The Prime Minister

Rabindra K Swain’s poem takes up a protagonist, and a dilemma, that has long consumed Indian public discourse—the question of how to understand the prime minister, poised tragically between personal integrity and a puzzling, provocative impassivity in the face of disorder and caprice. Swain refracts the prime minister’s predicament through the prism of mythology, seeing him as a solitary, ambiguous, inscrutable Shiva-like figure who must drink a bitter poison so that all those around him, whether devas or asuras, can thrive. The poem’s concluding image, of the bird that derives pleasure not from eating but from watching another bird eat, is an ironic recasting of a similar image from the Mundaka Upanishad.

The Prime Minister’s throat is blue.

The sea has been churned

Putting his hand in the hearths

He has come to realize any fire is too cold

For him

Paradoxes override expressions of anxiety.

He has the generosity of silence

In watching the Himalayas melt

The icy wind wouldn’t so much

As give him a warm hug

Taking a leaf from the wind

He has learnt to whistle all to himself

Blind

To the woes of his toes walking miles

On piles of dry blades of paddy

In the Prime Minister is the triumph

Of the bird who himself does not eat

But watches the other one take tiny pecks