Pratik : PRATIK'S SPECIAL CITY WRITING ISSUE HIGHLIGHT : YUYUTSU SHARMA EDITORIAL POEM. "Thrissur in her Dream"

YUYUTSU SHARMA

EDITORIAL

Thrissur in her Dream

On the first night of our arrival

in Thrissur, the famed sadhu of Pashupati

with his sandal-smeared forehead

dotted with U-shaped scarlet tika

holding a ting brass trident

found in most of flashy tourist

brochures and guidebooks,

the one who otherwise

lived a delightful worldly life

with his wife and numerous children

in a tin-roofed shack

outside Ram Mandir vicinity

across the Bagmati river

appeared in her dream.

The sadhu pulled a three-headed naga

out of his wicker basket and let it

crawl towards her in the dream.

She panicked; in due course

he persuaded her to honor the deity,

allow it to slither atop her shoulders

and cover her head under the canopy

of its fangs as a protector.

Birds whistled shrill notes

in the Ramanilayam Guest House

as she woke up in a town that

circled round a Shiva shrine on a hilltop.

As we walked around the town that

reminded me of my own Punjabi birthplace:

smelly granary stores, quiet

Malgudi squares dotted with street vendors,

blobs of lazy dozing dogs,

old time Raymond and Philips showrooms

along with Gandhi handicraft outlets.

When we finally rode a beautiful

green auto rickshaw that actually

ran on a regular meter to the Shiva shrine

and entered sacred grounds with bare bodies,

the same three-headed naga

stood in the dark hole of the shrine

protecting the Lord's head.

She flipped out, her big black eyes

opened wide: It's the same naga

I saw in my dream earlier in the dawn.

"Lord," I closed my eyes, "I've walked away from

sullen glaciers." I prayed.

"I've come to the summer of your backwaters

to let blood rush back to my groin

in your little town that resembles

the one I grew up in

and where as she once confided

we had the best love of our life

in the courtyard after a bath at

our ancestral water pump,

just a week after my father passed away."

Yuyutsu Sharma is one of the few poets in the world who make their living with poetry. Named as “The world-renowned Himalayan poet,” (The Guardian) “One-Man Academy” (The Kathmandu Post) and “Himalayan Neruda” (Michael Graves, Brand Called You), Punjab-born, Indian poet Yuyutsu is a vibrant force on the world poetry stage.

He is also recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature. Author of eleven poetry collections, most recently, The Alchemy of Nine Smiles: Nine Long Poems (Red River, New Delhi, 2024) and Lost Horoscope ( Nirala, 2023), he has read his works at several prestigious places and held workshops in creative writing and translation at Heidelberg University, University of Ottawa, Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University, Belfast, The Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin, Rubin Museum, New York, Beijing Open University, New York University and Columbia University, New York.

Yuyutsu was at the Poetry Parnassus Festival organized to celebrate the London Olympics 2012 where he represented Nepal and India. In 2020, his work was showcased at Royal Kew Gardens in an Exhibit, “Travel the World at Kew.” Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world and conducts creative writing workshops at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home.

Currently, Yuyutsu curated the Himalayan Literature Festival 2024 in collaboration with New York Writers Workshop in Kathmandu. He also edits Pratik: A Quarterly Magazine of Contemporary Writing.

More: www.yuyutsusharma.com

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