Poems in English / Where the frame breaks
The Death of Sanatan
Death came at night, inside an empty house. The body lies on the floor.
No person has come yet. Ants have come; bacteria have come, germs.A few neighbours looked in and went away. There is nothing on the wall but a calendar.Some rice on the floor, which the ants are dragging off.On the calendar, the Ram temple and the Statue of Liberty. Everyone has their glory. The corpse of Sanatan has no value.
A dead river has come. Can one person perform a cremation alone? Who will give the wood and the fire? Who will perform the mukhagni?
The scriptures exist, yet the dead have no religion.Among the dead, the death by hunger is the more heavenly one — saying this, the river went away.
But there are robots moving about the yard, and some birds trained on AI.
Masud Pathik. Translated from the Bengali.
- mukhagni
- the lighting of the mouth of the dead: the moment at a Hindu cremation when the closest relative sets the fire, and without which the rite is not complete.
- Sanatan
- a man's name, and also the word for the Hindu tradition itself, sanatan dharma.