That medley of memory and imagination, that city of wild fantasies of childhood
Of affection
Of courtyards bursting with harsingaar flowers
That city of Father’s mad furies and grandma’s severities
That city of grandpa's home and Ma’s, on the opposite banks of a street that like a rivulet is crossed and crossed again on bare feet
That city of marvels where a passerby can encounter my Father after the latter’s death
That city of Death
Of life after Death
That city of scarcity
That city altering scarcity
That city eternally lost to itself
That city of cantonment’s long dusty roads
That city where one can get entangled in Purushottam’s cycle and wound one’s feet
That city of the tiny height of Manju Prasad and her round face and Amarinder Kaur’s two long ponytails
That city of Madam Vagle’s sad eyes and the tented school getting drenched in the rain
Of the Yellow Mansion facing the hill-topped solitary hotel famous for the taste of its samosas
That city distributing sugar laddus at Jain temple and frying dumplings at home on the day of Anant Chaturdashi
That city of the teacher of botany, Dakwala’s far-reaching voice and long hands
Of the elderly Bakhshis sitting in the verandah of their own house like so many Nandi bulls
City where Mother gets dissolved in the household air
Where ancestors are absent
City of obscure quatrains of Ramcharit Manas
City where one asks oneself: ‘who is it who walks’, ‘who talks’, ‘who is it sleeping beside Ma’
That city where a dying dusk escalates Brother’s unease
That city of being quietly thrashed by one’s sisters
Where every now and then Brother would get angry with Father and disappear for a few days during which Ma would not fail to send a tiffin carrier of food to his hiding place
That city of cows leaving for meadows in the morning and returning home in the evening
Of milking the cows in buckets of foamy milk
That city of the special eggplants in fields of vegetable garden
Of snakes being taken out of their containers with difficulty
Of drunkards quietly leaving the desi liquor shop watched by sportsmen cooling their sweat in Lal Maidan
That city of men and women folding bidis outside their homes
That city of the old wholesale dealers hiding behind their old account books in shop after shop
Booksellers getting bored in their shops
That city of Paras Talkies showing foreign films
That city of Jamna Mithia and his wife walking behind him, panting
That city of oars slashing the moon floating on the pool of darkening waters
That city fragrant with Malpoohas from Vrindavan Mandir & Kadam-ghat mandir floating in the smell of ganja
City of the white-clad goon riding a horse with his murderous silver axe
City of Ma’s sad eyes concealing her cancer
Of airborne fibers from the silk cotton flowers
Of grandpa’s white Gandhi cap hanging limply from the peg
That city of infinite vibrations
That city defying descriptions
City silently expanding its geography in my ordinary dreams
That city permeating my ordinary stories in the guise of a road,
a tree, footprints in an expanding light,
disintegrating again and again, that city.
Udayan Vajpeyi has published five collections of poems including Kewal Kuchh Vakya, four collections of short-stories including Ret kinare ka ghar, three books of essays, a book on tribal painting and folk tales, Jangarh Kalam. He has written three plays for the great theatre director, K.N. Panikkar and a book on his works, Theatre of Rasa. He has written a book on theatre director Ratan Thiyam. He has published book length conversations with the film maker Mani Kaul, historian Dharampal, philosopher Navjyoty Singh, Hindi poet Kamlesh, art historian B.N. Goswamy, filmmaker Kumar Shahani etc. He has recently published a novel, Qayaas. His poems, short stories and essays have appeared in around 15 languages including French, Polish, English, Swedish, Odiya, Malayalam etc. He was writer-in-residence in Lavigny (Switzerland), Paris in 2003, and was a fellow at Nantes (France). He has written texts for documentary films b many directors including Kumar Shahani, Nandan Kudiyadi, Ashmaki Acharya etc. Has written dialogues for Char Adhyaya (film based on Tagore's novel of the same name) directed by Kumar Shahani. He edits a journal on Arts, Literature and Civilization, Samaas. He lives and works in Bhopal.
Krishna Baldev Vaid was a major Hindi writer known for his iconoclastic and experimental prose work. Educated in Punjab and Harvard, he taught at Indian and American universities and published novels, novellas, short stories, plays, diaries, literary criticism and translations. His work is translated and published in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Japanese and several Indian languages. His work as a translator is equally prominent and he produced the first Hindi translations of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame.