Daljit Nagra’s verse novel based on the Ramayana will be published in 2013.
On the outskirts of Mithila, a fabled city where they would soon rest having completed their sacrificial mission, the Sage took the boys past a neglected ashram. Rama, by the entrance, walked over a raised slab-stone. No sooner had he touched the stone than dust was enlivened by his foot and before him the dust outlined itself into the image...
Hauling pails from the village well the girls fell a-talking of weddings to come. Said one: My uncle will bring me chum-chums. Said a second: My uncle will bear me gildedsatin saris. The third, Bopoluchi, the fairest and fastest of the lot: My uncle, with casketsof jewels and fruits on a luscious white horsewill ride us to his palace to win me a suitor!
Poor Bopoluchi, the orphan, knew no...
Ah the Raj! Our mother-incarnateVictoria Imperatrix rules the sceptredsphere as she oversees legions of maiden‘fishing fleets’ breaking the wavesfor the love of a ‘heaven-born’ Etonian!Smoke from cheroots, fêtes on lawns,dances by moonlight at Alice in Wonderland –no the viceroy – the viceroy’s ball!Lock, stock and bobbing along onpalanquins to...
Daljit Nagra reads two of his poems, ‘This Be the Pukka Verse’ and ‘A Ballad for Bopoluchi’.
At the end of David Dabydeen’s poem ‘Coolie Odyssey’ (1988), the poet, deracinated by education, distance and time from the dirt-poor ancestors he is elegising, considers his...
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