitnā pās bulātā hūn
tum utnī hī dūr chale jāte ho.
kyun CHū rahe ho māthe ko? jāo!
nahīn karnā “ā”!
is shīshe mein pāre ko Kaid kar
nāp to loge mere badan kī garmī,
par us shīshe kā kyā karoge
jismein tumhārā chehrā roz deKH jaltā hūn?
Dramatic ban rahā hūn?
nahīn nahīn jī – shāyar hūn bas.
chār din ke BHūKHe ko deKH
Cyproheptadine nahīn liKH detā.
baiTHtā hūn uske sāth.
kyā Gam satā rahī hei pūCHtā hūn.
ab tak to patā lag jānā chāhiye thā.
koī bimārī nahīn hei
jo badan ko Kābu kiye baiTHī hei.
kuCH hei to ye hei ki andar ke insān pe abhī
saFed coat kā Kafn nahīn chaDHāyā.
Potential kī bāt mat karo. Price high thā.
jatā rahe ho jī?
“For old time’s sake”?
kyā yād kiye āye ho?
kahīn un lamhon ko to nahīn
jo yādon ke ped par pak chukein hein abhi.
bachpane mein hi toD lāte to sahī rehtā.
thoDā kacchā swād zarūr ātā zabān pe
par namak mirch lagāte hāth nahīn JHiJHakte.
āj na wo pake Fal toDe jāte hein,
na unhein aise hī saDtā dekhā jātā hei.
Dar lagtā hei unhein CHīlne mein.
na jāne kaunsī KHansī jakaD legī.
tumhāre dawāon kī kaDwāhaT baiTH gayī hei –
ab mīTHī sacchāī bhī to nahīn utartī gale se.
Minakhi Misra 