Lokayat

 

Poem: Lokayat

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An aphorism is, in a way, Lokayat :

People’s science, a path designed for people

“A watched pot never boils” – Perhaps the best companion to the

Copenhagen interpretation

All knowledge, if looked closely

Comes from life and its

Unknown troubadours

Colloquial wisdom can 

Defeat even the most learned

Surgery evolved through 

The work of artisans 

Potters, barbers, craftspeople, and such  

Later codified and expanded in the 

Sushrut Samhita by the 

Venerated king

If Sanskrit is older than Prakrit,

Why is it called Sanskrit; the polished one?

You can’t refine something that doesn’t exist 

(If you say Sanskrit was made by the Gods, 

                                                   Did thieves make Prakrit? )

Even the Vedic Sanskrit 

Which some say predates the Prakrits 

Was built on some common tongue 

Prakrits were called such since they 

Existed, organically

Wise men and women later refined them 

Into a crisp new Sanskrit dialect 

Only for books; never the streets

Much as I adore Sanskrit, Prakrits

Are roaring rivers with sharp bends 

Replete with liquid sounds

Rough at the edges

Beautiful inside 

(If you must go in details

Haalaa’s “Gatha Sattasai” is at places so erotic

It could make 

Fifty shades blush)

The Maharashtri Prakrit 

With its lilt and grace was 

Tailor-made for songs

Kalidas borrowed from it, 

So his Sanskrit plays could croon

Dnyaneshwar refused Sanskrit 

Much to the priest's dismay 

“I will write in Marathi – sweeter than the 

Heavenly nectars”

Mahadamba, Namdeo, Eknath, Tukaram

Founders, poets, rebels 

They chose the people’s tongue

With deliberate resolve 

Aristophanes wrote his plays in 

Street Greek, and 

Chaucer scribbled his tales

In oure tonge 

Peter Bruegel the Elder

Drew the commoner 

In their language 

In the times of Mir and later Ghalib

People freely spoke in Urdu

Or Rekhta, as it was called then, the 

Scattered dialect of commoners

While the gentry postured in Farsi

The language of the Darbar

The elites and the rich 

No wonder Urdu became the 

Ever-giving 

River of poetry 

And no wonder

William Carlos Williams 

Sought to perfect

The American idiom – people’s way 

Of saying things

Most knowledge comes from people, 

The common folk

Intellectuals rearrange it

And become immortals

In the gilded pages of written history. 

-Anant Dhavale

The Cardinal Sings

The Cardinal Sings

By Anant Dhavale

.

Not the free,

Nay the prisoner

The Cardinal sings to 

Wake you up

Wake up!

Not the pious, 

Nay the sinner

Afflictions of sense, 

Calamities of breath – I say,

Leave the shadows, 

The shadows! Beseech the

Light, I say beseech 

The light now!

Not the noble

Nay the murderer

All mornings are

Divine in hindsight and

Religion is blatant

Excuse for war

Go away Tiresias

We know how this ends

(It ends like the 

recrudescence of the last war)

Don’t you get it, it’s

Him–he sings for you,

The Cardinal sings for

You!

Not the jester,

Nay the king.

—-

Nativity

I burn with muted flames

A slow

Change of state

Find me if you can, in this

Heap of things

Once shone bright,

I am the lost planet of a

Dead star with

No strings of longing

My solace is my

Carnage –

A bloodstorm of desire

Sorrow is not infinite, and

This hour of

Nativity is

Also, the hour of my end.

.

Anant Dhavale

Civilization is a Zero-Sum Game

The Kung San of the Kalahari Desert, The Tuareg people of Algeria, Libya, Niger, and Burkina Faso,

The Berbers of Morocco, The Maasai of East Africa, and The Hadzabe People of Tanzania.

The Copts and Nubians in the Nile Valley. The Maori of New Zealand and the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia.

The Warlis, the Bhils, the Onge

The Jarawa and the Sentinelese

The Gonds and the Korkus of India.

The Navajos, the Cherokees, the Sioux,

The Ojibwe, the Choctaw, the Apache,

And the Lenapes of the United States. 

People older than the histories of the

Nations

They are now listed under. 

Civilization is a zero-sum game of

Pushing the sons and daughters of the

Soil to the brink of extinction.

.

Anant Dhavale

A Koyal Sings Amid War

Do not blame them if they speak Each other's language

Or drink from

Common rivers

Or the fact that they can reminisce their

Systematically robbed pasts in

Mostly unintelligent, yet

Somehow touching

Songy-dancy costume

Dramas.

A shared hodgepodge of

Emotional clusterfuck. 

And don't be surprised if they’re awfully close to each other

A kite flown high enough in

Amritsar could easily be spotted from

Lahore

If sufficiently colored with dyes made from Henna,

Mustard, and

Saffron

It is high summer in

India and in Pakistan

A season for

Mangoes and cool evening breezes

The otherwise outliers on the

Edges of hellish hot noons

A Koyal’s Mellifluous call is heard

He refuses to be suppressed by the

Roar of expensive war planes 

Middle-aged men and women suffer meltdowns 

On national television 

Froth billows at their hard-lined mouths 

Convulsive paroxysms of misplaced pride

A meadow is crimsoned

And villages are destroyed 

The Himalayas shudder with the 

Bright-burning, loud war birds flying amok

Chests are thumped loudly on both sides

Haphazard claims of victories made

A slow poison 

Crawls its way into billions of hearts

Displacing hopes of a meaningful co-existence

How’d we get here — what happened to all those

Loving, affable people otherwise used to 

Exchanging cringy Bollywood songs 

And Meaningful Ghazals

I am tired of the

Barrage of misinformation

Blasts on my phone

My hairline keeps receding 

And the world keeps going to shit

Every hour, every day.

__

Anant Dhavale

Koyal - Cuckoo