The Coal Miner Of Jharia | A Poem

I. The Inferno Floods

Nirjala, the coal carrier

Ashes coat mahua flowers heavy lifting

cranes chafe the shama bird’s auspicious song.

Photosynthesis is cancelled Vitamin D rare

till she arrives with the sun shining in her hair.​

Nirjala​ whose name is a sacred vow renouncing

the cool relief of water stands hip deep

in a pool thick with coal dust and miners’ sweat

but no memory of the translucence of raindrops.

*

Jharia

An Inferno where all circles of hell ​​

​​​​​​​collapse

​​​​​​​​into the perennial protest

of shredded earth

where fractured ​elements

go unheard where

hills recoil onto

a heaving horizon.

*

Sinkhole

Cars, trees, dogs and people vanish

without a trace.

Whom do we grieve when there is nothing left

to mourn? Flames get hungry

too left too long to starve

they cannot suppress a sudden yawn.

*

My Nirjala

gleams like the Milky Way

and unfurls somewhere behind

my lungs a deep, full raag.

I grow wings of moonlight

and nestle into the lines of her palms.

Nirjala the river I wade into without drowning

my map to a universe not hissing steam anymore

my lucky stone tied to the wishing tree at the Kalyaneshwari temple

the birth-giver​ the nurturer​ the silence gatherer

the uniter of elements​ the filler of chasms.

Nirjala whose head on my pillow

turns my dreams into the satiated rustle of sighing trees.

My toes curl into soft warm dirt

and I splash like a child in filthy colliery water.

I hear my laughter.

*

The flood

Coal worships fire. Water gushes in canals.

Leaking perforations and flaming gashes this is mined earth:

a dragon whose roar pours flood breath fire.

Can people drown in a land of fire?

One day water sluices into the earth’s throat

where flames lie cauterising her wounds.

That day dancing wildly hand in hand they ​unfurl

into this land beneath land an ​annihilation

that reverses the birthing of animals

turning them into floating foetuses. ​

*

Somewhere she rests

my Nirjala

in water

water in her

rests

II. Erasure

A hungry raven caws for bits of flesh

the floods have laid out a feast. Someone

unfurls an unearthly wail. Death

has combed the sun from your hair.

A beast howls from behind my lungs.

There is so much I haven’t told you.

When did we run out of time? Are you

just outside the periphery of light?

Are you merely sleeping

beyond the confines of language?

Are we together

but for the linearity of time?

*

The dog doesn’t eat. The baby

whimpers in my milk-less chest.

Nirjala, remember you had once collected

my tear drops in your palms? You had promised

‘I will come back from the dead for you’.

I light this lamp, the patheya, for you.

They say this flame guides the dead

on their journey onward. This one

will show you your way back.

*

The government official stands–as usual–

safely away from the ‘site of accident’

now hidden under fuming wet sand

for a moment before rushing off

to an important meeting with the Minister.

A dog yelps out of harm’s way.

‘Women do not work in coal mines’

so you did not make it to this list

of familiar names–the chosen ones

from all those who had walked into

the underground wearing their cracked

helmets and leaking gumboots.

III. Light, Again.

Coal dust preserves within my cells

an agony that would otherwise be homeless.

These mines are my inheritance,

as they were for my ancestors.

My spine shivers as I step in.

Above the horizon still bleeds.

Why do the living exhume pitch black ghosts?

Whose tribe was this now fossilized into coal?

What do we live for? What does one die for?

Someone calls out but the voices of men

are hollow in these tunnels.

The air is damp with sweat and tears.

I place my forehead on a cool black wall.

*

The earth whispers her secrets

‘These coal lumps were once refugee

stars in search of a new home. As they landed

softly I took them into my folds and grew

around them a grief-hardened womb. Listen

they murmur a prayer for the sun to rise

and croon a cradle song to dead children.

The heart of a lost star, this coal lump

is crystalized absence, frozen time. Rest.

Outside, this lump fires engines

glows in the hearts of homes.

In a child’s liquid eyes this coal lump

gleams like diamond.’

*

Her laughter is soft, toothless.

‘Nirjala’s daughter’ they call her

the women who have outlived

their own children.

Sleepless from a night shift

smeared in coal black I bury

my face into tufts of baby hair.

‘Nirjala’s daughter’ I whisper.

Her fat fists dance willing the sun to rise.

Somewhere Nirjala smiles.

Dawn breaks. The shama bird

unfurls an auspicious song. Here

for now draped in light

we are together once more.

Smita Sahay is a writer based in Mumbai & the editor of the Usawa Literary Review