Padmaja Iyengar 'Paddy' |
- Padmaja Iyengar-Paddy
KSA based NRI poet from Hyderabad Mahtab Qadr (Syed Sarfaraz Ali) invited me to a Multilingual Poetry Evening hosted by his Hyderabad-based dentist son Dr. Sohail A. Syed, Redesign Dental Clinics. It was truly an honour to be amidst and hearing the poetry of some of the greatest Hyderabadi poets. Being a lover of Urdu poetry, the evening was a real treat for me!!! All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening as multilingual poetry flowed till midnight!!! And befitting the evening, I read out my translation of Bahadur Shah Zafar's famous "Na kisi ki aankh ka..." and "Dentistricks" (in good humour since the event was hosted by a Dentist!!!) Thanks to Dr. Sohail and team for being such a sport!!!My translation of the famous "na kisi ki aankh ka noor hoon' of Bahadur Shah 'Zafar' was published in March 2017 issue of Setu. My other poem is presented below:
Dentistricks…!!!
Pinned on the dentist chair,I cried out in utter despair,
“Doc, remove my tooth,
The whole tooth and
Nothing but the tooth!”
The doc smiled indulgently,
“Worry not my dear Paddy,
I never remove a tooth,
And this is the whole truth -
Just Fill, Cap or Crown only.”
As I looked at the ceiling grim,
“Why, oh why?”, I asked him.
What he said didn’t make sense,
In my gone-case tooth’s defence.
Pain too made my senses dim...
In the good old days of my childhood,
Dentists always thought it was good,
To extract a useless and harmful tooth,
As it served no further purpose forsooth,
Except harbouring particles of food.
After some pain, the gums got healed,
The problem thus got forever sealed.
Today a variety of Fillings, Crowns, Caps,
Keep fees pumped up in the dentists’ taps,
As Dentistry now, is an advanced field.
After all these dental adventures,
Will I finally end up with dentures?
So, why not here and now,
Dear Dentist, end my woe,
And spare me from further tortures...?
A witty poem, which I first read at the Your Space section of Muse India a few years ago; and then again while penning my endorsement to Padmaja's collection of poems "P-En-Chants" where it was included; and again now. A coincidence is, only yesterday I visited my dentist for a fresh crown, since the one from an earlier impression didn't fit well enough. The moral is, teeth or no teeth, one should set one's teeth.
ReplyDelete