Under Dadar Bridge: Prakash Jadhav

Prakash Jadhav

Under Dadar Bridge

The three bricks of the sacrificial fire

She used to light

Have sooty ornamental marks- signs of

Loathsome destruction,

Charred neem twigs, and the arrogant touch

Of Impalas, choking and dragging with them

The breath of roads.

The ashes of existence float in the air.

She has left

The ruined sculpture of her relics

Under Dadar bridge.

As she tore her ragged hair

In the darkness of frustration,

I, poison-drunk and restless,

Would dig my fingers into the

Gooseflesh-navel,

Profusely pouring black blood into

Her psychic wounds.

‘hey, ma, tell me my religion. Who am i?

what am i?

‘ you are not a Hindu or a Muslim!

You are an abandoned spark of the

World’s lusty fires.

Religion? This is where I stuff religion!

Whores have only one religion, my son.

If you want a hole to fuck in, keep

Your cock in your pocket!’

Stripping the sari off her breasts

On that bridge

She would fling on my questioning face

Repulsive smiles, one after another,

Like stones.

I piss in the bastard gutter which

Has links with high-class sewage water

‘who was he? Who’s my father?’

scraping and scratching at the VD sores

that traced

the world’s map on her flower-like breasts,

shriveled during the malaria epidemic,

she would answer: ‘ he was some swine or other!

A star going berserk shot out of the

valley between my eyebrows:

‘ whore! Tell me the truth , or else…’

‘why? Was there only one who mounted

and then abandoned my body?

How many names shall I mention?

Many came and many went.’

‘you are whore , sss!’

a scream like a venomous snakebite

would break out involuntarily from my bloodied lips

she was engrossed in pulling out hunks

from the cat-flesh

boiled in her begging-bowl,

her eyes were sharp like razor edge

that scalps the world.

‘my stomach was on fire with hunger,

and they needed my cold corpse!’

she would take the scab off the green wound

and show me the ancient leprosy coursing

through her blood.

Stumbling through the dense darkness of life

She would callously dynamite my

Most dearly cherished dream-

‘show me my father, or perform his last rites.’

She would bray , that she-donkey of Bhdrapad,

Spitting on the fire in the chula,

Brutally exposing both her nakedness

And mine.

Then the raging volcanoes of my innermost being

Would break and tear into my heart.

‘I’ll rip your clothes off! I’ll strip you naked!’

‘what’s left with me now? I gave

them my lifeblood,

they gave me only wounds.’

Baring her teeth, like bramble thorns, hissing,

‘ you want to see, don’t you, where you came from?

What path you took?

Take my clothes off. Strip me and

Have a good look at the tomb

That was broken open to pull you out.’

Dashing ice-cold water on my maddened sex-organs,

She would kickat my cold, convulsive

Shudders, and run amuck.

Many stones and much mud

Slid off the bridge.

Under Dadar bridge , my questions echo,

The hostile stars eat like maggots

Into my future, my buried dreams,

The umbilical cord I myself

Had hung up to dry

There in the crevices of the stone walls.

One day, ma died…

When the rudder of her raft broke

In the cruel seas under the bridge,

I was asking these Himalayan people, whose

Heads drift proudly in cultured skies

To allow me to continue living.

Now I sit beside unrecorded memories,

And those scattered sculptures, in an empty hour,

And cry.

Now that she hasn’t left a lot

Behind her for me.

Hereditary diseases rebelling underskin

Are even now gradually bursting out

All over my face.

When striped and patterned,

Wholly panther-like,

I stand under the bridge,

Some white-collared mountain dwellers

Throw me coins

Because of her.

Translated by Shanta Gokhale and Nissim Ezekiel