Out-closeting Myself
As is obvious from the previous post, I went to read some of my poems at a Public Place. Those of you who know me well, also know that I have been anti such things for years. I have had a deep
theoretical dislike/distrust of the poet’s physical personhood being associated with the poet’s words. This one cryptic sentence cannot explain well enough the years of research that had gone into the formulation of my beliefs. However, certain events in the past few months have made me conduct an overhauling of sorts. I am ready to take off my garb of anonymity, ready to confront the dangers of
embodied words. So well, I am ready to say sundry, stupid things like: Hey world, here I come, etc.
I rather liked the discussion afterwards. I was asked questions on nonsense verse (
1,
2) , ghazals in English (
1,
2) , form vs. free verse and my insect poems (
1,
2,
3) among other things. Even though my closest friends will avow that my communication skills desert me when in a small group, I love talking to a crowd. One of the reasons why I am a teacher, I guess. So I quite enjoyed myself during the discussion. A friend/colleague asked me a very interesting question. She said that she felt my images were very intense and precise and wanted to know whether putting up my poems online somehow harmed the precision of the images…whether a kind of disintegration/dispersal of meaning happened to them when read on the computer screen. I gave her a vague-y reply. Would somebody like to answer that question?
PS: My first collection is coming out in August. I’m mighty excited.
~
Poetry Reading
Please do come for a poetry reading at 3 pm tomorrow [19-06-08].
Hindi poet, Hemant Kukreti and I shall read from our work at the AV Room, Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, Arts Faculty, University of Delhi.
Busy with “Anji”
[click to enlarge]
~
I haven’t gone back into hiding.
I have been busy helping out the Dramatics Society of our college. The annual production, Vijay Tendulkar's, “Anji”, directed by Dinesh Khanna, Associate Professor of Acting, NSD, is taking place on 3 and 4 of March. I made the poster (see above) and am helping with the costumes. I am also painting a huge (18 ft by 20 ft) stage prop. I will put up photographs when it is done.
The director had wanted a 50’s Bollywood look for the poster--therefore the misty sepia and the grainy texture.
Everyone’s invited. People in Delhi, please do come if you can.
~
Update: Photographs on Facebook.
~
The Water Strider
~
Know me for what I am:
the water strider, the rule-bender.
I walk
on water.
I shock the thinker
stalk the disbeliever.
I am
the water strider.
I glide, I flit, I dart
on the water’s tense face.
I chase space.
Pace, stride, take pride in that tart start.
I am Jesus-like.
I trace in him my making
and my end.
I fear, I hate, I love water.
I walk like I own water.
It mimics and reveals me
in echoes of light. Yes, the light touch
is what I advise:
Devise ways to disguise
gravity. A certain agility, some speed
is all you need.
Anybody can walk
on water.
~
Link: Water Strider
~
Labels: fun(ny) rhymes, insects
Jokhini
~
I love this tree.
Do you know the tree outside Dutta da’s house,
the one just across the garden?
It’s a nice tree, a flowering tree.
Throughout the year, tiny white flowers bloom all over the body of the tree.
It’s a shame I can’t remember
the name of the tree.
I might have known it once, but not any longer.
I love sitting on this particular branch. It curves so beautifully and fits me so well. When I sit here with my legs swinging in the air,
one-two-one-two, I can see right into Dutta da’s bedroom. I watch him sleep every night. I can follow his dreams as he tosses and turns on the ornate bed that belonged to his grandmother. Sometimes he wakes up, gets out of bed and looks out of the window. I almost feel his eyes on me. Does he know that I am here? Does he know that I watch him night after night, waiting for him to come out, waiting for him to touch my tree, waiting for him to touch me? But no, he doesn’t see me.
He only sees me in his dreams: sees
my eyes as sharp as curses, sees my
hair that has a life of
its own, sees me naked.
I get bored sometimes. I sing, I talk to myself, I play with my hair; but I get bored. The day irritates me and I try to escape between the leaves and the white flowers. When the night arrives with its harsh whisper of consent, I feel better. For some reason I have taken to laughing a lot. Everything amuses me--the insects that I catch and tear apart, the children on their way home after play, Mrinal mauling his little cousin’s fresh breasts. Everything amuses me. With his ink-tinged fingers, his wrinkly pyjamas and his sad-dog eyes even Dutta da seems funny.
And I can’t stop laughing.
I laugh because I have nothing else to do.
My laugh becomes one
with the wind
and the pollen
and the cries of the children.
I know I can wait forever, but it’s tiring. When will the bastard come out and piss on my tree? When, when? I want to go and pull him out of the window. I want to scratch him in anger. But I can’t. It’s not allowed to me. My feet will always walk away from me. Away. In the other direction.
My feet, my feet.
My poor, poor feet.
And then, of course, I have to cry. I seem to remember a time when I had feet. Real feet and not the ones that I have now--always turned away from me, annoyed with me. However, I cannot be very sure. I am never very sure of most things. So I cry and wail and moan and scream and shake the tree until the white flowers fall like dust to the ground.
The white flowers fall
like dust to the ground.
~
Conjoined
~
Someone with fine hands cut us up
carefully
oh so carefully
that we never felt the pain and the stitches
never showed.
Sometimes the stitches loosened and showed things beneath the skin
but scabs soon formed and healed
so that we forgot
how we were stuck together once
with spit and glue and blood.
Beloved brother, beloved lover
when crows sing
of distances and winds
gather over time and shalmali flowers
bloom on the marks
of our bodies
we stay fixed as if still sewn
together instead of apart--
Stay with me.
Don’t move.
~
On Metaphors
~
…These are examples of metaphors.
I laughed my socks off.He was the apple of her eye.They had a skeleton in the cupboard.We had a real pig of a day.The dog was stone dead.The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another, and it comes from the Greek words
μετα (which means
from one place to another) and
φερειν (which means
to carry) and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn’t. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor.
I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards.
--Christopher John Francis Boone
~
People say her face is like a haiku
~
People say
her face is like a haiku--
a hybrid shape
a sound, a brush of the tongue, a sigh.
People say
her face is a shocking translation--
syllables fixed in the throat
a frog’s splash, a dash, a numbered
thought in the sky.
People say
her face is a poor simulation--
a futile season
a lined total, a whim, a
floating
lash in the eye.
~
Labels: fun(ny) rhymes, haiku, poetic form
Written after a visit to an electric crematorium
~
Death
somehow
kills all poise.
It doesn’t help at all
that you have to lie down
all the time with blocks of ice
for support on a November night
and all the flowers and the florid incense
and all the other fancy wreaths and things don’t
mask much; especially not the fact that you are very
dead and very cold in a dreadfully dull way.
Of course what’s worse is you
are finally rammed inside a greedy
machine that makes rude, cranky noises
as it gobbles you up and turns you into smoke
and you are trapped and can’t escape because the
absurd exhaust fans don’t work. You are resigned to
being a bad smell
hanging to the walls of
a dingy room while people
discreetly cover their noses and
wait for you to change into ash and air.
~
Labels: death
The Poetry of Everyday Life: II
~
Pencil I am thin.
Leaden, yet light.
I am that fine line on white.
I am zigzag flowering wood that smells of childhood.
Use me, blunt me and make me grow again.
My death in pointed perfection repeated until your fingers can hold me no more.
Chew on me and suck when you think
I taste good.
~
VaseMost times I remain
empty, gathering insects in
my womb.
And sometimes I am taken
out, dusted
admired, given pride of place, positioned
so that I may be noticed.
Soon my
water turns green
again and evaporates
around peeling stalks.
Before I am forgotten
I give life to tiny swarming larvae
that will bite
live on blood
when they grow up.
~
ScissorsI am a right-handed conspiracy.
An unknown quality.
Iron nailed into an X.
A swooping gull, a mouth
that opens closes opens closes over
swift lines that divide.
~
Razor I mark the beginning of knowledge.
Use me
on a body that knows of sin, of hidden
places, of new things.
I harvest hair
I eat skin.
~
Conversations Between Lovers (and one argument)
The Lover ImaginesCan you please imagine me as a tree?
He asked me earnestly.
I looked at him and wanted to know:
But what kind of tree?
A coconut? Tall, elegant.
A mango? Solid, pregnant.
A neem? Slim, strident.
He thought for a while and seemed
confused. And then said:
A eucalyptus. That’s what I want to be.
With leaves
that smell of lust
and trunks that are the silvery
grey of summer nights.
~
On Textual AutonomyWhen I grow up, she told me
I want to be a flower.
But you already are a flower, my love
I told her.
I am not, she insisted.
I will become one when I grow up.
I did a close-reading and said:
You are already one, my heart.
A large purple flower.
Glossy like expensive paper
with just that perfect ambiguity of purpose
and ironic distance.
Your colour, a metaphor for other things.
Your shape, an affective fallacy.
Your softness, apolitical.
She scowled and turned her face away.
~
The Reed Speaks to the SwallowIt was unfair to silence me in that way
O swallow.
You loved me all through summer
and then told me I had
No conversationafter your friends left you.
Go then.
Go to your pyramids.
Be happy in the sun.
I am stuck here
in the river and all I can do
(immovable, domestic and voiceless as I am)
is flirt with the wind.
The swallow had nothing to say
and flew away.
~
The Pebble and the SeaYour touch had taken away
all my rough edges
smoothened me so that
I had become smaller.
I remember your harsh love—crashing
against me, pulling me away, taking
me with you into
your darkness. I remember
how you used to scream
into my ears.
Strange hands have taken me away from you now.
I have travelled
a vast distance and I sit on a cool surface.
Never to be touched
by you again. Unchanging,
still.
~
The Poetry of Everyday Life: I
~
Safety PinI am a fish
a wire fish
holding things
lips and friendships together
with a prick here
and a prick there and
the sweet circle of blood
~
TV RemoteI exist blurred
between memory and all
its antonyms
hidden in the folds
of furniture while unknown
nails search for me
Fingers tap-tapping
on my body charge me
make me arch.
I grant muscle
to the hands that control me.
~
Iron It’s my weight
that does it
the shiny heat that glides
kite-like over crushes, creases
lovingly to straighten
burn, steam
into exactness.
~
UmbrellaI am a flower eroded
with tears and the sun.
A steel skeleton
gives me wings.
Look for me
when you need a veil.
~
An Anecdote
At first it was just a whiff
of old days, an unsure
airiness that plopped this way and that
near the quilt. At first she thought
it was the quilt itself
a whiff of quilt
that entered even her night-home, the under-the-quilt-home
with everything curled and covered
and warm-shivery. It was a smell
that flew right into her arms
and licked her hair
whenever she walked into the room.
It grew stronger with each passing day.
Not even the stubborn sunshine
of open windows could get rid of it.
She tried incense.
The wavy spirals of jasmine
mingled with the smell
and made it worse. Her lover said
I’m moving out.
And he did. She moved out too
and they closed all the doors to the other room.
The smell needed a home.
A week later they found a pigeon
trapped between the cooler and the window pane.
In the rain, its mate
turned round and round
and round and round in blue-grey explosions
like the February sky and gurgled
through the day.
~
Labels: death, poetry
the unemployed angel speaks
Yesterday's lecture by
Giorgio Agamben at CSDS can only be described as delicious.
~
Since I haven't been writing much, here's something I drew/designed a few days back:
~
~
Update (18-01-2007):
David has written a rather lovely
poem about the little birdie in my drawing. Here it is:
Green fire
Escaped - the bird
flew from her,
drawing green flames
behind, growing the tree
branches and leaves
from her mouth,
green fire as gift
of pleading arms,
the unheld hands.
The bird chose not
to land on the trees
chose flight over
rest, chose air
over seas and forests,
over the contents
of a stomach
once world encircled
in itself.
To what end? Where
to fly and take
a winged memory
of life within a body?
Where to rest
when stolen in yourself?
Memories of trees,
green flame. Fly,
remembering yourself.
I am flown from the treeleft to fly handless,empty of what I desire.Take my wings, hands, beakand mouth of feathered hairand burn with the fire.Each wing flies, and lost hand searchesfor reasons to burn itself.
~
And, finally, a silly thing (won't call it a
poem) inspired by yesterday's talk:
~
the unemployed angel speaks
all this singing
tries me at times
and whoever designed
this white dress deserves
to be hanged
it doesn’t fit and the holes
through which my wings need to go
you know
like just so
are so bloody tight
what crimes dear Lord
what crimes
got me here
all I do is listen to sweet chimes
and sing hymns and trip around
in my silly frock
and my harp’s
missing you know and the dim tailor
doesn’t know anything about zippers (and yes
I’m sure the
ahem
people down there mock at us)
and my halo has lost its glow
I need a new conditioner you know.
~
PS: Please go
here.
~
Labels: drawing, poetry, rambling
Oh no, not again!
The Bearded One and I are going away to Kasauli early tomorrow morning.
I'm sure old age is catching up with us. We couldn't even think of going to the trouble of finding a new place to visit. No sense of adventure, as a cousin put it. We even booked a place in the same hotel. Before you ask, yes, the same room too.
Here are posts from our previous trips to Kasauli:
Zara MayThe BoyPhotogenic Metal~
Happy New Year and all that.
~
Poem for John Reed
They say he killed himself Nobody will ever say
Poor John Reed. He suffered so. Nobody will ever write him a Wide
Sargasso Sea. After all, he was a
Roman Emperora slave-driver. Worth killing off amidst
debts and excesses.
We wanted him dead anyway.
From the moment
he gave Bewick wings. Made him
collide against an orphan forehead. We wanted
him dead and with reason. Weren’t
we told that
he twisted the necks of pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit?
He housed a red-room
inside him. Closets, drawers,
curtains and full secret
passages. Full
and unworded.
They say he killed himself. A swift
disappearance, flicked away like dirt
beneath our nails.
~
I don’t remember when exactly I first read
Jane Eyre. I must have been very young. I do remember that I read an abridged version the first time round--the kind with illustrations and stuff. But even that version managed to fill me with an intense loathing for John Reed--Jane’s cousin and scourge of her childhood. He is, as I’m sure everybody knows, also the reason behind Jane’s punishment/imprisonment in the red-room. I have been teaching
Jane Eyre for several years now to first year undergraduate students of English Lit. It’s been so many years that sometimes I fear an entire generation of young women will be compelled to think of me whenever they think of
Jane Eyre. The other day in class, I made this strange statement--
Nobody will ever write a poem for John Reed. I don’t know why I said it; but as soon as I did, I knew I had to. Write a poem for him. Immediately. So here’s a first draft. The portions in italics (except for the second line), have been lifted directly from the text.
~
Spoken Word Workshop
(click to enlarge)If you wish to participate, you can also write to litsocip@gmail.com.
You need to be a university student to register.
Link:
Malika Booker~
New Caricatures
I’ll be paid for these ones. Peanuts. But I’m so excited! People can now say with proof that my Artistic Integrity (cough) has been compromised and corrupted by money. ~:-D
*
*
Giuseppe’s Cook
A poem ‘inspired’ by
Giuseppe Arcimboldo's The Cook.
~
Giuseppe, oh, he goes
wisecracking at us
A quip here, a jibe
there, a dig too most times.
I can make a fuss
and cuss and say
what are my crimes,
Giuseppe? What are my
crimes? I’m just a poor
cook, you know
with my dough, my chow, my
herbs, my pure book.
But you turn me
into meat--fowl
swine; god knows what
else for cheek and eye
and jowl of thigh and upside
down plate. I’m red, roasted
a game for you, Giuseppe. A pig’s tail
my hair and beard,
a slice of lemon
to adorn my stale hat
and the collar I wear. I’m meat to you,
Giuseppe. A detail
of toothpick, clever
hunched nose, cornered by a cover
in both.
~
Bloggers' Meet: Visualspeak
The famous mutton cutlet (non-greasy this time)
Ladies and families only
The Lyrical Ballads
CoffeE
Thirsty Pigeons
~
People who turned up for the blogmeet:
AishwaryaAmitkenAnirudhAnthonyLuvNikhilRiverYogesh
~
Too tired to write a detailed report. The photos ought to be enough for now. :)
~
Blog Meet on the 5th
This one has been planned to welcome
Anthony (yes, the sweet guy from Manipur who also writes a
food blog) who has shifted base from Bombay to Delhi. The meet will take place on 5-11-2006 (Sunday) at 3:30 pm in India Coffee House, CP. The Coffee House is on the second floor of Mohan Singh Place near Rivoli Cinema. All those who wish to attend the meet can leave little confirmation notes in the comment-space.
I hope this meet will be as fun as earlier meets in this quaint place with chattering monkeys, liveried waiters and unkempt, elderly men spouting poetry in the background. I'm sure we can all arm-twist Tony into giving away some of his culinary secrets! :D
~
Update:(confirmed guest list)
AanchalAmitkenAnthonyLuvRiverRohitShivamShivangi(still unsure)
AishwaryaAnirudh~
PS: All you shy people out there...we won't bite. Promise.
.
Two Tombs in Landour
Let’s say
I want to see them
playing house beneath
the earth replicating,
renewing spousal ties.
I’m sure they are discussing
the pros and cons
of soft and harsh
roots that grow
arrogantly
through arms, cheeks,
thighs; squabbling over
who smells worse, wondering
about the slow melting
of eyes and trying to crawl
closer to each other through
the lime walls. Perhaps
they are holding hands
through worm shit, loamy
leaves, wet songs and smiling
at ceilings that knock
against non-existent noses.
~
Link to image~
Ekphrasis
While googling for images of "old+woman", I found this extraordinary
painting.
~
(i)You never
allowed me to read that page
that face of yours, my love.
I look at you now but
you still look away
in different directions
forgetting
the promise you made
in a winter as bitter as this one--
a time when you didn’t wear
caps to hide your hair.
I wish I had real fingers to trace
the roads that go here, there
and everywhere on your skin.
Real fingers
the kind with which you
touched
my pebbly back all those years ago.
Can you grant me that
old wish?
Say yes, my love and I will
flick out my tongue, lick your lines
perhaps catch the fly of your lips.
~
(ii)The cap-red will be the only
colour and yes
the yellow of the face.
Everything else
will be stark, dark. Blue and lined
and off-white. One eye will look
at me and everybody else. The other
will look nowhere, definitely
not into the toad’s eyes.
However, the toad has
to look at her and point
a finger towards her. And all
will be netted-- her shawl, her
scarf, her skin,
the blue branches of the trees.
~
(iii)See, I can see
things. The lust
in the toad’s eyes, the pretty
holes in the scarf, the strange shift
of the right eyebrow. I am the word-twister,
the shape-shark, witness to love and age and death
and any other cliché you can think of. I can make trivial
things seem momentous, historic, vital, meaningful. I can make
you shed a tear
for a toad’s love
for an old woman.
~
Landour
Victor Banerjee's House. Just a minute before this snap was clicked, he (in crumpled kurta pyjamas) had looked down at us rather warily. Didn't get the opportunity to click
Ruskin Bond's impressively unpretentious house.
Phallic symbols, anyone? The Doordarshan Tower.
No Entry! You have to pay for your privileges.
Vacant.
The backyard of Devdar Woods. We stayed here.
Kellogg Church. Just a little to the right of the church is the
Landour Language School.
Hee Haw. Welcome and Get Lost.
Hidden. Little nook in the wall that caught my attention. :)
~
Going Away
The Bearded One and I are going away to
Landour tonight. That means lots of stories and photographs with which to entertain you guys after I get back! Bye! ~:-D
