Words like oxygen (a poem)

A poem celebrating an occupation with and of languages

“Oxygen of poetry” PC: Reena Kapoor. Instagram: @1StarDusty

Words like oxygen

Multitudes of languages occupy me
bedrocked memory of lifetimes past.
So many I’ve abandoned in poems,
in dialogue, I can’t locate anymore.
Jamming thick at my fingertips,
when I write, on my tongue as I speak,
waiting shyly for a quiet to descend
before they’ll consent to use. 

Whispering like familiar natives, 
they hum nearby, then sit by me,
telling me stories that won’t be 
told in any other routines,
singing me songs that rhyme
only in homegrown vernaculars,
posing questions that could only be
presented in mutual tongues.

I am lived languages, some whole, 
some fragments in liminal blood 
binding my reveries to my bones, 
waiting for a turn to flow. 
Errant words bubble to these lips
like oxygen in a corrupted pond,
sustaining natives and prodigals 
without punishment or grudge.

Do you know Hindi for sky?
Do you feel how aakash extends 
my presence in expansive peace 
to magnanimous heavens above?
Can saagar for the seas and oceans 
drown you in its enigmatic embrace?
Do you see how vaadi* for valley
chaperones life’s river from its lap?

Could puja, aradhana, upasna, ibadat…
for worship, impel you on numinous quests?
Or abundant words persuade you to love
Pyaar, mohabbat, ishq, anurag…
I could simply say I love you but you’d recognize it 
only if I whispered in every bhasha I contain
Then you’d know it in every colloquial tongue, 
every nuance, every insinuation that inhabits my soul.

###

-reena | 03.04.24

*vaadi/vadi, sometimes spelled wadi (Arabic), means valley.
(note: no fussy distinction between v’s and w’s in many of these languages)

*bhasha means language.

I claim to be fluent in Hindi, with some bits of Urdu and chunks of Punjabi thrown in. While I sometimes write in Hindi, and discovered the unrivaled, ethereal beauty of Amrita Pritam’s Punjabi poetry in my twenties (thanks to my beloved husband), I create literary works mostly in English.

And I carry neither inhibition nor hesitation in claiming that English is my language too. A little history behind this claim…

Prior to India’s independence (1947), English was the sole language of administration, and was broadly implemented in education by the British. After they left, India maintained much of the status quo. Part of the issue was that English was (often) the only common language across the newly formed nation state that boasts 22 official languages and hundreds of unofficial ones; not to mention dialects that run into the thousands. 

My own education, like that of most middle class (and up) urban children, was committed to “English medium” schools. This meant all our subjects — except Hindi, Sanskrit and any regional languages — were taught in English. For obvious reasons then, English hasn’t been an alien tongue for generations of urban Indians. And with the Internet, English has only spread wider and penetrated deeper within India.

While puritans may rue such “invasion”, the fact is that proficiency in English has been an undeniable factor in India’s (and Indians’) economic and political ascendance on the global stage. I don’t care to indulge the politics of language or its origins. I leave that to those that traffic in the eternal accounting of grievances. Instead, I celebrate the plurality of India, its unique ability to adopt, absorb and make its own, any cultures, languages, even culinary traditions that arrive(d) on its shores. The unparalleled diversity of Indian cuisine is testament to India’s enthusiastic “appropriation” of whatever aspects it fancied from all those who visited, for whatever reason. 

Growing up, several languages flowed in our home. My father was fully fluent in Urdu, a poetic language, which continues its tragic decline in India following India’s 1947 Partition. My parents spoke to each other in Punjabi, and to us kids in Hindi and English. Now many of my ilk use a comfortable “Hinglish” for our near and dear exchanges.

As a writer and poet, I feel lucky to have access to the multitude of traditions of literature and poetry in so many tongues. I could spend a couple of lifetimes and still not exhaust these riches. 

All the same, while English has conferred gifts of both utility and poetry, I do miss the milieu I was born into. And I sometimes find myself dreaming in languages of my origins, sometimes looking for the perfect shade of a word I can only express in Hindi, Urdu or Punjabi and sometimes writing mixed up lines that only a wandering polyglot like me, could make sense of.

To give you a taste of the multi-colored waters within which poetry flows in the subcontinent I’m sharing a couple of recent pop songs from India and Pakistan. Both songs seamlessly weave in words and phrases from Hindi, Urdu, English and Punjabi to create perfectly blended calls to romantic love. 

• Gray Walaa Shade from a Bollywood (India’s Hindi film industry) film speaks of how love is neither black nor white but instead of a gray hue…

• Go from Coke Studio Pakistan (a TV programme featuring studio-recorded music performances by established and emerging artists) is a call to boldness in love...

Give them a listen. Even if you don’t understand much, you’ll pick up the many English words, even sentences, woven into the lyrics. Regardless, I think you’ll enjoy the music of love, which we all must recognize in any language.

So now you know where from this poem arrived to express the gratitude that this musafir (traveler) feels for an embarrassment of language riches, and for the similarly amalgamated spaces she feels blessed in occupying...