The Day of Naming

 1

Can the empire acquiesce
If insurrection makes
The vagrant and untitled
Valiant?
Heroes must have lineage

When people of the forest converge,
Gather mortar, wood and stone,
And build;
Can this become a saga?
History must have foundation

Do you light a lamp on the mountain
For the rag-worn
Bullet-torn gonds?
Lamps must be lit only for the nobility

2

Indeed, even if I am queried about their hamlet
What can I say?
Making all the towns
They departed into forest womb –
If I am asked to count
Numbers sixty or thirteen,
I can only sight the stars
Whereas you can flaunt indemnity lists

Who cut the cord and christened the one
Delivered and discarded in the forest?
Maybe you got them first
Into the census roll
Or voter’s scroll;
Perhaps eliminated from Adilabad hospital,
Or mopped out with the monument today
These cannot aspire for titles

There,
The wood and pit, valley and pinnacle
Bird and reptile, water and fire
Man and beast, crop from the cleared forest, and nest,
Darkness and light,
All of them bear just one name:
The forest
The forest is both mother and baby to itself

Alarmed by the aborigine,
Evolving in the folds of the forest
And the forest nestling in the frame of the aborigine,
It is you
Who labelled them

Fear struck
In Bodenghat and Pippaldhari
Indravelli and Babejhari
And in Satnala
You wrecked their lives
Shored up with bamboo

With canisters and cartridges
Mining blood and sulfur gas
You commemorated their baptism
In the seams of the earth’s folds
With all accomplishing
You can never slay them again

3

The valiant emerge
From the very annals these engender
Can one mark which day
The aborigine was born?
While you brand
April twenty year after year
For the current account
But this time
Staggered by the flash of history
Already on nineteenth March
You dashed to Devak’s dungeon

4

There the gusty wild-floral wind
Turning in my heart
Now swirls over the mountain crests
The firmament turning the forest as sight
Rummages the dust for something.
Unable to see, the Godavari
Shrivels and languishes in the bed

5

People of the day before may be missing yesterday;
Yesterday’s cairn may have gone today.
Yet, Indravelli prevailed yesterday, today and the day before

Indravelli may not belong
To the before folk
Nor could yesterday’s Cenotaph own it:
But it will not abide by those
Who bulldozed it today

Nurtured in the flesh and blood of the tribe
The forest will abide,
Fused in the primordial vitality
The soul will prevail;
The kiss of the martyrs will persist

Ganga the life current remains
Stick and sword will caringly sustain
Even when the whole forest is ransacked
Camouflaged fire shimmeringly survives

But, Indravelli,
Turned into a town the other day
Will prevail as an emblem in insurgency
Yesterday the monument was
A memory trace

It will be a millstone for those
Who destroyed it

Indravelli will hold out
As struggling people’s
Peak of vision

THE DAY OF NAMING