Summary
"Blessing" by Imtiaz Dharker recounts the instances of a municipal pipe bursting in a community afflicted with drought. In the first stanza, the speaker states that the skin cracks like a pod because there is never enough water. In the following stanza, the speaker describes the sounds of water: the drip of it, the small splash, an echo in a tin mug, and the voice of a kindly god.
In the third stanza, the speaker recounts the occasional and fortunate occurrence of a municipal pipe bursting. Silver crashes to the ground and the flow finds a roar of tongues. A congregation of men, women, and children come from the huts of surrounding streets to butt in. They use pots, brass, copper, aluminum, plastic buckets, and frantic hands to gather the water.
In the last stanza of the poem, naked children scream as they play in the liquid sun. Their highlights are polished to perfection in the flashing light. Water is described as a blessing that sings over the children's small bones.
Analysis
"Blessing" by Imtiaz Dharker illustrates the way that water is transformed into a form of currency and a divine blessing in an urban community afflicted with drought. In particular, the poem focuses on the way the children in the community encounter the blessing of water. In the first stanza, the poet briefly describes drought with the lines, "The skin cracks like a pod. / There never is enough water" (Lines 1-2). As "the skin" is unspecified, it could refer to all types of skin: human, animal, and the surface of the earth. A pod is an elongated seed vessel of a plant that splits open on both sides when ripe. Like humans, plants need water to survive and grow.
Dharker has stated that the setting of the poem is Dharavi (considered one of the largest slums in Asia) in the city of Mumbai during the dry season. However, this specific setting is not explicitly named in the poem, making it applicable to other marginalized communities that experience drought. The simile of the skin cracking like a pod is specific to the poem's setting because pods (for example, cardamom) are often used as a food source in India. The rhythm of these first lines is a pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables that is maintained until the final word of the second line: "water." Dharker often employs irregular patterns of rhythm in her poems, meaning that when she chooses to break a fixed rhythm, it holds significance. Here, the emphasis is on water because of the severe drought that characterizes normal life for the community in the poem.
The poem is composed of four stanzas of varying lengths written in free verse. The first stanza is brief and bare-boned compared to the rest in order to convey the severity of the drought. In the second stanza, the speaker further develops the description of the drought by instructing the reader to imagine the sounds of water: "the drip of it, / the small splash, echo / in a tin mug, / the voice of a kindly god" (Lines 3-6). "Drip" and "splash" are examples of onomatopoeia: they describe the sound of water. Significantly, the speaker does not evoke a large rushing body of water, but rather the sounds of small amounts only. This contributes to the sense of desperation that occurs in places of severe drought. Between sixty and seventy percent of the human body is composed of water; it is essential for survival. The word "god" rhymes with "pod," showing that it is up to a higher source to determine whether the community's skin will crack like a pod due to drought or if their cups will be filled with life-giving water.
In the poem, the sounds of water are described as "the voice of a kindly god" (Line 6). This demonstrates that the people living in the poem's urban setting consider water to be a divine source and are grateful for whatever amount they can access. It is not in mosques or temples that these people encounter god, but rather in the moments when their survival is ensured for a time by the appearance of something as essential as water. Here, god is not capitalized, a choice that aligns with the frequent criticisms of religious fundamentalism elsewhere in Dharker's work.
The third stanza is the longest in the poem, describing the accidental appearance of water. The first lines that describe this read, "Sometimes, the sudden rush / of fortune," and the sounds and the sentence structure themselves give the impression of the movement of water (Lines 7-8). The sibilance of the /s/ in the words "sometimes" and "sudden" and the /sh/ of "rush" mimic the gushing sound of water. This is also a nominal sentence; it does not contain a verb. The poetic syntax of this phrase evokes the suddenness of the situation before even recounting what happened.
The word "municipal" specifies the poem's setting as urban. It also implies that the water supply is controlled by the government. It is only by accident (the pipe bursting) that the people living in Dharavi are able to access this water. The word "water" is then replaced by the word "silver," denoting it as a precious resource. This "flow has found / a roar of tongues," imbuing the water with life and sentience (Lines 10-11). The "roar of tongues" begins to evoke the chaos of the situation as people gather to collect and enjoy the water. People come from the huts as "a congregation" of men, women, and children (Line 12). The religious connotation of the word "congregation" illustrates that water is an equalizing and divine force. It is equalizing because everyone in the community requires it and will come together to collect it.
Like in the earlier stanza where the speaker instructs the reader to imagine the sounds of water, this passage describing the burst pipe is rich with sonic imagery. Everyone "for streets around / butts in, with pots, / brass, copper, aluminium, / plastic buckets, / frantic hands" to collect the water (Lines 13-17). The /b/ and /p/ add a percussive element to this list of words that seem to spill forth, evoking the hubbub of the crowd. The "frantic hands" are a synecdoche for the people in the community.
Using enjambment, the poet continues the list from the third stanza to the fourth, and hones in on the image of children playing in the water. People of all ages gather around the burst pipe, but it is the children who particularly turn the event into a celebration. They run, naked and screaming in the liquid sun, enjoying the water that has come their way. The imagery of this passage focuses on the way that light and water interact: the light is a "liquid sun," the children's "highlights" are "polished to perfection," and the light flashes with their movement. Light indicates hope, and here the water defines a moment of hope and joy.
Just as the sound of water is deified earlier in the poem as "the voice of a kindly god," water is referred to as a blessing that sings in the final stanza (Line 6). Children are included in the list of people who butt in from the surrounding streets to gather water with pots, buckets, and hands, but it is only children who play in the water at the end. The poet bestows active and divine qualities upon water "as the blessing sings / over their small bones" (Lines 22-23). Ending with this image shows the necessity of children (as well as their playful presence in the world) for the continuation of life. The act of gathering water demonstrates hope for survival, but the poem's central image is the playing children. The total gratitude and enjoyment of which children are capable contributes to the community's survival as a whole.
The image overall, however, is bittersweet. The focus on the children's "small bones" not only refers to their developing frames, but could also suggest their bodies are skeletal as a result of malnourishment, dehydration, and stress. If the reader is to understand the line "There never is enough water" as foreshadowing, then this last image of the children playing in the water suggests sadness and lack as well as momentary joy.
