Poetry

In my first serious foray into reading poetry, I picked up a book I'd acquired from my brother's bookshelf. Nissim Ezekiel's Collected Poems. This poem has moved me (don't intend to infringe copyright by posting it here)...

Motives
Nissim Ezekiel

It's easy to remember
your body in its nakedness.
I dwell on it
as on a landscape
or a beloved painting.
Not the total form only
but the details interest me.
My motives are sexual,
aesthetic and friendly
in that order, adding up
to bed with you.
Your skin is white
but black or grey
would do just as well.
The eyes are large,
so are the breasts--
does size matter?
I don't think so.

Your thighs are full and round,
thin and flat I'd love them too.
There go my aesthetics.
In making love
certain things
for which I have a taste
you do not quite accept,
you dress again
rather hurriedly,
you do not speak,
you look away,
you are somewhat quickly over.
Never mind. I adjust myself.
So much for my sexual motives.
I stay with you, close to you,
so perhaps the friendly motive
absorbs the other two.

the lives of safai karmacharis (sanitation workers)

Kachra Kondi (titled "The Garbage Trap" in the below English-subtitled version)
a documentary on the lives of sanitary workers in Pune,
directed by Atul Pethe,
produced by the Pune Municipal Corporation Workers' Union

Before giving you the video, here are two poems I've extracted from the documentary

1

The fragrance of a thousand rotten

ravishing corpses rushes out

as the lid of the manhole is lifted

The shit-pot, emptied by Savali’s mother

And far away, waking naked, heir to my generation

Is this the “reservation” for us?

(Poet: Jayanti Makwana, drainage worker)

(translated in the documentary from Marathi - or maybe Gujarati?)

2

With no inkling of the beginning and end

The living dead, me, was given birth

And so I was born

Had organs just like humans

And so identified as a human being

But human just for the sake of recognizing

You mash my whole life in your filth

Your shit

Don’t humans have the body parts?

Hands, feet, nose, throat, eyes, trunk

If that is so, then where are my body parts?

Who locked them?

In which cell of freedom?

Scrub me

It will only yield filth

Just filth

Trash, vermin and a breath of stink

Look at my lungs

Look at my heart

Look at my eyes

X-ray me

For the negative and positive results

Search for the complete human body with all its organs

Then you will see

How you have sucked life out of me

How you look down on me

Just to keep you clean

You force this work on me

That put humanity to shame and ruined me

I step fearlessly in your shit

Bare-bodied

Insects bit me

Nostrils flared by the filth

Sucked through breath, stomach, blood

Took the rod, pulled the wire, broke open the choke

Your blocked gutter gurgled

Oh people!

I suffocate in this living hell

Living through this death throes

I die in life

Living through this death throes

I die in life

I die in life

(Poet: Dhurandhar Mithbaonkar, former drainage worker)

(translated in the documentary from Marathi, though I suspect a better translation might be possible)