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
