INDIAN LOVE STORY 8 & 9 (additional ref: Ruth Vanita & Saleem Kidwai's latest book)

INDIAN LOVE STORY 9: Khajuraho Longings

The monk and the layman
Order a cooled lemon drink
And talk about cafes one would visit
When they would visit new cities
New York, Paris or Buenos Aires
Accordingly they’d pack their bags
One extra robe for the monk,
A pair of fine shawls the layman
Buys with his months of pay
**
The monk and the layman
Laugh at their own sculpted forms
Sculptured by another layman
It captures their soft moment together
On that ancient temple wall
My hand on your chest looks great
Your arm around my waist
**
The monk’s dress light, one color
No shoes and wooden flip-flops
A small cloth bag across his brawny shoulders
His tan exciting and earthen the layman
Likes a lot and they laugh and they touch
Before they plan to set off for a worldwide tour
Learn to eat anchovies and mix a gin
**
They laugh because they know immortality was at hand
Scholars' books, photographs and documentary films
Meant just one way, more so
Once they set off from that temple wall

*****************
INDIAN LOVE STORY 8: Maidens in Love

The tree had supple foliage
Dense and purple
Something about that color
(They said, oh a Poison Tree)
Perhaps because it was enraged
To be called such a name
A tree from storybooks
A story that looked for readers
Very much like those who incurred banes
While the tree grew the mane of an unruly teenager
And leaves like eyes
Measured in turmoil
When you see someone die
In front of you and yet stay mute, not cry
**
Yes, Poison Tree they called it
**
Then there were these women
Who frolicked under the tree
And made it their own
With glee rubbed its bark
On each others' hands and feet
Lithe, earthen and stark
Those scary Poison Girls
They painted toenails with the purple sap
Sharpened a free tongue
With its twigs
Nymphs who poisoned static rules, turned
Upside down balances small and big
Wiped grime from wars and rage
Searched homes never found
Books with overgrown wild flower pages
Poems head down, as if ploughed
Also caused old wood and fabric
**
To wilt like filth
**
Under the purple joy
They still sing
For trees and rhymes
Sing and say oh come,
We aren’t Poison Girls and know
Your false storybooks chime
Of times chipped and gnarled.

These two poems looked good bunched together. I did not want to steal any more picture from the Internet. But "the monk and the layman" photograph is available in Wikipedia as well as in other sites, made famous and copyrighted. I would, for the discerning reader, like to provide a link here to a discussion on the latest book by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai -- "Same-sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History" http://queerindia.blogspot.com/2005/03/gay-historians-ruth-vanita-and-saleem.html. Also, there's a blog on the same by Frog Books publisher Sunil Poolani (http://frogbooks.blogspot.com/2009/02/out-of-closet.html). He is on my blog roll if you scroll down and search on the left-hand column of my blog.

Indian Love Story poems 3,5,6

These are poems no. 3, 5 and 6 under my INDIAN LOVE STORY poems series:

(Okay, I repeat, I've never celebrated Valentine's Day, never really figured out what's there in succumbing to the commercial pressures of buying and receiving flowers, dinners, gifts... unless of course we want to stimulate the flagging economy in these trying times. I don't even have money for that! But the month of February, for very special reasons that are personal, makes me think about love and romance. Also, I start sniffing Spring already):

3. Around The Champaka Tree
(dancing around the tree being pretty much a Bollywood staple!)

Oh this was her arm, smooth as silk
Not a pashmina branch of wild fragrance
So I came to her hovering
Over the blossoms and fallen
Pollen
Fallen on her cheeks left and right
Making her hair nightly bright
With Aguru
From old movie frames
Where lovely black-and-white heroines
Like her
Smile with ivory finesse
While we go around
The Champaka tree
In our dance of love
In a trance, half-true
Singing:
Take me my love, take me!

5. Smoking Hearts

Was it Amrita Pritam
Who had reached out for the still-live
cigarette butt-end
Left on the expectant ashtray,
the smitten one,

By that Urdu poet of lilting
lines and starry fantasies?
She was a heart of feathers and
I am too, fluttering as
Your half half-smoked cigarette
Calls me with its coiling capers

I too can pick it up, touch it to my lips
And inhale your breath, phlegm, desire
In and out
Before someone’s footfalls
come running
In scrutiny
Of what’s smoking

Between hearts and long days
of wildfire imagination
But I can I can!

6. Jhumkas
(Written after an Urdu poem, remembered vaguely)

Because he had said they’re his teardrops
Taken them out of his coat pocket
He had said
They’re my unruly locks over your cheeks

My arms happy and lax
When they embrace too much
Wear them my beloved
Jhumkas for your bamboo-silk earlobes

Jhum jhum, they tinkle
Bloom by my cheeks
With dreams they mingle
Jhumkas I forget in the bathroom
To scurry, fetch and drop


Hide in my dupatta folds and wear
Only when I stop and step
Out of home
To hear them sing

Tingly like teardrops on the neck
Tangled in my locks
Because these are jhumkas that spin and dance,
At last weary running amok --
Because he never came back.

(I don't exactly remember the Urdu shayari here, it went something like this "jhumke naa pehno jaan jhumke/jhumke chum lenge jhumke"... lovely play on the words as you notice)

Indian Love Story: Romance Under An Umbrella

I've never celebrated Valentine's Day, never really figured out what's there in succumbing to the commercial pressures of buying and receiving flowers, dinners, gifts... unless of course we want to stimulate the flagging economy in these trying times. I don't even have money for that, dang! But the month of February, for very special reasons that are personal, makes me think about love and romance. Also, I start sniffing Spring already! So here's one of the love poems I've been writing lately as part of a series. They are clubbed under the header INDIAN LOVE STORY (and don't ask me why it is the fourth one!):

INDIAN LOVE STORY
4. Romance Under An Umbrella

It’s the rain
And your face that streams
Like the pain of an inch-long separation
While we listen together

The road’s song churning under an umbrella
In full monsoon cadence

No, fingers don’t touch
And you take back the longing
Of our heavy-breathing nights
To the trill from a paan-shop radio

Reciting the very lines
I had memorized for you.



Photo from Internet: Raj Kapoor and Nargis in film "Shree 420"

Forthcoming: Urban Indian Women Poets' Anthology to Print my Poem in September

I am very happy to announce that my poem, CITYSCAPES, will be published by Frog Book publishers in September 2008 (hopefully without delays)in an anthology of urban Indian women poets. It's a great feeling to be in the company of names like Meena Alexander, Jane Bhandari, Imtiaz Dharker and Rukmini Bhaya Nair. Hey, Rukmini was my teacher at Jawaharlal Nehru University where I did my Masters in Linguistics. She taught us Morphology! And Kamala Das too?? The legendary Kamala Das?

Here's what guest-editor Meena Kandasamy wrote to me in an e-mail:

"Congratulations!
I loved your poem Cityscapes and it's been selected for our as yet-untitled anthology.
Could you send me a 100 word bio (ignore this if you have already sent it) and your postal address.
We'll mail you the anthology once its released in September.
Thanks for the submission once again, and the patient wait.
I am terribly sorry for getting back to you so late.
It's just that I was stumped with the submissions.
Do you have any title suggestions for this book?

Cheers,
Meena."

On her blog site (see link in my bloglist ), she posted the details as follows:
"Sixty and Done

July 11, 2008 by Meena Kandasamy (blog by a 24-year-old Tamil woman obsessed with dr.ambedkar’s dream of caste annihilation)

The final line-up
Usha Akella, Meena Alexander, Anoopa Anand, Jane Bhandari, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Sujata Bhatt, Sampurna Chatterjee, Rimi Chatterjee, Pervin Chhapkhanawala, Roselyn D’Mello, Mamang Dai, Kamala Das, Nabina Das, Atreyee Day, Eunice De Souza, Mira Desai, Nandini Dhar, Imitiaz Dharker, Tishani Doshi, Reshma Ghosh, Uddipana Goswami, Anjum Hasan, Abha Iyengar, Mamta Kalia, Meena Kandasamy, Lajwanti Khemlani, Preethi Krishnan, Chicu Lokgariwar, Gayatri Majumdar, Sharanya Manivannan, Meena Menon, Monica Mody, Monidipa Mondal, Anita Nair, Sandhya Nambiar, Suniti Namjoshi, Gopika Nath, Marilyn Noronha, Sukrita Paul Kumar, Meher Pestonji, Joan Pinto, Anuradha Pujar, Ratna Rajaiah, Lekshmy Rajeev, Anupama Raju, Mani Rao, Mukta Sambrani, Bina Sarkar Ellias, Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Anindita Sengupta, Shefali Shah Choksi, Yogita Sharma, Menka Shivdasani, Sushmita Srivastava, Arundhati Subramaniam, Pooja Susan Thomas, Sridala Swami, Payal Talreja, Pali Tripathi, Ruth Vanita, Annie Zaidi

I have included the names of the poets from whom I solicited submissions, and the names of the poets who probably decided to give this a try. I think this is just the collection that I have always wanted to read, and that I never imagined I would ever put together. There are a lot of new, new names and I am happy I did that. Someone decided to give me a chance because they liked my way with words and that’s why I am where I am today. So, I haven’t been swung around by established names alone. I loved doing the selections and I love the ones I have handpicked. I did love a few other poets (I mean, their poems), but sometimes the theme didn’t match. And to those who can’t see their names here, I am not sending any rejection mails. If it isn’t here, it isn’t in the book. That’s all. Besides, Sunil Poolani might be using a few great poems that didn’t go into this book for Urban Voice (with the poet’s permission of course). So, it is not a complete rejection, really. Thank you dears for making this so wonderful.

The pre-press will swallow the rest of July and some part of August. The book will be out in early September 2008."