Photography by Khan Belal
used to ask us to read him
the shop-signs in Devanagri:
‘मिंटू आइस-कà¥à¤°à¥€à¤®’
‘जगत हारà¥à¤¡à¤µà¥‡à¤¯à¤°’
‘चितà¥à¤° सिनेमा’
All his life, he
had known only Urdu
– leaving Lahore at 18,
a young railway-clerk
new at the desk then
– in the early months here
he had struggled, tried opening
a cigarette-shop in Delhi
(Pachkuiyan Road) before
being given the same job
in the Indian railways
in Lucknow.
In all this commotion,
he never bothered
learning another script,
dependent still, at 73, on his grandchildren
to read him ice-cream signs
when he treated them to
an orange-bar.
Now, years later,
when I ache to read Faiz’s letters
in his own hand-writing, I have to
write to a facebook-friend in Lahore,
or ask a boy in our neighborhood,
or worse, use a translation app,
which is like rubbing stones on silk.
What grand-father and I
do not know – Urdu, Hindi –
lie in each others’ glass, in
each others’ loss, in their
remaining on our tongue, and yet,
as we try, in their flying from our eye.
~ Akhil Katyal
Born in Bareilly in 1985, Akhil Katyal is a writer and translator currently based in Delhi where he also teaches literature. His poetry and translations have been widely published including in ‘UCity Review’, ‘The Earthen Lamp Journal’, ‘The Litterateur’ and ‘The Four Quarters Magazine’.
