Three poems in the latest issue of Mascara Literary Review. And two poems in Hari Batti’s Green Light Dhaba.
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I’m in this article in HT Horizons. According to it, my typical day involves reading, reading, and well, not much else. Not sure where they got that idea from but it sounds nice. Kind of a dream life. Also, this article about City of Water appeared in Bangalore Mirror today.
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I had written about South African poet Loftus Marais some time back and I’m really thrilled to see him on PIW. It means that translations of some of his poems are now online.
Hiroshima anniversary. Bombs in general, actually. Coincidentally, I saw this production of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen over the weekend. I liked the play (and the performance) and it took me back to poems on bombs including Yehuda Amichai’s ‘Diameter of the Bomb’ which I’ve posted earlier. Also, a few days back The Guardian featured war poetry commissioned by Carol Ann Duffy. I’ve been very upset with the poems she’s written since she became poet laureate and the one she’s contributed here didn’t do much for me either. But war poetry is very difficult to do well — the stock images just overflow so easily plus one is battling general fatigue and inurement because they’ve become common on TV news. However, I liked:
Afghanistan
by Paul Muldoon
It’s getting dark, but not dark enough to see
An exit wound as an exit strategy.
In related thoughts, death and grief and so on, something in Jeanette Winterson’s column for July on her blog moved me very much:
So the book finished, I was just moving forwards, when I faced two deaths in the next 4 months: Pat Kavanagh, who had been my agent at the most formative time of my writing life, and with whom I had had a very serious affair. For me, if I love, it doesn’t stop, even if the shape changes. Love is as strong as death.
And then my father…
What a time… so if I say that I am in a good place now, and that everything has changed – both at a deep level, and on the surface… I keep remembering that the the opening line of my book Written on the Body, is ‘Why is the measure of love loss?’
At one time I could relate to the ‘love doesn’t stop’ bit, but over time, I find myself growing more cynical. Does it become easier to start and stop love once you “master the art of losing”, get used to measuring loss? There are people I can imagine loving all my life. But there are enough others who I loved desperately at one time and now feel a vast sense of fatigue and indifference towards. My mother says “what is true for a time is true for that time” — and post-loss fading should not blur or sully that truth. I lean towards this most days. I really like Winterson. I think her writing is luminous. A friend, who had the incredibly good fortune to attend a reading, tells me that she is as impressive in person. And the generosity and faith of this statement, the heart in it, lives up to all that.
I also find it amazing and very admirable when people notice and remark on beauty even when shrouded in grief. When my father died five years ago, I went into a fugue from which I took months to emerge. I don’t remember writing about a single thing, let alone about his death or the grief. Clearly, my coping mechanisms were not very evolved. I think, today, I would try to do it differently, turn more to things of beauty around me, and to writing. Because that is the best way to cope, isn’t it? To continue to do the things you love most, the things that nourish and nurture.
Winterson mentions the lunar eclipse in her column and I’ve been thinking about it too. Firstly, because I love the moon. I like putting it in poems despite being advised not to. I like reading poems about it even though it’s a face pocked with as many cliches as craters. And the actual eclipse may have been a damp squib but I’m excited anyway because Susan Miller, who is my secret vice and superstition(al) weakness tells me that it will bring me good things and make August generally fabulous. I’m not arguing with anyone who says such nice things.
And lastly, here are two poems of mine — one on war and one on the damned moon. They’ve both been published before (Mosaic, Unisun; Not A Muse, Haven Books) and will also be in my first collection City of Water, to be published by Sahitya Akademi some time soon (hopefully this year)…
Homecoming
You cried while telling me–
about the land, packed stone
under your boots, the air
dry as burnt bread, your skin
blistering like volcanic earth,
your head, a numb knob, stunned
by the monotony of the miles
and the village,
its cluster of homes
like a flock of sheep
in the open, its people
dim with terror,
and how you raped
the first woman you saw there,
how she crumpled like wet newspaper,
pounded your back with her hands
as the child in the corner
cried and cried without knowing why,
and crawled about
and knocked over the kerosene stove.
Your tea had gone cold.
I put my hand on the back
of your neck and said
everything would be okay.
I said that I understood.
But even after all these years,
when I close my eyes, hers
swim up, warm and brown,
and every time we make love,
I see her bruised hands
reach up like a prayer.
***
Moonsong
My love
shames rivals into oblivion,
obscures them
until all that is left in the sky is my orb,
its one gleaming eyeball
white as sand on foreign beaches,
hollow as dust.
You slid in
to find mountains, craters
and lava spew.
Now you are afraid
of my solitary anger,
the coiled serpent
at the base of my spine.
You are afraid
of its nameless hungers,
its slow uncurling down the length
of your body.
You are afraid
it will stalk you in dreams.
You are afraid
of my haunted face in the night,
my fragilities–
the soft space
at the base of my throat,
the fine line of my collar bone.
You are afraid they will unravel you.
You, who have spent a lifetime
simplifying yourself.
The latest issue of Eclectica is online and two of my poems are in it. Do read.
I’m still grinning about yesterday’s news that the Delhi High Court has come to its senses about Section 377, homosexuality and basic human rights. Now if only the government would actually overhaul the law. I’m also grinning because I started the month with book-buying, which is always a good way to start. Acquisitions: A Man in the Dark by Paul Auster, The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch, Delta of Venus by Anais Nin, a host of Joyce Carol Oates (The Rise of Life on Earth, The Falls, Man Crazy) and Vol 5 of the Sandman Series: A Game of You by Neil Gaiman. As I was telling a friend the other day, Neil Gaiman is my fix. His Sandman series is available in ten volumes that bring together all the comics. My plan is to buy one volume a month because I want to savour pleasure for a change instead of hurtling through it like I usually do. I was also gifted A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver. Much joy. 
Oh, and today, there is a Toto Funds the Arts reading of Ram Ganesh Kamatham’s new play, Ultimate Kurukshetra, at Crossword at 6.30pm. Some well-known theatre people (Mallika Prasad, Balaji Manohar, Ajith Hande) will be reading. Apologies for the late notice–but there is a repeat performance at the Rangashankara tomorrow at 11 am. So in case you miss today’s reading, you can catch it there.
Four of my poems are in the latest issue (pdf) of Origami Condom. You’ll have to scroll down quite a bit for the poems. I’m republishing two of them here:
Desire.15.
Intensity had its failings that summer.
We clambered over cartons in the store-room,
stumbled in semi-light. Your fingers played
at ineptitude. I act like I know the impatience
of hands. I wonder if any of my friends
have done this. They attended special
classes for French, stooped
over Le Soleil, repeated verbs in monotone—
naitre, revoir, mourir—maundered later
at the arcade where boys in black leather
leaked cigarette smoke out of their mouths
while mother at the dining table
illustrated latitudes and longitudes
to a recalcitrant son, her voice taut
as sitar strings, her eyes patient as stars.
I pretend interest. I pass food
from plate to mouth. The walls receded
into the shapes of your face. I wait
for the next humid or rain-stopped afternoon
when your fingers will find their way
into the right places.
***
Totem
After his hair fell out in clumps,
it skulked everywhere. On his pillow.
The back of the sofa where he leaned
his head. In the drain.
Coarse black strands like handloom cotton.
He took to rubbing his hand
across the shrubby baldness
like other people smooth beards
or lift moustache edges
with agile, self-conscious fingers.
It was more than acceptance
or coming to terms. It was almost
vanity.
His head:
its brown soft as caramel, faintly wrinkled,
totem that had watched over us for so long,
now bursting like a sack, neat tumors
jostling in there like potatoes,
bulged frailer in the lamplight every day.
***
Peach
heavy on my palm.
Its hard-knot,
rattling heart muffled
by flesh I want to pierce.
Its skin
soft as felt, smooth as
unshaven down
on bare arms, dust on
butterfly wings.
Its in-between colour –
less than orange
not quite pink,
ambiguous
like brown.
Apples, pears and plums
are cool against the
cheek, but a peach
is warm.
***
Sunflowers
Their brown hearts shrivel
easily. They seethe in their skins
with the patience of
stalkers. In Van Gogh’s paintings,
they wilted in the heat of his
brilliant chrome
but they were indoors, you understand.
Try leaving them in a field. They
will grow like an army. Their
upturned faces will teach you
devotion and their fierce,
absurd longing
for a distant star
will demonstrate the joy
in things unrequited.
*Originally published in the anthology Mosaic.