To the poet, who sells fish for living...
I can feel your pain
On that Monsoon night
When you lay on your grass mattress
Spread on the clay floor
Clenching your tiny knees
To your cold chest
Watching the Kerosene lamp
Struggle with the wet wind
trying to snuff out its pale light,
And you tried to figure out,
Was it the hunger,
Or the cold,
that kept you awake,
or was it the thunderous wind
that howled outside?
I can feel your preplexion
when your mother came to you
on that rain drenched night,
'Child there is a treasure trove
amidst the bamboo grove,
a little way out side'
she whispered gently,
'I am going to look for it,
You be a good boy and go to sleep!'
Leaving you alone she
Went into the wet night
Only to came back at mid night,
Without the treasure trove,
but clutching at a wet five rupees note,
And tried to dry her hot tears
By the flickering lamp...
I can feel your realization on
that tortured night-
That would haunt you all your life-
that robbed you off your innocence,
your boyhood pride...
I can feel your anguish
When once your drunken father
'Sold you off' for five rupees
And your mother again went out
'Treasure hunting' at night
To 'buy you back'...
And then again and again-
Whenever you and your little sister
Howled with hunger pangs...
I know how you must have felt.
When, out of poverty and starvation
Your father went crazy,
And spend the remaining thirty years of his life
Roaming half naked on the streets,
Drinking and begging-
While you bore the humiliation
Of being jeered at by your peers and neighbours
As the son of a 'mad-father', a 'harlot's offspring'...
The deep scars of the burning memory
of your mother's nocturnal sojourns,
Your father drunken scenes,
Would turn you into a poet-
Pouring out the molten lava
Of your painful experience
Into your reader's hearts...
Sitting today, on the rock near your home
Reeking of fish, you sell during the day
To feed your family of four-
A wife, a daughter and an infant son-
You reflect on your growing up years:
You grew up literally on the street
Doing odd jobs as restaurant-waiter,
Digging Telephone-cable pits,
Barber, chef, stonecutter,
Head-load labourer,
And occasionally a beggar,
But you supported your self
and some how went to school
Which poverty forced you to leave after high school
You married early at twenty,
for money, a girl who was hardly educated,
And with the dowry money,
Married your sister off
To save her from the clutches of poverty
That the marriage never lasted, is another story...
Now you thank the fish vending
Which has given you
A thatched roof over your family's head-
has anchored your vagabond life...
You even contemplated committing suicide,
Out of sheer poverty and hunger,
When you wrote those poignant lines:
'Is death more painful than hunger-
Harder than starvation?'
You went along with your entire family
and lay on the railway line,
but minutes before the train came
your three years old daughter woke up
and howled in thirst and hunger,
this woke up the infant son,
And while you tried to pacify them,
They refused to go back and lie
on the railway line...
and thus you were thrown back
Into the throes of life, to struggle again
with the travails of day to day existence...
That night the rain poured on the street of Kerala,
And all four of you slept in a shed...
Now you sell fish by the day,
Your only source of sustenance,
And pour your heart out into your poems
By night to feed your soul
That keeps you going in this hard life:
Your poems, they say, smell of fish,
Of 'scorched reality of life',
And now you are recognized,
Author of eight poetry books,
And several awards,
(including Sahitya Academy Award).
But the fish-vending
still keeps you alive...
Or, is it the poems you write?
I can feel your pain Pavithran,
Which means, the pure,
The unpolluted one!
And indeed your soul has retained
Its purity, its innocence...
Author: Zoya Zaidi
Aligarh (UP), India,
Copyright©: Zoya Zaidi
Inspired by reading about the true-life story of Pavithran Theekkuni, a resident of Aayancherry village, 60km from Kozhikode, Kerala, in Hindu, Sunday edition, 12th Nov. 2006. A poet who sells fish for living...
Poetry by Zoya Zaidi
Read 824 times
Editors' choice
Written on 2009-05-25 at 22:32
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Print text
The Poet-Fishmonger
I can feel your pain
On that Monsoon night
When you lay on your grass mattress
Spread on the clay floor
Clenching your tiny knees
To your cold chest
Watching the Kerosene lamp
Struggle with the wet wind
trying to snuff out its pale light,
And you tried to figure out,
Was it the hunger,
Or the cold,
that kept you awake,
or was it the thunderous wind
that howled outside?
I can feel your preplexion
when your mother came to you
on that rain drenched night,
'Child there is a treasure trove
amidst the bamboo grove,
a little way out side'
she whispered gently,
'I am going to look for it,
You be a good boy and go to sleep!'
Leaving you alone she
Went into the wet night
Only to came back at mid night,
Without the treasure trove,
but clutching at a wet five rupees note,
And tried to dry her hot tears
By the flickering lamp...
I can feel your realization on
that tortured night-
That would haunt you all your life-
that robbed you off your innocence,
your boyhood pride...
I can feel your anguish
When once your drunken father
'Sold you off' for five rupees
And your mother again went out
'Treasure hunting' at night
To 'buy you back'...
And then again and again-
Whenever you and your little sister
Howled with hunger pangs...
I know how you must have felt.
When, out of poverty and starvation
Your father went crazy,
And spend the remaining thirty years of his life
Roaming half naked on the streets,
Drinking and begging-
While you bore the humiliation
Of being jeered at by your peers and neighbours
As the son of a 'mad-father', a 'harlot's offspring'...
The deep scars of the burning memory
of your mother's nocturnal sojourns,
Your father drunken scenes,
Would turn you into a poet-
Pouring out the molten lava
Of your painful experience
Into your reader's hearts...
Sitting today, on the rock near your home
Reeking of fish, you sell during the day
To feed your family of four-
A wife, a daughter and an infant son-
You reflect on your growing up years:
You grew up literally on the street
Doing odd jobs as restaurant-waiter,
Digging Telephone-cable pits,
Barber, chef, stonecutter,
Head-load labourer,
And occasionally a beggar,
But you supported your self
and some how went to school
Which poverty forced you to leave after high school
You married early at twenty,
for money, a girl who was hardly educated,
And with the dowry money,
Married your sister off
To save her from the clutches of poverty
That the marriage never lasted, is another story...
Now you thank the fish vending
Which has given you
A thatched roof over your family's head-
has anchored your vagabond life...
You even contemplated committing suicide,
Out of sheer poverty and hunger,
When you wrote those poignant lines:
'Is death more painful than hunger-
Harder than starvation?'
You went along with your entire family
and lay on the railway line,
but minutes before the train came
your three years old daughter woke up
and howled in thirst and hunger,
this woke up the infant son,
And while you tried to pacify them,
They refused to go back and lie
on the railway line...
and thus you were thrown back
Into the throes of life, to struggle again
with the travails of day to day existence...
That night the rain poured on the street of Kerala,
And all four of you slept in a shed...
Now you sell fish by the day,
Your only source of sustenance,
And pour your heart out into your poems
By night to feed your soul
That keeps you going in this hard life:
Your poems, they say, smell of fish,
Of 'scorched reality of life',
And now you are recognized,
Author of eight poetry books,
And several awards,
(including Sahitya Academy Award).
But the fish-vending
still keeps you alive...
Or, is it the poems you write?
I can feel your pain Pavithran,
Which means, the pure,
The unpolluted one!
And indeed your soul has retained
Its purity, its innocence...
Author: Zoya Zaidi
Aligarh (UP), India,
Copyright©: Zoya Zaidi
Inspired by reading about the true-life story of Pavithran Theekkuni, a resident of Aayancherry village, 60km from Kozhikode, Kerala, in Hindu, Sunday edition, 12th Nov. 2006. A poet who sells fish for living...
Poetry by Zoya Zaidi
Read 824 times
Editors' choiceWritten on 2009-05-25 at 22:32
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text|
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