Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










THE ESTRANGEMENT OF BHARTRIHARI by Kunwar Narain, translated by Apurva Narain

‘Can I kiss, Pingala,
that jubilant light playing
on your incarnadine lips?’
 
         ‘No, it is not for you.
         It is for the keeper 
         of a king’s stables,
         it is his truth—
         you must find yourself
         some other light,
         some other fruit 
         of eternal youth.’
 
Love, which she took to be
the need of a lustful man, was 
         Bhartrihari’s utopia…
 
Whenever the bedrock of trust
in the most stubborn of loves
         breaks, a distraught heart
         becomes a wilderness:
an illusion breaks—not a person— 
that love not even worth 
a kiss, is worth nothing.
 
Coming out of home at night
in the wintry sigh of sobbing winds
there was relief.
 
One could still live
another life, on other terms— 
         a little more disconsolate
         but far less cruel.
 
I did not destroy them 
though I could, he thought,
but let them take what they wished…
and so saved for myself
a priceless world
of so many possibilities,
         in camaraderie with nature
         without hoarding or squandering,
         without gain or loss—with just
         the coming and going of seasons…
 
The dance of estrangement
becomes the adornment of an ascetic
         whenever his unsated desires
         enfold him like nymphs.
 
I am beholden 
to the love that filled me 
with a melancholy
even greater than bliss
 
I wish to live that love
immensely, in eternal time
         creating an eternal space— 
not torn by people and things
or trifling news from kith and kin, 
         standing aside 
         I wish to watch the world
 
I wish to laugh alone
on myself alone,
go on laughing so that tears fill the eyes, 
as if laughing and crying 
were the same thing— 
         two sides of the same coin,
         a beautiful face on one side
         on the other a forgotten date. 
 
Making his sentience limitless 
Bhartrihari sees
         like a sculptor sees a statue in stone,
         a poet sees a soul in a statue,
         a saint sees the universe in a soul…
 
         and neither the universe has a limit
                  nor sentience…


NOTE

Bhartrihari, 6th-7th century poet-king (often seen as the philosopher-grammarian who wrote Vākya-Padīya or Words in a Sentence), led a sensuous, luxurious life. Of his wives, he loved queen Pingala most. It is said that a saint once gave him a fruit ‘for eternal youth’. He gave it to Pingala, but she passed it on to a stable-keeper whom she loved; he in turn gave it to another. The fruit traveled back to the king. He learnt of Pingala’s betrayal and was disillusioned. After a long self-struggle, he became a yogi—living in a cave near modern-day Ujjain till his death. He is said to have written the Śatakatrayacomprising three ‘śatakas’ (sets of hundred verses)—Śṛiṁgāra (love)-śataka, Nīti (ethics/polity)-śataka, and Vairāgya (dispassion)-śataka—scholars confidently attribute only the first to him.

Excerpted from Witnesses of Remembrance: Selected Newer Poems, trans. Apurva Narain, Eka, Westland, 2021


KUNWAR NARAIN, TRANSLATED BY APURVA NARAIN