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Part One
T.Wignesan
It is night yet in the West
and the
planes land between listlessly burning tarmac lamps
stealthy fingers scurrying through diadems of neons halogens and amber
Wake! O!
The cowherds’ bare blistered feet already
trample yesterday’s dust into mud
and
cartwheels strain in crusted fissures where rains only once or twice fell
while
dreams fester in cosy centrally-heated silken beds in luxury flats
Wake!
O!
Tomorrow is yesteryear’s planned strikes
buses
trains taxis office machines lie soundlessly asleep
and
will not wake until the battle over psychic comfort comes to an end
Wake!
O!
For You there is no respite no pause
no
tea-breaks with cheese biscuits or croissants
there’s only the last container to crane over the dock in unpaid
overtime
Wake! O!
Your eyes will hurt in the twilight’s hazy
glimmer
no
time to brush your teeth nor shave in hot and cold running water
nor
the right to flush a toilet nor heedlessly course through in cosy tubes to work
Wake! O!
The sirens rave through boulevards in broad
night-light
rushing hypertensic cardiac cases from their delight-full beds
cholestrol
and diabetic cane sugar within reach of every child in supermarkets
Wake! O!
Let those who succeeded their former masters
sip
their sweet sweatless porto before the hors-d’oeuvres
and flap their tabliers hiding their secret shame under
cabalistic arms
Wake! O!
Wake! there’s little time left for your own
bickering differences to fester
the dawn signals the tasks that lie ahead unfinished
and the carrion hunters trained in their old master’s image club
together
Wake! O!
Wake! and see the extent to which you’re still
enslaved
enslaved by your own kind who hanker after conditioning platitudes
the clubby comfort of secretly oath-taking power cliques
Wake! O!
Remember! Remember Haidar Ali his son Tipu
and Akbar
remember Sivaji and Chandra Bose and Kattapomman and Asoka
remember O! remember the one and only Mahatma
Wake
Wake!
in
infested villages sans drains sans potable water sans
hope
see
how they’re bound in mantric incantating castiron caste strictures
Wake! O!
No where else in the world are humans so
in-humane-ly stratified
what proof have the Brahmins to issue forth from Brahma’s head
who proclaimed them the chosen elite on top of the Indian pile of castes
Wake! O!
Wake! and see how your northern brethren have
cast off their spiritual shackles
even if they had abjured the path of the just to yoke their bodies
yet for each child a vaccine a
soja-filled stomach to keep slavers away
Wake! O!
Wake! O!
for your own kind are about to enslave you once all over again
and the old master needs hardly despatch troops to proclaim his divine
law
Wake!
Wake and watch how your elite ape and espouse
the ways of the old master
how for an air-ticket a stipend per diem they would do you in without
compunction
how for some lions memberships in select clubs they’d betray your own
true kind
Wake! O!
Wake! O!
far outweighs that of the former papal
how the four fiery Eastern Dragons no more parade in papier maché garb
Wake!
No wisdom more canny than the folksome pantun’s
peasant proverbials
Wake! Monde Malais! Wake and note no Sultan whirls as a Sufi
Nor no Sage of Singapore
pouting platitudes can make you wake
Wake! Malay! Wake!
And settle your differences with neighbours over
the bamboo fences
for as long as you chain produce Kalashnikovs and cartridges
others far-off will pride themselves on their need to divide et impera
Wake!
Give your less mighty neighbours not so much the
helping hand
as the glory of an example of standing upright free on equal feet
you who had over the ages exported suzerain panaceas and no conquests
Wake! O!
Remember again Asoka the masterful Mauryas the golden era of the artful Guptas
Kalidasa’s Shakuntala Tulsi
Das Pannini’s grammar Bharatha’s Natya Sastra
The Tolkappiyam the
Cilappatikaram Manimekalai Ramayana Maha Bharatha
Wake!
Remember Lao Tse! Master Kung! and the all-doubt
dispelling future perfect Yijing!
Remember the finest mind-embroidered silk flowing down the ages
in Wu’s Monkey skeins of
thought calligraphed in the Buddhist mean!
Wake! O!
All is not full-figures all not burgeoning percentage growth
if glory can be reduced to mere Middle Kingdom might!
then bound feet will drag on
face-down in seven kowtows
Wake! O! Mighty
And set your legions marching not to win wars or
quell rebellions
but to unclog your drains canals marshes and rivers
let your lifeblood circulate nourished in lifegiving oxygen
Wake! O!
Whose art the better glints down the ages the gilded Samurai swords
or those of Bashô and Issa in the carved rocky sands of the combed
garden
or those of Lady Murasaki in Genji Monogatari and Chikamatsu
Wake! Sleepless Rising Sun! Wake!
And
remember the sun never really sets only on covetousness
no greater co-prosperity sphere is there than inner contentment
here the sun only rises and spreads its eyes in constant kindness
Wake!
O! Where have they all gone who drank deep and
late Old Khayyam’s wine
while with compass and rule he measured the rhymes of the skies
and found the tulip-cheeked maiden wrapped round his earthen cup
Wake! Old
And still the venomous thunders flooding in the
Tigris-Euphrates veins
every minority has a right to his pride of place every dog his manger
no monster bomb worth the sweetness of the four-stringed ruba’i
Wake!
Saddam! Wake!
Let not the dust from streets settle on the rags
of the by-standing beggar
batten down the mud with stones and gravel with those very hands
that culled the
Wake! O!
See not how the chiselled rocks of Fathepur
Sikri lie chipped in negligence
nor how the hordes of monkeys romp on the fortifications in disdain
see only the vision that shaped the mind of Akbar’s masons
Wake! O!
Scorn not the erstwhile brother now behind a
frontier wall
if your ways were just no
brother would have sought cover
siblings are no higher or lower born of the same mother
Wake! Now
Receive the bounteous waters that descend from
the heavens
confine and clean them in reservoirs in troughs or in buckets
and make them pour forth in joy onto your children’s faces
Wake! O!
Wake!
wake your neighbours also from the gonepast Rip-van-Winkle millennium
it’s hardly enough just to keep going from day to day
nor rely on the idea that no matter what
It works
Wake! O!
And take the tasks in your own hands the tasks of your own fate
do not let the helper from elsewhere tell you what is best
what is best for you in his words is always infinitely better for him
Wake! Wake!
The poor
the misguided in streets and villages weigh on consciences
for you have always let them be in their ignominious plight
show them how share with them
your superior knowledge
Wake!
Differences only persist because you want them
to
it is enough to show them what causes their bodies to weaken
it is enough to feed their minds with that little which will grow in
time
Wake!
If you give them no running water and the drains
and pipes of evacuation
if the rubbish that piles up behind huts and mansions heaves and
breathes
if you dung and spray in the open air to feed legions of flies and
insects
Wake! O!
The food that they serve you will be from
unclean hands
and the tourist will bypass the hotel and soon the sub-continent
and there’d be little use in saying
we the upper castes we live in godly-cleanliness
Wake!
And shatter the dream of the purity of
untarnished blood
there are just those who are born with blood and bones legs hands eyes
and those who think they are twice-born with more than just that
Wake!
We have all but one mother over that great eastern divide of the Black
Continent
in the nuit des temps our dreams stood up on hind legs
and uttered the words we now mouth in Babelic tongues
Wake! O
And take upon yourselves the task of showing
those who falter in spent spurious dreams
that the age of conquerors is an age brought to a standstill in history
books
that buying and selling is all the commerce conquerors can peddle
nowadays
Wake!
Show them that a fair deal is still one to be
honoured in your shores
no one will take more than what is his earned share
and none will seek to shortchange his honour for luxury
Wake!
And let the Wheel of the Law turn your fortunes
to steadfast mettle
and he that abjured gold and
palace to roam the streets and forests
has long since won the hearts of nations beyond your continent
Wake!
And learn from his example the simplicity of forsaking futile ambition
of forsaking all that crippled your body and mind
of letting them alone in their Vedic mystic glorification
Wake!
For he
has woken up those peer nations they
who woke up before you
and have put their fellowmen in a state of equal plenitude
with nothing to envy those who conquered and humiliated you
Wake!
And think not
nor devise how you may emulate your past masters
envy not them their lives nor
their wealth in times to come
your future is no more never
more tied to their apron strings
Wake! O!
And let your heart beat to the rhythm of
thriving hives
let no one tell you where to put your feet next
when you pull your weight together
there your feet will prop you up straight
Wake!
And let those who enslaved your body and mind
for so long
let them learn from your willingness to forgive
that they too have a place in your heart as guests
Wake!
Do not crush the children of those whose
ancestors sought to humiliate you
children grow conditioned to the ways which you accepted for ages
as you accepted the conditioning of
your children by their fathers
Wake!
And shake off the mantric spells ringing in your
conditioned minds
but remember and preserve the great sanskrit treatises
those that refined aesthetics in dance music drama poetry in sculpted architecture
Wake! Artful
And see how all is not bad in the horrendous
past
see how Akbar the Great lavished learning in between dangling his sabre
see how the Moghuls wrought lasting mausoleums in the name of love
Wake! O!
Suffering
See how the British-planned railways brought you
closer than ever before
see the I.C.S. examination as the equaliser the Confucian meritocracy
see how the Western savants discovered your own glorious past for you
Wake! O!
Recognize the truth of your enslavers’
contribution to the sub-continent
heed not those who would poison your minds with chauvinistic lust
accept the historical fact as a truth that cannot recede into wishful
oblivion
Wake! Now!
There is no shame in being taught the truth of
your present or past plight
the accidents of history have reaped their toll on your memory
but now you are master of your own fate
of your own history to come
Wake!
Wake! and show the way to a better understanding
for the less fortunate
the maimed in mind the thwarted
by birth those the abject
shunned from sight
let them also claim descent from your Himalayan heights
Wake!
Before it’s too late! Before your own kind
enslave you again
victim to your former masters’ machinations
slave to your own listless traditions
Alas! Wake!
Where is
that all-embracing self-negating self
You who have turned upon yourself
once too often to shed your precious blood and repent
Wake!
Wake not to feel that all is maya all
futile all cyclic dust
even if it were so the pain lingers
pain is cantankerous
in the beggar’s strife-torn eyes
in the child’s fly-infested blown belly
Wake!
All is not illusion all is not fake all is not a passing phase
the hurt lingers on in the memory of those who died in pain
forsaken forbidden trodden on
and driven under
Wake!
To lose even a day no
to lose even an hour
is to put millions on the block
is to set them back by aeons
Wake!
Rise with the sun rise fresh from yesterday’s toil
from poisoning TV commercials and commercials’ mightily airy-fairy
movies
from jingling song and bill-cooing in gardens from worshipfuls of Bollywood idols
Wake!
Lull not
your finely-tuned senses in lilting goose-pimply melodies
let not your far-sighted perceptions become dulled in spurious
imitations
here in the West they marvel at the speechless facial rhythms of a
Satyajit Ray
Wake!
How do you manage to listen day in and day out
to the sentimental romantic quatrains
set to rumba and samba cinematic background less-than-roaring forties’
dance music
under a decor of piped sky-lancing and prancing tinny gushy
melodramatics
Wake!
Before your children grow up thinking reality is
a coloured film-strip in hot gasping halls
where plumpy heavily mascara-ed curly moustachio-ed pot-bellied half-men
chase blown-up versions of the eternal Sita oozing midrift flesh heaving in rosy gardens
Wake!
Wake and take the future by the horns it’s no toro
that will gore you into the past
you need no muleta for a faena with the dark and terrifying
future
the future’s just a bull raised on cow’s milk in green pastures
Wake!
Make haste to befriend the toro meanly
reared away from spectator eyes
by dread alone the bull is nurtured and prodded to terrify
and when at last the ranchero’s
silhouette appears in the arena it charges
Wake!
There are no greater mysteries than those your
scientists can unravel
the only mysteries that persist are those drummed by priests into your
brains
even a helpless Stephen Hawking can pierce the Aryan mystery by silent
reflection
Wake!
Let those who seek power in the polls seek it
for their own sakes
sooner or later sooner than later they too will pass away
their power gnawing at their bones will feed the etherising flames of
their pyres
Wake!
Let those who seek to challenge their power
challenge it for their own sakes
they too will rot in the chains they have willingly chained themselves
in
for they too seek power for the sake of power and for theirs and their own comfort
Wake!
And let them all pass over you you who have borne in quiet pain
mauling under the pretext of
mournful migrations and the Mughal might
Mohenjodaro and Harrappa notwithstanding
Vijayanagar and Kaveripumpattinam
Wake!
Do not for a moment think your sons have
deserted you
nor
your daughters gone to spawn with other spouses under other suns
your needs are their needs your
tears their blood coursing in their
veins
Wake!
If you had woken up earlier to tend to your
shores to tend to the marauders at the
border
letting only the lone Kshatriya exert his martial art abused by fine courtly comfort
you would not now wonder how a Rajput court at Mewar drove Akbar to such
lengths
Wake!
Your
bombs and canons come late far too late
now to put together your sundered arms
no use crying robber in
nor stretch your mighty legs over the Palk Straits to proclaim your
integral faith
Wake!
There are no borders to the staunchly raised in
unbending respect and unrelenting loyalty
there is no need for police-ed borders for those who are tied to you by
blood
there’re only stretches of unfathomable water so much un-scaleable
mountainous frights
Wake!
And draw your sons and daughters about you they who inherit your fate
tell them not when they may act or how
just let them gather around you
with time if you wake up in
time they’ll hoist you to Himalayan
heights
Wake! Now!
© T.Wignesan 1996/2001
(Written
between April 7th and 20th, 1996; revised February 2001 and
published in The Asianists’ Asia, Vol.
II, March 2001, an on-line journal: URL – http://members.aol.com/wignesh/;
“Part Two” in Volume III.)
[from
the “original version” in the collection: longhand notes (a binding of
poems), 1999]