Indian Writing

Get ready to prepare your assignments and submit them in time. Remember to Write the the following details clearly in your assignment

On the top

• Title of the Paper
• Title of the assignment

At the end in one line

      

Submitted by

• Your Name, Class and Roll No
• Your Exam Register Number

Hunger : Jayanta Mahapatra

It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.
The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.

I followed him across the sprawling sands,
my mind thumping in the flesh's sling.
Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.
Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth
his old nets had only dragged up from the seas.

In the flickering dark his lean-to opened like a wound.
The wind was I, and the days and nights before.
Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack
an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to those walls.
Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind.

I heard him say: My daughter, she's just turned fifteen...
Feel her. I'll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father's exhausted wile.
Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside

Jayanta Mahapatra

Marriages Are Made :Eunice deSouza

 My cousin Elena

 is to be married

 The formalities

 have been completed:

 her family history examined

 for T.B. and madness

 her father declared solvent

 her eyes examined for squints

 her teeth for cavities

 her stools for the possible

 non-Brahmin worm.

 She's not quite tall enough

 and not quite full enough

 (children will take care of that)

 Her complexion it was decided

 would compensate, being just about

 the right shade

 of rightness

 to do justice to

 Francisco X. Noronha Prabhu

 good son of Mother Church.

-- Eunice deSouza

Extended Family : A K Ramanujan

 Yet like grandfather

  I bathe before the village crow

  the dry chlorine water

  my only Ganges

  the naked Chicago bulb

  a cousin of the Vedic sun

  slap soap on my back

  like father

  and think

  in proverbs

  like me

  I wipe myself dry

  with an unwashed

  Sears turkish towel

  like mother

  I hear faint morning song

  (though here it sounds

  Japanese)

  and three clear strings

  nextdoor

  through kitchen

  clatter

  like my little daughter

  I play shy

  hand over crotch

  my body not yet full

  of thoughts novels

  and children

  I hold my peepee

  like my little son

  play garden hose

  in and out

  the bathtub

  like my grandson

  I look up

  unborn

  at myself

  like my great

  great-grandson

  I am not yet

  may never be

  my future

  dependent

  on several

  people

  yet

  to come

-- A K Ramanujan

Spoiling the Name : Kamala Das

I have a name, had it for thirty
Years, chosen by someone else
For convenience, but when you say
Don't spoil your name, I feel I
Must laugh, for I know I have a life
To be lived, and each nameless
Corpuscle in me, has its life to
Be lived . . . why should this name, so
Sweet-sounding, enter at all the room
Where I go to meet a man
Who gives me nothing but himself, who
Calls me in his private hours
By no name, or the city's dusty
Streets where on afternoons
I walk, looking for old books, antiques,
And new thrills that might come my
Way? Why should I remember or bear
That sweet-sounding name, pinned to
Me, a medal, undeservingly
Gained, at moments when, all of
Me is ablaze with life ? You ask of
Me a silly thing. Carry
This gift of a name like a corpse and
Totter beneath its weight
And perhaps even fall... I who love
This gift of life more than all!

Kamala Das

Breezy April : Rabindranath Tagore

Breezy April

Breezy April, Vagrant April,
Rock me in your swing of music!
Thrill my branches with enchantment
Of your touch of sweet surprises.

In my idle dream by Wayside
You come startling me from slumber,
Wilful in your mood fantastic
Tease me with inconstant courting.

Breezy April, Vagrant April,
I live with my lonesome shadows.
I know all your fitful fancies
Language of your flitting footsteps.

All my secrets burst in blossoms
At your passing breath of whisper,
And my new leaves break in tumult
Of surrender of their kisses.

                        - Rabindranath Tagore