"The Fight": The Poetry of Leeladhar Jagoori

Translated by Matt Reeck

Translator’s Note:

US-published Hindi poetry in English translation tells a story of preemptive erasure. Although the Hindi language is one of the most spoken languages in the world with over half a billion native speakers, its poetry remains practically invisible in the “West.” The author of some 15 volumes of poetry, Leeladhar Jagoori (b. 1940-     ) is inarguably one of the most important contemporary writers of Hindi poetry, and yet his poetry has to date appeared only sporadically in English translation in India and abroad. What of the Earth Was Saved (World Poetry Books, 2024), my translation of bachi hui prithvi (1977), was the first volume of his poetry published in English translation outside of India.

The poems translated and published in SUSPECT come from Jagoori’s 1981 volume Now It’s Words that Tremble [ghabarae hue shabd]. This volume contains his last poetry written in the 1970s. Jagoori has written extensively about the cultural milieu of India in the 1960s and 1970s, and about how he and other poets turned their attention to capturing the rapidly deteriorating dreams of newly independent India. The Sino-Indian War of 1962, the droughts and famines of 1965 and 1966, and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 were all taxing for the country. But they didn’t match the stress of the 21-month Emergency of 1975-1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties and censored the press. Effectively, that was a period of democratically elected authoritarianism.

These short poems capture the sense of the social turmoil. Jagoori’s pithy ways of expressing the history is important as a way of representing the struggles of the common man not only then in India but everywhere throughout history. 

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 प्रार्थना

फलो !

गरीब और कमज़ोर के लिए

देखते ही बढ़कर पाक जाया करो

फलो !

जब तुम महंगे बचे जाओ

तो तुरंत सड़ जाया करो

छूट ही

और चुने न दिया जाय

तो देखते ही।

Prayer

fruit!

seeing poor and weak children

grow big and ripe

fruit!

sold at top price

as soon as you’re touched

(and don’t let yourself be touched)

I want you to immediately rot

okay!

Maanas Lal - एक मामूली आदमी (2016), Mix Media on Canvas
Image description: The painting is an abstract composition featuring bold, sharp, and fragmented brushstrokes. A vivid blue pattern is in the center of a yellow rectangle, which is layered on a red-and-black background.

विरोधी

ज़रूरत नहीं कि जो एक ही जगह के हैं

वे आपस में दोस्त भी हों

लगभग एक जैसी ऊंचाई पर रहते हैं

पहाड़ और बादल

इन्द्ररधनुष और ओले

हिरन और चीता

एक ही जगह के रहनेवाले हैं

छूना और चिकोटना

इसी तरह एक ही चीज़ को लेकर

हुनर दो हो सकते हैं

जैसे चेहरे पर चुम्बन और घूँसे।

Enemies

just because they’re from the same place

doesn’t mean they’re friends

mountains and clouds

live around the same height

as do rainbows and hail

and cranes and cheetahs

the same places

can be stroked or pinched

and this principle applies to everything

two things exist

you can kiss a face or slap it

तकरार

--तुम्हारी आवाज़ गन्ने के बराबर है

--और तुम्हारी बाँस के बराबर

--क्या गन्ना और बांस की जोड़ी ठीक रहेगी ?

--अगर किसी जानवर से पूछा जाय

तो उसे दोनों पसंद होंगे

--पर उसे पीटने के लिए थोड़ी देर

गन्ना और बांस बराबर हो सकते हैं

--अच्छा?

मेरी आवाज़ अगर गन्ना है

तो मेरा शरीर गन्ने का पूरा खेत है

--और मैं बांस का घना जंगल हूँ

जिसमें सटे हुए गन्ने के खेत की हवा आ रही है

और जिस में वर्षों बजा सकता है।

The Fight

—your voice is like sugarcane

—and yours is like bamboo

—can sugarcane and bamboo get along?

—if you ask an animal it’ll say

it likes both

—but to beat an animal a little

sugarcane works just as well as a little bamboo

—really?

if my voice is sugarcane

then my body’s an entire cane field

—and I’m a thick bamboo forest

where I can play for years in the wind

blowing from the neighboring cane field

Maanas Lal - बेचेह्रगी (Facelessness) (2016), Mix Media on Canvas
Image description: The painting features abstractly rendered human faces against a black background. The faces are distinct and bear blank expressions. Some are more abstract than others, with certain facial features erased. The faces are rendered with sharp edges and in bright shades of red, orange, yellow, blue, pink, and white. 

तो

जब उसने कहा

कि अब सोना नहीं मिलेगा

तो मुझे कोई फ़र्क नहीं पड़ा

पर अगर वह कहता

कि अब नमक नहीं मिलेगा

तो शायद मैं रो पड़ता।

So

if you say

there’s no more gold

in the world

I won’t care

but if you say

there’s no more salt

at the store

I might burst into tears

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Leeladhar Jagoori (b. 1940) is one of the leading Hindi poets in India. For his poetry, he has won the top literary and cultural awards in India, including the Sahitya Akademi Hindi Prize (1997); the Padma Shri (2004), a lifetime achievement award; and the KK Birla Foundation’s Vyas Samman (2018), honoring excellence in the arts. He lives in Dehradun, Uttarakhand.

Matt Reeck has received fellowships for translation from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and PEN. He won the 2020 Albertine Translation Prize for Zahia Rahmani’s “Muslim”: A Novel, and the 2022 Northwestern University Global Humanities Translation Prize for Abdelkébir Khatibi’s The Wound of the Name. He translates from French, Hindi, Korean, and Urdu. He lives in Brooklyn with his family. 

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Maanas Lal is a young artist whose artworks have made great waves across the art world. His exhibitions of photography, painting and self-developed technique of digital painting have received critical and commercial acclaim. His work has found collectors across the globe. Maanas is an author of four true crime books and a prolific columnist with hundreds of published articles to his credit. He has learnt vocal Hindustani Classical music and also plays the guitar. He is also a TEDx speaker. Maanas wishes to become a better reader of books and situations through the course of his life.

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