THAT LAZY AFTERNOON
That afternoon
in the Aurangzeb Road garden
we sat sated lulled into
a near afternoon siesta
on the long veranda, khus fragrant
through slatted wood and muslin shutters
dancing lazy in the whirring
of the Ram Cooler
Even the bees, drowsy
collapsed, plumped
onto stamens and bulbs of pregnant flora
The Heliconia drooped to the flagstone
cobbles
And even the grass shushed us
Be quiet, for it is a long day!
The dog was briefly chased
by an irate mother bird
some sort of partridge, it picked
up its feather skirt and chased after
the dog, much like an incensed Victorian
lady with plumped collars and jewelled buttons being goaded to
rap a thug on his head
with her flimsy parasol
We watched half lidded, semi smiling
summer dress armpits soaked with
gritty sweat, young smooth rubber hose limbs tangled
sitting back into and over large wicker chairs
hair tied in tight braids and jasmine
a tumbler of RoohoAfza trickling beads
Of ice water down its sides
Then
three cracks, sudden torn sky
A congregation of parakeets burst
from the wild foliage blanket
that crept, so slow each day claimed
a small step more into the timidity
of the garden
creeper vines snarling onto rose trees
tenaciously taking back to shadow
what sunlight stole each morning
Three cracks, we looked up
at each other, then shrugged
The unknowing witnesses
to history being writ in blood
at our doorstep
that lazy afternoon
(The poet was a few homes away from Mrs. Gandhi's residence on the day of
her assassination, and heard the shots fired.)
Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first and longest-serving prime minister (1947-1964). She served as her father's personal assistant and hostess during his tenure and was elected president of the Indian National Congress Party in 1959. Upon her father's death in 1964 she was appointed as a member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house) and became a member of Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting. When he died she succeeded him as prime minister, serving from 1966 to 1977 and then again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, making her the country’s second-longest-serving head of state. In 1971-1972 she went to war with Pakistan in support of East Pakistan’s war of independence,which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh, and from 1975 to 1977 she instituted a state of emergency during which she ruled by decree. Due to unrest in Punjab in June 1984 she sent troops into the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, the Harimandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar. In retaliation two of her Sikh bodyguards assassinated her in October, less than a month before her 67th birthday. She was followed in office by her son Rajiv until 1989; two years later he was assassinated by a Tamil suicide bomber from Sir Lanka due to his sending peacekeepers into that country in 1987 and reversing a coup in the Maldives in 1988. Congress Party leaders invited his widow Sonia (born in Italia as Edvige Antonia Albina Màino) to replace him as the party’s head, an action which she resisted until 1998; eventually she would become the part’s longest serving president. After the electoral defeat of the National Democratic Alliance in 2004 she was unanimously chosen to lead a 15-party coalition government, the United Progressive Alliance, and was expected to become the next prime minister but was prevented from doing so by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1955.
ReplyDeleteKhus is the Urdu name for Chrysopogon zizanioides, commonly known as vetiver (derived from the Tamil vettiver). Due to its fragrant aroma in perfumery it is often known by its older French spelling, vetyer; it is contained in 90% of Western perfumes, especially those for men, but is also mixed with sugar and citric acid syrup to make khus syrup, used to flavor yogurt drinks like lassi. During the summer muslin sachets of vetiver roots are tossed into the earthen pots that keep a household's drinking water cool. It is a favored offering to Ganesha (the son of Shiva and Parvati, the remover of obstacles, the god of beginnings, the deva of intellect and wisdom, the divine patron of arts and sciences), and vetiver garlands are often used to adorn statues of Shiva in the familiar guise as Nataraja, the cosmic ecstatic dancer.
ReplyDeleteRAM coolers are devices that use random-access memory to regulate temperatures by providing warm air or cold air as necessary. Allegedly they maximize performance, efficiency, and economy by speeding up the process of the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics (if two thermodynamic systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other), a concept first clarified by James Clerk Maxwell in 1871 ("All heat is of the same kind"), although the actual term was coined by later British scientists Ralph H. Fowler and Edward A. Guggenheim in 1939.
In 1906 Uunani (herbal medicine) physician Hakim Abdul Majeed formulated a non-alcoholic concentrated squash (syrup) in Ghaziabad, near Delhi. It was designed as a cooling agent and contained herbs such as purslane ("Khurfa seeds"), chicory, wine-grape raisins, European white lily, blue star water lily, lotus, borage, and coriander; fruits such as orange, citron, pineapple, apple, berries, strawberry, raspberry, loganberry, cherry, concord grapes, blackcurrant, and watermelon; vegetables such as spinach, carrot, mint, and Egyptian cucumber; vetiver roots; and flowers such as lemon, orange, and rose. (The rose was a popular remedy for the loo, the strong, hot, dry summer wind that blows over North India and Pakistan.) Mixed with water, it is a kind of sharbat that is often prepared as part of Iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan. [Unani, tibb yunani in Urdu, is a Perso-Arabic form of herbal medicine that developed in India during the Mughal empire; the term is derived from "Yunani" (Arabic for "Greek"), since its roots were found in the 11th-century "Canon of Medicine" (al-Qanun fi al-Tibb)by Abu 'Ali al-Husayn ibn 'Abd Allah ibn al-Hasan ibn 'Ali ibn Sina ("Avicenna"), derived from the humoristic theories of Hippokrates (ca 460-ca 370 BCE) and Aelius Galenus (129-ca 216).]
Heliconia (also called lobster-claws, toucan peaks, wild plantains, or false birds-of-paradise) have flowers that are subtended by brightly colored bracts that protect them; though they produce ample nectar that attracts pollinators, especially hummingbirds, floral shape often limits pollination to a subset of local hummingbirds.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Mr. Vorhees! It's incredible how much effort you've put into this page!!
ReplyDelete