Sahitya Akademi

The Fragrance Your Body Would Give

Author(s): Hemant Divate and Dilip Chitre
Source: Indian Literature, Vol. 55, No. 2 (262) (March/April 2011), pp. 71-72
Published by: Sahitya Akademi
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23343944
Accessed: 20-03-2020 02:57 UTC

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His mouth and nose crammed with slime and faeces
the butcher who slit me

now lies suffocating

watching a new action movie being shown on the cable channel.
Suddenly with the ad of a competitive branded chicken
there is a break.
He swears, hurls obscenities
ceaselessly under his breath.
The comparatively deflated number
of his dwindled profit
grates its way through his stressed mind
wrenches and twists his neck

and thrashes him frantically.

At that time I am listening to

a song playing on 93.5 FM
'Bhagvaan ke ghar der hai, andher naheen hai'
and watching the Gupta of the building opposite
who in his own bedroom

is playing hen-and-rooster with his flabby housemaid

and huffing and puffing from exhaustion.

The very next moment

a powerful punch from the villain in his mind's TV
suddenly hits Gulab Bhai beneath his ear
and at 3:23 in the full-blown afternoon
Gulab Bhai's mind caves in.

Translated from Marathi by Sarabjeet Garcha

The Fragrance Your Body Would Give

'I'm remembering
The fragrance of 'Pond's Dream Flower' your body would give
And your e-mails
I'm remembering
Our intimacy
In the cacophony at Marine Drive

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72
Indian Literature: 262

How we would go on talking without tiring

Can't recall any subjects we talked about though
Then sometimes

We would share a cigarette

I who had never seen the inside of a disco

Haven't yet visited one

Postponing my visit so far

Later you gave up smoking

Gave up drinking as well
And we gave up
The intimacy at Marine Drive

We continued to cling to each other

Within four walls

Now as though we were caught in a wheel

We have no time to talk to each other

We sit reading the newspaper

Sometimes we have tea together
And if we ever talk
It's about our child and our home
Or else about when we would return home
Making a phone call in the afternoon we ask
Each other

'How are you?'

And nowadays, instead of the fragrance of 'Pond's Dream Flower
At night your body gives
The desired-undesired odour of tired sweat

Translated from Marathi by Dilip Chitre

Shopping at the Mega Mall

Super micro thoughts

Pass through my mind
As I shop at the mega mall.
For instance,

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