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The train
sways sighs hurtles
its carriageway a green blur

The rain
bedecks the window bars
with strings of pearls, beads

The glass panes with diamonds.

Written in the train while I am headed back home to Hyderabad where I am told the rains have been very, very heavy in the 10 or so days I was away :-)

Book Launch of Ink Dries at Oxford Bookstores

If you follow my blog or are in touch with me on Facebook (or in other ways for that matter) you must be aware that its been quite a while since Ink Dries has been out and available.

Yet, this blogpost and this invite (to "this" event).

Because Ink Dries will soon be available nationally through Oxford Bookstores.

Yes this took some doing and yes, it wasn't easy doing it and I can only thank all my readers and friends for their continued support -- something that matters a lot whenever I contemplate on the "futility" of publishing poetry in these reader-parched, let-us-all-get-published-and-famous-days. 


Maybe more on this in a bit from now. 


For now, a personal invite to you :-)


You are invited to the book launch of Ink Dries at Oxford Bookstores, Hyderabad on the 28th of July, 2012.


I will be in conversation with Mr. Vijay Marur and thereafter there will be a poetry reading by Little Theater.


If you are in Hyderabad, do please come. Immaterial, do please spread the word.


A special note of thanks to Sujata Roy (of Oxford Bookstores) and Sashi (my brother) for all they have done (especially at the last minute) to make things happen, what with me away in Uttarkhand on a birding trip.


More on that too, in a bit.


For now, this book release :-)         

S c a t t e r e d ?

That -- the title of this blog post seems to sum up the status and character of the Monsoons this year (and the related fate of India's prosperity at large). To elaborate, the forecast is that the monsoon will be mostly scattered this year. Which means, it may rain cats and dogs (and cloudbursts) over your house while it barely drizzles over mine -- immaterial of our respective houses being located in two different states, cities, colonies or even being cheek by jowl in terms of proximity.

As I write this, there already seem to be "water wars" happening here in AP with the meagre water in Nagarjuna Sagar / Srisailam the proverbial bone of contention. And though AP has received some rains (which here in Hyderabad have as usual revealed the abject state of city's urban planning as if it were covered by a thoroughly wet tee shirt), the situation is really grim and almost drought-like across a large swathe of the country -- the floods in Assam notwithstanding.

The "entire" country is a different kettle of fish and the monsoon is not something that can ever be properly predicted but still why is it so that we -- most of India's metros and towns don't do much about conserving water? That we don't do much about letting it all go and flow -- by and by of course, through one big dam and another -- out into the sea?

Why, oh why, cannot we take a leaf out of the planning and foresight of kings and kingdoms of yore, who -- in days far less scientifically advanced than these had the common sense to get tanks and man-made lakes constructed in an intricate arrangement that ensured that more or less all the bounties of the heavens could be collected?

Why oh why, don't we give our lakes -- at least here in Hyderabad -- a bit more of respect, treat them with the care they deserve as our only reservoir of fresh water?

Is it that we all think, with typical urban consumerist disdain, that we can buy as much of water as we want?

Beggars me, the very idea...what will one buy when there is nothing to buy? 

Liquid food for thought, is it not?                

An Old Woman

An old woman grabs
hold of your sleeve
and tags along.

She wants a fifty paise coin.
She says she will take you
to the horseshoe shrine.

You've seen it already.
She hobbles along anyway
and tightens her grip on your shirt.

She won't let you go.
You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.

You turn around and face her
with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.

When you hear her say,
'What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?'

You look right at the sky.
Clear through the bullet holes
she has for her eyes.

And as you look on
the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.

And the hills crack.
And the temples crack.
And the sky falls

With a plateglass clatter
around the shatter proof crone
who stands alone.

And you are reduced
to so much change
in her hand.


-- Arun Kolatkar   

S c a t t e r e d

Do you remember the velvet mites
their touch a pristine soft, softer than a cherub's kiss
their colour a red
redder than the passion in our lifeblood?

Do you remember how deeply we sighed
at the thought, that they were drops
s c a t t e r e d
harbingers of the coalescing deluges of love?

Again
full of faith, the rains
are here, drenching us child like,
with memories of what could have been