(13 January 1911-12 May 1993)
Hey, Ishwar will you
be angry with me
if I worship to you in
Arabic?
Hey, Allah will you
damn me to hell
if I pray to you
in Sanskrit
every evening?
That’s what people tell me.
Ishwar…Allah
reassure me!
There are many
many prayers
I love.
Can’t I sing one hymn
with steady devotion
and recite any prayer
I desire?
I’ll undoubtedly feel
more religious if I could.
Everyone says that I can’t…
Not to me personally, of course…
But their convictions, their actions,
show clearly and unambiguously,
they have the sanction of some
higher authority.
I want to be totally convinced
by what they proclaim…
what they loudly broadcast
—absorb it—
Otherwise, I’ll feel that
I am a very… very……very
reactionary and backward
old fogey who doesn’t know
anything thing about
Ishwar and religion.
Hey, Ishwar!
Hey, Allah! Forgive me…
forgive me…forgive me!
It’ll be better
if the two of you
get together and
strike me
dead!
Then I’ll be at peace…
feel as if I had never lived—
‘What would have happened
if I had never been…!
After all
there was God
when I was not!
There was God
when there was nothing!
I was lost when I was born…
What would’ve happened
if I had never been?’1
***
What happens these days
is different from what’s heard,
memorized and repeated
in poems
printed in different scripts…
It’s difficult for me
—despite a life-time of faith—
to discover religion
or culture
in these violent times…
This isn’t a poem
but part of my diary.
It’s not worth publishing.
In my present state
it’s a way of talking to myself…
it’s of value only
for the sincerity of the words
uttered by my lips
the voice heard by my ears.
Sages, scholars,
intellectuals, teachers…
Don’t,
even by mistake,
spend your precious time
on these odd lines
and if you’ve begun
to read them
stop at once…
—So, as I was saying…
******
[1] This is a variation on a famous ghazal by the great Urdu Poet, Mirza Ghalib. Shamsher Bhadur Singh doesn’t quote it exactly.
Shamsher Bahadur Singh (13 January 1911 – 12 May 1993) was an Indian poet, writer and pillar of the progressive trilogy of modern Hindi poetry. Shamsher, the creator of unique masculine images in Hindi poetry, was associated with the progressive ideology of life. Singh won the Sahitya Akademi in 1977 for Chuka Bhi Hun Nahin Main.
Alok Bhalla is a literary critic and essayist, poet, translator and editor, Bhalla has edited Stories About the Partition of India (3 Vols.), translated Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug, Intizar Husain’s A Chronicle of the Peacocks (both from OUP) and Ram Kumar’s The Sea and Other Stories into English. He is based in New Delhi, India.
Alok Bhalla in The Beacon
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