An attentive critique on contemporary reality--modernity, capitalism,
industrialization--this first United States publication of Mangalesh
Dabral, presented in bilingual English and Hindi, speaks for the
dislocated, disillusioned people of our time. Juxtaposing the rugged
Himalayan backdrop of Dabral's youth with his later migration in search
of earning a livelihood, this collection explores the tense relationship
between country and city. Speaking in the language of deep irony, these
compassionate poems also depict the reality of diaspora among ordinary
people and the middle class, underlining the big disillusionment of
post-Independence India.
Song of the Dislocated
With a heavy heart we left
tore away from the ancestral home
mud slips behind us now
stones fall in a hail
look back a bit brother
how the doors shut themselves
behind each one of them
a room utterly forlorn
Mangalesh Dabral was born in 1948 in the Tehri Garhwal district of
the Himalayas. The author of nine books of poetry, essays, and other
genres, his work has been translated and published in all major Indian
languages and in Russian, German, Dutch, Spanish, French, Polish, and
Bulgarian. He has spent his adult life as a literary editor for various
newspapers published in Delhi and other north Indian cities, and has
been featured at numerous international events and festivals, including
the International Poetry Festival. The recipient of many literary
awards, he has also translated into Hindi the works of Pablo Neruda,
Bertolt Brecht, Ernesto Cardenal, Yannis Ritsos, Tadeusz Rozewicz, and
Zbigniew Herbert. Dabral lives in Ghaziabad, India.
