SUGANDHA DAS

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SUGANDHA DAS is a young poet who founded ‘Mildly Offensive Content’, in 2013, among India’s earliest performance-poetry collectives. With poets from around the world, they staged over 300 shows across the country and helped shape India’s spoken-word landscape. She has lived in far-flung areas of India, finding elegance and beauty in the remotest corners but the Himalayas have always called her back. For nearly two decades, she has lived in the Himalayan foothills – her work is rooted in this terrain of awe and human smallness. Hers is a life guided and continually steadied by poetry. The mountains remain both compass and solace. She has a degree in English Literature from St Stephen’s College, and a Master’s degree in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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For Fathers

In the symphonies of loss,
I have found my father time and again.
Once, as a young man carrying his child.
Once, as a weeping man caressing his liquor like an old lover.
Once, as a photographer nearing his death on a water tank
Because the eye of the camera showed him more of the world than the eyes of the wary watchman.
In these symphonies,
I have found my father time and again.

He often said, “let your mind and your heart play see-saw to achieve a perfect balance”
Because his heart always won and that is one fight which always hurts when you win it.
He told me stories of Romeo and Juliet in the same breath as the existential pains of Bertolt Brecht and the vagaries of war.
Maybe in love and war, he saw mind and heart playing see-saw.
Just as he did, between court room disasters for custody
And a child who hung herself from his tie, refusing to let go, because he was Tarzan.
And he always told her, the forest never lies. Believe in it. Live it. Find your Tarzan within you.
In these symphonies,
I have found my father time and again.

A young bearded man, best known for playing madman in his father’s play
He now walks, slowly, very slowly, holding on carefully to the walking stick
The only madness afflicting him being not a show
But a de-anchoring of his feet and a trembling of his hands
From years of sifting happy stories from those of loss.
Maybe it is just old age. And maybe, it is just life playing examinations.
If I could watch him once more, laughing and chasing me down the garden of hibiscus, jasmine and guavas
I would perhaps not look for him in these symphonies of loss. Time and again.

As you become older, you become more aware.
Of parents becoming grey haired children, of their frailty.
Frail, fragile, innocent. Somehow that order doesn’t seem right. Doesn’t seem fair.
I find myself wondering if I’ll see him lift his arms up again, for my sky jumps
And he’d catch me before gravity got the better of me.
It feels like another lifetime, does it not?
To find your father in those images because the movies played it out for you
To find your father in symphonies set in the piano keys of a jazz festival your father never cared for or heard of.

Let me tell you the story of his life. In just words.
Brilliant. Loving. Estranged. Trampled. Cornered.
Resilient. Brave. Actor. Victorious. Silent.
Silent. Silent. Silent.
In the symphonies of loss. Silent.
I cannot find him in the silence that time bears upon him.
Can you find yours? Tell me if you do.
We could entwine our fingers around that memory of our first heroes.

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For Words

There are words that become old friends
And there are words that become bitter enemies.
I like saying cobbler and pebbled street,
Savouring them on my tongue, like new candy to a child.
I like saying cougar too.
Cougar, cougar, cougar.
Not like the woman with a teenaged daughter,
Sagging and perky sticking out.
Red lips and pink lips, hiding age and youth alike.
No, not cougar like that.
Cougar more like the instinctive animal.
Cobbler more like a man of stories than a mechanic of shoes.
And pebbled streets, where I can walk bare feet
And feel the alternating cool and hot
Like fresh cookies and an Oreo shake.
I could never really say, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Without sounding overly rich,
Like a young man with drug money his father gave him
After severing a derelict’s head.
I like my people different too.
Not long twisting cardboard cut-outs you could buy at the mall.
More scented, like fresh earth on a wet morning day.
This is how I can fill up those empty spaces that jut out like abandoned shop windows in me.
And this, is how I will continue to say words
Like, cobbler, pebbled street and cougar.

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For Mothers, Estranged

I lost my mother on 01 May 2021. I didn’t know that it was also her birthday;
I have vague memories of knowing that her birthday was around this time.
I didn’t know how old she was; maybe in her early 60s.
I don’t know if she was buried or cremated—she was born a Hindu and converted to Islam with her second marriage.
I don’t know if she cherished her new life or regretted leaving behind her previous one or if she felt a mix of both.
I didn’t know if my mother missed me
But 6 days before she passed, she liked two photographs of mine on Instagram—the first time I felt that she was watching me.
I get some solace in thinking she scrolled all the way through my life, the only way she knew how, and liked photos from several years ago.
I like to think she missed us—my father and I; because she liked a photograph of the two of us by the sea.
I like to think she wanted me to wear her heirloom jewellery, because she liked a photo of me in wedding attire and a maang tika that I think belonged to her but was left behind
Like so many lost experiences, when she embarked on a new life.
I do not know how to grieve for an estranged parent.
If a relationship is a twine rope, holding two people together, ours was frayed. And her death feels like the frayed rope snapped forever.
I only knew of my mother’s passing from a girl I had met briefly years ago; she messaged me on Instagram saying “Neera aunty passed away”.
It’s ironic, this feeling of everything and nothing for a person that brought me into the world but never raised me.
Nevertheless, while I remain my father’s daughter, I hope my mother is at peace.

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For Justice

The air is heavy with the sweat of dozens,
Lawyers in suits, judges in capes.
Cops in uniforms and applicants in cottons.
The air is heavy with the stress of dozens.
Those deciding, those judging,
Those arguing and those praying.
The air is dense with moisture,
As the monsoon knocks on Goa’s doors.
The window grills show balanced scales,
However, justice is not blind.
It’s an open window, sometimes ajar, sometimes closed.
Totally pliable by the wind of money.
Or the violent breeze of revolution,
That comes swooping.
Not today.
Today, the air lies thick
With anticipation, promises, anger, inheritance.
Today, the court shuts at 4pm
In suppressed joy and relief.
Today, the court begins its 45 day long summer break.

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For the Sea, From the Himalayas

Dear Sea,
I’m not big on nomenclature though “Dear” suits you in my heart just fine.
And you, Sea, you are too wide and too salty for my pure white snow. Though there is some magic in our silence.
Silences we don’t share together; silences that you on the coast and me in the north are constantly protecting from human cacophonies.
I heard you grumbling and roaring in the night, as you covered up those thirsty, dried sands in the dark.
Your charity comes by night time; mine with the sun glowing on the chirping gliding birds and trees.
Your roar, just a few metres off the beach, is it an ecstatic yell of triumph upon reaching the shore?
Or is it a wail on leaving the vast solitude of waters behind?
I watched you, Sea. I watched you from the white thrones I occupy, bereft of humanity
While you are splashed around in the throes of bikinis and rubber tubes.
You and I, we are calm when the sun shines upon us. We have humans crawling around us, trying to derive even if just an inch of brevity and understanding from the rocks and sands they scratch on our surfaces.
Have you understood them, Sea? I have tried to. As they burn plastic brown clouds around me; an impending shroud that lays me naked, bereft of my white robes.
Have you understood them, Sea? Have you tried to? As they pump black waters into you and sigh at your raging beauty surrounding them on plush beach beds?
Oh sea, all those messages in bottles they set assail on your waves, can’t we leave one for them?
All those bright flags they pierce into me, when they summit, can’t we leave one for them?
I would like to tell them, don’t watch our beauty in rising and setting suns and moons.
We are bathed golden and silver in those lights, much like the metals humans covet.
Don’t try to understand us in your neuron filled minds.
Oh Sea, you and me, land and water, cannot grasp the human mind.
Except in avalanches and storms. High tides and winters.
I wish they saw my wonder in the forest set aflame by the sun
I wish they heard your hum in the night time stroll and warm waters caressing their feet.
I wish Sea, that you and me would meet.
I wish Sea, that beyond the reasons of silent conversation
Lay just you and me, mingling like the valley clouds bathing my forests in translucence
Like the mist hiding your murmur in the early morning.
I wish Sea, that our greens would combine.
My gnarled oaks and your soaring palms.
I wish Sea, that you would write to me, in the twinkle of the stars.
In the vastness of the blue skies we share.
I wish Sea, that you would love me in the distance.
As I do. And our history would be confined to this letter.
In the chatter of humanity.
Love,
The Mountains

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