Bastar and Miscellaneous Poems

Book excerpt: Bastar is a series of poems on Bastar, a part of the ancient Dandakaranya (modern-day Chhattisgarh). It is home to some of the most primitive and wonderful forest-tribes in the world. For over a century now, the tribes are reeling on the one hand, under the ways of bossy petty officials, traders and, now, the Naxals and, on the other hand, the ‘schemes’ of the Government and the evangelists who presume that the good of the tribes lies in ‘mainstreaming’ them. Bastar Rebellion (called ‘Bhumkal’) in 1910 was a flashpoint of the tribal rage against such ‘development.’ It was a rape of our faith by a people, Who professed religion, practised rituals, Yet did not share our sense of the sacred. Bhumkal [=’Earthquake’] The 35 poems in this section are vignettes of this socio-spiritual-cultural conflict that continues even today. The author likes to describe this work as ‘documentary poems.’ Bastar, he believes, is a narrative of indigenous societies crumbling the world over under settlers’ greed. The second section of the book contains 33 Miscellaneous Poems on a wide range of unconventional topics, all with a spiritual undercurrent.