Blessing by Imtiaz Dharker
The skin cracks like a pod.
There never is enough water.
Imagine the drip of it,
the small splash, echo
in a tin mug,
the voice of a kindly god.
Sometimes, the sudden rush
of fortune. The municipal pipe bursts,
silver crashes to the ground
and the flow has found
a roar of tongues. From the huts,
a congregation : every man woman
child for streets around
butts in, with pots,
brass, copper, aluminium,
plastic buckets,
frantic hands,
and naked children
screaming in the liquid sun,
their highlights polished to perfection,
flashing light,
as the blessing sings
over their small bones.
Analysis of the Poem
'Blessing' is a four stanza poem with some inconsistent usage of end-rhyme, dealing with the major event of a broken water pipe in a deprived slum on the outskirts of Bombay. The imagery used in the poem emphasises the poverty of the people and how important and how sacred drinking water is to these people. The poem starts with a short, two line stanza that serves the purpose of framing the poem and establishing the context or back story of the poem.
The skin cracks like a pod.
There never is enough water.
Here the 'skin' could be a literal reference to a person's skin that has become chapped and chafed by constant exposure to the hot sun, or could a more figurative reference to the dry dusty ground that also cracks and splits during heat-waves and droughts. Also, when a person becomes dehydrated their lips and gums begin to shrink and their skin becomes dry and loose. The word 'pod' refers to a seed pod that opens in the hot weather to release its seeds. When taken together these descriptive words paint a rather bleak, even violent image. The poet's choice of words reminds the reader that we are dealing with a hot country where thirst is common, after all, 'there never is enough water.'
The second stanza begins by asking the reader to imagine water dripping into a cup, to imagine the tiny splash as the water droplet hits the bottom of the cup. It is as if the person describing the dripping water hasn't had a drink in months and, just like a man dying of thirst in a desert, is fantasising about a delicious drop of thirst-quenching water. Like the first stanza, the second stanza reinforces the idea that within the context of this poem water is a very precious and rare thing, not to be wasted at any cost. The fact that the tiny droplet of water creates an 'echo' in the mug suggests that the mug is almost entirely empty, like a drop of cool water hitting a parched tongue. Moreover, what kind of person owns a tin mug? A rich man, or a poor man? We could say that the reference to a tin mug implies that this person is also very poor. Most interestingly of all, the last line of the second stanza personifies the echoing splash of the water as 'the voice of a kindly god', which not only makes the water seem even more precious and divine but also part of a god and therefore something miraculous and deeply special.
The third and longest stanza of the poem tells us a story of a burst water pipe and how suddenly this precious resource was transformed from a tiny, precious drip into a powerful torrent of water. Such is the value and importance of water to these people that throughout the poem it is referred to as if it was a precious metal like gold or silver.
The poet describes the gushing water as a 'sudden rush of fortune' like someone winning the jackpot on a slot machine and the money rushing out of the machine. As the precious water splashes onto the ground the word 'rush' could suggest that people are 'rushing' around trying to save as much of it as they can. We are told that it is the public (municipal) pipe that has burst, which could either be a water pump that is available to everyone or maybe just a large water pipe that runs through the slum. Either way a large water pipe has burst and it is a cause of some panic and excitement. Again the poet uses figurative language to compare the water to precious metal when she writes 'silver crashes to the ground'. Caught in the right light water can look like silver, or a highly polished mirror, only in this instance the poet uses the word 'silver' to emphasise how precious a commodity it is. As the water beings to flow and drain away it finds a 'roar of tongue.' Now, this is an interesting metaphor and also an example of synecdoche which is a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships. In this poem the word 'roar' refers to a group of people since we only have one tongue each and therefore the plural 'tongues' suggests a group. It could be that the tongues are 'roaring' with thirst, or perhaps that people are merely shouting and their combined voices constitutes the 'roar' of a crowd. It seems that the poet is being purposefully ambiguous to make readers think about the idea of thirst and to remind everyone that there are lots of other people involved in this event. And indeed, as the poem continues people are starting to appear from their huts with all manner of pots and pans to carry the water, so perhaps the 'roar of tongues' is actually a shout of alarm and panic to tell people that they need to try and save as much of the water as possible.
The word 'congregation' has been used as it has two important meanings within the context of this poem. Firstly it refers to a congregation or group of people, but it also refers to a group of people in a church or being given religious instruction. Again, the poet is using ambiguous religious language, the effect being to make the process of saving the spilling water a kind of religious ritual, which in turn emphasises the precious nature of the water. The poet has already described the water as a gift from a 'kindly' god, so if the water is a gift from god it is only right that the act of collecting it should bear some resemblance to a religious ritual. This is also further evidence that these people are religious people and that they see accidents as acts of god and not just freak occurrences.
People from 'all the streets around' rush to save the water. This could mean that their water is somehow restricted, perhaps they have to pay for it and as such a burst pipe represents a chance to save some free water. Maybe it is rationed in case it runs out. It is highly unlikely that people in a British city would all rush out to the road with their pots and pans and buckets to save water if a water pipe burst on the street! It is described that they use cheap containers to save the water and their 'frantic' hands also suggest that there is an atmosphere of panic. However, all is not doom and gloom since the small children are playing in the water, the highlights in their hair 'polished to perfection' after a life spent outside in the hot 'liquid' sun.
