Koyamparambath Satchidanandan's speech at Sahitya Akademi (Meet the Author)

A B O U T P O E T R Y , A B O U T L I F E

"I cannot tell from where poetry came to me; I had hardly any poet- predecessors. Whenever I try to think about it, I hear the diverse strains of the incessant rains of my village in Kerala and recall too, the luminous lines of the Malayalam Ramayana I had read as a schoolboy where the poet prays to the Goddess of the Word to keep on bringing the apt words to his mind without a pause like the endless waves of the sea. My mother taught me to talk to cats and crows and trees; from my pious father I learnt to communicate with gods and spirits. My insane grandmother taught me to create a parallel world in order to escape the vile ordinariness of the tiringly humdrum everyday world ; the dead taught me to be one with the soil ; the wind taught me to move and shake without ever being seen and the rain trained my voice in a thousand modulations. With such teachers, perhaps it was impossible for me not to be a poet , of sorts. I have looked at my genesis with detachment in an early poem ‘Granny’ : “My grandmother was insane./As her madness ripened into death,/My uncle, a miser, kept her in our store room/Covered in straw./My grandmother dried up, burst,/Her seeds flew out of the windows./The sun came and the rain,/one seedling grew up into a tree,/Whose lusts bore me./ How can I help writing poems /About monkeys with teeth of gold?”.It was not only my grandma who was insane; there were three in the family, all women.That explains the celebration of madness and the suspicion of sanity in many of my poems.

Our village was beautiful though I was unaware of its charms as long as I lived there. It had paddy fields that would fill with water during floods and with blue flowers after harvest in August, hills with named and nameless creepers and flowers, backwaters on which little open boats plied with men and merchandise, little peaceful temples, mosques and churches which bred genuine gods and not devils as they sometimes seem to do now. The northern part of our village, Pulloot, was dominated by communists and the south by Congress men. My primary and upper primary schools were in the north which meant I was a tiny communist there, but at home all went with Congress. Even our gods whose pictures adorned the pooja room seemed to belong to either of these parties, though a little more violent than the party men were for they never wore garlands of skulls, carried swords and spears nor had several heads like the gods: still those Goya- figures the family worshipped seemed to go well with those post-Gandhi times. That was also my second lesson in sur-realism, the first having been the three-month long fever that had almost killed me when I was four and given me Dali-like nightmares that crowd my early poetry.

I was born in a middle-class home, and by the time I was born it was a unitary family, with my parents not educated beyond the high school, and a sister and a brother who were elder to me. My father was doing odd jobs, farming on our family land -where we helped too-, working in a lawyer’s office, helping people prepare legal documents for land transactions. Earlier he was in the police force from which he had voluntarily retired . Two of my sisters had died in accidents before I was born; I have written a poem addressed to one of them who had appeared before me one night, put her soft betel-leaf hand on my palm and invited me to her enchanting land, slightly above earth but below heaven. My mother taught me to respect all religions, and I accompanied my little friend Abdul Khader, to chandanakkudam, the festival in the mosque with the same enthusiasm with which I attended thalappoli, the temple festival and liked the pathiris made at his home by his sister Khadeeja. My brother used to write poetry- though he ended up as an engineer- and by the time we needed higher education, the family, now larger with my sister’s children, had been rendered even poorer by the inevitable land reform that took away a good part of our land which had been with the tenants. But scholarships helped us pursue studies in college. My divorced sister had now married V T Nandakumar, a fiction writer adding one more writer to the family already struggling with two aspirants! My friends in the Malayalam medium schools in the village were mostly from very poor families:I have remembered them in a poem on my classmates, Kunjimuhammed, Vasu and Janaki none of whom went to college. Some of my teachers, especially in the High School at Kodungallur, the little temple town-earlier Muziris, a port that brought Greeks, Romans and Arabs to Kerala-that I reached after crossing a river and walking miles, encouraged me to write. Raghavanmaster, my Malayalam teacher, would send me to every poetry competition and the disciple seldom disappointed him. I cannot forget also Sankaran, a mad man, said to have been a Malayalam munshi, who introduced me to Kumaran Asan’s great poetry that he would sing and interpret every morning to an eager crowd in the village square. I would reach school late, but this was better education. My first poems were published in the manuscript journal of the village library and the high school magazines.

Christ College, a well-run Carmelite institution where I did my graduation in biology, had a well-stocked library. My early readings had already been done in the village library that bears the name of Kumaran Asan. That is where I read not only the great Malayalam fiction writers and poets, but translations of Tagore, Bankim, Saratchandra,Tarasankar, Manik Banerjee, Bimal Mitra, Yashpal, Jainendrakumar, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Hugo, Zola, Maupassant, Flaubert,Thomas Mann and several others. The Malayalam weeklies of the time never forgot to serialise at least one novel each in translation, especially from Bengali or Hindi . But in Christ College I began reading books in English somewhat systematically, helped on by the librarian , John Master who was a Latin scholar.I read the Holy Bible with great attention and that had a lasting impact on my vision and imagination; many of its books were great literature, besides being moving human documents; I especially liked the Book of Job, Revelation- that was my third lesson in sur-realism- and the Psalms, especially of David. Perhaps only Mahabharata that I read later in Kunjikkuttan Thampuran’s Malyalam translation had a similar impact on me. Buddha’s Dhammapada I read when I was nineteen also has had a great impact on my ethical imagination. The Communist Manifesto was another book that awakened my moral sensibility. At Christ College I also read the Complete Works of Shakespeare spending a whole vacation on it and making notes, and the collected works of Wordsworth, Shelley , Keats and Byron and translated some of their poems., especially Shelly’s ‘To a Skylark’, ‘The Cloud’ and ‘Ode to the Westwind’, Keats’s ‘Ode to the Nighingale’ and many short lyrics of Byron. Translation, however, was not new to me: I had translated a lot of Omar Khayyam’s rubayis while in high school from the Fitzgerald version.( I translated all the sonnets of Shakespeare much later, for a volume of Shakespeare translations edited by Ayyappa Paniker.) Looking back I feel they were a part of my training as a poet though I continued doing translatons whenever my own poetry went dry so that I have now more than 1500 pages of world poetry translated by me.

Maharajas College in Ernakulam where I did my post graduation in English played even a greater role in my evolution as a writer: My reading grew more intense and focused ; I read also a lot of theory including the Marxist classics. And I got my real taste of modern literature as Yeats, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett were part of the syllabus and I was burning midnight electricity on Sartre, Camus , Kafka, Baudelaire , Rilke and the Black poets. My poems and critical articles had begun to appear in Malayalam magazines by now, and I had a small circle of eccentric admirers though that did not ensure my victory in the college elections where I was an independent candidate supported by the Students’ Federation who always lost to a local party, the Democratic Front. My good friends included late T.K.Ramachandran who grew up into a leftist intellctual, N S Madhavan, now a major fiction writer in Malayalam, P.V. Krishnan Nair who later became Secretary of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi, Sankaranarayanan (Nambu as we called him) who is now with the Deccan Herald in Bangalore besides others.This was the time when I also met Ayyappa Paniker, the pioneer of New Poetry in Malayalam, and a fine scholar who was to play a major role in my life later, sending me to various festivals of poetry, making me translate several poets from across the world for the poetry journal, Kerala Kavita edited by him -that also published my first important poems- and later encouraging me to come to Delhi taking up the editorship of Indian Literature in the Sahitya Akademi. Maharajas college had some excellent teachers of literature and provided me the kind of ambience I was looking for with heated discussions on literature and politics, sharing of books and creative confusions. I was an angst-bearing little existentialist and at the same time a half-baked Marxist besides being attracted to the radical humanist ideas of M. N. Roy introduced to me by the senior intellectual and poet M Govindan.There was a little circle of actively dying Royists at that time around the town of Trichur. I occasionally joined their discussions along with and died a bit too. My roommate C.T.Sukumaran( who later joined the IAS and was murdered by the mafia) also joined me at times.

I began to take my poetry seriously in the mid-1960s when Malayalam poetry was undergoing a sweeping transformation in terms of theme, mood and form. The new poets , tired of the excesses of the Romantics and the shallowness of the Progressives were striving to create a novel poetic idiom that would capture the conflicts and complexities of contemporary life in its totality. They had learnt their lessons from three sources: the specific -oral as well as written- traditions of Malayalam poetry, the larger - classical as well as modern-traditions of Indian poetry, and the avant-garde practices of modern European poetry. New rhythms, metaphors, images, word patterns and structures of feeling and thought and radical deployment of archetypes, myths and legends from diverse cultures together transformed the landscape of poetry in my language as in many others at that time. The change had its impact on my poetic practice giving it new directions and dimensions. We rallied round Kerala Kavita, the release of each of whose quarterly issues became an occasion for discussions on poetry as well as readings, some of them directed by Theatre and Film directors like Kavalam Narayana Paniker and G. Aravindan. In the Seventies, I published a little magazine , Jwala (Flame), with my friend P. K. A. Raheem, a great supporter of the new movements as the publisher, that carried the latest in Western thought and writing.;Allen Ginsberg, John Cage, Limericks, Concrete Poetry, Argentine microtales including Borges…A new fraternity based on modern sensibility was evolving in Kerala, that included besides writers, modern painters, sculptors, film makers and playwrights. I wrote a series of articles on Modern painting besides on other art forms and also took to painting for a brief while when I had lost my faith in language and suffered a crisis of faith and consequent depression. My first collection of poems, Anchusooryan had been published in 1971 and a book on Modern poetry, Kurukshetram, one year before it; and many short collections followed, almost one every two years. That was also the time of the Film Society movement and we organized one in Irinjalakuda,the town where I was teaching, holding many retrospectives, of filmmakers from Eisenstein and Bergman to Godard and Tarkovsky. Later I added many more to my favourites, from Kurasowa and Jansco to Kieslowsky, Parajinov and Angelopoulos. I had never thought of becoming a critic; but there were few to interpret the emerging modern sensibility and I was constrained to play that role, leading me to write books or articles on new poetry, new fiction , modern painting etc.. My academic research in post-structuralist poetics and critical endeavours cannot be said to have helped my poetry; but they did improve my understanding of the complex linguistic processes involved in creative writing and the essential anonymous and polyphonic nature of all writing, making me less possessive about my own writing.

In the second half of the 1970s, a new political alertness revitalised this modern poetry; it was now ready to take on larger social issues and historical situations and interrogate the status quo.The new poetry got the eyes of history; and the impetus came chiefly from the New Left ( Maoist) movement that attracted several young idealists in Kerala as it did in Bengal and Andhrapradesh. I can now very well see that its politics had problems; but it did generate a lot of creative energy that transformed our poetry, fiction, theatre and cinema. There was a reorganization of the earlier high modernist fraternity; some poets were changed completely, giving birth to what Yeats would call ‘a terrible beauty’ while some got partially transformed and were sympathetic. Even senior poets like Ayyappa Paniker , N. N. Kakkad and Attoor Ravivarma wrote poems fired by the new social awakening with tribals and landles peasants at its core, and there were poets like K.G.Sankara Pillai and Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan who were in the forefront of the new cultural ferment. We were all active in Janakeeya Samskarika Vedi , the Forum for Peoples’ Culture that upheld avant-garde practices. Journals like Prasakti ( Relevance) and Prerana (Persuasion) gave a new impetus to the movement; street and proscenium theatres flowered with new plays and adaptations; translations ( most of them mine) of Latin American poets like Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo, Black poets like Senghor and David Diop and European poets like Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon and Bertolt Brecht provided new models. The campuses became vibrant with poetry readings and campus plays.This was the time that I also adapted some plays of W.B.Yeats, Lady Gregory and Bertolt Brecht. My play on Gandhi’s last days was written later on the request of the Secular Artists’ Forum that I had also helped found along with a lot of artists and writers at a time when communalism was beginning to malign even Kerala’s body politic. I had by the time also become a regular invitee to the literary events at Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, thanks to Ashok Vajpeyi, the cultural visionary. These readings and workshops acquainted me with a lot of major Indian writers, especially poets, including the likes of Navkant Barua, Neelmoni Phookan, Subhash Mukhopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Kunwar Narayan, Kedarnath Singh, Sitakant Mahapatra, Ramakanta Rath, Jayanata Mahapatra, Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar, Namdeo Dhasal, Sitanshu Yashaschandra, and Ali Sardar Jaffri besides poets from abroad like Derek Walcott, Tomas Transtromer and Phillippe Jaccottet, though I did meet a lot of other poets from Kim Chi-hai and Tasos Denegris to Mahmoud Darwish, David Diop and Bei Dao during my readings outside India.

The Seventies’ movement ended tragically, producing several young martyrs who were killed by the police or committed suicide out of disillusionment. I escaped their fate only as I had always kept a critical distance from the political formation and its closed ideological stance and managed to honestly articulate even this moment of retreat, isolation and fragmentation in my poetry. I also used this interval for introspection and fresh theoretical enquiries as whose mouthpiece I launched the journal, Uttharam ( The Answer).( Later I edited a third journal , Pacchakkutira (The Green Horse), for arts, creative writing, translation and social and literary theory) There were too new social movements centred round human rights, consumer rights, issues of environment and tribals’, dalits’ and women’s emancipation which gave hope. I could see a new politics of ‘microstruggles’ or ‘transversal struggles’- as Michel Foucault calls them- emerging in Kerala sharing their ethical concerns with the 70’s movement. It was around this time that Ayyappa Paniker prompted me to move to Delhi and take up the editorship of Indian Literature at the Sahitya Akedemi. Leaving my job in the college and my presence in the cultural scene of my state was not at all easy; but the adventurer in me got the better of the sober soul and to the surprise and even the chagrin of many I decided to take the plunge. Frankly I do not regret the decision when I compare what I lost with what Delhi gave me: fresh exposures to all art forms, a deeper interest in Indian literature that led to many fresh explorations some of which are collected in my three books in English on the subject, the advantage of distance form my native state that helped me look at it at times nostalgically and at times critically, the many poems on Kerala and Malayalam, the series on the Saint and Sufi poets,a large circle of writer-friends across the country and abroad, the new directions I could give to the Akademi’s journal as its editor and later, as its Executive head, to its activities, travels in three continents that often inspired a lot of my poems and also won my poetry a lot of friends and translators abroad. My readings across the globe have helped reaffirm my faith in the power of poetry to speak to people across nations, languages and communities; it is the shared mother tongue of human beings that survived the Babel. No wonder it has survived Plato’s Republic, Hitler’s Auschwitz and Stalin’s Gulag, and still whispers its uneasy truths into the human ear trained through centuries to capture the most nuanced of voices.

Poetry as I conceive it is no mere combinatorial game; It rises up from the ocean of the unsayable, tries to say what it cannot stay , to name the nameless and to give a voice to the voiceless. It is no mere reproduction of established values and recognised truths; it is, as Italo Calvino says, an eye that sees beyond the colour spectrum of everyday politics and an ear that goes beyond the frequencies of sociology. It upturns the virgin soil, advances on the blank page , to use Nicanor Parra’s famous phrase.The truths it discovers may not often be of immediate use; but it will gradually become part of social consciousness.I also share Neruda’s concept of impure poetry, poetry that bears the dust of distances and smells of lilies and urine, a poetry that is often created out of words salvaged from the wreck of languages and nations. Poetry differs from prose not by following a metre or rhythm; there are many metrical poems that are worse than prose. The difference lies in its power to dissolve paradoxes and its way of imagining things into being and connecting words and memories; rhyme and rhythm may, of course, help to invoke an atmosphere. Its attraction is in what lies beyond the dictionary; it recovers words and experiences exiled from memory. Lorca used to speak of duende, a common term in Andalusin popular discourse: that sudden vision of godhead in Arabic music and dance that makes the audience cry, Allah, Allah. It is the intangible mystery Goethe found in Paganini’s art, the divine persuasion that the Gypsy dancer La Malena felt in Bach’s music played by Brailovsky. The search for it is a solitary trip without maps. Poetry too has those moments of revelation when like a whirlwind it subverts all logic and pulls down all preconceived projects. Every poet worth his/her salt must have felt the thrill and the terror of such moments of epiphany at least in the best moments of their inspiration. I too have experienced this not only while writing some poems which seemed to have been dictated to me but while istening to Girijadevi singing her tumris perched between the sun and the moon in Ayodhya leaving her voice to Sarayu’s breeze to rock the cradle of little Rama or in the ecstatic moments of Kumar Gandharv, Mallikarjun Mansoor or Kishori Amonkar singing in Bhopal and Delhi where the real world ceases to be and you float back to the times of Amir Khan or Fayyas Khan and beyond. M.D.Ramanathan’s hindol has given me this feeling as also some rare moments of Mahalia Jackson and Arita Franklin. And I have found this elevation while reading Dostoevsky’s Karamazov Brothers or Kazantsakis’s God’s Pauper. Tadeuz Rosewicz, the Polish poet said poetry should lay its eggs not on the chaff of half and a quarter words but directly in the abyss, and J.Swaminathan while speaking of the geometry of colours remarked that the triangle, the rectangle and the circle are coloured windows that open into the inexpressible and the ambiguos. He saw how in the tribal art nature and its creation enveop each other. This reciprocity is vital to any art today to liberate ourselves from the anthropocentric Western thought that speaks of nature in the language of war and rape and leads to the annihilation of man and earth.

I have often been asked what the central themes of my poetry are. It is difficult to reduce poetry to themes as any complex-enough poem works at many levels. As Umberto Eco says in a recent interview, works are more intelligent than their authors; they may contain possibilities that the author might never have known or imagined. But Rizio Raj,the writer-friend who edited my collected works has divided my work into three parts, Akam, poems of love , domesticity and interiority, Puram, poems of social concern and Mozhi, poems where language itself becomes the main theme. Gauded into a response, I will say justice, freedom, love, nature, language and death are the central concerns of my poetry as perhaps of all poetry. And the chief elements that helped shape me as a poet have perhaps been the traditions of poetry, local, national as well as global, experience, observation- of nature and of human beings, travel, interaction with other arts like music, painting and cinema, reading and translation, all turning into the fibres of my imagination.And I have been open-minded when it comes to forms having employed several verbal registers in Malyalam,from street talk to the language of legal documents and a diversity of metrical and non-metrical devices, folk, classical and modern.

The responsiveness of the Seventies is still alive in my poetry though I have distanced myself from all dogma. My commitment is largely ethical- to certain values, like justice, equality, freedom , love, respect for all forms of life.These have become all the more significant in a world governed by the values of the market and increasingly and violently being colonised by the forces of globalisation. While I have continuously raised the issues of women’s emancipation, the rights of the marginalised, ecological harmony and a world without wars, and kept responding to the tragic turns of social events, from the Emergency to the rise of communalism in our society, I have not ceased asking the deeper existential questions, of being, freedom, instincts, nature, relationships, death. I find no contradiction between the sacred and the secular; I can well be spiritual without being religious.This is something I have learnt from our Saint and Sufi poets and reformers like Kabir and Gandhi who battled against hierarchies of every kind , challenged Power in its diverse manifestations and interrogated the superfluous externals of practised religion. A poet does not need any religion other than poetry itself. Nothing can scare poetry except perhaps the empty white paper where, as Wislawa Szymborsca says, the poet has to await the incarnation of his/her essence in total solitude behind put-on masks and closed doors. I fear only the suffocating silence of a world where the soul has ceased to speak and man cannot decipher the language of leaves and waterfalls. I hope not to survive to see that day when the universe is deprived of its sacredness and evil prevails unquestioned."

As shared by the poet on Facebook, reproduced here in entirety, apologies in advance to everyone if this goes against any established etiquette

The Quiet World

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

By Jeffrey McDaniel, from The Forgiveness Parade. Copyright © 1998 by Jeffrey McDaniel( found on www.poetryfoundation.org)

P.S. - Thanks Giridhar for sharing this one with me. Lovely poem indeed!

The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

By W.H. Auden, first published in the New Yorker (1939) and later in Another Time (1940) (found on www.poets.org)

P.S. - I like the dry and irreverent tone of this poem (it reads for all purposes like a long obituary of someone who has lead another dry and very gray life) and how Auden highlights "mock achievements" of the citizen. Somehow this poem always brings the title - Another gray life - to my mind.

Moving On - Book Launch, some more pics

Mr. Shankar Melkote reading my poems


Ms. Mythili Nayar reading my poems


Presenting Little Theatre


Presenting Little Theatre


Dr. Giridhar Rao

P.S. - Pics courtesy Rajasekhar.

Moving On - Book Launch, some pics

Dr. T Vijay Kumar introduces Moving On


Presenting Little Theatre


Presenting Little Theatre and Mythili Nayar


Mr. Shankar Melkote reading my poems

P.S. - Thanks Kartik for the pics.

Moving On - The book launch!

Yes, it happened and happened pretty well too.

No, I did not give any impressive talk, in fact I goofed up (majorly). I still find addressing a gathering tougher than contemplating a 650kms in a day ride. All the last minute worries regarding how successful the launch would be did not help either!

Anyway, its done now and the book is launched and I am happy that the book has come out exactly as I had visualized it.

A bit about the launch.

Dr. T Giridhar Rao was the Master of the Ceremonies and he was spot on in the excellent way he managed the evening.

Dr. T Vijay Kumar introduced my book and spoke at length about what he felt was good in my poems and also briefly touched on various pitfalls that come in the way of "first book authors" that I have managed to avoid. He then released the book.

Thereafter the poetry reading started with Mythili Nayar reading my poems first.

Then Little Theatre took over and just blew the audience away. In fact I was getting SMSes while the poems were being read - "This reader is just awesome man!" "That was mindblowing" and so on....

Thereafter, both Dr. Girdhar Rao and Dr. Vijay Kumar read some more poems.

And then I did some signings too :-)

A big thanks to all who made it to the event braving the Hyderabadi traffic and distances. I had expected a larger turnout but then as they say, "the best laid plans of men and mice"....

A big thanks to Vijay Marur, Sarala Mahidhara, BS Prakash and Shankar Melkote of Little Theatre and Mythili Nayar for reading the poems of an obscure poet to an obscure audience.

I look forward to more such events and I hope that Coucal flies into and off the shelves of bookstores too :-)

P.S. - Have put up one pic of the launch here (thanks GR), to my left is Dr. Giridhar Rao and to my right is Dr. T Vijay Kumar. Yes, that's me in the middle :-)

Moving On - Book Launch Invite

For all of you out there who have taken the time to visit my blog and interact with me about "this and that" poetic, here's the book launch invite. Do consider it a personal invite and I would be immensely honoured if you can drop by for what promises to be a very poetic evening!

For those who may have problems finding the venue (like I usually do in the fast changing metropolis that is Hyderabad), if coming from Jubilee Checkpost, look out for a Water Tank / Tower (?) with Kavuri Hills written on it to your right. Next look out for Madhapur Police Station and turn left at the traffic signal opposite Madhapur Police Station. Drive / ride / walk on this road and you will come to a lane on the left with a board pointing the way to the venue. If you are coming from the other side, I guess its equally simple, ask for Madhapur Police Station and turn right at the signal.

See you there at Chitramayee!

P.S. - I could be wrong but I have a sneaky feeling that this road opposite Madhapur Police Station once used to be the "not so secret way" to go to what used to be called Secret Lake - now called Durgam Cheruvu and for all purposes a small mirror of stagnant water that reflects back the city's lights at the heavens above...but then, I could be wrong :-)

Moving On - Book Release

Yes, it is finally happening.

I am launching my book here in Hyderabad on the 18th of December.

This is just a quick update, will post up in detail pretty soon.

Venue - Chitramayee, State Gallery of Arts Auditorium
Kavuri Hills, Madhapur

Date - 18th December, 2009

Time - 5.30 p.m. onwards

Cycle song

The 4'o clock sun must have
melted from summer's heat
and rained all over
this cloud canopy
making it a washed-out, silver
diffusion of light.

Off the seat - pedalling furiously,
below me, I see
me and the cycle
on the rain-wet road,
less, afternoon-shadow,
mirror reflection, more.

My road's a banked river
of wet asphalt,
its mosaic rain-soaked;
a watershed, for
just born puddles and streamlets,
all along its banks.

Lucky me, bicycling
in the year's first rains
lucky me, what I spit out
is not sweat
or the dregs
of baggage and bitterness.

From "Moving On", this one is also up at Kritya (thanks Rati for accepting this), do check it out here

Crossing over

Crossing over
from green bank to greener one,
shirt glowing a schoolboyish white
the field hand
grows another limb
bringing his crowbar down
sharpening it
on the winter-sun wet
whetstone of black and blue
that's this asphalt stream
on which, car-borne,
from one busy blacktop river
to another busier one,
we cross over.

From "Moving On", also published on nthposition (thanks Rufo!), do check it out here

Moving On

How exactly do you write a blog post about a book cover? That too, if the book is yours? And if there are the proverbial mountains still left to be climbed to get the book printed and released?

All I will say is this took a lot of thinking (and unthinking) and some doing!

Now, let me move on to the mountain climbing :-)

A dead leaf's dervish whirl

Blood rust red
spider web hung
from living green
you twirl
in a dervish whirl
drunk - forest breezed.

That breeze died -
an air river dried
into nothing. For placid green
to float and bob
as still life's
anchored and treed.

You hang limp
spider web hung
by living green,
blood rust red, very dead.

Memories

How do you stop memories
dead-ends they don't know
unchided they lead and follow
light as a shadow.

How do you dam memories
that silently in you flow
undamned by you they won't slow
no deep sea do they know.

How do you school memories
these joys you babysat
that refuse to grow
where will you ask them to go?

Ode to Narsapur forest

Its a misty winter morning
and the world's awash with dew;
come, lets leave yesterday, its troubles hanging
lets start life anew.

Come, where time walks slow
in simple cycles of day and night
in which smoothly come and go
dawn, noon and gay twilight.

Where, nature her wand does weave
raising verdant seas of green
and charms out a treasure of sights that leave
memories colour drunk, senses rapier keen.

Where every tree, shrub and grass
rock, gully and jungle trail
hum with life and in living amass
richness of simplicity beyond human toil's avail.

Where bright flashes of colour herald
birds of which we know no name
and animal spoor; of pug, paw and hoof
this, a wild domain proclaim.

So, come and drink your fill
of this bounteous spread
and let its sounds and smells till
your self, to cultivate hope and bury dread.

And as back we make our way
to a life of monotonies, drab and gray
let's pray for yet another day
when you and I come Narsapur way.

Mountain spring

As sheets of tinted gold
or molten silver, you glow
springing free, from a rocky hold
with blithe abandon you flow.

Bubbling, gay, you make your way
under this eroded arch, over yon hard rock ledge
while your merry gurgle seems to say
to lifelong goodness, a pledge.

Pray, what makes you so
merry, buoyant and free
is it some unknown you know
or some holy light you see?

Perhaps it is the relief,
of a new life you see (under sunny skies)
for you must have known the grief
of a rocky prison, which no sunbeams prise.

Or its that you just rejoice
as the bearer of nature's elixir
and through your mellifluous voice
herald providence, light and cheer.

I really do not know
the secrets in your blithe voice's peal
yet, on your rocky banks, as you gently flow
my puny despairs die, my imagined wounds heal.

Woodsmoke is a blanket

Unlike the silent sheet
of morning mist
or the shroud of fog
leading evening into night
woodsmoke is a blanket
spreading like a story
raconteured by a fire's crackle - twigs telling
how tree droppings were brought home
bought free by poverty
to smoke and slowly cook up
small helpings on big plates
for cavernous little mouths
gobbling morsels
seasoned with lots of smoke.

Before the matchstick

Before the matchstick
turns darker than its head
flaming golden, it
gives your face
a third eye
red, oxygen sucking red
yours to suck in
a lungful of smoke
before the matchstick
warps into death.

Clouded smoke

No white boats
swimming in blue
not a white spread
with blue tears showing through
the skies are
smoke, smoke, smoky
grays unbraiding out
tendrils of black,
clouds smoking cloudily.
Can I reach up
and suck in
a lungful of
this smoking wetness?

Railing at love

Is love a set of subtitles
that's seen, written true
on a sleepless TV screen
where everything else is muted out?

Is love a burst of remembered song
blood warm and flowing strong
drowning the soul, a call
echoing in the heart?

Or is it a tyre gone bald
lacking grip, not bothered by
the careenings
of a motorcycle belching loud litanies?

Dragonflies

If I could go back 25 years in time, around 3.00 in the afternoon today, I would have been besides some Pokhuri in Rourkela, watching the buffaloes from the Khatals all around it wading into the dull emerald green (rich in spirogyra) waters, marveling at the recalcitrance of the egrets - blobs of sun-splashed white on the dark bovine hides - most of them waiting till their feet are wet before kicking off and flying around....

I would have been chewing on a stem of grass, the sun would have been hot on my back and I would have had thousands and thousands of dragonflies all around, transparent winged specks of yellow, red, black and green, there but still not there, as whimsical in their flight and direction as the kapok parachuted seeds floating out of a Bombax fruit that has ripened and burst.....

I didn't go back 25 years in time today (I did go for cycle ride sometime back, charmed out by the moonlight, more about that later) but I have been seeing quite a few dragonflies here in Alwal (a locality in Hyderabad) too (quite notably above the Football ground near Loyola Academy, that becomes almost a mini-pond every year after the rains), so well, I wikied (yes, its now as much of a word as googled is) and apart from coming to know that the Samurai identify themselves with the dragonfly and so many other things that I don't want to bore you with, came across this beautiful Vietnamese saying -

"Chuồn chuồn bay thấp thì mưa, bay cao thì nắng, bay vừa thì râm"

What does it mean?

If Wikipedia is to be believed, "Vietnamese people have a traditional way to forecast rain by seeing dragonflies: "Chuồn chuồn bay thấp thì mưa, bay cao thì nắng, bay vừa thì râm" (Dragonflies fly at low level, it is rainy; dragonflies fly at high level, it is sunny; dragonflies fly at medium level, it is shadowy)."

Well, I think I need to get away soon and go farther than the Football Ground near Loyola Academy (or Shameerpet Lake, for that matter).

And find a lake / wetland where the dragonflies float around in thousands.....

Silent heights

Cottonwool clouds
snow boats anchored
to snow headed peaks
in a gentian blue
ocean of bright light
everything in sight
afire and bright
sound frozen in fright
circumambulating the mountain Gods
who in deafening silence speak.

Uncamouflaged

The chameleon trapezed its way
it's tail tightly coiled
around the traffic's slipstream
across the blacktop - uncamouflaged - slow

a flushing leaf living green
unlike our wine red car
not diesel smoke stained
like the scarred lorries

nor a blur of colour
like the buses,
into the roadside foliage, alive
the chameleon trapezed its way.

The Highwayman

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh.
And he rode with a jeweled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jeweled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like moldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say--

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching--
Marching--marching--
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side.
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast.
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say--
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good.
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood.
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.
Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love's refrain.
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him--with her death.

He turned; he spurred to the west; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood.
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew gray to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shouting a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding--
Riding--riding--
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

By Alfred Noyes from Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems (found on www.poets.org)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

By T.S. Eliot, from Prufrock and Other Observations (found on www.poets.org), the formatting has gone for a toss, my apologies.

A River

In Madurai,
city of temples and poets,
who sang of cities and temples,
every summer
a river dries to a trickle
in the sand,
baring the sand ribs,
straw and women's hair
clogging the watergates
at the rusty bars
under the bridges with patches
of repair all over them
the wet stones glistening like sleepy
crocodiles, the dry ones
shaven water-buffaloes lounging in the sun
The poets only sang of the floods.

He was there for a day
when they had the floods.
People everywhere talked
of the inches rising,
of the precise number of cobbled steps
run over by the water, rising
on the bathing places,
and the way it carried off three village houses,
one pregnant woman
and a couple of cows
named Gopi and Brinda as usual.

The new poets still quoted
the old poets, but no one spoke
in verse
of the pregnant woman
drowned, with perhaps twins in her,
kicking at blank walls
even before birth.

He said:
the river has water enough
to be poetic
about only once a year
and then
it carries away
in the first half-hour
three village houses,
a couple of cows
named Gopi and Brinda
and one pregnant woman
expecting identical twins
with no moles on their bodies,
with different coloured diapers
to tell them apart.

By A.K. Ramanujan, from The Striders (found on www.oldpoetry.com)

Auguries of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

By William Blake (found on poets.org)

BREAK, break, break

BREAK, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson from Palgrave's Golden Treasury

P.S. - From what I know this poem was left untitled by Tennyson and "BREAK, break, break" is the first line of the poem. Am I wrong? Do let me know :-)

Tomorrow

In the downhill of life, when I find I'm declining,
May my lot no less fortunate be
Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining,
And a cot that o'erlooks the wide sea;
With an ambling pad-pony to pace o'er the lawn,
While I carol away idle sorrow,
And blithe as the lark that each day hails the dawn
Look forward with hope for tomorrow.

With a porch at my door, both for shelter and shade too,
As the sunshine or rain may prevail;
And a small spot of ground for the use of the spade too,
With a barn for the use of the flail:
A cow for my diary, a dog for my game,
And a purse when a friend wants to borrow;
I'll envy no nabob his riches or fame,
Nor what honours await him tomorrow.

From the bleak northern blast may my coat be completely
Secured by a neighbouring hill;
And at night may repose steal upon me more sweetly
By the sound of the murmuring rill:
And while peace and plenty I find at my board,
With a heart free from sickness and sorrow,
With my friends may I share what today may afford,
And let them spread the table tomorrow.

And when I at last must throw off this frail covering
Which I've worn for threescore years and ten,
On the brink of the grave I'll not seek to keep hovering
Nor my thread wish to spin o'er again:
But my face in the glass I'll serenely survey;
And with smiles count each winkle and furrow
As this old worn-out stuff, which is threadbare today,
May become everlasting tomorrow.

By John Collins, from Palgrave's Golden Treasury

Gabriel García Márquez on writing

Gabriel García Márquez: I'm still writing

Contrary to reports that he has laid down his pen, the Nobel prize winner Gabriel García Márquez tells Colombian newspaper "the only thing I do is write"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/06/gabriel-garcia-marquez-still-writing

Spaces

Morning insists entrance
ingressing as day - windowing
a new rectangle of light

rising six feet tall, thoughts
egress doorways - dog like
searching more room, to stretch and play

out as formed words, written on
blank pages of silence - walls
of age existence identity duty - refrains

gated as a familiar address
called home, its spaces inviting me back
however much, in me I roam.

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

By Philip Larkin (found on www.artofeurope.com)

See Paris for me

For more than a month now I have interacted on and off with Priti through Facebook and also read some of her "tightly drawn, poignant with immediacy" poems. Here's one,

'Tied my word-boat...'

Tied my
word-boat
to an imaginary anchor
in your silence.

Now
The word-boat
shallow
Your silence
a distant shore
The thought-crafted anchor
as flimsy
as the shadows
that throng the mind

Time to set
the word-boat adrift
Will it capsize?
Will it find
real resting place?
In a more
accepting silence?

All these days, Priti's first book has been getting ready and now its finally available in bookstores! Published by Penguin, "See Paris for me" is Set in Paris, Budapest and Hyderabad, this is a story about Sadhavi, a married woman, who finds herself intensely attracted to Kanav, a scholar and teacher, whom she meets in Paris. An intelligent woman with a traditional upbringing, a modern liberal education, married into an orthodox Brahmin family, Sadhavi had not actively thought about or pursued that which would fulfil her as an individual - till she comes to Paris and, away from her familiar surroundings, finds herself somewhat alone, emotionally vulnerable and intangibly connected to Kanav.

Sadhavi's yearning for an elusive fulfilment - and her struggle to let go of it - forms the core of the narrative, shaping the finely nuanced, contemplative contours of this quietly told but deeply felt novel.

Here's an excerpt of the book (the first page in fact) shared by Priti -


30 September 2004
An image followed me relentlessly today. It was part of a dream. And I can make no sense of it. I must have fallen asleep briefly – there is no other explanation for it - while reading in the afternoon.

I’m waiting for a concert, perhaps it is part of a Carnatic Music Festival here in Paris. I have great expectations from it as if it will mean something significant for me in an intensely personal way. The evening comes. Almost everybody is seated in the concert hall. I’m nearly the last one to enter. The musicians are introduced; they tune their instruments - a benign assurance of something splendid to follow or the usual preface to the recital. There is near perfect silence and the stillness of anticipation. The vocalist mentions the ragam and the talam. It is Ritigowla—one of my favourite ragams—it’s going to be a beautiful evening, perhaps one of those rare lustrous moments that leaves its lingering glow on the humdrum ones that follow, making them easier to accept.

And then, soon after, I hear nothing. I’m slightly perplexed. I wait patiently for the silence to melt away. It remains. It is too complete, absolute and unremitting to be real. I look at the musicians: the singer, the tambura player behind him, the mridangist and the violinist. They are all performing but I hear nothing. I focus on the vocalist. From the expressions on his face, his lip movements, his shake of the head, his absorption, his keeping of the talam with his right hand by thumping on his thigh, I know that he is singing the composition. I look at the people around me, watch them. I know they can hear and seem to be enjoying the music. Why can’t I hear anything? What’s wrong with me? I stuff my index fingers into my ears, pull them out and repeat the act several times in order to clear my ears. No sound enters. I discreetly clap my hands before me but the clap is a mute gesture. I clap a little harder. I hear nothing. My neighbours glare at me. I look at them bewildered.

I shrink into my chair and press hard against its back to contain the incipient panic. Then I close my eyes hoping that if I shut my eyes my ears will open up. Guardedly, I thump the right armrest of my chair with the open palm of my hand and, as I do so, I incline my head to the right to catch the sound. Silence—thick, seamless. At first there is confused fear, then agony, anger and gut-wrenching frustration with each passing silent desolate moment. I sit there petrified in my soundproof, soul-negating world. Delirious panic seizes me as I realize that something that can make me feel exquisitely fulfilled can never be mine even for a moment.

The memory of this horrible dream circled inside my head the rest of the day, potent and untiring. Leaving me as enervated as the other one I keep having where I am ceaselessly engraving a script on invisible walls. Why? Because I want to record and save memories but that is not the way to do it. The nervy etchings that a sense of loss makes cannot nurture future moments. I know that, yet I persist.

Intrigued? Buy the book :-) If you are from Hyderabad you can get it at Landmark, Walden or Crossword.

Priti blogs at www.somethinginpassing.blogspot.com

Dylan Thomas

"I make one image—though 'make' is not the right word; I let, perhaps, an image be 'made' emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual & critical forces I possess—let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make, of the third image bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict." - Dylan Thomas describes his technique in a letter. (from poets.org)

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, Dylan Thomas (found on poets.org)

For Satish Gujral

The deaf artist
who has never heard a human voice
articulate the language
of his choice
declares with passion
his drunken creed.
I mean no disrespect.
What does one do
whose loss
and liability
loom as large as this?

Deaf artists all,
all of us who martyr the meaning
in the flux
to lonely
and heated visions whoring
after truth.
Mea culpa. Punish me.
It is the task
of love
and imagination
to hear what can't be heard
when everybody speaks.

From "Hymns in Darkness" - Nissim Ezekiel, Collected Poems
Please excuse me for formatting errors, the "Tab" key seems dysfunctional on blogger.com

Defining a 6000 acre farm in the heart of South Africa

The other boy who was cheered by news of an eastward trek was the half-Hottentot Dikkop, fathered nineteen years earlier by a Coloured hunter who had lain with one of Hendrik's servants. It was unfair to call him a boy, for he was seven years older than Adriaan, but he was so unusually small, even for a Hottentot, that he looked more like a lad than Adriaan did. He had a large bottom, a handsome light-brown skin and a shy nature that expressed itself principally in his love for the Van Doorn children, especially Adriaan, with whom he had long planned to set forth on a grand exploration. If the family now moved a far distance eastward, after the new hut was built and the climate acclimated, he and Adriaan would be free to go, and they would be heading into land that few had seen before. Nothing could have pleased Dikkop more than this possibility, and when the wagons were loaded he went to Hendrik : 'Baas, come new farm, Adriaan, me, we head out?'
'It's time,' the baas agreed, and that was all the promise Dikkop required. On the journey he would work as never before, proving to his master that the proposed exploration was justified.
Two wagons heavily loaded, a tent to be pitched at dusk, a white family of nine, two slaves, two large families of Hottentots, two thousand sheep, four hundred cattle and two span of oxen - sixteen in each - formed the complement of the Van Doorns as they headed into totally unfamiliar land. Johanna had a meager collection of kitchen utensils, five spoons, two knives but no forks. Hendrik had a Bible published in Amterdam in 1630, a few tools and a brown-gold crock in which on festive occasions he made bread pudding for his family. He also had a small assortment of seeds, which he was confident he could expand into a garden, and sixteen rooted cuttings of various fruit trees, which, with luck, would form the basis of an orchard. In the entourage he was the only one who could read, and he took delight in assembling all people connected with him for evening prayer, when he would spread the Bible on his knees and read from it in rich Dutch accents.
The trekboers traveled only modest distances on any day. The oxen were not eager to move and the herds had to be allowed time to graze.Hottentos had to scout ahead to locate watercourses, so that five miles became a satisfactory journey. Also, when a congenial spot was found, the caravan lingered three or four days, enjoying the fresh water and the good pasturage.
At the end of three weeks, when some sixty-five miles had been covered, Hendrik and Johanna stood together on a small rise to survey a broad expanse of pasture, where the grass was not excessive or the water plentiful, but where the
configuration of land and protective hills and veld looked promising.
'Was your father's farm like this?'
'Almost the same,'Johanna said.
'And he failed?'
'We almost died.'
'This time it's different,' Hendrik said, but he was reluctant to make the crucial determination without his wife's approval. At a score of intervals in their life together she had been so prescient in warning him of pitfalls that he relied on
her to spot weaknesses that he missed.
'Would you worry, Johanna, if we chose this spot?'
'Of course not! You have sons to help you. Trusted servants. I see no trouble.'
'God be praised!' he shouted with an exuberance that startled her. 'This is it!'And he started running towards the center of the plain he had selected, but Johanna cried, 'You won't have time before sunset! Wait till tomorrow!'
'No!'he shouted with an excitement that activated his children and the servants. 'This is ours! We mark it out tonight.' And he kept running to a central position, where he directed his Hottentots to collect rocks for a conspicuous pile. As soon as it was started, he cried to everyone, 'Where's north?' He knew, of course, but wished their confirmation for the sacred rite he was about to perform.
'That's north,' Dikkop said.
'Right.' And he handed Johanna a pistol. 'At half an hour, fire it. I want everyone here to witness that I wakled only half an hour.' And with that he strode off to the north, not taking exaggerated steps, and not running, but walking with grave intent. When he had covered about a mile and three-quarters, Johanna fired the pistol, whereupon he stopped, gathered many rocks and built a pile somewhat smaller than the one at the center. Then, shouting with joy, he sped back to the center, leaping and kicking like a boy.
'Where's south"' he yelled.
'Down there!' several voices cried, whereupon he said again to his wife, 'Give me half an hour,'and off he went, never running or cheating, for the testimony must be unanimous that he had defined his land honestly. When the pistol fired, he built a cairn and hastened back to the central pile.
'Where's west?' he shouted with wild animal spirits, and off he went again, taking normal strides but with abnormal vigor. Another shot, another cairn, another dash.
'Where's east?' he cried, and the men bellowed 'There's east!'But this time, as he headed for the vast unknown that had so lured his crippled grandfather, and had seduced him away from the pleasing security of Trianon, it seemed to him that he was participating in a kind of holy mission, and his eyes misted, His steps slowed and diminshed much in scope, so that his farm was going to be lopsided, but he could not help himself. He had walked and run nearly eleven miles at the close of a demanding day, and he was tired, but more than that, he was captivated by the mountains that ran parallel to his course, there to the north, hemming in the beautiful plains on which the great farms of the future would stand. And to the south he could feel the unseen ocean, reaching away to the icebound pole, and he had a sense of identification with this untrammeled land that none before him had ever felt.
'He's not walking,' Adriaan said at the center.
'He's slowing down,' Johanna said.
'Give him more time,' the boy pleaded.
'No. We must do it right.' But Adriaan grabbed his mother's hand, preventing her from firing, and of a sudden his father leaped in the air, throwing his arms wide and dashing ahead to recover lost time.
'Now!' Adriaan said, dropping his hand. The pistol fired, the eastern cairn was established, and Hendrik Van Doorn tramped slowly back to his family. The new loan-farm, six thousand acres of promising pasture, had been defined.

Pages 322 - 326, Chapter V, The Trekboers - The Covenant by James A. Michener
Please excuse me for formatting errors, the "Tab" key seems dysfunctional on blogger.com

Liquid truths

Puppies and toddlers
don't have eyes,
you look not into
hardened mirrors
that reflect your fears
but liquid pools
that drown you in joy
seeing as they do
everything new
even old me and you.

A star shaped Diya

Swimming out of oil
into fans-switched-off air,
four wicks look me in the face,
bright with light
like smiling eyes
on the radiant face
of someone drunk high
on the euphoria
of being in love
or sated by the small joys
of the certain and familiar
celebrated as a festival.

"Aren't grasses green?"

Hands clenched into fists
around the rear-view mirrors' stands
in my front, the little man rides,
bottom itching on the petrol tank;

at watch, eyes permanently peeled
behind me - pillion sitting -
the bigger little man watches
our road changing, from straight asphalt

into a snaking river of gravel red, flowing
through a sea of motorcycle dwarfing grasses
flowering yellows, purples and russets,
and when just green, like none on any lawn seen.

Deepavali Memories

It’s the Monday after, as I write this.

My street and those all around my place are full of the remains of two days of relatively subdued Deepavali celebrations – with the remnants of the so called “Lakshmi”, “Double Sound” and “Lanka” crackers the most visible, littered like grounded confetti…

And then there are the Deepams, perched on the boundary walls and besides main gates. Some look almost unlit (though there’s the black eye of a burnt wick staring back at you), evidently put out by the cold winds that blow this time of the year; others are well and truly spent, burnt through and through, right to the end of the wick and the last drop of oil – and in burning adding the light of yet another Deepams to the festival of lights – Deepavali.

Light is central to my own memories of Deepavali, my earliest recollections of Deepavali being the recital of “Dubbu Dubbu Deepavali, Malli Vochhey Naagulachavithi”, when I was a little man, with my left hand clutching onto my grandmother and the right hand holding a papaya leaf, its ends festooned with oil-stained pieces of cloth lit up and flaming with light, like so many Deepams.

There is no specific meaning (superficial or deep) that can be ascribed to “Dubbu Dubbu Deepavali, Malli Vochhey Naagulachavithi”, at least none according to Amma (Naagulachavithi however is another festival that comes after Deepavali). When I play amateur anthropologist, I conclude that in all probability its just a ditty meant to safely introduce little men (and women) amongst my community to the Matabulu, Chunchi Buddis and Taara Zuvvalu (Telugu names for home made / locally produced sparklers, fountains and rockets) that would have seemed so dangerous to a little man (or woman).

I don’t know if Dubbu Dubbu is equally important amongst Telugu households these days as it was when I was growing up. Or even if it was that important when I was growing up - though Amma says that my brothers and I partook in this ritual dressed in festival finery till we were 5 years young / old.

Maybe it’s yet another rite of passage for which most of the families these days have no time, or it’s a rite of passage that most have passed by, but come Deepavali, when the Deepams are being lit, the same ditty still echoes in me – “Dubbu Dubbu Deepavali, Malli Vochhey Naagulachavithi”

Deadline Drass

Draas is the last major speck on the map before the mighty Zozi La and the spectacular run into the vale of Kashmir, through honeymoonsy, touristy and picturesque Sonamarg. Draas is also the world's second most cold inhabited place, yet another one-road village of Dardis and other nomadic tribes with Henna dyed beards, vacant looks and duplicitous smiles that would put Bollywood villains to shame.

Riding out of Ladakh into Kashmir, my initial plan was just to pass through Draas in time to make it through the Military check post at Meeramarg. I was however, a bit at sea about the deadline to pass Meeramarg. At Manali, I was told I will be allowed through till 8.30, at Leh, 6.30 and finally at Kargil, I was scared sleepless when told that it closes down at 5.00!

Naturally, I was out of my relatively warm hotel bed in Kargil, at the uncivilized hour of 2.00 in the morning and the temperature was of course anything but warm. I get the fully laden Bullet off its main stand, three odd kicks and nothing happens, I put the choke on and kick again and the bike sputters, starts, misses, sputters and then bursts into its reassuring song.

Kargil's economy is largely dependent on the brave souls who hike from here into Zanskar and God only knows wherever else, and of course the Great Indian Army. And as with most frontier towns, it’s not a place for early morning somnambulism. It was this or the intense cold, but either way I did not have to contend with man's best friend (great shaggy creatures with fangs a shade more Yellow than mine) chasing me as I rode around in circles before finding the road to Draas.

I had heard a lot about this road. It twists and turns with the LOC and there are signboards all along the road, dryly announcing, "Beware, you are under enemy observation". Moreover, since our well-meaning neighbor watches down from behind strategically placed guns, there are no lights anywhere.

The cold was growing every minute and I was not using my gloves, considering that the blasted things were impeding clutching and braking. And I was in thin canvas boots, with just a simple set of woolen socks underneath, the Gum Boots I had picked up at Manali bungeed down, as I wasn’t expecting any water-crossings.

5 minutes out of Kargil, I was frozen to the bone and cursing away to glory, my neck numb and my legs hugging the bike for whatever warmth its petrol-fired heart could gift me.

Usually, I would have just hunkered down and belted away, getting to my destination faster, but that was impossible here, with the narrow road twisting and turning, the stars for most part blocked out by the dark brooding ridges all around and my headlight’s glimmer just a bit more than that of a guttering candle.

There was no traffic on the road that I could tail and when I would slow down to pass through the military camps, all I could usually see was a milestone indicating that I am on the right road, or when a bit more luckier, some friendly sentry’s hand going up in the instinctive greeting only a biker gets.

Then, it happens; I take a curve too fast, the road straightens on to a bridge, I hit a speed breaker I can’t see, the bike’s angle and the heavily laden carrier don’t help and its really touch and go as I head towards the stanchions and the dark waters below.

I have never been good at reconstructing such scrapes on the road, but it was either my momentum or my riding instinct that saved me. I had cut across the bridge diagonally, finally braking inches from the end of the road.

Whew!

Before I can get off the bike, a torch shines into my face. It’s a brave Jawan of the Great Indian Army, firm and solicitous at the same time, wanting to know who I am, why I am out at this time of the morning and where I am headed. My tone is equally firm and polite as he checks my papers, jots down my details and then waves me on, with a smile that only the sane can bestow on the cerebrally challenged.

For now I am just intent on hanging on and counting the milestones till I get to Draas. There is no way I could have sped on this stretch; the road was just a bit more than a patch of gravel with water flowing over it.

The last 15 odd kms to Draas are still frozen in my being, my hands were bereft of feeling, forcing me to put them one by one on the cylinder head, wait till the engine burnt through the numbness, then ride a bit and then repeat it all over again. Time to time, I would swivel my head to get whatever bearings I could, see the ridges on my right illuminated by big yellow splotches of moving light and wonder grimly if it was the Pakistanis getting ready to shell. And somewhere here, my bike hit reserve.

Finally, the road sloped down and became a street with water flowing through it and I was in Draas before I realized it. I made a beeline for the only street-side eatery that was open; managed to mouth the word “Chhai” and practically thrust my hands into the welcome blue and golden flames of a Kerosene stove.

It was just 4.45 AM, I had met my deadline with Draas, though Meeramarg was still relatively far and I was now out of petrol. I also got to know that there is no petrol bunk in Draas and I may have to go back to Kargil to get it.

But I wasn’t greatly worried, I was just riding through, and the mountain had been kind to me all along, as it is to those who "believe". For now, it was time to let the warmth seep into me, time to savor yet another glass of Tea, besides the road, in yet another one-street outpost…………

The Motorcyclist

At its zenith, a full and bodacious moon whitened the heavens above as a lone Bullet snaked up through the Mothugudem Ghats. The night was typical of the summer, tropical interiors and the forests of the Deccan, the air warm and thinned out for most part - with pockets that smelled of swamp, rice-fields and water-holes - redolent with the heat of the day already 6 hours past.

Sitting straight and alert, his Denim Jacket and Denim pants comfortably draped over his road-limbered body, the motorcyclist looked as if he could ride till the proverbial end of the world, just on and on.

The night had always been his element and the remoteness anyway meant that there was not much incentive to stop for anything apart from a hurried smoke or an urgent leak behind the bushes.

His scalp itching under the battered, dust covered helmet, he luxuriated in the feel of the moving night air balmily caressing his face - through the open visor - the hair of his beard and moustache fluttering with every turn as he ascended up on a road he knew not much about.

His thoughts went back 200 kms and 6 hours, to Junglepally and the small Forest Check Post where he had decided to turn off from N.H. 211, after 3 hours of riding non-stop - at speeds averaging 100kmph - bored by the monotony and thirsting for a mystery road. The village wit who bummed a smoke from him wanted to know why he was headed on a road that "did not go anywhere". Usually, he would have laughed it off as something typical of the inanities of the road and forgotten it forever.

But tonight, somehow that question was fluttering and flying in his head, like a tetchy bat in a dark cavern; awaking another thousand questions he had always assumed to be permanently asleep.

Am I truly yet another average Joe?

Is this riding - usually with absolutely no real destination in mind - truly indicative of my aimlessness in life?

Or is it my way of giving the finger to a world that is all about stereotypes, my way of proclaiming my independence?

Even as one unwelcome question led to yet another unwelcome question in the depth of his being, he suddenly seemed to have ridden into a spellbinding world of luminescence, suddenly it seemed it was day.

The Ghat stretch ended and to his left, for as far as his trail-weary and crow-feeted eyes could see, there were the rolling, limpidly lit expanses of the Sabari's highland catchment area. Almost out of no volition, as if guided by a power and reason without, he eased off on the throttle, geared down to neutral and then braked to a smooth stop at the very edge of the drop. Stretched out below him and beneath the Bullet's front wheel, the reservoir glinted at its middle like it was of beaten silver, the troughs of the small ripples dribbling with a glint like fool's gold and the gentle waves coursing landwards liquidly like mercury.

Almost as suddenly, as if born out a Cherub's breath or a Nightjar's fluttering wings, a breeze started blowing, carrying the cold air that sat on the reservoir's waters, upwards to his sweat-soaked body and still-hot Bullet, cooling things only the way something truly wild can.

With rapidity reminiscent of the changing of weather on a high-altitude pass, the breeze strengthened into a gale and clouds started scudding across the till-now empty skies, their dark shadows flitting across the reservoir and dappling the waters. The air no longer just smelled of the wilds and the still waters, overlaid on everything else now was the fragrant smell of a summer-baked earth soaking in the first drops of rain - somewhere just around him, even though beyond his immediate sight - satiating his entire being through his nostrils.

Outwardly looking the same, the motorcyclist was now at inner peace. The reverie was now broken and though he still couldn't remember those thousand questions; he realized that he finally had the answer to why he was the way he was. Mentally congratulating his instinct - something that had led him to packing the raincoat and plastic sheets - he wheeled the Bullet below a massive Neem tree with a Choupal that could be a welcome bed for the night.

Bike parked, he again walked to the rim of the reservoir, lit up a smoke and gazed across what was uncontestedly his own kingdom. His and his alone, at least for that one moment when the first drops of rain would raise a toast to the mystique of a Full Moon shining on deep waters in wilds criss-crossed by mystery roads.

He was already thinking forward to riding through the rain-blessed forests on the morrow as the first fat, bodaciously big raindrop hit him in the face; a face split in a grin that was sheer happiness.