This Number Does Not Exist

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.

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Asking for Favors 1 The Places That Are Left 2 The Accompanist 3 Touch 4 Woman in Love 5 The Quiet House 7 Old Photographs 8 The Missing 9 Song of the Dislocated 10 Torchlight 11 Before Going to Sleep 12 The Seven-Day Journey 13 This Number Does Not Exist 15 Good for a Lifetime 16 The Death of Leaves 17 Grandfather’s Photograph 18 Letter to Children 19 Poem of Dreams 20 Poem of Paper 21 A Picture of Father 22 A Picture of Mother 23 A Picture of Myself 24 A Poem on Childhood 25 Return 26 Kiss 27 I Wish 28 A Picture 29 A Tale of Love 30 An Act 31 The Sounds 32 Words 33 A Dream 34 Civilisation 35 City 36 This Winter 37 The Other Hand 38 Outside 39 The Way Home 40 My Face 41 Lantern on Mountain 42 A Child 44 Daily Grind 45 Exhaustion 47 Final Incident 49 We 51 In Passing 52 Delhi: 2 54 Enemy in the New Era 55 Reality These Days 57 The New Bank 59 One of Gujarat’s Dead Speaks 61 The City, Again 63 Afterword 65 About the Translators 69

About the Author :
Mangalesh Dabral was born in 1948 in a village of the Tehri Garhwal district (the Himalayan region). He spent all of his adult life as a literary editor for various newspapers published in Delhi and other north Indian cities. His books include five collections of poems, Pahar Par Laltein (Lantern on the Mountain, 1981), Ghar Ka Rasta (The Way Home, 1981), Hum Jo Dekhate Hain (That Which We See, 1995), Aawaaz Bhi Ek Jagah Hai (Voice Too Is a Place, 2000) and Naye Yug Mein Shatru (New-Age Enemies, 2013), and two collections of literary essays and sociocultural commentary, Lekhak Ki Roti (Writer's Bread, 1998) and Kavi Ka Akelapan (Solitude of a Poet, 2008), and a book of conversations, Upkathan (Substatement, 2014). He also published a travel account, Ek Baar Iowa (Once in Iowa, 1996), based on his experiences in Iowa, USA, where he resided for three months as a fellow of the International Writing Program in 1991. His poems have been widely translated and published in all major Indian languages and in Russian, German, Dutch, Spanish, French, Polish and Bulgarian. They have been included in various periodicals, such as Modern Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today, The Poetry Review and The Little Magazine, and the anthologies Periplus (ed. Daniel Weissbort and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra), Survival (ed. Daniel Weissbort and Girdhar Rathi), Gestures (an anthology of poems from SAARC countries) and Signatures (ed. K. Satchidanandan). Aawaaz Bhi Ek Jagah Hai was translated into Italian by Prof. Mariola Offredi under the title Anche la Voce e un Luogo. Dabral was featured in many events and festivals, including the International Poetry Festival in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and others in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and various cities in Germany. He translated into Hindi the poems of Pablo Neruda, Bertolt Brecht, Ernesto Cardenal, Yannis Ritsos, Tadeusz Rozewicz, Zbigniew Herbert, to name a few. He also worked as a consultant to the National Book Trust, India, and received a number of awards, including Shamsher Sammaan (1995), Pahal Sammaan (1998) and the Sahitya Akademi Award (2000). Dabral passed away in 2020.

Review :
"The significance of the anthology lies in displaying, between its elegant covers, the striking range of Dabral's poetic quiver. He is a poet of personal loss and memory as much as of collective grief and rage and of the historical present. He can be restrained and subdued, and also spew volcanic fire. He can dwell long on the most ordinary but also penetrate the vast unseen, whatever the scale. He can speak to the past and to the present on their terms, and to each from the vantage point of the other... This poet can suddenly throw you, astonished, into another space, into another part of the world, into abysses where the only life-thread may be your imagination." --Biblio: A Review of Books "Dabral's work is infused with the sense, as Robert Duncan put it, that 'the drama of our time is the coming of all men into one fate.' But the work is equally inhabited by the hurdles. This tension is also the core of Dabral's artfulness--his polemics lean to the side, obliquely, burdened by something more gravely consequential than his singular desire. Consolations are few." --Ron Slate, On the Seawall "[Dabral] fulfills the role of a poet as an observer who allows us to see the world through a new set of eyes. He takes ordinary moments or mundane objects and makes them shine in a way they've never been shown before...This new [collection] is carefully edited and beautifully produced. The selection of verses will please admirers of Dabral's work while attracting and inspiring new readers... Both in the original Hindi and in the English renditions, Mangalesh Dabral's voice remains true and honest, an eloquent cry from the mountains that echoes in the city." --The Hindu "[Dabrals themes] are so simple they verge on being impersonal: childhood, sunshine, concerns about the future. Nothing here is developed enough to give it an individual character. It is up to the reader to supply the details. This poem, like many of Dabral's works, escapes from impersonality only when the readers dip into their own memories and enrich the poem with their own associations." --Words Without Borders "One should use silence in order to tell about the aesthetics of absence in the poems of Mangalesh Dabral. His is a poetry of displacements inside of personal cities and abandoned oblivions; the duality of the world contained in each open door settles in his eye, as when someone goes away leaving both flowers and beggars behind. The translator of Herbert, Ritsos, and Neruda--Mangalesh Dabral--writes in Hindi and speaks about home, yet brings the dust of the world in among his lines." --Nikola Madzirov, author of Remnants of Another Age "In many of [Mangalesh Dabral's] poems you can still feel the fresh Himalayan breeze and see the observing consciousness of the boy who has come from the village to the big city. Although now a praised and acknowledged poet, Mangalesh's tone is still unassuming. Although critical as well: Is the world good enough for our children? Is human contact becoming reduced to impersonal communications via cell phones? Mangalesh's poems are like fingertips that feel out the world and translate what they come across." --Annette Van Der Hoek, Poetry International Foundation