Remembering Hiroshima

“A Doctor’s Journal Entry for August 6, 1945” by Vikram Seth

The morning stretched calm, beautiful, and warm.
Sprawling half-clad, I gazed out at the form
Of shimmering leaves and shadows. Suddenly
A strong flash, then another, startled me.
I saw the old stone lantern brightly lit.
Magnesium flares? While I debated it,
The roof, the walls and, as it seemed, the world
Collapsed in timber and debris, dust swirled
Around me – in the garden now – and, weird
My drawers and undershirt disappeared.
A splinter jutted from my mangled thigh.
My right side bled, my cheek was torn, and I
Dislodged, detachedly, a piece of glass,
All the time wondering what had come to pass.
Where was my wife? Alarmed, I gave a shout,
‘Where are you, Yecko-san?’ My blood gushed out.
The artery in my neck? Scared for my life,
I called out, panic-stricken, to my wife.
Pale, bloodstained, frightened, Yecko-san emerged,
Holding her elbow, ‘We’ll be fine,’ I urged –
‘Let’s get out quickly.’ Stumbling to the street
We fell, tripped up by something at our feet.
I gasped out, when I saw it was a head:
‘Excuse me, please excuse me – ’ He was dead:
A gate had crushed him. There we stood, afraid.
A house standing before us tilted, swayed,
Toppled, and crashed. Fire sprang up in the dust,
Spread by the wind. It dawned on us we must
Get to the hospital: we needed aid –
And I should help my staff too. (Though this made
Sense to me then, I wonder how I could
Have hoped, hurt as I was, to do much good.)
My legs gave way. I sat down on the ground.
Thirst seized me, but no water could be found.
My breath was short, but bit by bit my strength
Seemed to revive, and I got up at length.
I was still naked, but I felt no shame.
This thought disturbed me somewhat, till I came
Upon a soldier, standing silently,
Who gave the towel round his neck to me.
My legs, stiff with dried blood, rebelled. I said
To Yecko-san she must go on ahead.
She did not wish to, but in our distress
What choice had we? A dreadful loneliness
Came over me when she had gone. My mind
Ran at high speed, my body crept behind.
I saw the shadowy forms of people, some
Were ghosts, some scarecrows, all were wordless, dumb –
Arms stretched straight out, shoulder to dangling hand;
It took some time for me to understand
The friction on their burns caused so much pain
They feared to chafe flesh against flesh again.
Those who could, shuffled in a blank parade
Towards the hospital. I saw, dismayed,
A woman with a child stand in my path –
Both naked. Had they come back from the bath?
I turned my gaze, but I was at a loss
That she should stand thus, till I came across
A naked man – and now the thought arose
That some strange thing had stripped us of our clothes.
The face of an old woman on the ground
Was marred with suffering, but she made no sound.
Silence was common to us all. I heard
No cries of anguish, or a single word.

Notes:
1. The first ever A bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6th August 1945, vaporizing thousands of innocent men, women and children in less than an instant. Human beings are capable of many things but the capacity for destruction is the one that will always be the one of shame.

2. Vikram Seth is a poet and novelist. Born in Calcutta (1952). Educated at Oxford and Stanford University.
Literary awards: 1. Commonwealth Poetry Prize; 2. Sahitya Academy Award; 3. 2001 EMMA (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Award) for Best Book/Novel An Equal Music

The Power Of Music

When summer comes, we hear the hums of
Bhisma Lochan Sharma.
You catch his strain on hill and plain from Delhi
down to Burma.
He sings as though he’s staked his life, he sings
as though he’s hell-bent:
The people, dazed, retire amazed although they
know it’s well-meant.
They’re trampled in panic rout or languish
pale and sickly,
And plead, ‘My friend, we’re near our end, oh
stop your singing quickly!’
The bullock-carts are overturned, and horses
line the roadside;
But Bhisma Lochan, unconcerned, goes
booming out his broadside.
The wretched brutes resent the blare the hour
they hear it sounded,
They whine and stare with feet in air or wander
quite confounded.
The fishes dive below the lake in frantic search
for silence,
The very trees collapse and shake – you hear the
crash a mile hence -
And in the sky the feathered fry turn turtle while
they’re winging,
Again we cry, ‘We’re going to die, oh won’t you
stop your singing?’
But Bhisma’s soared beyond our reach, howe’er
we plead and grumble:
The welkin weeps to hear his screech, and mighty
mansions tumble.
But now there comes a billy goat, a most
sagacious fellow,
He downs his horns and charges straight, with
bellow answ’ring bellow.
The strains of song are tossed and whirled by
blast of brutal violence,
And Bhisma Lochan grants the world the golden
gift of silence.

Source: p. 64, Images of Life, An Anthology of Poems by Neil O’Brien (Frank Bros. & Co.)Note: Summers are unbearably hot in most parts of India (this does not prove that winters aren’t cold enough though!). It is hard to tolerate someone singing out of tune in that crazy heat. This is a poem by Sukumar Ray, translated by Professor Sukanta Chaudhuri. Sukumar Ray is the Lewis Carroll of Bengali literature, much inspired by Carroll’s works. His poems seemed untranslatable till the gem of a collection The Select Nonsense of Sukumar Ray by Professor Chaudhuri (Oxford University Press) came into existence. Sukumar Ray’s famous son, filmmaker Satyajit Ray had also made an attempt to translate his father’s poetry into English and later highly praised The Select Nonsense of Sukumar Ray. This poem would go well with my previous post as well as serve as an introduction to the fantastic world of Sukumar Ray. Although structurally Bengali and English are very different languages, like in English, great poetry often rhymes well. This makes it doubly difficult to translate as much of the essence/ play on words would be lost if it didn’t in the translation.