Friday, October 30, 2009

Pirzada Qasim, A Burning Lamp

A lamp I am
Burning since long.
Burning out,
I will usher in a new dawn.
Whatever gave you aphasia
I will sing and louder sing with aplomb:
I am your voice.
Erasing me is not an option;
Deleting me is not an option;
I am the voice of your woes.
Troubling times,
Faith intact.
Everyone my concern,
Everything my concern.
Dust I am:
For you a face rub;
For you a foot rug.
Dancing for long,
I am tired out.
Every moment a faint reminder,
Every movement a faint reminder,
I burn out sight unseen.

K. B. (Bush) Gulati

TRIBUTE TO PAUL COPELAND

Paul gets me needless publicity advertising I went in cold, cap in hand, to his office begging for food and shelter for the thousands of students who had trekked out of Burma seeking refuge in Thailand in the wake of the unsuccessful Uprising that took place in August 1988.
To his credit, what Paul did was he readily gave me a connection to Oxfam who soon thereafter were the first to arrive on the spot to provide the sustenance I was frantically seeking for the homeless hungry students.
That was the beginning of our interaction. Later, it was a pleasant surprise and a rare gratification for me to discover I was keeping company with an eminent Canadian who, out of curiosity, had made a commitment to fixing much that was wrong in Burma.
I say that advisedly because few, very few, in Canada, and that includes some of our honorable members of parliament, even knew there is a country called Burma.
Temperamentally, Paul is a socialist, and I am a conservative, but we never had any problem working amicably for a cause that we both perceived as just.


Whether it was a question of
1. Raising the Burma issue in parliament;
2. Lobbying Ottawa to pressure Burma’s military regime to hold elections;
3. Rousing the Canadian media from its blissful innocence;
4. Holding awareness seminars and/or receptions;
5. Receiving and escorting ministers of the Washington-based Burmese government in exile;
6. Pitching Ottawa for a subsidy to that government;
7. Imploring the Canadian government to open Canada’s doors to Burmese refugees languishing on the Thai-Burma border;
8. Organizing campaigns and street demonstrations to get Canadian companies like Petro Canada and Ivanhoe out of Burma;
9. Persuading Canadian universities to grant an honorary doctorate to Aung San Suu Kyi;
10. Holding meetings, scheduled and unscheduled;

The list can go on, but what is memorable and noteworthy is that Paul would respond selflessly, regardless of whatever other matters he might have had in his portfolio. He was literally a phone call or a fax away.
My father, a successful entrepreneur and a community leader in Mandalay, had only one mantra for everyone: “If you want to be happy, learn to stay away from doctors and lawyers.”
He would surely have modified his mantra had he known the likes of Paul do exist.
After Paul had labored so passionately with me on the Burma matter for some five years, I asked him with trepidation what he would consider a fair return for all the good work he was doing for us.
His disarmingly spontaneous response was, “Nothing.”
Again I asked, “What?” And again he said, this time loudly, and with an air of finality, “Nothing.”
After dinner at my place one evening, when he and another member of the Ontario bar had quaffed a few cognacs, our lawyer friend loosened up to Paul, “The kind of work (criminal law) you are doing you will never make more than a hundred a year. You want to make more than a million a year, you do the kind of work I do.”
Though slow, Paul’s response was, “I do not like the double billing big firms do.”
“I’ll find you a firm that does single billing,” said our mutual friend.
Moments of audible silence had passed before Paul said, “I don’t think I can shake off my concern for the wrongfully convicted.”
“You do have a problem there,” our friend huffed.
Ladies & Gentlemen, the 1300 political prisoners in custody notwithstanding, the problem, as far as we are concerned, is an entire nation of 45 million people has been held captive in their own homeland by a lawless regime for 45 years now.
Their leader, a Nobel Peace Laureate, has been locked up in her own home by the same lawless regime for some 18 years now.
Both the people and their leader can be freed if you, who are so well blessed, would be generous enough to use for their sake some of your own freedom and the tools of language and logic you possess in profound abundance.
We heartily congratulate Paul and rejoice with him on receiving the Law Society’s tribute for his achievements and contributions in promoting equality and human rights and his exceptional commitment to the pursuit of law and social justice.
However, we feel your greater tribute to Paul would be some contribution on your part to Paul’s unfinished business in his Burma file.

Majrooh’s Lament (To His Cross-border Cousins)

What greater frenzy will you exemplify?
In angst we rent our garments four.

The shattered heart cries for repair;
Blood our only raiment.

Our zest in springtide excelled yours.
With friends we kept faith,
With grace we endured foe’s encomiums.

We then had dreams bigger than yours;
We now have regrets deeper than yours.

Seize every candle by the flame
In your quest for the zenith of dreams.

We hold safe the burns and blisters
We suffered in symposiums galore.

As we faced our assassins,
You looked on from afar.
Our losses no match for yours.


(The Cross-border Response)

Yours was detention ephemeral, Majrooh,
Here every lane, every alley is prison eternal.


K. B. (Bush) Gulati

FIVE POEMS

cremation in my yard

in my cellar
is the corpse
of a man
that died
a long time ago

the cops know
the man died

but they are busy

waiting and waiting
the hulk has shriveled
to a skeleton

i build
a pyre
in my yard

voices in the house
clamor
you cannot consign
you cannot cremate
you need clearance

k b (bush) gulati
**********************************************************

Frenzy

who could ever control frenzy
the fragrance that pervades every breath
the bounty whose hunter lies ensnared

who ever had power over life

beware the stranger
possessed by lust for your body

shattered i lie
my heart captive to a refrain

in the silver moonlight
lets create some fun

you wont talk
i wont either

K. B. (Bush) Gulati
Toronto, Easter Sunday 2005

****************************************

Majrooh’s Lament
(To His Cross-border Cousins)



What greater frenzy will you exemplify?
In angst we rent our garments four.

The shattered heart cries for repair;
Blood our only raiment.

Our zest in springtide excelled yours.
With friends we kept faith,
With grace we endured foe’s encomiums.

We then had dreams bigger than yours;
We now have regrets deeper than yours.

Seize every candle by the flame
In your quest for the zenith of dreams.

We hold safe the burns and blisters
We suffered in symposiums galore.

As we faced our assassins,
You looked on from afar.
Our losses no match for yours.


(The Cross-border Response)

Yours was detention ephemeral, Majrooh,
Here every laneway, every alley, every district is jail eternal.


K. B. (Bush) Gulati


****************************************
The M. I. Road Pedicab Driver
(Jaipur, June 2001)

Deaf
To the squeaks of dry reluctant wheels,
Oblivious
To the unrelenting midday sun and loo,
Beads
Rolling down glistening ebony,
With clockwork precision,
He coaxes his cab and passenger
Up the grade,
Inch by inch,
As he shifts
His hundred pounds, perpendicular
Now to the left pedal,
Now to the right pedal,
Now to the left
Now to the
Now to
Now

The passenger’s destination
His only voice.

K B Gulati

*******************************************
the trip

i hailed a taxi
i asked to be sped
to the airport
so i would not miss my flight

the cabby
sensing lucre
stalled

i missed my flight

i hailed a taxi
i asked to be driven home

the cabby meant well
but did not know the way

power failed

the streets were dark
the streets were silent

the signs read

NO STANDING ANY TIME
NO STOPPING ANY TIME
NO PARKING ANY TIME

k b (bush)gulati

PROFESSOR RAJAN, MY MOST MEMORABLE TEACHER

*(Summary of comments by Professor K. B. (Bush) Gulati at the South AsianLiterary Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award ceremony, Philadelphia, December, 2006.)*

*Graduate teaching of English at Delhi University was a study in contrast with undergraduate teaching at Mandalay University where I had done my B.A. One hundred and twenty students, many of whom with zero back ground in English, were crammed in a room with chairs only versus never more than twelve-to-a-class, all taught by visiting British Council and Fulbright lecturers. At Delhi U. the norm was distance, no eye contact or interaction between lecturers and lectured.*

*I wanted to fly home on the first available flight. What really persuaded me to stay on was the arrival on the scene of Professor Balachandra Rajan as the Head of English Department and Dean of Arts Faculty. His presence alone gave some credibility to the parody passing as “post-graduate studies in English” at Delhi. It was his body language that made every student sit up and listen with heads bowed in reverence and silence. Gone were the knitting needles, the assorted magazines, the urgent messages making the rounds, and **the sketch pads that caricatured every lecturer beyond recognition.*

*September 1967, I landed in Toronto and soon learned with elation that Professor Rajan was now tenured Senior Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario, in the other London, 200 kilometres west of Toronto. Since I was looking for work, I wrote him a ten-page letter congratulating him on his well-deserved position, recounting the hard times we had been through in Burma at the hands of the military regime, and finally asking him if I could name him as a referee in my job application. Professor Rajan wrote back a two-sentence response:*

/*Dear Mr. Gulati,*/

/*I was indeed sorry to hear of your troubles. You are welcome to name me as a referee.”*/

/*Yours sincerely,*/

/*B. Rajan*/

*I did not know what to make of his cold terse message. In August 1969, immediately after I had bought my first car, I drove with my wife and two infant daughters on what was in essence a pilgrimage to Professor Rajan’s abode. As an offering, we took along a generous basket of seasonal fruit.*

*Professor Rajan was incredulous anyone would drive all the way from Toronto just to see him and his family. Fortunately, he has since been disabused. However, like a */*pujari*/*, he gently removed a peach and a mango and returned the rest to the basket. *

*Getting to know each other has been a long process. At each meeting, the initial bread-breaking and table talk was restrained, formal and delicate. Each opinion was expressed in tentative terms. The familiarity I have gained over the years has been enriching, personally and intellectually. It has deepened my respect for this fine individual of many parts, a veritable storehouse of information, wisdom and needle-sharp wit. Given North America’s propensity for acronyms and abbreviations, his colleagues call him Bal. His students call him Balachandra. I can never bring myself to call him anything but Professor Rajan.*

*After I had taught at George Brown for about five years, Andy Wilson came aboard as an instructor. He had been an imperial history student at Western. Still, I asked him if he would happen know my old man, Professor Rajan. *

*His response was a knockout: Andy’s dissertation for the M.A. was */*Macaulay’s Minute: The Adoption (Imposition?) of English as the Official Language of India,*/* and Professor Rajan had been invited as an external examiner at his defence. As Andy told me, what happened at the defence was that Professor Rajan persuaded everyone the dissertation could be created as a document of lasting value by presenting a more balanced picture of the ground reality. Andy did not resent having to re-write the dissertation. When I asked him about how Professor Rajan was received by Western’s student body, his spontaneous response was, “Professors of English are a dime a dozen, but if Professor Rajan happens to be walking the campus on a busy day, the students part like the Red Sea.” *

*Retired university professor of English and college principal from New Delhi, Dr Tulsi Ram Sharma, who now lives in Toronto, had long pressed me for a*/* darshan*/* with Prof Rajan since he was the man who had finally approved his dissertation, */*Paradise Lost as a Classical Epic*/*, for the London University Ph.D. in English. *

*Summer 2005, as we drove to and from London, Dr Sharma, reclining somnolent on the passenger seat, kept mumbling, “Marvellous. Extra-ordinary. Divine. The very essence of the form. You don’t come across personages like this easily.” *

*April 2006, when Professor Rajan had turned 86 and was barely able to stand because of a muscular disability, he read standing at the Renaissance and Reformation Society’s symposium a 30-minute paper, */*Samson Hath Quit Himself – Like Samson */*on the relevance of Milton to the world today. Most memorably, he likened the twin towers spectacle of 9/11 to the spectacle of Samson bringing down the twin pillars of the Philistine temple. After the standing ovation, all his former students present made a beeline to congratulate him, drenched him in wet kisses and with refrains, “You taught me in ….”; “I was your student in ….”*

*Others who had not been his students regretted Western had done a poor job of publicizing in a timely manner what a jewel they possessed.” *

*I thank the organizers of the South Asian Literary Association for permitting me to share some of my experiences and impressions of Professor Rajan at this Distinguished Achievement Award ceremony *
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