Delhiwale: Her poem on heatwave

Poet Jonaki Ray navigates her first summer without her father, finding solace in writing amid the heatwave of Delhi, reflecting on grief and the state of the world.

It is her first summer without “baba.” This time last year, poet Jonaki Ray’s father was “very happy” on receiving a copy of Firefly Memories, her debut collection of poems. Professor Bikash Raymahashay passed away in January. Jonaki’s mother, Deepali, died some years ago.

Jonaki Ray in Delhi. (HT Photo)

These days, well-meaning acquaintances, including her cook, gently nudge her to quit Delhi for a city in the south, because that is home to her brother and his family, and they imagine there she will feel more at ease. “But my world is here—my friends, my day-job, my colleagues, my poems.” Jonaki amusedly wonders if such an unsolicited advice would have come her way if she were a woman with a husband and children. As the afternoon heatwave rages outside, she retreats deeper into her south Delhi apartment, writing a poem on this unbearable season.

Who Shall I Say Is Living?

after Leonard Cohen

The last time I wrote a poem, the city of Dilli had turned into

a tundra of ghosts. Those taunts of the past have come back to haunt

us now. Bodies like sizzling barbed wires, we snarl and scowl, as the sun

raises flames around us. The roads shimmer, mocking the rivers turning dry.

Some escape to their summer cottages, and talk about buying new

ACs, ordering new water purifiers, and more and more water. Some combust

in the sanctuary of their living rooms worrying about their wealth and health.

Some seek shelter in the shadows beneath those AC framed windows, homing in by

curling on narrowing patches of streets, bundling on top of their rickshaws, beneath the crumpling hoardings, and around leftover garbage heaps.

Some complain, “The mandis have become so expensive! Everything—papayas, mangoes, watermelons, tomatoes—rots so fast”, while their eyes slide past the daily maalis, the food deliverers, the presswallahs, the ayahs, the guards, the cooks, all those that make their life comfortable.

The last time I wrote a poem was a week before I turned rootless. When I clasped Baba,

my father’s hands, for that last time. When I had not yet been orphaned. And summer was a symphony of the gold of the Amaltas, the greens of Neem, and the fire of Gulmohar. And like all Dilliwallahs, I too was a part of the chorus that sang paeans to the beauty of the city.

Now, how does one account for the grief that thorns the smiles of everyone who keeps moving, keeps living? Still, what right do I have to mourn when the world is burning? When children are turning to ashes, homes into rubbles, the sky into a furnace, and oceans into carriers of bodies. And Dilli, along with our planet, is sliding us, the heedless us, towards extinction.