In Exchange

 

This is not only life, it’s a story.

Why do you wrinkle your nose?

This is the real smell of life.

 

The burning grounds have a story,

they have tears and grief.

Even when we turn afar,

these grounds are  closer to home.

Even though we believe

that this is a place of death,

these grounds are the source of our own.

 

Don’t be afraid of the burning grounds,

you’ll find poetry, stories,

and pots full of emotions there.

 

The living burn the dead

to show their anger there.

Brave touch fire to the weak

and show disappointment.

Father warms his stomach

on the pyre of his son there.

A brother dries his cloth

on his younger brother’s fire.

These are the grasslands

where the selfish warm themselves.

 

Isn’t it strange? People burn people there.

People turn their own shapes to ashes.

A father’s skull says, “Son, your sons

will also turn you to ashes.”

The human plays games there.

The human snatches

at pieces of his own flesh.

This is the place

where you can bargain for life.

This is where people are cremated.

 

A hundred thousand aged people

must have said to the young,

“Look, children,

we are not even taking our souls with us,

we go empty-handed.”

 

Uncountable young persons

must have said to those who burn the dead,

“Look, friends,

we are leaving our youth here.”

 

Yet the human is unchanged,

saliva still drips from the corners of mouth.

These are the fields where they play dice,

put at risk life’s sparks.

These are the beds where people sleep together

and find eternal life.

 

“Mohan!

Mohan, what are you doing?

Don’t turn the stones on this cremation ground,

what broken face do you seek?

Don’t go Mohan. Don’t go there.

Why do you act in this shameless way?”

 

I look for my history

I look for the face

that planted the seed in my mother’s womb.

I look for my lost father.

 

“How can a human

be born without a father?”

I asked my mother.

My mother did not answer my question.

I asked her a thousand times

and she gave me tears,

only tears.

My story is lost in tears.

 

A son without father.

That is no problem for anyone.

The voice that tells of the lost human

is lost here in these grounds.

This is why I scratch at these graves

I ask my question to the burial grounds

and all night I wait for the dead to rise.

 

Perhaps the father I lost

will rise up from the grave,

perhaps some unknown ghost

will give me a clue of his place.

Where are the people who eat their friends?

I search for corpses

chewed upon by other humans.

 

“My pain has crossed all limits Mohan.

My heart split on hearing your story.

Nothing can be held in my heart anymore.

Return and I will find your history for you,

I will find the grave of your history.

Even if I have to make myself

a prisoner for life

I will put at rest anything

that might have happened.

I will find and remove

the source of your pain.

But you must know,

the history you lost is not buried here.

It is flying elsewhere.

It has a body that has breath in it.

I swear on your blood and mine,

it has flapping wings.

The witness to these words, brother,

are your heart and mine.”

 

I will dig up every grave.

I will find my father.

 

The God has become great

even though I do not reach my door.

Before I reach my lawn,

he has become enraged.

No one’s conscious,

no one kept their wits.

He rages like thunder,

slaps heads.

 

Come before me,

you eighty-four-year-old man,

I will drop you.

It is the end of my student life,

I will crumple you up like these notes.

I will make you, my father, immortal.

I will be proud to have murdered my own.

Even history will be proud

of this son who murdered his father.

 

Come before me prepared,

come before a billion people,

I will destroy your black history.

Die on the sharp edge

of your son’s khukri.

 

Touch the feet of the porter seven times,

ask for moksya, oblivion.

I will offer you to the gods,

I will cut off your head,

I will wipe out your tears

and offer you to the temple.

I will give clean waters

to my father who died at my hands.

I will give your blood

to forgotten history.

I will make a billion

Heaven-dwellers laugh.

This murder that I will commit

will be the first of its kind among humans,

the last of its kind among demons.

 

I will pick your meat off bones myself.

Your ears may be hungry,

but the screams and calls for help

won’t feed them. The skeleton

I shall lick and clean,

your eyes won’t tire

at their clacking sounds.

I will throw what meat remains

and let the crows and vultures have fun.

I will scatter pieces of your meat

so that dogs and the fox can eat them.

 

I heard from my aunt a long while back,

you beat and dragged

your goddess-like wife by hair.

You killed your butterfly-like daughter.

You ate the hardworking Kaley alive.

You ruined Mohan’s enormous spirit.

Even if I murdered you ten times,

even if I hung you by the rope a hundred times

you would not atone for your sins.

 

I don’t need Mohan here.

I can take revenge myself.

I don’t need anyone,

I will fulfill Kaley

and Butterfly’s promises.

I will face the accusation

that I am a murderer’s son.

 

Come to me,

stand before me!

 

“My Mohan. My sister’s meditation.

The thirst of these eyes may be quenched.

But where is sister,

the sister you loved more than life?

Congratulations, son!”

 

The fire inside her was getting brighter.

Kanchi’s heart was beating quickly

the atmosphere was scary.

Mohan turned up.

 

“Wait a moment,

wait for a little while.

You have dug up this grave,

I will also look inside, give me time.

Yes we will kill him.

But let him die differently

if he’s dead, he’s dead,

let him live his death.

 

“Shambhu,

if we can kill,

let’s kill everything inside.

It’s easy to kill what is outside.

How are we to find what to kill inside?

Remember, those that are dead

live inside, we don’t want that.

We have to kill him in a way

his death does not live.

 

“Whether it has a good history or not,

the grave is still there.

It will hold stories to tell

the stifling world.

It will be a witness to the crime.

History will not speak

if we kill these fields and sands,

it will not flow if we close its supply.

Let us change this history,

for history will not stop counting interest

accrued on this killer’s life.

 

“If we murder,

though we kill a murderer,

a murderer will still remain.

Fire does not burn fire,

we cannot pull down history

that has already formed.

 

“We cannot bring to life dead ancestors.

The history that is soaked in human blood

will not be cleaned by blood.

The skin of civilization

parched and broken by cruelty

cannot be washed by death’s waters.

 

“Let us not kill humanhood

leave young hands innocent.

Let us not end another statue

that wears a human face.

 

“In the end, Shambhu

the human needs life, not death,

the earth needs sweat not blood.”

 

My loved brother

are you now a god?

 

“Brother, my brother,

I remain human."