At Times

At times it is good to laugh:
even before you take your life, for,
the sun survives you,
fishermen set their tiny boats once more
on the raging sea,
the drowned man's clothes learn
to fly about the riverbank,
a man and a woman
blossom into heaven
from a bed of misery,
a boy riding the noon
dreams of caparisoned elephants,
a girl turns into a breeze
inhaling the scent of orange blossoms,
a home-bound bird deposits
four blue eggs and
a star in the twilight,
Sehgal trembles like the moon in a river 
on the lips of a happy drunk,
a poem slips past a banyan tree
hiding its face behind an umbrella,
a raindropp turning into emerald
on a colocasia leaf remembers
the poet Kunhiraman Nair. 
 
 

(Translated from Malayalam by the poet )
 
 
 
 
 

Manchmal ist es gut, zu lachen:
selbst bevor du dir das Leben nimmst, denn
die Sonne überlebt dich
Fischerleute stechen mit ihren kleinen Booten erneut 
in die wütende See,
die Kleidungsstücke des Ertrunkenen lernen
herumzufliegen am Flußufer,
ein Mann und eine Frau
blühen in den Himmel
von einem Bett des Elends,
ein Junge reitet die Mittags-
Träume von mit Schabracken bedeckten Elefanten,
ein Mädchen verwandelt sich in eine Brise
während sie den Duft von Orangenblüten einatmet,
ein heimwärts fliegender Vogel legt
vier blaue Eier und
einen Stern in das Zwielicht,
Sehgal zittert wie der Mond im Fluß
auf den Lippen einer glücklichen Betrunkenen,
ein Gedicht rutscht an einem Bamyan-Baum vorbei
und verbirgt dabei sein Gesicht hinter einem Regenschirm,
ein Regentropfen der sich verwandelt in einen Smaragd
auf einem Kolocasien-Blatt erinnert
den Dichter Kunhiraman Nair. 
 
 
 

.	K. Satchidanandan (Photo by Sikha Khanna)

K. Satchidanandan, perhaps the most widely translated of contemporary Indian poets, has 23 collections of his poetry in 18 languages including  English, Irish, Arabic, French, German and Italian. His book While I Write : New and Selected Poems (Harper-Collins) came out in 2011 and Misplaced Things and Other Poems (Sahitya Akademi) in 2014. Satchidanandan writes poetry  in Malayalam, and prose in Malayalam and English and has more than 20  collections of poetry besides several books of travel, plays and criticism and translations of poetry from around the world and five books in English on Indian literature. He has represented India in many Literary Festivals and Book Fairs across the world including those in Lahore, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Dubai, Damascus, Berlin, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Wales, New York, Washington, The Hague, Paris, Frankfurt, Bonn, Leipzig, Beijing, Shanghai, Rotterdam, Medellin, Sarajevo, Vilenica and Moscow . He is a Fellow of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi and has won 31 literary awards  and fellowships including Sahitya Akademi Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award five times (for poetry, drama, travelogue, translation, criticism), Gangadhar Meher National Award (Orissa) , Kusumagraj National Award (Maharashtra) and NTR National Award (Andhrapradesh), Kuvempu National Award (Karnataka), K. K. Birla Fellowship for Comparative Literature, Sreekant Verma Fellowship for Translation and the Senior Fellowship from the Govt of India  besides Knighthood of the Order of Merit from the Government of Italy and India-Poland Friendship Medal from the Government of Poland. A film on him, Summer Rain, was released in 2007.