Poetry with Prakriti Poetry Contest

For all you need to know about the contest, go here

Last date for sending in entries (one poem per participant) is 15th December.

The prizes are good (three cash prizes of Rs.10000/-, Rs.7500/- and Rs.5000/- each) and it's an open competition, which means anyone can participate.

So, hurry :-)

Here's more about the actual Poetry with Prakriti Contest, that's quite an event list indeed, no?

Far from the madding crowd

Far from the madding crowd?

Oh yes.

Far from the effed up city traffic?

Oh yes, very much yes.

Just around 10 days back, I finally took a call and got the barrel
and piston on the Bullet replaced. I have been a bit around this
country on that barrel and piston and done close to 90k kms on it.
But still, technically speaking it shouldn't have
failed / ceased / seized. My current mechanic is soft-spoken,
highly skilled and very very wise (he's touching 60) and
according to him the piston overheated and failed. Incredulously,
not because I was racing at 130 kmph on the highway,
throttle locked and hunched like a jockey on my iron horse.
But because, I had negotiated a 55 minutes long
crawl -- Basheerbagh -> Liberty -> Tank Bund -> Sindhi
Colony -> Paradise X Roads -> Vikrampuri (where the engine
conked out), largely in 1st and 2nd gear on yet another
forgettable evening when the city's traffic was well and
truly fucked.

In other words, I got trafucked.

Is that a word (yet)? I don't know, but I am sure
Hyderabad's traffic won't get better, rains or no rains.
There are just too many people and too many cars to give
the city's roads any chance to be orderly.

So the thirst to be far from the madding crowd...

Another reason is that I am now running in the aforementioned,
"new" barrel and piston, a task that is not exactly easy,
requiring as it does inordinate patience, a nose (literally)
for the smell of over-heating, a total disregard for the passage
of time and so on and so forth...

Whatever some of my other biker / rider friends may say,
somehow the idea of running-in the city doesn't make sense
to me, after all I don't want to get trafucked again...

So I have been riding around on the highways and man, oh man,
have I been tripping or what?

Two of my status messages (from Facebook) to illustrate
what's on my mind while on the road


Then – a single lane, sunlit
dapple ground for mango, banyan and neem.
Now – a wide carriageway, to hurtle or airstrip,
in antiseptic speed. With a median that's a country
road – of grasses nodding sagely,
riding breezes and slipstreams. What remains
of that sunlit dapple ground – like a single leg
of worn blue denim, still catches sight.
Here light puddles bright,
as golden shelled maize, tanned brown paddy.


(This was after an approximately 250 kms -- to and
fro -- ride on NH 7, one of my familiar haunts for
most of my riding days in the Deccan)


The roads belong to no one,
but S.H.1 remains mine –
blessedly alive
as a beating vein on the back
of my right hand
– like my throttle wrist.
For 78 kms under a mellow November sun.
To a bit before Siddipet (and back).
Through a rain-soaked Deccan bursting
with colours – yellow-flowering gram,
“oh-so-white” cotton, wildflowers
I know not the name of and
the good, green earth.


(This was after a traipse on the road that leads
to Shamirpet Lake and a lot beyond, again a familiar
haunt for as long as I have been riding
in the Deccan)

There's a lot more of running in left and to make things more
time-consuming I also finally bought a Nikon D-90 (an impulsive
purchase using the only credit card I have) so I am hoping I will
traipse around some more and compose something poetic with my eye.

Somewhere far from the madding crowd.

When a frog in a puddle dies

I am lucky in that, I live pretty close to wide open spaces and
what can be justifiably called "wilds". Barely two kilometres
from my gate, I can get lost in a charmed expanse comprising of
disused and abandoned quarries, vineyards, orchards and mixed
farms and acres of trees and grasses growing wild.

This is where I cycle as much as I can, sometimes for a reason,
mostly for none. These expanses are the setting for a number
of poems in Moving On, and one that deals with my cynical take
on the false hopes regarding the monsoons last year -- Unslept.

So it passed that this year too I was cycling in the same wilds
when the monsoons arrived over the Deccan. Many would say a sure
sign that the Monsoons are here for good is when you see peacocks
dancing. In my case, I have seen more peacocks (and peahens) than I
could count this year, but queerly enough that is really is the
Monsoons, the original item, not some false alarm was kind of was
communicated to me by a slightly dopey (or highly sated)
looking frog, sometime in late June.

It must have been five or six days into the Monsoons, and I was
on the dirt track (that winds through the charmed expanse mentioned
above) for the second time. This dirt track is incidentally wide
enough for a truck to pass and I see a healthy puddle forming on
it where it passes through a thickly wooded section. And I see
Mr. Froggie too, fat and glassy eyed. I was totally at a loss
to decipher that look; I have seen really, really thirsty people
look like that after a very welcome round of beers. I guess
in Mr.Froggie's case it was a bit more than just beers -- maybe
he was enjoying the orgasmic bliss of a private spa pool or he
was dreaming of being kissed by a princess....

So that was June. From then till end of November -- till around
a week back, to be exact -- I haven't seen Mr. Froggie or bothered
much about the puddle, but crossed it again and again and seen
it bigger and deeper than it ever was last year.

Meanwhile, 5 months passed.

In these five months, I got wet more times than I can remember,
fell sick three times (a record of sorts for me) and even as I
write this, am recovering from a very severe and debilitating fever.

In these five months, I have once again realized that the
monsoons have a magically regenerative touch (and intoxicate
frogs and human beings alike) and there is no nook or cranny
of even a concrete city that the rains cannot reach. Its a
bit overwhelming to see the tops of dead and boringly staid
walls grow green with moss, and to see a profusion of butterflies
and bees, millions and millions of them, the former coming when
the monsoons are at their peak, the latter when the waters
start "standing". Its overwhelming to ride on Tank Bund and
see streamers of butterflies flutter-flying aimlessly, blithe
and unconcerned, flowers in flight. Its fun being on the Bullet
on the highways seeing a dragonfly headed for your face and
managing to dodge it at the last minute.

It's believed that the rains slacken after Ganesh Chaturthi.
But that didn't happen this time around. It's also believed
that September 30th is officially the last day of the Monsoons.
This year, I was soaked to the underwear on September 30th in
riding home through a shortcut through the bastis that flank
Hasmathpet Lake, but the same happened a week after.

Nobody (not the least, me) minds the rains, but
5 months of it is freakish, no?

But then, last Tuesday I got a sign that the Monsoons
are done and finished.

And it had to do with a sighting of Mr. Froggie.

I am on the cycle (you know where, don't you?) and I come
across THE puddle. Or rather, I come across a very well muscled
and (really swift) seven footer of a snake, ( flecked with gravel
red) shouldering its way into the grasses besides the dirt track.
With Mr. Froggie in its jaws. Its over before I can brake the
cycle and I see that the puddle is no more than 2 inches of water
and mostly wet gravel sludge.

That was one very big and fat looking snake too, evidently
intent on feeding full and hibernating.

And snakes hibernate in the winters, don't they?

Which means as of last Tuesday, the monsoons have ended and
its winter here now :-)

That ends a really bountiful monsoon, one that has left the
quarries full of water and a profusion of life still sprouting
from the rain-soaked Deccan.

RIP, Mr. Froggie!

Welcome to Hyderabad Literary Festival 2010

If I am not wrong, the last time Hyderabad played host to such a multitude of writers was when the ACLALS (Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) Seminar / Conference on Post-Colonial Literature was held here. In the year 2004, if memory serves me right.

I was there at the event and though I don't remember much about it, I remember meeting Mr. Keki Daruwalla and showing him my poetry. And I also remember trying to talk to Hoshang Ji :-)

2004 seems eons ago and in my case, much ink has flowed since then. And now again Hyderabad will play host to some of India's most notable writers -- writing in our richly vibrant, regional languages and English.

At the Hyderabad Literary Festival 2010, (December 10-12) organized by Muse India and OUCIP.

Registration is a must to be at the HLF 2010 and is just Rs. 500 (inclusive of luncheons and refreshments) for all three days. Which in other words is as pleasantly inexpensive as our own Irani Chai, in my humble opinion.

So go here and register before Dec 5th, or risk missing out on literary history in the making, here in Hyderabad itself!

Shamanisms and the Mother cult

By my own account I am not a very religious person. For as long
as I remember, I have never believed in rituals and orthodoxy
and nowadays, I am of the firm opinion that it’s important
for a poet to be a skeptic and iconoclast – if required of
his / her own beliefs.

But somehow (maybe because I don’t know any better) I have
always believed in the Mother cult that is in many ways
central to Hinduism. The cult that glorifies, venerates
and worships Shakti in her various forms and
Avataras – as Durga, Parvati, Ambika, Manasi, Tarani and
so on.

Does one belief lead to and feed another? Does my
relatively early exposure to the Mother cult (while
growing up in Orissa – where Durga Puja is an
overwhelmingly colourful festival of pomp and pageantry;
where almost every third temple is devoted to a
goddess – Maa Tarini, Maa Birija, Maa Samaleswari,
Maa Sankata Tarini, Maa Singhavasini, Maa Tara Tarani
and so on) explain my fascination with everything to
do with Shiva?

I really do not know.

But yes, somehow the very mention and memory of “Maa”
evokes a very blissful and humbling feeling in me. And
conjures the image of an all-understanding, fiercely
protective mother, in whose presence one relatively feels
non-existent in terms of ego and totally a wide-eyed child.
An image of goodness that will triumph over evil, come
what may, because that’s the way things are destined to be.

Need I say that I feel overwhelmed by the same childish
wide-eyed wonder and feeling of smallness when I experience
the grandeur (and mystique) of nature? Or when a poem comes
unbidden, with more meaning than I can understand, words
falling into place like some shaman’s chant?

I really do not know. But these are good problems to
have; these are deep waters worth contemplating.

One man’s prayer my be plain gobbledygook to the other,
but here’s a lovely link to a prayer / chant / bhajan / song
that has given me goose pimples from the very day I heard it.

And I will say the same thing yet again before I conclude
this post, there’s more meaning than I can understand
in Ai giri nandini,
I don’t claim to understand it all, but it’s a good
problem to have :-)

Invoking the scribe -- 2

For some peculiar reason I am still caught up with memories juxtaposed with Ganesh Chaturthi; memories that seem very much mine but also have that sepia-shade of being touched by time; seeming almost as if they are from another life.

I remember the elephants (from across the border and Bihar) waddle-walking down the colony road, in a ponderous convoy of twos and threes. Then the shrill trumpets at every gate meant to summon the lady of the house -- with money and rice for the mahout and a tidbit for the lumbering giant.

I also remember how I would sometimes get a "paid" ride on an elephant (only if my father or an uncle was at home) and how most of the adults of the colony would bargain for a bristle of hair from the elephant's tail -- meant to bring prosperity.

I remember the culinary celebrations at home -- mostly dealing with delicacies that would rarely (if at all) be made till September and Lord Ganesha came again. For instance, idli batter cooked in baskets of green jackfruit leaves. To be eaten with a assortment of sambars and chutneys, each more un-idli-like than the next! I also remember the numerous types of coconut ladoos, the junnu, the payasams and so on......

And I remember a particular Brinjal curry that my Grandmother would cook when we used to have a get together of uncles, aunts and so on -- after counting the number of heads -- of which everyone would want second helpings. This is a curry that deserves a separate post altogether not only for the time-taking way it used to be made and the memories of taste associated with it but because of the name that one of my uncles had given to it -- one that would scandalize my Grandmother everytime I would utter it!

The end of September (and the Visarjan of Lord Ganesha) also meant a slackening of the rains and the arrival of sun-splashed, green gold days. And the beginnings of group picnics and escapades to pokhuris, rivers and other water-bodies buzzing with a gazillion dragonflies.

To be followed by Durga Puja and winter, of course.

Invoking the scribe -- 1

I work on the other side of the lake and my commute extends from one city to another. Which means that one of the small joys that I can partake of on a daily basis (apart from Sundays) is a ride across the Bund and also that I get to see Hussein Sagar (with its changing colours, depths and moods) on a daily basis.

I am an observer, even when I am on the Bullet, immaterial of the usual dangers and risks poetic in a fast-moving city; immaterial of someone trying to overtake me from the left and someone else wanting to shoulder a way from the right and someone else wanting me to get out of his / her way.

But then, this post is not progressing the right way, it should ideally start with what happened on last Thursday. That was when it took me almost 2 hours to make it to the other side of the lake (the Bund was closed to traffic) and no, I am not going to rant about the city's lack of civic sense or other metropolitan woes.

You see, last Wednesday was when the immersion happened here in Hyderabad. And this time around it seems that the turnout of the people participating in the immersion and the number of idols were both unprecedented and thus it continued for most part of Thursday too.

I am talking of the immersion procession of the elephant-headed god, Ganesha.

Peculiarly enough (maybe because of my substantial commute this year) Ganesha has been constantly on my mind this year and I have been to more of his Pandals and immersion processions this time around than in other years.

I have been stuck on Tank Bund inordinately and ridden my way on egg shells as people have crossed the Bund barefoot -- grandmothers, mothers, daughters, fathers and sons -- entire families with their family's Ganesha. To bid him adieu till next year by immersing him in the waters.

I have chuckled to myself on finding Necklace Road open and ride-able (as opposed to being a mass of lake-watching people the very next day) and also noted that probably this is the only time when Tank Bund looks brighter and more necklace like than Necklace Road!

I have thrilled at the quaint logic and arithmetic of my mind which finally calculated and understood the reason why Lord Ganesha is also known as Bhima -- while I had slowed down in front of yet another pandal on yet another day. As something about the colour of the idol or the lighting in the pandal or some enlightenment in my mind lets me conclude that the lovable (and petulant) child God is simultaneously massive and elephant headed too.

And lastly (you could say it all started here) I have ridden as if my very life depended on it -- slowly and with utmost caution while three of his idols in wet, unbaked clay, sat pillion on the back seat of the Bullet. And felt very blessed to reach home and find all three idols intact.

I have wanted to blog all this for quite some time. And as with most observations and memories the delay in writing means I have forgotten a lot of things. Still, mine's the hope that with this blog post up, I can write a bit more (am dealing with a persistent writer's block as of now) and I hope the original scribe, Lord Ganesha blesses me to write well.

Om Ganeshaya Namaha

(O Lord Ganapati!) You are (the Trinity) Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa. You are Indra. You are fire [Agni] and air [Vāyu]. You are the sun [Sūrya] and the moon [Chandrama]. You are Brahman. You are (the three worlds) Bhuloka [earth], Antariksha-loka [space], and Swargaloka [heaven]. You are Om. (That is to say, You are all this).

How do you write?

I write with two inexpensive, fairly common fountain pens. One is a Camlin, the other an even more obscure and easily forgettable brand -- in a world of Parkers, Montblancs, Lamys and other collectible heavies.

But it wasn't always so. For most of my initial days as a Copywriter, I used to write with pencils. And I still have fond memories of my daily "getting-down-to-work" ritual. The sharpening of 4-5 pencils (with a blade) in a frenzied abandon that used to leave the area around my desk littered with shards and shrapnel of wood.

Typically, before getting down to writing copy, I would also normally sign my name on the numerous scribble pads littering my desk. And recollect and rewrite quotes like -- "I am a pencil".

Looking back at those days, one reason I can think of -- for persisting in writing with pencils -- is that, when writing with pencils, editing becomes a matter of just erasing out what is errant (for the client or the client-servicing person) and the copywriting gets done without turning the page into a battlefield of scratched out and crossed out words, something unavoidable when writing with pens.

And one consumes less paper, even if it is one-sided paper.

But then, coming back to the reason for writing this post, I write with fountain pens these days and I am high on ink. Which brings me to another ritual that I have been following for most of the last three months.

My pens bleed ink.

No, they don't just leak ink, there is no leak as such, the nib and the feeder are fitted just fine. The pens just bleed ink and I have to clean them up and leave them to dry (without the cap on) before I can get down to doing anything else.

Is it because of the high humidity levels thanks to the profuse rains we have had over the Deccan? Or is it that, for the pen -- bleeding ink is release?

I don't know, but either way, its a good problem to have and smelling ink is a good way to start another day of writing.

Then of course, there are the bonuses. Poetry has come to me thanks to the persistent inkbleeds and the smell of ink. Poetry that demands immediacy and is jotted down by me (in ink) as yet another scrap, yet another note, as the welcome flight of yet another stray bird....

Poetry like this

We dry,
my ink pens and I

Do I write all day with pen and ink? Unfortunately no, I tap out most copy on a laptop. But even for work purposes, sometimes writing in ink (on one-sided paper) helps.

Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, 2010

Participating??

Hurry, deadline is September 1st!!

Flashbacks of a fool -- is "this" important?

As far as confessions go, "this" isn't much and deals with an almost open secret about me.

Even the little man seems to be understanding how to get around "this" now and mimes for me, when he is in a patient / ultra-communicative mood.

So, if you are wondering why I am disclosing "this" now, frankly there is no specific reason.

Yet, since this is the first time ever I am writing about "this" at length, one can say I am coming out of a peculiar and strange closet.

By "closet", I am referring to a close circle of people who know about "this" -- family, friends, colleagues (lot of them past, some current) and probably some readers who have guessed what "this" is, either by reading Hoshang Ji's foreword to my book or by reading the poems where I refer to "this", in a multi-layered, far from direct, maybe stoic way.

By "closet", I am not referring to my sexual orientation, this post is not about that.

Peculiarly enough my decision to "come out of the closet" was made long back -- on the first of this June -- on one of the beaches opposite Thotlakonda (near Vizag) just after I had attended my Grandmother's fourth death anniversary.

Maybe this decision was influenced by the occasion-strengthened memories of her -- I can't claim to have got over her loss but with every passing year, on attending her death ceremony, I get a heightened understanding of the grace, charisma and silent dignity with which she had lived her life.

Maybe this decision was influenced by the other-worldliness of that beach setting -- a sun-splashed evening of what was an overcast day, when as I lay / sat amidst the surf and gazed out to sea (with the only other person on the beach being my 10 year old nephew -- goose-stepping and stilt-walking to stay dry) a white-bellied sea eagle flew in and passed barely two coconut palm trunk lengths / heights away from me, the extremities of its wings burning a russet gold as they caught the setting sun, almost meeting at the "down-flap" while it furiously beat them to get higher, now that it was above land.

Either it was the occasion or the setting but from the very moment I decided to acknowledge "this", wave after wave of self-realization kept washing over me.

I may write about these self-realizations sometime soon and in all probability here itself.

Or I may decide not to.

Or I may deal with them through my poetry.

Or I may decide not to.

But it was pretty clear then (and is even more clearer now) that I have been a fool in the way I have dealt with "this". It was also clear that "this" will not go away and since my pride won't go away either, life will not get any easier for me.

So then, the "this". I am what I would choose to be called "Hard of Hearing".

No, I don't like being referred to by derivatives of "hearing challenged", "hearing impaired" or other glorified politically correct words which mean nothing but "hearing disability", because I don't consider my being Hard of Hearing a disability.

And yes, you are welcome to blame this on the pride I mentioned earlier.

At least in my case, its important that I retain my pride and dignity, because from what I have learned, the world doesn't understand the strange world of being "Hard of Hearing". For instance, the world (at least that of recruiters and other strangers who interact with me based on quaint checklists) assumes that the Hard of Hearing are good for nothing and discriminates -- either by shying away as if repelled or by assuming dystopian scenarios of my capabilities where I probably come across as someone needing a dole, kindness, sympathy, whatever...

That's something which will never cut ice with me, since I have an overpowering aversion, almost bordering the physical when it comes to dealing with misplaced senses of superciliousness / arrogance manifesting as kindness.

So then, the "this". I am Hard of Hearing and I do have a far from easy day (with family, work or with friends / colleagues) when my hearing aids don't work properly.

Yes, life's tough as it is, and even tougher when one is mistaken for a freak / retard / loonie if he cannot hear (properly).

No, I am not in denial, I have no problem in explaining the degree of my "Hard of Hearing" ness, the nature, the other nitty-gritty involved in it, but believe me its a long, "very very" technical story that you may not understand totally and I will find boring.

I mean, it's the progressive story of something like ten years of my life and by now it bores me.

And oh yes, the "this" doesn't mean I am a recluse, or not social. Not more than any other poet / writer I know or you know.

It means (among other difficulties I face on a routine "bad ear" day) that I cannot converse on phones and find it difficult to follow conversations at crowded places (like conference rooms of companies, poetry readings, cocktail evenings and bars).

Or, you could say that when my hearing aids don't work, I hear almost nothing of voices.

Apart from some friends (most of whom anyway know about "this") I really don't know who visits this blog. Frankly, I don't blog much and I certainly haven't promoted this blog. So I don't really expect anything earth-shattering to happen because of this blog post.

My days will go on, mellowly delightful when poetry comes or surging with adrenaline when I chase it. Some days (some at least) will hopefully be full of poems "written" down and "rewritten" down and stashed away. And someday soon (hopefully soon) I will sit down and plan the next book too.

Is poetry life? Is life poetry? Which should I consider a bigger priority? I don't know.

Talking of life, I will still treat it as a gift meant to be lived and chase adventures endeavoring to love and laugh as much as I can.

WTF, hearing aids or no hearing aids, I have one life and I intend to live it.

P.S. -- I know I probably come across as a bit angry. And whatever you may think about it, the pride / dignity / anger is important to me, so I will retain it, thank you so much.

P.P.S -- So, if I had decided to disclose / confess / uncloset "this" at the beginning of June, why did it take me so long? Firstly, I did not know what that bird was, took me a bit of thinking and googling to figure out it was a "white-bellied". Secondly, I had to figure out how to be best described and that took time too, I will settle for "Hard of Hearing", thank you. Thirdly, among other crazy things that have happened to me in the last two months, I have lost one hearing aid and taken up 2 other sets for trials -- and been battered and bruised by the chaos of voices machine-gunning into my head. And lastly, I have been busy with the demands of writing copy (and some poetry).

P.P.P.S -- The title of this blog post is borrowed from a Daniel Craig movie that I have seen more than 4-5 times on the telly. Late at night, with subtitles (of course).

"Media-shy" from my book (Moving On) nominated for "Best of the Net Anthology"

Yes, one of my poems (Media-shy) has been nominated for Best of the Net Anthology by Asia Writes. A big thank you to the guys at Asia Writes and Professor Lee Upton (the judge who selected the 6 poems to be nominated from Asia Writes).

Thank you again, Asia Writes and I wish you guys go from strength to strength!

Six Stanzas on Nirvana (Salvation)

I am neither the mind, intelligence, ego nor chitta (seat of memory); neither the ears nor the tongue nor the senses of smell and sight; neither ether nor air, nor fire, nor water nor earth -- I am eternal bliss and awareness, -- I am Siva! I am Siva!

I am neither the prana (vital force), nor the five vital breaths, neither the seven elements of the body, nor its five sheaths, nor hands, nor feet, nor tongue, nor other organs of action. I am eternal, bliss and awareness -- I am Siva! I am Siva!

Neither greed nor delusion, nor loathing, nor liking have I; nothing of pride or ego, neither of dharma or object, nor of desire or liberation. I am eternal, bliss and awareness -- I am Siva! I am Siva!

Nothing of pleasure or pain or virtue or vice do I know, of mantra or sacred place, of Vedas or sacrifice; neither am I the eater, nor the food nor the act of eating; I am eternal, bliss and awareness -- I am Siva! I am Siva!

Death or fear I have none nor any distinction of caste; neither father nor mother; nor even a birth have I; neither friend nor comrade, neither disciple nor Guru. I am eternal, bliss and awareness -- I am Siva! I am Siva!

I have no form or fancy, the all-pervading am I; everywhere I exist, and yet am beyond the senses; neither salvation am I, nor anything to be known. I am eternal, bliss and awareness, -- I am Siva! I am Siva!

From "Thus Spake Sri Sankara" -- a Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore publication.

P.S. -- I wonder if these have been translated from "Sivanandalahiri" that epic Sri Sankara is believed to have composed at / after his visit to Srisailam.

Saaz Aggarwal on "Moving On"

By and large, Facebook has been pretty good to me and I
have met some really amazing people on this social networking
site. One of them has been the amazingly versatile, highly
prolific (she's a writer, editor and poet too) refreshingly
witty Saaz Aggarwal.

Our interactions were about this and that (and of course Hyderabadi
Biryani) and when Saaz came to know that I have a book of poems
out, she went ahead and bought it, (from Evening Hour) promised
to read it and even said she may review it for her blog.

That verdict is out and available in full
here.

I am like, YAY and Wooooo Hoooo Hoooo to see that she says...

"Anand’s poems made me smile – some for their wit, some for their
depth. The themes were mostly elemental and filled with
passion … the monsoons … rivers, lakes, hills, trees and
cloudbursts the poet had allowed to enter his consciousness and
emerge, transformed, as evocative words on paper … a word sketch
of a day-wage labourer … the knowledge that one would have to learn
history from a book rather than from a grandmother who had lived
it … and many that dealt with a broken heart."

Thank you Saaz Ji. Thank you!

Saundhi -- An Evening of Poetry

Apart from being a number of things that are food
for thought, Evening Hour is also a bookstore
(and lending library) that sells books online.
My book has been available at Evening Hour's Kukatpally
bookstore for almost 4 months now and Priyanka (who's
single-handedly taking Evening Hour places)
also tells me that it has been doing well and
attracting readers.

For as long as I remember, Priyanka has been
inviting me to interact with Evening Hour's
customers under their "Meet the Author" event.

For as long as I remember, she has also been indicating
a keen interest to organize an event specifically for poetry.

That's the setting then, for Saundhi -- An Evening of Poetry
at Evening Hour's store on 26th of June.
I will be there and in conversation with Dr. A Giridhar Rao.
Thereafter, it will be an "Open Mic" session, for poetry readings.

If you have wanted to meet me and are in Hyderabad on
Saturday do please drop by and say hello.

And yes, if you have wanted to experience the magic of
a poetry reading, or wanted to read out poetry
(by you or by anyone else) to a very receptive audience
in an informal, chilled-out atmosphere, don't miss
this "Open Mic".

Saundhi - An Evening of Poetry
When - 26th June, 2010, 6.30 pm onwards
Where - Evening Hour Store, JNTU Lane, Kukatpally, Hyderabad

Questions about "Open Mic"? Call Priyanka at 040-65873003

Know somebody who you think writes amazing poetry? Let him / her know!

A Bullet in the Rains

Among the many other things I don't manage to tell this blog
(in time) is the fact that this April my Bullet turned 8.
That is 8 years. By extension (I don't have a car, maybe
I don't really like being boxed in one, maybe I am
claustrophobic, or maybe I just don't need one) this means
that I have been riding through Hyderabad's monsoons
and enjoying getting drenched in them every year.

It's a cycle for me, you see, something that I await without really
knowing why, something that also brings out the neanderthal in me
(I like grinning up at the raining skies, I like riding through
the stinging curtains of water, I don't really mind the discomfort
or the pain of having to ride through waterlogged traffic that
moves slower than a prehistoric moraine) and I am not at all
ashamed to say that I love almost everything about the rains*.

Let me temporarily forget that last year when it rained and I got
back home (in the midst of a power cut), I had slipped on a far from
thin film of water that had "rained" in and fallen heavily onto my
behind. I am sure (rain lover or rain hater) you will excuse me for
cursing the rains (and the builder) loudly for three odd days
in that instance.

Coming back to the Bullet, I guess it is not as low maintenance as
me after all, or maybe it's the fact that I do use it, or it's the
fact that the quality of whatever goes into it as spare parts sucks
to high (rainy?) heaven. Anyway, I have changed the petrol
tank cover thrice and there is this memorable incident related
to the petrol tank cover, the Bullet (and me) and the rains that
is best related on a day like this (call me a fool later if you
want) when after getting wet the way I did yesterday, I would say
it does seem that the Monsoons have "set in" over the Deccan.
And hey, hey, hey, far earlier than last year, no?

So this was the incident then (three monsoons past, if my memory
serves me right). The petrol tank cover had gone kaput again -- was
not lockable -- and I was returning from a friend's place
having ignored his requests and remonstrances to stay back
and wait out the rain. And it was pouring away. As happens in
Hyderabad (and maybe in your city too, I wouldn't be claiming
exclusivity for this, patriot that I am) when it rains for more
than half an hour the roads look like a landscape scoured by
streams and rivulets in a hurry to go and drain into some
now non-existent friendly neighbourhood lake. So I was riding
blind not knowing if there's a speedbreaker, a pothole or
something far more dangerous ahead of me under all that water.
And then it happens, I go into some kind of depression, the
Bullet sinks fork deep in waters and by the time I am out of it,
the petrol tank cover goes flying off!

Ever tried finding something that has fallen into swirling
rain waters? Believe me, it's no easy task -- especially in
the evenings -- even if you are on your hands and knees.

But all the while I was searching for the petrol tank cover,
the Bullet was idling away, unmindful of the rain bouncing off
its chrome and lancing into its petrol tank -- for what must
have been at least 2 or 3 minutes. This incident / story had a
happy ending, I found the petrol tank cover and (I did say,
happy ending) as expected, the Bullet didn't die
on me.

So now you know. I love the rains and the Bullet does too.

And yesterday it had rained and rained and rained and
rained some more. From what I could see, no cats or dogs died,
but immaterial of that the gutters weren't much distinguishable
from the roads and the roads (thanks to the medians in between)
seemed to be stopping the waters and turning into one-way canals.
So it meant something like two hours of riding to get back home,
with some stretches (the ones on Necklace Road and near
Sanjeevaiah Park specifically ) making me feel that I am riding
on a lakebed. After all, that is what most of Necklace Road is,
isn't it?

But yes, I did have an amazing time, getting soaked to the
skin and never having to stop, even while the autos and (some) cars
around were belching smoke (inzin mein paani ghoos gaya Saab) and
getting stranded.

I guess (in my far from direct or orderly way), I am writing this
blogpost out of happiness at yesterday's experience and as tribute
to the trusted chrome-plated steed that I ride. And there seems to
have been no permanent collateral damage (apart from the cell phone
dying) to me either**!!

And oh, yeah. Speaking of the Bullet, it started at first kick
today morning again. Talk of the small joys of life.

* Scratch out riding through Punjagutta Circle, Ranigunj and Abids
Circle, even after 5 minutes of rain. Double scratch the very idea
of trying to get hold of an Auto after 30 minutes of rain. And don't
get me started on the quality (or lack) of anything close to civic /
city planning in Hyderabad when it rains.

** The "Cargo" trousers I had on yesterday should get dry by today.
My cellphone died on me and finally lit up today morning (and I had
to tell it the time for a change!!). My wallet (incidentally of
Camel leather and picked up at a roadside shop near the fort at
Jodhpur is almost dry and apart from slightly bleary eyes (paani
ghoos gaya) and a sore throat (I did seem to have drunk in some of
the rains) I am pretty much okay.

As Summer Ends

How cyclical the seasons are and how independent of our concepts of time (days, months, years) pains and sufferings too. We are 9 days into the June of a blazing, in many ways vitriolic, almost "out of Dante's inferno" summer. And yet, it seems respite (in keeping with it's own cyclical timing) is here. Science (or rather the newspapers and the TV Channels quoting the Met Office) tells us that the Monsoons are already here, that they will be average (but for a shortfall here or there) this year.

And though a part of me is guarding against getting excited or happy or relieved too early (after all, the last edition of the monsoons over the Deccan was so fickle-natured it left me "Unslept") this year it seems the rains will come on time.

Why do I say this? On what authority?

For one, it has blazed so much all this summer that it seems any more heat would be against the laws of nature (Global Warming be damned).

For another, it has been "clouds floating in a sea blue sky" kind of views for most of the last week or so, and those clouds seem to be packing up now and today was positively overcast.

For yet another, its been amazing cycling weather for the last two days (at least where I live, in between NH7 and SH1) and yes, I have been out cycling and even spotting a bit of wildlife here and there in the wilds around my place (this will need some explanation, maybe later). While on the cycle, for some reasons I get to either blank out my mind or focus it; in comparison, when on the Bullet, my being is in ferment with a continuous stream of thoughts, almost as madcap as Hyderabad's traffic.

And yes, for yet another, it rained a bit (and gusted a lot) yesterday evening. And no, I don't think it was summer rain. Though there has been quite a lot of it here. Because, yesterday evening it smelt different, there was a promise in the fragrance of the breeze. How do I explain that in English?

Saundhi, it was, the smell of rain on parched earth.

So, on the basis of the available evidence, I pronounce this the end of summer.

Amen.

Calling the Rains

Islands white
in a sea blue sky
clouds stay
like inkwells
feeding memories
wet with aquamarine
and a thirst for rain
O, that I could be
a tree dancing in glee
my leaves like windswept hair
breezing
breathless with song

To a nameless hill near Thotlakonda

The moment sat between us
like a table clothed
by a listless sky,
sea water turns
this empty beach into glass
reflecting your wilderness
like some past;
of your eagle eyries
and wild palms
soon there will be no history
as tourists drive up you
for a hotel with a view
unknowing, child-like
the seas of time will
still swish in, to take away
whatever remains
of the silences
that were once simply wild.

Moving On, now available at Benguluru

If I ever get around to doing a book tour, I would love to do it on my trusted Bullet. And what better way to carry along my books on the road, but in my Cramster saddlebags? After all, my first pair of Cramster saddlebags lasted me for more than 6 years, usually carried at least one book (apart from my Lonely Planet Atlas, my other maps and notebooks into which I rarely wrote my trip logs and other biking gear) and never gave me no issues!!

And yes, I have another new pair waiting for me to hit the road again. When I will be doing a book tour and which book I will be carrying in my Cramster saddlebags, only time will tell.

Meanwhile, if you are in Bangalore and wanted to get a copy of my book, do pick it up from the Cramster Showroom. It is at,

110A, Westminster, Cunningham Road, Bangalore - 560092

The store is open on all days (including Sundays) from 11 am - 7:30pm , and the phone number is +91-80-41519713.

Many, many thanks (and a biker salute) to Keerthi and Cramster for this.

Railing at the Sun

Day lives
sighing its heat
from quarried rock

And dies,
skies burning red,
like pyres of money and plastic

"We have been poorer
in the past" - Grandmother had said -
"our footwear, leaves

I have fed my sons
starch mixed in water
as I have fed you spoonfuls of milk"

Yours is the insidious burn
brazen and loud, of a boor
you, sun aren't worth even a curse

What do you earn,
you employee of time?
Will you arise richer tomorrow, fool?

And who will care for you
if my dark lord opened his eye
to forever take away night?

An elegy on the demise of April

Uninspired by Eliot
now I write this elegy
half a month after its demise,
to an empty April
when all that's poetic
like broken-winged birds
stayed trapped in emptiness
failing to soar away
all through the days
and the sun burned
in my eyes
long after nightfall
silhouetting flaring
images of ghostly trains
rattling along emptily
even the high notes of their rattles
echoing emptiness
through a summer burnt Wasteland
unlike what Eliot ever mused on.

Memories in Flight

Then it came
like a flashback of a memory
something time hasn't still turned
into carrion
that these Pariah Kites wheel
-- above this place
that time once knew as a garden
maybe of mango trees --
like the vultures used to
above the orchards of
my boyhood past
while the Sun and my kite specked the skies
staying frozen blazing light
in the afternoon heat
high above shadowed me
and wild mango trees.

Make the war public -- C Anjaneya Reddy

"In Chhattisgarh, Maoists have made a major issue of the exploitation of mineral deposits in tribal areas by MNCs and the private sector which has to be immediately addressed. If these projects cannot wait, the government would do well to entrust this job to public sector undertakings, ensuring that all resultant benefits and employment go to local tribals. This would remove a major irritant.

Likewise, beedi leaf picking or bamboo contracts could be taken away from private contractors and entrusted to government corporations with improved wages for tribals. This would serve the tribals well while cutting off the flow of funds to Maoists.

There should be no attempt to privatise policing which in a way Salwa Judum is all about. It is about time this group was wound up. Instead, well-protected, well-officered and numerically strong police stations — with not less than 25 officers and 100 men in each station — need to be established all over the affected areas. These have to be mostly manned by the tribals themselves.

The role of the paramilitary forces should be limited to guarding these police stations and carrying out field operations. Ultimately, it is the civil police that can and should fight the Maoists."

Excerpts from C Anjaneya Reddy's (a former IPS officer) piece in the bottom half of today's DC's Op-ed page. Read it all here

Danse Macabre 35 is now out

This is a bit late, but better late than never :-)

Danse Macabre's 35th issue is now out and the editors have accepted one of my poems, The Road to Medhchal, read it here (you will need to scroll down, the poem is at the very bottom of the page, mine was a very late submission, after all!)

Thanks Adam!

This issue of Danse Macabre also has a thought-provoking article on Telugu Dalit poetry by Narender Bedide -- I'll Weep Like Karamchedu!, check it out here

The Truth about Tigers - Shekar Dattatri

" Prakriti Foundation has tied up with renowned wildlife and conservation filmmaker, Shekar Dattatri, to screen his new film ‘The Truth about Tigers’ for various organizations in Chennai – from schools and colleges to corporate entities. All you need to do is provide us with a suitable space on your premises - an auditorium, a large corporate boardroom or an AV Room – and our team will do the rest.

The screenings are free. Prakriti Foundation has taken up this initiative because we strongly believe that every Indian should know the truth about why our tigers are disappearing and what we can do about it. Saving the tiger needs our collective effort, and the time to act is now!

We would like to screen the film at as many venues around Chennai as we can. Since the demand for the film is high, we encourage you to register a screening with us early.

What we require from you:

1. A hall that can accommodate about 100 or more people (we are open to smaller audiences for corporates).

2. The hall should be capable of being made completely dark.

3. A coordinator from your side to work with our team.


What we will provide:


1. All the required AV equipment.


2. A resource person to answer your questions.


THE TRUTH ABOUT TIGERS (40 minutes)

The tiger, India’s National Animal, is disappearing at an alarming rate from our forests. Government estimates reveal that there may be fewer than 1500 left.

Why have India’s tigers declined so drastically? What exactly are the problems facing their conservation? And are there any solutions to the crisis?

These and many other questions are answered succinctly in ‘The Truth about Tigers’, a unique documentary by award-winning wildlife and conservation filmmaker, Shekar Dattatri. The film also provides useful pointers on how ordinary citizens can contribute towards saving the tiger.

Two years in the making, the film combines stunning footage shot by some of the world’s leading cinematographers with deep insights from experts such as renowned tiger biologist Dr. Ullas Karanth of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and wildlife crime fighter, Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India.

This film takes one through the tiger’s life, from birth to death, and illustrates how different human activities impact the conservation of this great predator. Internationally acclaimed actor, Roshan Seth, provides the narration, and one of Britain’s top documentary composers, David Mitcham has contributed to the music score. An accompanying website provides more information about tigers and their conservation.

About Shekar Dattatri

Shekar Dattatri is a wildlife and conservation filmmaker whose films have won numerous awards in India and abroad, and aired around the world on channels such as National Geographic and Discovery. A committed conservationist, his well-researched films combine craftsmanship and artistry with a profound understanding of the nuances of conservation issues. In 2004 he received a Rolex Award for Enterprise for his conservation filmmaking, and subsequently, the Carl Zeiss Award for conservation and the Edberg Award from the Rolf Edberg Foundation in Sweden. More information on his work can be found here " -- Logesvaran Devan, Prakriti Foundation, Tel: 98402 15765

Pablo Neruda

"The writer has to look for the river, and if he finds it frozen over, he has to drill a hole in the ice. He must have a good deal of patience, weather the cold and the adverse criticism, stand up to ridicule, look for the deep water, cast the proper hook, and after all that work, he pulls out a tiny little fish. So he must fish again, facing the cold, the water, the critic, eventually landing a bigger fish, and another and another." - Pablo Neruda

Moving On -- Now available at Walden

Starting today, Moving On is available at Walden {stores at Road No. 2, Banjara Hills and Greenlands Road (adjacent to Pulla Reddy Building), Begumpet / Somajiguda}.

Incidentally, Walden had given me a lot of food for thought (as an "account" being pitched for) way back in 1998, while I was with an ad agency a stone's throw away at Topaz Building.

Meaning, I had done the research on what Walden's advertising should be about and then stayed up some nights to write the copy :-)

It's another story (of course) that we never made a proper pitch........

Nice to see that Walden's still doing good business (the store had around 20 customers at around 11.00 today morning) even these days when there are bigger and swankier bookstores around.

Nicer to see that they are as choc-a-bloc full of books today as they were then.

Nicest is that they are stocking Moving On :-)

Invite - Screening of “Lost and Found: Six Glances at a Generation”

Osmania University Centre for International Programmes &
Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad cordially invite you to a screening of

“Lost and Found: Six Glances at a Generation”
(99 mins., 2005)


Time: 3 pm
Day & Date: Wednesday, 28th April, 2010
Venue: AV Room, OUCIP

About the film

Nurtured in war and turmoil, raised in fragile
democracies, the first post-Communist generation of young men and women from Central and Eastern Europe is now poised to play a leading role in the world. In Lost and Found, six young filmmakers from this region present their personal views on the subject of “generation” and the many changes that sometimes separate them radically from the generation of their parents….In Lost and Found, a generation takes a look at itself – and confidently asserts its position in a new Europe.

Happy Birthday, John Muir!

Today's John Muir's birthday.

Among other notables who have written about the natural world, the outdoors and the wilds, John Muir has been one of my biggest inspirations -- ever since I read about him in an old issue of the National Geographic. I had set out to do a long and detailed post on him and how he has inspired me, but while I have been busy with another birthday John's is almost getting over :-)

So, watch this space for that detailed post!

Happy birthday, John Muir.

Some of his quotes are here (many are not not exactly perfect).

Some of his writings are here.

A related post by another blogger is here.

Don't know who he is? There's google!

Incidentally according to some sources, Earth Day's date (April 22nd, that is tomorrow) was chosen under the misconception that it is John Muir's birthday.

Another story from strife-torn Chattisgarh

"I can't go back to my village, I have enemies on both sides -- the villagers on one side and the Naxals on the other (laughs). But still the present is a little better than the past. Now I want to do some other work. I don't want to work in the police because I don't want to make enemies any more."

The full story is here

Invite - Empire of the Moghul : Brothers at War

Hachette and Akshara invite you to the book launch of Alex Rutherford's (Diana and Michael Preston) second book in the Empire of the Moghul series, Brothers at War.

Time and Date : 6:30 PM, Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
Location : Saptaparni, Road No. 8, Banjara Hills

Sridala Swami, a poet from Hyderabad will be in conversation with the authors (Diana and Michael Preston, Alex Rutherford is their pseudonym).

"Hungry tribals turn to Maoists. Help us rise like Obama"

Twenty-eight-year-old Pushpa Rokare (nee Usundi) is the only journalist from the Gond tribe, one of India's most primitive and backward indigenous peoples. Rokare studied up to Class XII, supporting her education through the small wage she earned in the administrative section of a Hindi newspaper. Later, she started writing stories for the paper on her own initiative. This unlikely chronicler from the Gond tribe told Keshav Pradhan in Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh about her community's long association with the Maoist-run "people's war". Excerpts:

P.S. -- I was pleasantly surprised to read this article in TOI yesterday, was about to type it out in its entirety and then found it online, so just pasted the link. More power to Pushpa, this country needs more of her ilk and less of the Arundhati Roy kind spouting their intellectual invective.

Danse Macabre's April edition is out!

Danse Macabre's April edition is out now. This issue features a whopping 82 poets.
And yes, there is one of Shri Jayanta Mahapatra's poems as well, check it out here (you will have to scroll down on the page, its the ninth poem in this section)

T.S. Eliot

"No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written:he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing." - T.S. Eliot

P.S. - Found on Danse Macabre

Garrison Keillor

"People complain about the obscurity of poetry, especially if they're assigned to write about it, but actually poetry is rather straightforward compared to ordinary conversation with people you don't know well, which tends to be jumpy repartee, crooked, coded, allusive to no effect, firmly repressed, locked up in irony, steadfastly refusing to share genuine experience: rarely in ordinary conversation do people speak from the heart and mean what they say. How often in the past week did anyone offer you something from the heart? It's there in poetry." - Garrison Keillor

P.S. - Found on Danse Macabre

The Wasteland

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD


APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying 'Stetson!
'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
'You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!'

By T.S.Eliot, the entire poem (along with some notes) can be found here posting it today as April's here over the Deccan and the heat's certainly getting to be cruel...

A letter from Shri Jayanta Mahapatra

I really don't know how to start this blog post.

I also do not know how to write about my recent visit to Orissa with my parents (for 5 hectic days prior to Ugadi) when the bittersweet disquiet of being back at a home that we had left (I grew up in Orissa) played hide and seek with the joy of experiencing and enjoying the familiar milieus of my childhood.

This was a brief, rushed trip since Amma wanted to be back in Hyd for Ugadi (I had a marriage and the reception that followed to attend), but we did manage to go to Lord Jagannath's temple at Puri, the Sakhi Gopal temple at Sakhi Gopal, Lord Lingaraja Temple at Bhubaneshwar and Maa Biraja's Temple at Jajpur.

While at Cuttack, I remembered that a famous poet (somebody whose poems I had hunted out and read back in my schooldays) whom I remembered without recollecting his name, whom I remembered without recollecting anything definite about his poems lived in the same city at a locality quaintly named Tinkonia Bagicha (triangular garden).

Our cab driver said he knew Tinkonia Bagicha and took us there, but since I gave him the wrong name (for some reason the name that came to me was Jatin Das), it took me some wandering around in the afternoon heat before I was directed to a building with the name "Chandrabhaga" besides its gate.

Not at all bothered by the afternoon heat, but feeling very penitent for not having done this long before and mentally kicking myself for getting a senior and eminent poet's name wrong, I finally fetched Amma from the cab and we together walked through that gate -- to meet Shri Jayanta Mahapatra.

We weren't lucky enough to meet Shri Jayanta Mahapatra (he was away at New Delhi) but I did manage to spend some time in his living room / study and the feeling was of being blessed, like being in a temple of wisdom and thought -- because I somehow feel fortunate when I come in touch with senior / old poets, be it when I read their poetry or when (in rare cases like this) I get to feel the aura of their presence.

Since I couldn't meet him, I left a note for him instead -- along with a copy of my book -- introducing myself as someone who hasn't met him or enjoyed the privilege of knowing him and requesting his feedback on my book.

I had a sense of fulfillment as I stepped out of Chandrabhaga (similar to how I feel when I step out of a temple) and since we left for Jajpur thereafter (to Maa Biraja's temple, where again I felt very blessed) you could say these intense feelings were poems in the book called Orissa, segueing seamlessly into each other.

Yes, I felt fulfilled and really didn't want or expect anything else from my visit (though I did hope that Shri Jayanta Mahapatra would read and probably like my poems).

Which is why when M told me yesterday that a letter has arrived from a "Jayanta Mahapatra, Tinkonia Bagicha..."at the Coucal office, I couldn't really believe it. And when M wanted to know why I was acting so "worked up" and who Jayanta Mahapatra is, my reply was a terse "google him".

I hurried to meet M, claimed the letter (and the envelope) and have read it more than a dozen times already. And I still don't find words to explain my happiness. As you may very much expect, I am going to frame this letter and cherish it as a treasured possession for the rest of my life.

Not because he has praised my poems (which he has done), but because the letter (incidentally handwritten) itself reads like a poem, one revealing the wisdom, bighearted nature and humility of the great man.

P.S. Coincidentally, when I started writing this post my father wanted my help in filling up some forms to transfer his Kisan Vikas Patra certificates to a post office here in Secunderabad. The forms had an address field starting with "To The Postmaster..." where my father asked me to fill in "Ispat Post Office, Rourkela 769016" and that very act made it feel like I was writing a letter home.

I guess that's another reason why I am so kicked about this letter from Shri Jayanta Mahapatra. Because though I am very much a Telugu belonging to Hyderabad, my childhood "home" was Orissa and Shri Jayanta Mahapatra's letter was like a letter from home.

Watch "Four Minutes" at OUCIP

Osmania University Centre for International Programmes
& Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad

cordially invite you to a screening of

“Four Minutes”
(Dir. Chris Kraus, 112 mins., 2006)



Time : 3 pm
Day & Date : Mon 22 Mar 2009,
Venue : AV Room, OUCIP


About the film: Four Minutes is “a powerful drama about an
elderly piano teacher and her relationship with a young
prison convict”. It “tells an unusual story with equally
unusual conviction”. Traude Krüger has been giving piano
lessons in a women's prison for decades. She meets Jenny,
a reserved young woman convicted of murder who was
once considered a child musical prodigy. Her attempt
to guide her pupil to victory in a music competition
leads to a difficult, contradictory relationship
between the two women which fascinates to
the very last second.

OUCIP is located in the Osmania University campus, and can be reached by turning left opposite College of Arts (if you are coming from the Tarnaka side) OR by continuing straight from the Administrative Building (if you are coming from the Vidyanagar / Shivam side).

Invite - Meet the Author @ Evening Hour

Evening Hour is organizing a Meet the Author session with Priti Aisola, author of See Paris for Me (Penguin Books, 2009)

Date - 20 March, 2010
Time - 6.30 PM onwards
Venue - Evening Hour Store, JNTU Lane, Kukatpally, Hyderabad

Consider this a personal invite from Evening Hour, for more details, click here

Ugadi Pacchadi, 1999

The calendar
by birthright and mother tongue
that I call mine
doesn't have a scary millennium,
waiting beyond the brink.

The rituals
I these days follow
for release, money and the release of money
don't know any falls,
I alone walk the edge.

This new year
has to taste different
last year's sourness cannot be bittered
and this spoonful of sweetness, like a day
can't stay on as a permanent aftertaste.

From Moving On

As indicated by the title of the poem, it was written on Ugadi, 1999 (yes, I know it seems almost a lifetime back). Ugadi (March 16th, this year) is Telugu New Year day (as opposed to January 1st) when a Pacchadi (chutney / mixture) is made and eaten across all Telugu (and Kannada) households.

Apart from being deliciously tasty, the Pacchadi's ingredients themselves are supposed to be indicative of the overall balance of life. As such it comprises of the sweet (jaggery / sugar, banana, other fruits ), the sour (tamarind / raw mango), the bitter (neem flowers), the salty (salt) and the hot (green chillies).

Please do note that this is basically a simplistic explanation, there may be deeper meanings in that spoon of Pacchadi.

"Bittered" in the poem is not a typo, its word play :-)

Kaliyugabdi 5,111 Ugadi Subhakanshalu

This and that about how "Moving On" happened

By mid July, 2009 ( a month after I had quit my job) I was finally convinced that I had a body of work that was worth being published and that it was high time I took the plunge and brought out my book. Also, for a various number of reasons that I will try and talk about later (related to the "penury of demand" for poetry, the confused landscape of publishing, my past interactions with some so called publishers and my belief in the so called tradition of "self-publishing) I had already decided to learn everything required and do all that needed to be done to bring "the book" out.

Now, if this makes you visualize someone sitting locked up in a room at a desk / computer spending most of the day and night waiting for the muse to come, you are both right and wrong.

Right -- because, I did spend a lot of time sitting locked out of what used to be pretty much of an ordered life prior to my momentous decision.

Wrong -- because....oh well, here you go...

Around May / June, basically with the vague idea of getting fitter I had again got back to cycling (I used to commute on a bicycle through most of my school / early college days) and I continued with cycling July onwards, because it helped in my poetic thought processes and also gave me the much needed release from all kinds of questions from within and without....

So for most of early July and August, while the monsoons played truant, I used to burn calories with a furious frenzy, on a road that still burnt with the vestiges of summer.

Had you been a bird in the afternoon sky, you would have seen me cycling away, in search of the epiphanic and inner peace -- willing new poems to come and waiting for those already in ferment in me to sort themselves out.

My road used to the same one, day in and day out, the stretch that leads to Shameerpet and then onwards to Karimnagar and Asifabad, S.H.1, also called Rajiv Gandhi Rahadari.

Then, for something like three weeks in September when the monsoons were well and truly here (over the Deccan) and the waters that rained down from the heavens varied in between being a misty ooze, a persistent drizzle, a hammering of liquid hail and deluges of cloudbursts that blinded and drowned -- I had continued with the habit that I had clothed my days in, all through July, August and September.

So, in stages, I got used to cycling, I got used to the thirst (and pain?) of waiting for the rains and then glorified in getting wet in it (as opposed to getting wet in my sweat). For most of these days, I would stop and cloudspot / horizon-gaze at Shameerpet Lake and I guess unwittingly, the lake (and the coming of the rains) became a metaphor probably larger than the season and life.

It started raining and I started cycling beyond Shameerpet (but still stopping there to cloud-spot / horizon-gaze) and I must say the cycling soon became more pleasure and less pain. Seeing Shameerpet lake covered by an umbrella of dark clouds (on a daily basis)and getting wet in the year's first rains were pretty much euphoric. But the best thing was cycling through a cloudburst that was primeval in its fury and intensity -- as primeval as the rain / hail / snow that I had stopped for and shouted at while motorcycling up a totally deserted Baralaccha La in 2005.

By and by, I lost the urge (or burnt out the fury) for cycling non-stop like an automaton and got bored of the routine of the same road again and again (in fact, I had written some really dark and confessional stuff in the days before it rained, but even with that mindset, I spat out "the outpourings of blame" onto the road itself).

Then I discovered a stream of gravelly red streaked with ochre and yellow running through a lake of wild green grasses -- that starts where one of the asphalt roads from my colony peters out and peters out somewhere near the stretch of N.H.7 that leads to Medchal. This stream of dirt led to more discoveries and more space for thought as it wanders through solitude and open spaces that are wild with grass flowers, butterflies, chameleons, and abandoned, water-filled quarries.

By now, my cycling getaways were more focused on reworking on my poems and most of the time I would have a copy of the manuscript of "Moving On" (in a plastic folder) with me. Or a notepad (again in a plastic folder) to jot down visitations poetic. In fact, for three consecutive days in October I went to the same quarry in the evening to try and do justice to the magic of the monsoons, when the skyline was all clouds and one couldn't really distinguish where the reflection in the waters trapped in the quarry was rain-wet rock and where it was pencil black, rain-swollen cloud.

And since it rained almost all the while I was on the cycle, "Segues of Shade and Shadow" was mostly pencilled on a wet notepad, with me hunched under an outcropping of rock while the poem came "... while rain walks / on stone-pooled rain ..."

Granite Gaggles also happened in a similar setting somewhere in that monsoon fed wilderness, where the poem arrived with "... light leaks out / and writes odes ... "

Yes, some of the poems came in / from this monsoon-fed, "monsooned" wilderness. As October ended and November started, the grasses were almost shoulder high at places and I even motorcycled through them, sometimes with the little man sitting on the tank, both of us equally thrilled at the Bullet thumping its way through the grasses and the sightings of the various birds (coucals, peacocks, parakeets, cormorants, bee-eaters, etc.) and I guess it was on one of those trips when he concluded that I have some kind of supernatural (at least comparable to the Cartoon Network characters known to him) powers since I was taking the motorcycle into a "thick forest".

Coming back to the book, though the rains and the cycling added more poems to the MS, by first week of November almost everything was sorted out and ready for printing. Then started this and that delay on this and that account. The "T" agitation just burst out of the blue around this time and that didn't make things any easier, either.

But then, December 18th finally arrived and "Moving On" was finally launched.

P.S. - Maybe its entirely in keeping with the way things happened, that the title of the book also came to me while I was on the move. In R's car and on the way back from a marriage at Nakrekal, on the same day the poem "Crossing Over" came.

P.P.S. - I did not exactly keep a log / note down the "exact" way things happened. This is basically meant to be a structured ramble about how the book happened.

Priti Aisola on "Moving On"

A child-like wonder at, and gratitude for, the little beauties of nature is very evident in Anand’s poems. In his poems there is deep concern for the physical environment – how its landscapes are being transformed and water bodies are being devoured to make place for concrete structures and tarred roads. For example, the poem “Vizag’s Hills” describes how hills once teeming with life have been deforested and cut into, to provide ‘dead wood’ and ‘dead stone’ for houses. Similarly, in the poem "Banyan Square" he speaks of the ‘massive’ Banyan tree, whose world has been uprooted to make place for progress’ concrete structures and pukka shops. True the Banyan survives in memory ‘for the square’s known after it still.’ This memory will have to suffice.

What comes through acutely is a strong awareness of a past that cannot be reclaimed. It could be communal or personal past, or it may refer to the natural environment that has seen some dramatic changes. In "Three Soap Trees", he quietly mourns the fact that no ‘epitaphs’ are written on the death of trees, fields, open spaces, on the disappearance of childhood’s and youth’s familiar spaces.

Anand’s poetry is replete with images to do with journeys, water and fire. There is plenty of colour – black and white and deep and bright colours and pastels. And each is rich with multi-layered meanings. So many of his reflections, his lyric poetic moments, his philosophic musings center around water in its different forms – puddles, ponds, pools, streams, lakes, rivulet, rivers, rainfall, the monsoon…. In "Monsoons, 2004", he chronicles heartbreak against the backdrop of the monsoon and explores its changed meaning in his life.

Each image that he evokes has the authenticity of experience and the lucidity of something seen by the inner eye.

His passion for cycling and motorcycling comes through in his poems. Cycling becomes a metaphor for negotiating ‘the traffic of his (my) thoughts’, for escaping sleepless thoughts, for calming a certain restiveness that moves ‘from unslept night to sleepless day’. There is pain as on ‘reality’s’ road ‘dreams die (dying) in sight of open eyes’, and there is the courage to go on in spite of that.

A delving into the process of writing, into the well-springs of creativity, and anguish over ‘insipid writing’ also finds a significant place in his work. Silence has a disquieting connotation in his work.

Underlying his poetry is ‘the enigmatic search’ for some elusive resting-place as he journeys through different spaces – those within the self and those without. Spaces in ruins and spaces that have been swallowed by the irreversible march of urbanization preoccupy him.

-- Priti Aisola, author of See Paris for Me

Thanks a lot for your very detailed and sensitive notes, Priti, it's been an immense privilege to know and interact with you!

Peter O’Leary

"To dwell in language is to dwell in the moment of epiphany, even to elaborate it and conjugate it by stretching the word out into its grammar. The word is what hits the poet and goes all over him or her. Enshrining this moment is the act of poetry. The life spent making such a shrine is the burden — or the affliction — of the poet. The poem does not heal. Like life, poetry is something from which we cannot be healed." - Peter O’Leary

Dr. Sachidananda Mohanty on "Moving On"

"Anand Vishwanadha’s poems speak to us in many voices.Words and expressions come cascading in startling sequences leading to dramatic endings.The poems ‘Vizag’s Hills’ and ‘Media-shy’ are good examples: picture perfect cameos that haunt our memory.

Landscapes and lakes are often rendered animate and come alive as intimate associates.The poem ‘Maa Chilka’,for instance,reveals the intimate bond between man and Nature in filial terms.

Anand’s poems are distinguished by a set of vivid images that create a mood forever lasting. Rhythm and substance get inextricably fused evoking meanings considered long lost."

Dr Sachidananda Mohanty
Professor & Head
Department of English
University of Hyderabad

Many,many thanks Sachi Bhai.

The Road to Medhchal

(For Adrian)

We spreadeagled and pinned down
half a summer night
into conversations
-- soaring noon high --
of you and I, the roads in and out of life,
of you and I and throttle-fulls of speed and smoke.

We spreadeagled and pinned down
questions for time
-- the need to just ride, the need to just be --
mirroring the soul in the machine,
the engine in the being, agreeing
-- we write even as we ride --

In throttle-fulls of speed and smoke
book, chapter and verse
stories of metre and mile
the metre of miles....

Ambika Ananth on "Moving On"

"The intensity, force, depth and lucidity of Anand Vishwanadha's poems defy the fact that "Moving On" is a debut collection. His poetry shows a contemporary sophistication in expression and imagery (truly characteristic of his poetic sensibility), yet sometimes symbolizes frailty , vulnerability and uncertainty – the absolute human side.

Adopting the techniques of allusiveness and multi-layered irony, he chronicles the the poignancy of love and mundane twists and turns of life, to convey his pertinent questions on and about life.

His poems -

convey empirical truths in words of elemental simplicity,

have philosophical mysteries ventilated from within,

are compellingly different, refusing to get tied down by conformist principles.

Some poems have a sense of movement , yet with a sort of rootedness and depth of thought – they justify the title – Moving On."

- Ambika Ananth, Chief Editor, Muse India

Thanks Ambika Ji!

Free Shipping (anywhere within India) offer on Moving On

For all of you who have wanted to know where to get my book from, here's a quick update! You can order "Moving On" at Evening Hour, here at absolutely NO shipping charges. Thanks Priyanka!

The book (paperback, 100Pp, 72 poems, foreword by Hoshang Merchant, published by Coucal Books) costs 150 INR.

In fact, according to some well-read friends, "Moving On" can probably be called three books rolled into one, since the poems presented in it deal with three distinct themes / subjects. The euphoria and angst of reacting to and dealing with "this wide, wide world", the pleasure, pain and nostalgia of "love and loss" and the joys and discoveries of being "water-washed".

Some critical feedback has come in on the book, I will be posting up the same here soon.

I guess, "Moving On" would mean so many other cliched things to so many people, but this title was chosen because it does justice to all the poems in the book.

So if you have wanted to get it, get it now! And in case you have any problems do drop me a line, will be happy to help.

Muse India - March - April Issue

Muse India , a bi-monthly e-journal for Indian literature has launched its latest (March - April) issue.

In this issue, Ambika Ananth (Chief Editor, Muse India) presents glimpses from Tamil literature, with Rajaram Brammarajan, the noted poet and translator, serving as the section editor, and Prof T Vijay Kumar oversees a special feature on ‘Indian Writing in English – Criticism Across Genres’.
There is also an article by Manu Dash on Dilip Chitre, (the illustrious Marathi and English poet), who passed away last December, where Manu Dash recounts his personal association with him.
There are also two book reviews by Ambika Ananth, of "Letter to an Imaginary Pen Friend and Other Poems" by Kumarendra Mullick and "Women in Indian Writing – From Difference to Diversity" by Ranu Uniyal.
Muse India has a very lively forum called Your Space, meant for readers to share and invite feedback on impromptu poems and short fiction. Incidentally some regular contributors to this forum were part of the Muse Meet (in January this year).

Invite - Evening Hour Storytelling competition for kids

The nice people at Evening Hour are organizing a storytelling competition for kids. Details are as below,

Date - 06 March, 2010
Time - 6.00 PM onwards
Venue - Evening Hour Store, JNTU Lane, Kukatpally, Hyderabad

The competition is for kids between the ages 3-10, for more details contact Evening Hour on 040-65873003

The Tandav of life

Stiff-tailed, biting noon air
a muddy yellow cat's-paw
of cold rabid dread
it passes me,
pattering left,
on two tap-dancing paws

Lurching right,
wobble-legged
toppling onto its back
in an empty-stomached width
of shade
a common cur
maddened
by the Tandav of life

Refusing to die
a dog's death.

Untitled Ventings

The last week's been funny.

I do time trials against a setting sun in the evenings and write and read this and that most of the other time.

But at nights, the same dream that had left me sleepless for most of June last year comes back. Again and again, as nightmares do.

Its a stark setting, there is this conference room with a bunch of people around a table -- some half-asleep, some barely there, some pecking away at their laptops -- a management review meeting is happening.

And I have just being pronounced guilty.

"What do you do anyway?" has always been the question here. Sometimes voiced, sometimes not, usually very subtly stated of course.

"You don't deserve what we pay you" has also been always the accusation here {when the recession happened, my ROI was naturally the first to be questioned (purely a case of fingering because I had NEVER not delivered something asked of me)} sometimes veiled, sometimes not, never stated of course.

Let me cut back to the dream.

So I have just presented what my team has been doing for the last two months. All this has already been reviewed by my reporting head (and management by default), we have been sending weekly status reports.

My own reporting head has also never brought this up. Its been understood that my team will facilitate and support all techno-marketing-whatever-you-call-it activities and "marcomify" (as phrased by him) whatever content is sent over. Even if the content is a mish-mash that has been "captured" from this and that source and rewritten to be muck and "rewriting" which again meant getting a headache in just 10 minutes!

Psst...my team consists of only one writer. Yes, yours truly and him alone.

Now that I have presented the presentation, a gent says "Not happy with you boss!" Then he even kindly raises his voice and repeats the same thing yet again. As I have already said, the conference room is full of people, this is not a one-on-one review and I report to someone else.

So this was no off the cuff, casually uttered and unintentional jibe. This was evidently something far more than a rap on the knuckles. Something akin to "public mein pant utaarna" by somebody for whom I had bent backwards, never refusing anything, doing everything asked of me in the spirit of passion, leadership, blah, blah....

So a bit of me died that day and this dream started coming every night. I had decided to quit that very day and two other incidents that happened thereafter vindicated my decision.

ONE -- I am told that my reporting head feels that all I do is "put a comma here, a semi-colon there, and so on", by someone in management who had said the same thing to me a number of times earlier (of course jocularly, with marked bonhomie, a nice smile, et al). So a bit more of me died.

TWO -- And then {post a lengthy internal debate post which I am told my team of three will be an independent department again and will be AGAIN solely responsible for putting up a full-blown website (supervised by the techno-marketing excel sheet types of course) when I look at the work in hand and ask for resources, I am reminded of my hearing disability twice (but the same damn phrase) by two gents from management. Again, a bit more of me died.

Continuing there after these two things happening would have been like living on a dole or feeding off someone's far from veiled kindness.

So I quit, wrote Moving On and I had thought I had moved on.

But then this dream comes again and again.....

The Road

Paved,
cobble-stoned,
or the bottom of a river of dirt,
the road doesn't go anywhere,
it is just a way,
s t r e t c h i n g
in between
the here and now
and the deja vu of wherever
endless in ambiguity.

Night of the Scorpion

I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison -- flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room --
he risked the rain again.
The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the Name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the sun-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made
his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.
May he sit still, they said.
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through,
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites
to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said:
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.

By Nissim Ezekiel from The Exact Name (1965)

The Truth about Dhanya

His old skin
is like the ground
on which he sleeps,
so also, his rags.

He cannot
stand upright
or walk without pain,
does odd jobs
for the ten families
of The Retreat, collects
a few coins every day,
uses them for tea
and smoking.

Given food, he eats,
otherwise, he goes without.
Quite a cheerful chap, really.

Nobody minds his presence
as he stumbles around the place.
He's lucky, in a way,
isn't out in the streets, begging.
We look after him
and he makes himself useful.

That's all the truth about Dhanya.

By Nissim Ezekiel from Poems Written in 1974

Jeet Thayil

"I think one very fine way to tell the development of a society is how it treats its poets, its gay people, and its women. And in those three areas, we really are backward. I believe that two generations from today, there may be value placed on all of this. Young people today read poetry, they buy books, they read poetry on the Internet. The Internet has taken poetry out of that academic conversation, which has to happen if poetry's going to live. Say `poetry' and there were a lot of people who were turned off already, who had forgotten that a poetry reading is just a man or a woman speaking to you. Poetry needs to resonate with you if it's going to live. It's human speech, and it's the most beautiful speech, it's elevated in a way we can't have in our normal lives; it contains the best of us." -- Jeet Thayil in conversation with Nilanjana S. Roy for Hindu Literary Review, full story is here

Some poetry and a lot of pain

On the morning of 17th February (it wasn't afternoon -- of that I am sure) one of the dumb bells I exercise with (once in a while) fell on my left hand.

Nothing broken thankfully (especially not the dumb bell), but my hand really ballooned up in a big way. To look like a bear's paw and become equally unwieldy.

Typing was a pain, holding onto a book was a pain, putting on a shirt was a pain, and so on...

I did manage to cycle around (the motorcycle's clutch lever is on the left handlebar; will try clutching it tomorrow and hope that I don't pass out from pain) and though jolts of pain shoot up when I put the left hand on the handlebars, the joys of moving on are worth it.

Incidentally, on the evening of 16th I was cycling after posting up Memory's Scythe here and it rained and rained and rained, making things more than a bit dicey for me since my clothes (I was wearing a Kurta and baggy cotton cargoes) soaked up all the waters and made cycling back home really heavy going.

Coincidentally (I mean this in an eerie way), I had been similarly soaked (and caught up in a 4 hours long traffic jam somewhere near SR Nagar on my way back home) when I had written Unslept.

Eerie, no?

Maybe I shouldn't complain about the rains not raining too much :-)

Two poems up at Asia Writes

Media-shy and Banyan Square, two poems from my book, Moving On are now up at Asia Writes. Do take a look, they are here

Moonmist at Twilight

Like a lakebreeze's
gentle evening coolness
voiceless whispers
of twilight's wind
caress kiss me
butterflying my face
with a cherub's lips
turning my pedalled sweat
(while the road stretches ahead
a dry river of red)
into a balm
cooler than moonmist.

Memory's Scythe

If your hair wasn't black
blue-black or browned out of a bottle
but green, with highlights
of yellow, wild-flowering
red, pink and yellow, and

If it had flowed down
longer than waist long, like love let loose,
it could have been
my monsoon world of grasses shoulder-high
where I crouched all those days

Lost -- questioning --
why the skies copiously flow down
their wetness coupling them to the earth
and rise skywards again in wet green
that summer's flaming sun scythe will burn.

Invite - The Scholastic Aviva Storytelling Night

Scholastic is organising an evening of Story Telling for children between the ages of 8-14. The event is at St. Mary's College, Yousufguda, on Saturday, 20th Feb, starting at 6.30pm.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,
Towering over your head.
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,
And she's gone.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds,
Lucy in the sky with diamonds,
Lucy in the sky with diamonds,
Ah... Ah...

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain,
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies.
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers,
That grow so incredibly high.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,
Waiting to take you away.
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds,
And you're gone.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds,
Lucy in the sky with diamonds,
Lucy in the sky with diamonds,
Ah... Ah...

Picture yourself on a train in a station,
With plasticine porters with looking glass ties.
Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile,
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds,
Lucy in the sky with diamonds,
Lucy in the sky with diamonds,
Ah... Ah...

By The Beatles, primarily written by John Lennon (credited to Lennon/McCartney) for the group's 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club