Indigo farmers: An ode to Nil Darpan 2009, Poem
Length: Multimedia 3.48m
Exhibition: ‘Indigo: The ‘Blue Gold’ 2023
South Asia Institute, Chicago , IL
Multimedia spoken word poetry performance, 2009-2023
This work is a multimedia narrative of the play Neel Darpan in the form of spoken poetry performance which portrays the eco-political exploitation by the colonizers in the early 19th century. This poem also delves into the politics of Indigo, the first national freedom movement in Champaran led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1917-1918 and the unfortunate state of farmers even today.
Exhibition support: GoodEarth: India’s leading luxury design housE
POEMS
INDIGO : THE BLUE GOLD Indigo farmers: Ode to Nil Darpan
The blues of indigo
Or the moods of indigo!
The turbulent blue waters
Stormy skies and stormy weather
Under the sky and over the sea
The Union whip
And the farmers blue
Resistance spread wide
Toiling and sweating
Spading and farming
Plowing and cultivating
On meadows green
The parched terra firma, the soil-
the soil that gets infertile after each cultivated crop
Tilling the devils turf
Swinging sapphires in paddocks blue
The natives of region delta
Flaming colonial regime
Torrid, and stifling
The eastern India in the century nineteen
Die of hunger, No food to eat
But grow indigo!
Why! Says a farmer’s child!
Innocently. Why !
I am hungry!
The woe of a mother
Child and the farmer
Oppressed in drudgery
Hundreds of years of subjugation
Voices of screaming women
Dragging down the fields
Uncluttered tresses
Torn breasts and feet
What the sordid story
Of exploitation and authority !
The chase continued
for the golden blue devil
The hawk and the worm
The ‘tinkathias’ enforced…
The greed intensifies
The hell break loose,
Like worms they die…
So they do! Even today!
Mahatma steps in…
He walks miles and miles
Preaching ‘right to live’
‘freedom to live’
Kindling awareness
He wrote letters unending
To colonizers ruling
Fighting for the farmers
The hawks threatened him
In his body frame
Unshaken he was
Went on and on…
NO VIOLENCE he said
STOP growing indigo… we will fight! 7
We need wheat and rice
to survive!
The blood that trickled
In the fields of blue
Is the blood that embossed
The chest of indigoes
To reach England 7
Do we need another Mahatma
to fight for 21st century farmers..!! 2
The blues of indigo
or the moods of indigo! 2
69 lines
THE MODEST INDIGOFERRA: a colonial commodity
An attractive plant
From the family of beans
Purple clusters, and flowered peas
Around the world In tropical regimes.
This plant, colour and the dye
An antiquity of ancient times
A hue so rich, bold and revered
A colorant, so labour intensive
Crushed and Clustered green leaves,
Softened into vats to the mushy waters
For months and days, in undated
Fermented, in crystalline white
Of sodium hydrosulphite1““““2`
Processed and grounded
solidified blue cakes
Triturated fermented, macerated
Decantated and oxygenated
The magical blue
Such a legacy of this modest plant
The ships that voyaged
Marin tined around the world
Stopped at Indian shores
Carted the boxes of dye from India
East to west and beyond
Making it the most desirable dye
Magnificent blue they said !
A colonial commodity
Traded across the globe
In the realm of clothing and weaves.
The story of voyages does not end
This magnificent blue gold
Had a flipping side too it
The Mood board was violence
Slavery forced and indentured it was!
Migration and colonization and beyond
Touching the horrendous human trafficking
Narratives unheard, and unsung, they were!
The saga of slavery and capitalism
persisted for decades and centuries unending
The bleeding hues of Red, white and black
made devils blue
The so called The gold of millennia
What a legacy of this modest plant!
Indigo, the blue gold of old
A hue so rich, so bold
Authoritative and empowered
Yet fracturing the magical blue with
exploitation, oppression and grind
57 Lines