SHEHER -- the Tentative Cover

Guest-edited by Meena Kandasamy, the anthology of "urban" poems by Indian women writers has this tentative cover. Haven't heard if they were re-working it. Encore shameless plug: my poem will be there humbly nestled, hopefully by the scintillating Kamala Das (same last names, you see!).

Basically, these were my comments on the cover:

*the vertical view conveys strength and direct approach of the woman’s position

*that she is holding together what represents the cities symbolic ‘mammoth’ bridges, pillars/monuments/edifice… she is like the female Krishna who held the mount govardhana (was it?) to shelter the cattle from rains… (aw I forgot my mythology!)

* that her back is turned towards us. We don't need to see her face always, a face that has been over-abused in movies, calendars, posters, matrimonial (shaadi.com?) ads… et al. hence we don't need to know if she is good/bad looking, dark or light, shy or angry… whatever

* that the image also conveys a sense of control in the way she holds the city’s edifice and looks upon the spread before her. She surmises it, it’s her say on the city.

* her hands holding together or apart of the monument and bridge is very emergetic. She has the capability to change, that comes out well.

What I didn't like is:

*that she looks very ‘rural’ in the way she has been dressed. per se there is nothing wrong with ‘rural looks’, but here, perhaps a more “straight” form would look better than a swingy, ghaghra-wearing sort of form. Perhaps the artist can rework on relaxing this formative structure of the woman’s image.

*I love B&W but there is just too much black there. and the spotlight kind of treatment doesn't make it less imposing. Could a border around the etching work to keep the image in its lightedness?

* The title font (I don't think it is spooky at all) seems to jar a bit with the slug/sub-hed below.

Also, friend and poet Anuradha Pujar's work will be there. Two writers from Ithaca in the same anthology, ain't that cool?

My Sunday Reading -- Seamus Heaney

Apart from gathering old stories and articles (mostly written by me) I also read something refreshing every now and then. Poetry Foundation (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/feature.html?id=182158) is a good place to go, and when I read Seamus Heaney, one of my favorites, the weekend seems quite good despite the gray sky and that nibble at the toes by a nagging about-to-descend autumn weather hovering outside my doors. Joshua Weiner writes an insightful article about Heaney's craft and how identity plays a role in shaping it...

Casualty

by Seamus Heaney
I
He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
Towards the high shelf,
Calling another rum
And blackcurrant, without
Having to raise his voice,
Or order a quick stout
By a lifting of the eyes
And a discreet dumb-show
Of pulling off the top;
At closing time would go
In waders and peaked cap
Into the showery dark,
A dole-kept breadwinner
But a natural for work.
I loved his whole manner,
Sure-footed but too sly,
His deadpan sidling tact,
His fisherman’s quick eye
And turned observant back.
Incomprehensible
To him, my other life.
Sometimes, on the high stool,
Too busy with his knife
At a tobacco plug
And not meeting my eye,
In the pause after a slug
He mentioned poetry.
We would be on our own
And, always politic
And shy of condescension,
I would manage by some trick
To switch the talk to eels
Or lore of the horse and cart
Or the Provisionals.
But my tentative art
His turned back watches too:
He was blown to bits
Out drinking in a curfew
Others obeyed, three nights
After they shot dead
The thirteen men in Derry.
PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said,
BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday
Everyone held
His breath and trembled.
II
It was a day of cold
Raw silence, wind-blown
Surplice and soutane:
Rained-on, flower-laden
Coffin after coffin
Seemed to float from the door
Of the packed cathedral
Like blossoms on slow water.
The common funeral
Unrolled its swaddling band,
Lapping, tightening
Till we were braced and bound
Like brothers in a ring.
But he would not be held
At home by his own crowd
Whatever threats were phoned,
Whatever black flags waved.
I see him as he turned
In that bombed offending place,
Remorse fused with terror
In his still knowable face,
His cornered outfaced stare
Blinding in the flash.
He had gone miles away
For he drank like a fish
Nightly, naturally
Swimming towards the lure
Of warm lit-up places,
The blurred mesh and murmur
Drifting among glasses
In the gregarious smoke.
How culpable was he
That last night when he broke
Our tribe’s complicity?
‘Now, you’re supposed to be
An educated man,’
I hear him say. ‘Puzzle me
The right answer to that one.’
III
I missed his funeral,
Those quiet walkers
And sideways talkers
Shoaling out of his lane
To the respectable
Purring of the hearse...
They move in equal pace
With the habitual
Slow consolation
Of a dawdling engine,
The line lifted, hand
Over fist, cold sunshine
On the water, the land
Banked under fog: that morning
I was taken in his boat,
The screw purling, turning
Indolent fathoms white,
I tasted freedom with him.
To get out early, haul
Steadily off the bottom,
Dispraise the catch, and smile
As you find a rhythm
Working you, slow mile by mile,
Into your proper haunt
Somewhere, well out, beyond...
Dawn-sniffing revenant,
Plodder through midnight rain,
Question me again.

Some DTE stories, Lost and Found from 1996!

It is amazing how sometimes the Internet can throw up surprises at you, that too on a lazy browsy Sunday! I found some of my 1996, yes sir, 1996 stories published in Down To Earth environmental magazine (http://www.downtoearth.org.in/). Guess where? Some website called India Environmental Portal I never knew about. I have pasted them below with link to the portal. The map, graphic and the photo with the stories are original, accompanying the articles the way they were printed back in 1996. I feel old, ooh!


Waterfront Cauvery
Author(s): Nabina Das
Date: 28/02/1996
Source: Down to Earth
Tags: Cauvery, Karnataka, Water Distribution, India


THE dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu regarding the distribution of the Cauvery river water in the winter of 1995, had become a constitutional crisis, Early this year, the Narasimha Rao government appointed a three- member panel which was expected to submit a report to the Centre after assessing the crop pattern and stress in the Cauvery basin and the delta (Down To Earth, Vol 4, No 18). According to Y K Alagh, vice-chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and head of the panel, the report has recently been submitted to the government. although it has not been made public yet. Earlier reports had assessed crop condition in region during normal rainfall seasons, and not in the dry months. Speaking to Down To Earth on February 1, Y K Alagh, refusing to comment categorically on the panel's findings, said, "I think both the states are great, and I am glad to render my service for a national cause. I can only say that the crisis is a seasonal problem, under discussion since last quarter of the last century, with which the farmers in both the states have learnt to live. External water supply may be required to lessen their sufferings." In Alagh's opinion, southern India has a very complex crop pattern (rotating kuruva, samba and thaladi rice crops) dependent mainly on the north- east monsoon, as opposed to the north Indian crop pattern. The 'canal colonies' that modem Punjab boasts of today, were in fact, already present in the state of Mysore since long. His observations reaffirmed the position held by many experts that the crisis stems largely from the recent shift over to water-intensive cash crops, Several experts have opined that the failure of the northeast monsoon last year, triggered the recent crisis in the Cauvery basin. The dams had very little water; even satellite pictures showed a very low index of both ground and surface water. The VC pointed out the correlation of the present water crisis: Tamil Nadu's needs heighten Karnataka's, and vice versa. He observed that both the states were actually water-strapped in different ways. And it is only the balancing of 'need' and 'usage'- important determinants of the irrigation methodology practised in the two states (the reliability is almost 75 per cent) - that can solve problems. Referring to probable measures to reduce the sorrow of farmers in the Cauvery basin and the delta, Alagh said, "Water should be used in an optimum manner. There can be better sharing patterns, rationing and pricing of water, rainwater harvesting, creation of effective water markets and the like." Eventually, these measures are expected to improve the ground and surface water situation in the Cauvery basin. He said that all these would be part of the National Water Policy which has been created to aid both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; but it should be made "effectively operative", He commented, "Already, we are late in creating the policy." Alagh sounded an ominous prediction. He said, "In the very ear future, India is going to be a water-strapped economy. Mostly, the country will face groundwater irrigation problems, increasing salinity and ingress in several regions marked by a falling water table. Pricing of water may teach policymakers a few lessons. The need of the hour is societal and political wisdom, which can put the problems to rest."

For All That Is green
Author(s): Nabina Das
Date: 29/06/1996
Source: Down to Earth Vol: 5 Issue: 19960630
Tags: Environment

AT a function organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature- India in New Delhi on June 5 on the occasion of World Environment Day, the chief election commissioner, T N Seshan said that the burning topic of environment could be compared to the proverbial elephant which was touched by four blind persons and wrongly defined by all! There is no need to go into the details of the proceedings of the function where several suggestions were made, debates held and explanations given, except imbibe the information that there are only five people to every vehicle in Delhi as opposed to 45 in Calcutta, 24 in Mumbai and 55 in Madras; and that vehicular pollution alone contributes to 64 per cent of the Delhi's noise and air pollution; that the quality of the Yamuna water in Delhi is in the E category - fit only for irrigation and industrial uses, and that by AD 2010, the food grain requirement in the country will touch 240 million tonnes. Depressing enough. What rules our lives anyway? Environmentalists and their outfits have emerged as the 20th century Nostradamus, predicting a great apocalypse if the right things don't just happen. Dante's descent into Hell perhaps couldn't have been worse. The emergence of environmentalism in the last decade has, in certain ways proved a boon and in some cases, a sustained eyewash. From forming a committee for mountain development to wildlife conservation to protest incinerator usage to CFC phase-6ut efforts, the world has marched a long way in defining green crusadeering today. Even as the Habitat ii in Istanbul took off after a yawning span of two decades (Habitat I was held in Vancouver), to parley the state of the world's teeming multitude, everyone woke up to several cruel facts about the state of the global populace. Since many of the situations are being realised as irreversible, there seems to be a frenetic attempt to pitchfork reforms everywhere, from anywhere. But the centre is falling apart. The book Our Stolen Future, by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski and John P Myers - described as a cautionary tale - makes interesting observations: "What is happening to the animals in Florida, English rivers, the Baltic, the high Arctic, the Great Lakes, and Lake Baikal in Siberia has immediate relevance to humans. The damage seen in lab animals and in wildlife has ominously foreshadowed symptoms that appear to be increasing in the human population." The book says: "In time, the alarming reproductive problems first seen in wildlife touched humans, too." In fact, the root of the problem had been grasped by the early 20th century American philosopher, John Muir, quoted in the book as saying, "When we try to pick up anything by itself, we find that it is bound by a thousand invisible cords ... to everything in the universe." No one seems to have yet picked up the common thread. Precious little is usually done to resolve any ecological disaster until the 91tuation gets out of control. At this moment, we are bestowed with a punctured ozone layer; a massive onslaught of death-dealing old and forgotten viruses; the AIDS / HIV spectre; a toxic waste inundation resulting in,@carcinogenic food, water, dyes and materials; a struggle for the right over one's indigenous resources; nuclear' disasters still lurk around; virulence of pollution; a marauded forest cover, dying waterbodies and depleting resources, and a madly burgeoning population. Intellectuals may have been and swearing by the swooning over environment on umpteen occasions like the World Environment Day or the Habitat conference. Sustainable @evelopment anyway is their mantra. Alternatives naught. But a national newspaper reported that despite all homilies or exhortations, 17,000 biological species or sub-species disappeared from the face of Earth, about 26 billion tonnes of top soil was washed away by surface erosion, desertification rose by nearly six million ha, 17 million ha of forest cover was lost - and all this in just one year. Environmental activism today should mean environmental legislation strictly coupled with people's participation the world over, in tune with the scale of degradation experienced in different places. It is heartening to note that for the first time in the judicial history of India, the first green bench has started sitting from June 3 at the Calcutta High Court as per the Supreme Court's direction. One expects a lot from it. A Poison Information Centre recently set up at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi would, besides immediately treating cases of poisoning, provide information on poisoning induced by chemicals, plants, drugs and household pesticides. Shimla has reportedly been successful in completely banning polythene bags and introducing paper and cloth bags for commercial purposes. In this kind of effort, educating the people is a basic necessity. In this regard, Anil Agarwal, director of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, opines that Third World issues, being complex ones, need careful handling. According to him, the Third World must have development in a way that protects the environment and its people from harm. And there is still enough time left for us to deliver the goods.

Citywards Ho!
Author(s): Nabina Das
Date: 29/06/1996
Source: Down to Earth
Tags: Children, Population, Urbanisation, Women

IT is definitely a small world that we live in today, and Damocles' sword never shone so ruthlessly before. This fact has been highlighted by the startling revelations in the recently released The State of World Population, 1996. Within 10 years, more than half the people of the global village will become city dwellers, comprising 3.3 billion of the 6.59 billion urbanites. states the report. The report examines "the causes of urban growth and the implications of expanding urbanisation" that would inevitably face neo-urbanites. This may not necessarily be a "bad" development, assured Wasim Zaman, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative, while releasing the report. "But it is also true that in developing countries some 600 million of today's 1.7 billion urban residents do not have the means to meet their basic needs for shelter, water and health," he said. Zaman stressed that poverty will threaten the growth of urban future; for the poor, their environment will emerge as overcrowded, violent and unhealthy, where millions of urban children may be at the risk of being school drop-outs and becoming victims of labour exploitation, sexual exploitation, unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases (STD). In the foreword to the report, UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali says, "To be sustainable, development should be better balanced between rural and urban areas, and among small, medium-sized and large cities." The report pinpoints increased mobility as one of the major features of rapid urbanisaton. Migration, in fact, accounts for some 40 per cent of the citywards exodus, where the effects of international migration (although insignificant by comparison with internal movement) would have more serious implications. Apocalypse now While the report touches upon all the issues confronting urban life, it makes some startling statements: "The emerging viruses (on which another UN report was carried in Down TO Earth, Vol 5, No 2) are the only most dramatic examples of rural diseases establishing themselves in urban areas." Hectic urbanisation is projected to lead to a deadly apocalypse whereby several infectious diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, antibiotic-resistant infections and STDS/HIV/AIDS, etc would wreak havoc on communities in the developing world. Already, India has seen a resurgence in the onslaught by the first three. The possible threats to urban health conditions are more or less unknown to rural surroundings, most important among them being air and water pollution - the direct result of industrial activity, transportation and cooking exhausts. The neo-urbanites will thus be exposed to hazards which their natural immune system is unaccustomed to, making them much more susceptible. The report states: "The demands of the urban future will test the pledges made by the world's governments at the series of global conferences on social development, which started in 1992 and concludes in June 1996 with the International Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat ii) in Istanbul. Meeting their universally agreed goals is vital for the future of cities and for all prospects for human development." It also says: "Among the most specific goals are those of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994). The 1CPD aims at achieving primary goals of providing universal primary health care including reproductive health care, family planning and sexual health by 2015, closing the gender gap in education and providing education for all by then , and ensuring equality and autonomy for women as essential for dynamic urban growth." Interestingly, the report documents the composition and distribution of the World's largest cities that have undergone dramatic changes over the past 45 years. Bangalore, Mumbai, Calcutta and Delhi are among those metropolises 'projected to become megacities by AD 2015, registering a more than three per cent growth rate per annum between I @90 and AD 2000. Zaman specifies, "By the year 2000, it is projected that Mumbai will be the second largest city of the world and there will be three Indian cities with population of 10 million and over."

Focus on Eve Several recent studies, according to the report, show that a growing proportion of the rural-urban migration patterns comprises women; and if individuals migrate, they do so as "part of a complex family and community process". It is evident, then, that the gender factor plays a significant role in determining migration streams. But this aspect remains somewhat elusive - "obscured by conceptual problems and measurement difficulties". The report discusses the policies, strategies and issues for improving the cities, which have been further refined by the ongoing Habitat ii conference which has focussed on shelter for all; it was attended by a representative of the NGO Waste Wise from Bangalore in India which presented an alternative approach to solid waste management. The ICPD'S main concerns are families and children, health and environment, population distribution, urban management and ensuring access to information. The UNFPA strategies encompass improved family planning and health care for all, and advocates empowerment of women. But questioning Turkey's right to hold the conference, 35 NGOS organised an Alternative Habitat ii to highlight problems not adressed by the official event. The urban future is feared to carry several risks towards our physical environment and natural resources, for social cohesion and human rights. However, considering the opinion Of sociologists, that cities - already accounting for 60-80 per cent of the GNP of many developing nations - could serve as hubs of human creativity, this growth could open up a lot of developmental avenues. Despite the speculated setbacks, the phenomenal urban growth is seen as a very heartening "secular shift in societies and economies, on a scale never experienced before", asserts the report. The need of the hour is a cohesive society where women's role will be well-defined. To meet existent needs and anticipating new ones would be the crux of the agenda in building a "civic society", it envisions.


A Bolt From The Blue Author(s): Nabina Das
Date: 14/12/1996
Source: Down to Earth
Tags: Air Transport, India

AS the debris of the first ever mid-air collision in the history of Indian aviation between a Saudi Boeing and a Kazakh IL-76 aircraft lie spread over an area of 10 km in Charkhi Dadri — about 80 km southwest of Delhi — several investigations are on to probe into the disaster. Whether it was pilot error or instrument failure, for aviation experts, however, the cause behind the collision that claimed 351 lives and reduced the safety of the Indian skies to a myth, lies somewhere in the haloed portals of the ministry of civil aviation and the National Airports Authority (NAA). The omen has long been felt to be disconcerting on the ground itself. The "airport stress syndrome' came to roost in India with the statement of an annual air traffic growth rate of five per cent and the NAA projection that the rate would have climbed to eight per cent from 1996 (see Down To Earth, Vol 3, No 12), thanks to the open skies policy adopted under the aviation glasnost. If the sheer magnitude of the November 12 accident makes the word ‘tragedy' sound like an understatement, the word ‘crowded' fails to convey the state of the Indian skies, once thought to be generous and capacious. Says air marshall D Keeler, former additional director general of civil aviation (ADGCA), "The quantum of air traffic handled by airports like Delhi and Mumbai has flown above the danger mark. We are promoting its further growth and approaching the target of close to 20 flights per hour. Aviation operations are a matter of dealing with carefully carved out corridors, and presently, the corridors resemble a choked throat.' But the asphyxiation of air corridors is not an unheard of phenomenon. Way back in 1988, when Vayudoot was being conceived as the alternative domestic airliner to the sagging Indian Airlines, jams in the air with aircrafts flying bumper to bumper were foreseen. Air Traffic Control (atc) was identified as the key area of growth to handle the number of flights that resembled German armadas over England during World War II.K V N Murthy, former executive director (planning), naa, says, "There are airports in the west and the east which are handling much more traffic. But the difference is the quality of technology at disposal in the air traffic control rooms that makes their job easier and reduces the error margin.'It is indeed a startling revelation that air traffic controllers at the Delhi and Mumbai airports which, incidentally, are the most modern ones, monitor air traffic manually. Surjeet Singh, a controller in Delhi says, "We handle flights on paper and fix recording points for both incoming and outgoing flights. Once a flight reports its presence, we fix another slot and then move to the next. Once there is a computer to do all this and a sensor to feed a voice system, we can cut down the time taken to handle each flight.'In fact, an ambitious atc automation project was conceived in 1988 by the naa in collaboration with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). Following global tenders in 1990, the contract went to the lowest bidder — Raytheon — a us-based company. Today, the project outlay cost is Rs 423 crore.As per the contract, Delhi and Mumbai atcs would get a whole range of sensors: one airport surveillance radar (ASR) with a range of 60 nautical miles, one en route surveillance radar and a monopulse secondary surveillance radar — the last two with a range of 250 nautical miles (one nautical mile = 2.9 km). For better communication, installation of very high frequency omnigraphers (VHFO) of a 30 nautical mile range and very high frequency omni range transmitters for bifurcation of unidirectional flights have been proposed. Presently, the Delhi and Mumbai control towers function with an ASR having a range of 60 miles. Of the seven vhfos that were proposed, four have been installed. But there were complaints of radar ‘slippage'. For example, on the radar screen one aircraft was shown by two blips, and often, the radar did not pick up the signal of a moving target within its range. According to airport officials, apparently the equipment supplied had some defects in the software. Says Keeler, "Had the new radars been commissioned in time, then there would have been fewer chances of this collision. Ironically, the given date of completion of the automation project was November 1, and the crash took place within a fortnight's time." Keeler says that the collision occurred because one of the two aircrafts strayed into the others flight path although the Saudia plane was directed by the atc to maintain a height of "14,000 ft and level' after leaving Delhi, and the incoming Kazakh airliner was asked to maintain "15,000 ft and level'. It has been recorded that the two aircrafts were at a distance of 13 miles, and were, according to the pilots, maintaining their respective heights (later, a section of the press reported that the Saudia aircraft had assumed excess height). But 13 miles is a minor distance between two aircrafts moving towards each other along the same path at the speed of 260 nautical mile/hour — to be covered within a matter of seconds.The atc at the control tower saw the two aircrafts on the screen as two blips. He knew the distance between the two and their position, but not the speed or the height, because the 20-year old radars in use at the igia do not provide this kind of data. Therefore, even as the two blips converged on the screen, the atc saw no cause for alarm. It was only when the blips did not separate themselves and carry on along the designated path but just vanished from the screen, that the initial shock set in. Says Murthy, "World over, the atcs have detailed data and they warn the aircrafts from straying into each other's path. But not so in India." Experts like Keeler say, "What is important is the fact that the control tower did not have an inkling that the two crafts were on the collision course. On the radar screens that are in use, all incoming and outgoing flights on the same radial seem to be on the collision course. These two dots, however, met on the screen and disappeared." The former ADGCA says that even a freak meteorological phenomenon could have led to the collision. H S Khola, DGCA, however, refuted charges that the equipments at the igia control tower were outmoded. He was speaking at a press conference in New Delhi, on November 13. It is also not known whether the aircrafts were equipped with a collision warning system, mandatory for aircrafts operating in the developed world. But it was not just the absence of certain instruments that invited the disaster. There were other lapses as far as the general operation procedures laid down by the icao are concerned, the most crucial being the ‘lateral separation' of the incoming and outgoing flights.Says Keeler, "The aircrafts in the sector (path) were separated by a height of 1000 ft. That is one level of safety margin. But then, they could have been separated laterally also, so that, even if there is some problem in levelling, they are still not on collision course." The two ill-destined aircrafts were flying in a sector once nicknamed ‘green five two', which handles more international flights than domestic ones. Normally, all sectors have corridors with lateral seperation for both incoming and outgoing, as well as domestic and international flights. In fact, all corridors in the Indian air space have provision for lateral separation, with the exception of this particular one.Keeler says, "The lateral separation was not done in this case as it was claimed that the corridor towards Pakistan in the west is too narrow. But I do not agree. It is at least three km wide, and there is scope for lateral seperation for adding another safety margin." The alibi adopted by the naa was that the Indian Airforce has always resisted expansion of the corridor citing security reasons. But according to Keeler, the airforce had, some months ago, called for negotiations for widening of the corridor. Another factor is the curfew system enforced by countries on the east and west of India due to the immense noise polllution caused by the aircrafts. Thus, to skip night travel through these countries, aircrafts on international sorties prefer night flying over India. But with ancient radars and communication systems in our country, night flying increases the risk factor all the more. Recently, the situation had improved a little when in Delhi and Mumbai, an Instrument Guided Landing System was installed to facilitate safe take-off and landing. To take a look at the West, in the us, a comprehensive plan known as the Future Air Navigation System (fans), is being drawn up by aviation authorities which is expected to be operational from ad 2010. A close-up of the system shows the following features:
• the package includes the Global Satellite Navigation System (GSNS)
• it is being developed by the us department of defense
• the fans package involves a total of 21 satellites
• the system transmits position and altitude data to an accuracy of 10 m
The GSNS, which will update positional information on aircrafts, is a combination of observation and communication satellites. Several European nations have expressed their interest in this system. According to the NAA, the Indian authorities, too, are keen on having the fans installed for a safer flying future.

Will the Real Sarah Palin Stand Up Please!

Sarah Palin appeared like a new star on the American political firmament, bright and sweeping, sweeping away all coverage of the old jaded Biden (pardon, no ageism here, he really is) from print, radio, TV, and the Internet. Even Obama's rock-star status seemed to wince a little from the enthusiasm she generated and the jibes she made with her 'pit bull wearing lipstick' half-liner (some power talk, huh?).

What an entry.

But the more I watched her speak (no hard news interviews to anyone yet. She just talks family stuff to soft mags and the only newsy bytes that came from her were apparently that she knows God -- my gawd -- supports Iraq war and Alaska pipeline. Also, probably hockey...) ad nauseum about her family, five kids, husband Todd, how she is so gung-ho about managing government and family together, the more suspicious I became.

First, I cannot imagine a mom shoving her minor daughter up on the pedestal, declaring to the world she is five-months pregnant -- they didn't do abstinence classes in Alaska, perhaps it was too cold, that's why; and we know Palin is against contraception, sex education and all that evil stuff -- and then whining that the press made a mincemeat of this juicy information. Just how calculating and cold-hearted can one be?

Second, to display little Trig as her trophy to be slung back on the face of the Democrats, was absolutely out of line. And this, after she had kept her pregnancy under wraps as she became the governor and disclosing it only towards the very end.

I totally fail to understand, why the business of running a government is made out to be a 'very special' job especially if you are a woman with five kids (one of them anyway decided to not remain a kid anymore and have her own kid)? Is "governance" supposed to be a measurement whereby gender angles now get defined? If you, a woman, had one kid and been in governance, you were not special at all. If you produced five or more kids -- one of them while you took up governance -- you are called "strong". As Palin has been.

What is so "strong" about having multiple kids and doing other work together? Instead of being a reaffirmation of feminism, this stinks of being a huge rotten piece of the anti-feminist agenda. Women not only have babies, but also work. Haven't we heard that always? And oh yeah, they have been working in fields, farms, large joint households feeding scores of mouths, walking miles to fetch water, firewood, fodder for cattle and ferrying food for their toiling male counterparts.

This has happened for thousands of years, it happens all over those underdeveloped or developing nations of the world even today. I am from the South Asian Subcontinent. Ask me, how the sacred duties of homemaking are hailed with greater reverence when the woman, a "good woman", does more work outside her four walls. Things like invading so-called male bastions like governance and policymaking and become false goddesses. But hey, while she does that, let her not forget babymaking and breadmaking.

While my respect for women who have been in aforementioned situations much due to patriarchal pressure than owing to their free will is unlimited, I don't figure out why such things should be considered a norm in today's world. Governance is an area where I'd want my representative to carry out her duties as a clear-headed person, married or unmarried, straight or gay, man or woman, with or without family and kids, equally effectively. And I won't listen to anyone telling me I cannot be a good journalist/writer/manager/banker/artist/professor/prime minister/leader because I have or don't have a huge family to look after.

Besides, to have or NOT have babies is a choice, clearly something Sarah Palin doesn't believe in.

Why else should anyone choose her? Not at least because of her moose-hunting, salmon-fishing skills (is it because these activities sound 'oh-so-manly'?). We've already had the outgoing Veep Dick Cheney proving that his quail-hunting skills were pretty similar to his governance skills. Don't need another!

Matt Damon's quip about Palin that it all seems a really bad Disney movie finds a zesty ring here with me. The Alaska governor reminds me of the pompous, raucous, flamboyant Fairy Godmother of Shrek the movie. She is really hoping to find that magic potion for her admirers. Well, I'm afraid she'll give them and several other unsuspecting ones a poison without an antidote.

Also please don't vote her for her rimless glasses, for I see little vision in her. Besides those glasses cost a packet -- elitist may I say? And although I cannot vote in the US, I think it's a good idea not to fall for polar bear burgers (I'm afraid that's truly why she wants those bears around, for hunting) on our table.

No, Palin is not a star and not someone who cares about policies for people's good. As much as Palin has energized the Republican campaign (she looks better than McCain, there's no denying), she hasn't made any detailed comment on issues like the economic trend, the debt, the tremor in stock markets, taxes. So, who is she? We definitely need to see the real Sarah Palin behind those rimless fixated eyes, bright lipstick, the plastic smile, the rankling voice, the Shrek Fairy Godmother braggadocio. Will the real Palin -- on real issues -- stand up please? Enough about what she thinks American life should be.

It's time to know what America deserves.

P.S. ---- If Sarah Palin wins, it'll be perpetual Halloween (interpreted as Hallelujah by Republicans...) for USA! There, my two cents. Also, I just read Katha Pollitt's "Lipstick on a Wing Nut" (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/pollitt) on The Nation's website which I recommend for her intelligent language and irreverent style (I had briefly attended one of her classes in Wesleyan Writers' Conference where I went as a Jakobson fiction scholar).

Eileen Moeller's "Vertical Footholds" in Kritya

Poet Eileen Moeller's "Vertical Footholds" appears in Kritya's September issue. An excellent visual poem that made me search out Eileen's blog so I can read her updates regularly. See http://eileenmoeller.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-poem-vertical-footholds.html

She is so kind to mention my contribution too. As Upstate New York 'neighbors', it was a pleasure to be published alongside her work.

The Trouble With Azaadi

I would like all visitors to take a look at this post I came across recently:
http://qalandari.blogspot.com/2008/09/trouble-with-azaadi.html

Qalandar makes a point that's usually not given much space for discussion in the subcontinental forums, especially when passions run really high and national movements are deigned to be the only path for subverting existing nation-state strangleholds.

I'll return with my observations later.

A Sulekha poetry prize

I don't have the audacity to post the poem here, I really never thought it'd be getting a prize. But Sulekha.com, the gigantic website that is a jolly pastime for expats and residents Indians alike as well as a few 'outside' voices, took a poem of mine and declared it one of the winners in one of their ongoing contests. This was a poem about my brother and me, seen through a very puerile juvenile pair of eyes, but no, really, I won't post it here! I am happy but a little embarrassed.

A couple of my other Sulekha poems are presented in the form of hyperlinks on this site. So if you find the one in question while chasing those ones, good luck! In the meanwhile, I am twiddling my thumb and hoping for more news about writings I have been submitting here and there.

Vogue-India: Not à la Mode

When Queen Marie Antoinette supposedly had said, "if they don't have bread, let them eat cake," about the starving French commoners during that infamous and controversial monarchical reign, she had underestimated the power of people and also, did not think much if her 'creative' quip would backfire that horribly, costing her own life. Legend may have spun this tale into something we all want to believe.

Priya Tanna is no Marie Antoinette and although being in charge of 'creative' aspects of Vogue India is something she is serious about, she is not serious about India's poverty and the way the fashion industry shape the middle class psyche, not legend but reality. She won't be guillotined for sure, but a lot of folks would want that little head of hers to think a little more humanistically.

Fascinating really is while the Indian media, of course those channels and papers that pride themselves as "mainstream", is busy producing oodles of newsprint and tape about the Indo-US Nuclear deal deliberations in Vienna, a handful of journalists are talking about a recent photo series by the fashion magazine Vogue-India. There's even a Facebook protest group.

Since the mainstream media is still dithering, let me cut to the backstory, a report in the New York Times:(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/business/worldbusiness/01vogue.html)

According to Heather Timmons, the writer, for many in India there are reasons to feel squeamish about the photos as the editorial spread seemed “not just tacky but downright distasteful” according to Kanika Gahlaut, a columnist for the daily newspaper Mail Today. She denounced it as an “example of vulgarity.” There’s nothing “fun or funny” about putting a poor person in a mud hut in clothing designed by Alexander McQueen, according to Gahlaut who spoke in a telephone interview. “There are farmer suicides here, for God’s sake” she said, referring to thousands of Indian farmers who have killed themselves in the last decade because of debt."

Priya Tanna, the editor of the fashion magazine in question, tried dismissing the notes of disapproval. “You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously,” Ms. Tanna said. “We weren’t trying to make a political statement or save the world.”

Precisely, that's the problem. Ms. Tanna ignored the fact that in a country like India, statements, reports, photos, features, songs -- everything has a political bearing. Every crumb of bread is politically earned by a huge majority. Every slice of cake produced (I presume Ms. Tanna likes her cake) by impoverished underpaid workers translates into social and political ballot. So, to depict a poor villager who perhaps earns less than $2 a day holding a Burberry umbrella or a toothless and clearly poverty-stricken old woman cuddle an infant wearing a designer French bib is nothing but political immaturity and an unpardonable frivolous act.

Do I then say that fashion cannot and shouldn't depict the poor and the underprivileged? Why not. I love fashion, I have my own version of it and I think the established fashion houses only need employ their resources a little better to "democratize" fashion in India.

Let's back up from the pseudo-arty pretension of Vogue/Ms. Tanna and see how else fashion events can make a difference. All of us here know about the UN's recent bid to promote awareness about sanitation and the NYC event where Indian sanitation workers (mostly Dalits) walked with top models (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7489296.stm). Naturally, the intention of that fashion event was to make the society open up its sluggish eyes (Cosmopolitan or Bloody Mary-induced) and look at folks who have barely earned any respect for a service they have been providing to a society divided so comfortably hierarchically...

Lip service? I'd rather have folks do that than turning away from realities as if they never existed. If Vogue had an iota of concern for the people they recruited (were they paid in French bibs and Burberry umbrellas?) -- perhaps a poor farmer like thousands we hear committing suicide, an old homeless woman, her ilk neglected and discarded, a baby representing millions that don't have basic care, a young girl who symbolizes gender imbalance and female foeticide -- I'd have probably looked at their campaign with sympathy in a country where it's cruel to call this photo series anything like 'art'.

Having said that, it's a pity that quite a few people still love a war, a drought, a hungry sad face... Be it fashion or news reportage or community outreach, so many book covers/magazine covers/annual reports (of NGOs too) etc. are full of sordid images meant to sell. If you ask me, one of my favorites is that famous photo of the Afghan girl (Sharbat Gula) looking with her stunned bewildered green eyes clicked by Steve McCurry. But then, here the photographer's mission statement was clear -- exposing the brutality and uselessness of war.

What is Vogue's mission in their caricature of a campaign? Just "lighten up" as Ms. Tanna said? She should probably suggest international Vogue editions to do high-fashion photo-shoots with East European war refugees, Katrina victims, rundown Chicago neighborhoods, jobless US auto workers etc., and see the reaction. Not only lighten up, she'll sober up too. If there has to be a fashion agenda making these folks the cynosure of all eyes, there better be a good reason beyond just selling magazines.

Why boycott Vogue India? They say the circulation figure is 50,000 although I doubt about the magazine's real following. Just march to Priya Tanna's office, bombard her with e-mails and phones, post blogs and messages, so she takes both fashion and poverty seriously hereafter. As a journalist I have seen worse, as an activist I don't want to see more.

My journalist friend Subir has blogged on this issue and as he mobilizes more opinions, I shall draft all that here.

THREE POEMS IN KRITYA

The September issue of KRITYA poetry journal is out. Three of my poems are featured in the section "Poetry In Our Times". Follow the link: http://www.kritya.in/0404/En/poetry_at_our_time.html to read the first one titled "Lost Landscape" and then click on "More poems by Nabina Das" to read the rest -- "Buddha's Children" and "Dialogues With Dilli" (you can click on the title of this post too, it'll take you to the relevant page of Kritya).

A very close friend asked me why I chose these three poems, and if there was any link among them at all. At a first glance, the three poems are geographically located in three different places -- Assam, my birthplace; Tawang monastery in Arunachal Pradesh, where I did my field-work for a Masters dissertation in Linguistics, and Delhi, where I lived for a decade or so studying first at Jawaharlal Nehru University and then working as a journalist for several years at several places before marrying a 'Delhiite'. The poet's voice, if there is something like that, is personal in "landscape" and "Dilli". When I shared these poems in an informal forum, I was told how the 'pain' of the first got re-generated in the third, in an altered form. The normative gesture of missing a lost landscape (birthplace) and another landscape (home away from home) where I lived for a considerable length of time, is iconized, according to my commentators. A few identified readily with "Dilli" because it is iconic of anybody's uprooting -- if roots are the only 'imagined' links -- from a place of utter familiarity. Nice supposition. But all the while, I contended that Delhi as a city had not enhanced my so-called rootlessness. What it had done is cast my own beliefs and fears into a complex relationship of unfamiliarity that I was ready to understand and to some extent, absorb. Hence, the question: "Dilli do you love me?" And this love is a new love, a grown-up love, somewhat carnal in flavor, as opposed to the sense of love's loss in "Lost Landscape" -- a love that is a child's attachment with her pleasurable as well as reviled things from the past (flute, Borgeets, bloodshed, death); a love that is now anecdotal in her contemporary memory; a love that she doesn't sanctify but showcases for sure. When finally my readers mentioned the words 'love' and 'roots', it was interesting to see the kind of symbiosis the words formed in the context of these two poems.

As for "Buddha's Children", the poetic voice there I think is pretty much a 'fly on the wall'. It's a documentary poem. Perhaps it should have spoken about the beauty of Tawang, the golden monastery, the breathtaking mountains all around, etc., if the poem were to follow a traditional descriptive route. But I'm glad it speaks about the people, the villagers, who make up the spirit of Tawang -- every morning as they trot up in a file along the precarious mountain roads to find work and come back exactly the same way. It's almost a set routine. What is not is the lavish monastery, the cheerful monks and their larder full of grains and food. The latter, therefore, never interested me. The villagers did, while they carried on building roads, scrubbing the Tawang courtyard spanking golden, minding their mules and children, chewing on their paltry meal and waiting patiently for the divine blessing to come.

In the same section of Kritya (second from the bottom), do read the wonderful poems of Vera Zubarev. Also, in the section "In the Name of Poetry", see Eileen Moeller's work. Absolutely refreshing.

Of Identity and Living in Imagined Communities

It's an interesting thought how identity works or doesn't work at all. The topic has been on my mind for a very long time, in different forms. While I write, read news and fiction, recite a poem or converse with a person, the issue comes up again and again. These are Proustian moments, in a redefined way. The triggers don't just evoke sensations from a bygone era like childhood, rather from phases in my formative years as well as my not-so-ancient adult life. I live in "imagined communities" or "imagined cultures", if I am to shamelessly borrow an academic term. Only, for me nothing is imaginary. All stand good and true.

Some time ago, when I created this blog, calling the URL "fleuve-souterrain", a few folks pouted saying, "French! But why?" Yeah, I'm not French, never aspiring to be. The reason that "fleuve-souterrain" or "the river underground" appeals to me as a nice concept has got nothing to do with French culture, language or food. True, Mo (see ABOUT ME above left) is getting his PhD in French Literature (his work is actually a mélange of literature, post-colonial geopolitics, architecture and identity issues among French, Francophone and Subcontinental milieu). Did I use mélange and milieu? Nah! But of course we know the English language has several cognates that are French? So, is his (pre)occupation influencing me? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Anyway, just because I am not French, or don't speak French like a parrot, or don't drink a daily glass of red wine and devour Camembert for breakfast-lunch-dinner everyday, does not mean I cannot have "fleuve-souterrain" as my blog URL. It's my choice. Period.

Contrarily, should I have named my URL 'bangali-naari' 'rojonigondha' or 'aabar-dekha-hobey' just because my forefathers (why don't they talk about foremothers?) happened to be Bengalis? Wait, not only Bengalis, but from the present Bangladesh, so maybe the URL should've been 'Surma-nodir-paar' or 'sylhet-shohagini' or 'bhatiali-gaan'... How absurd. But then how could I ignore my Assamese heritage and not name my blog 'nimaati-koinaa' or 'xeuji-dhoroni' or 'oxomi'? For me, the Assamese identity is as important as my Bengali identity. Maccher jhol is as tempting as tenga-anja.

And I'm not even talking about my pan-Northeastern identity (born and brought up in Assam, with relatives strewn all over Northeast India). We northeasterners love Beatles, eat akhuni or dry fish, dress Western, drink too much and women unhesitatingly sit on men's lap. Can anything be weirder? Oh, wait again, what about my 'English-speaking'/'Western-educated'/'bourgeoise brown sahib' identity? Or my '10 + years in Delhi' identity. My 'Punjabi-by-marriage' identity (there's a problem here though -- Mo's father's side is Multani from Pakistan and probably they have Jhangi connections too)? Good lord! So how far can stereotyping work?

These things don't matter really, but sometimes they put you off. For example, every time I meet people from Assam, my birthplace, and start conversing in Assamese with great delight in my heart, shoots out the inevitable question: "Ghor kot (where's your home)?" Now that's not a good translation. Ghor here means one's original village/town, either in the very urbane yet idyllic Brahmaputra Valley, or distinctly in upper or lower Assam (determining the degree of nobility in one's Assamese-hood). Without batting an eyelid I explain that my ghor is in Guwahati city (that's considered unnatural because the city is supposed to be full of aspirants, vagrants and migrants from villages and small towns of Assam) while my parents were born in what was then "East Bengal" and a very tickling family tree story (my dad has the ancient scroll) said that my ancestors were from northern India, migrated eastwards from a village by the banks of the Ganga during the golden reign of King Harshavardhana the great! Alas, no one sees the creative angle in this ethnogenetic fiction. Pat comes the remark: "Oh, but then your Assamese is very good!" Of course it is. Because I'm Assamese, from Assam and derived of all its joys and pangs. And somehow, I wonder why and how, most of these remarks come from folks sitting at elite seminar tables discussing and debating topics like identity, nationalism and integration. Jesus (I have a 'cultural' right to say that, I went to a catholic school)!

So how should I introduce myself? I drink red wine, savor Camembert, cook Thai and Lebanese, eat out Indian, love my tenga and fish, wear whatever I feel like, read in four-five languages, cherish Rabindranath and Lakshminath Bezbaruah as much as Dostoevsky and Mahmoud Darwish, spend energy on haranguing about Kashmir plebiscite and ULFA, want to strip and flog fanatics of all hue, name my blog URL a silly French nomenclature and find peace in the fact that Pakistani-Bangladeshi-Indian businesspeople outside the South Asian Subcontinent rarely fight a bitter fight. At a recent vacation in Ottawa when a family from Bangladesh figured out my still-existing ties to that country (some of my cousins live there) and the man said: "As Bengalis, it is then okay to ask you a favor," I smiled. Of course. Also, as humans, civilized folks and as people in need it is okay.

It actually felt better when while having dinner with Mo's film-maker friends Claudine and Patrice in Paris -- in the snooty St. Michel neighborhood -- Patrice very casually commented how easily I can pass of as a Mexican or Puerto Rican whereas Mo looked very "Indian"! I was tempted to quip, "Now I can tell people I just came across the fence the other day!"

So next time I hear people wondering whether I am a sworn Communist, a die-hard fish-lover, a madcap with enough 'bangali' brains, an Assam-born person with "very good Assamese", a northeasterner with "acceptable" Indian looks, a faux-Punjabi with good Hindi skills (some choice abuses I relish on occasions), an imagined-French, an always-subcontinental with stratified links all around, I'll let them have fun unless they are too eager to prove things to be such or otherwise. I dare not invoke Benedict Anderson because I'm told he is already passé and I'm still adding tags to myself. My identity.

Reading Robert Hass and Kay Ryan

Two different names, two different expressions. Robert Hass (above, left) and Kay Ryan. Hass won the Pulitzer this year in poetry (shared it with Philip Schultz's "Failure") for his collection "Time and Materials". I started reading Hass even before the Pulitzer was announced, from a review of his aforementioned book in Boston Review. It serves little to say that Hass' work enthused my own imagination a lot. It also put me to think about the way poets in the Indian subcontinent have been writing since ages, combining their respective contemporaneity with epical, classical, mythological allusions. That Hass was doing precisely that all throughout his work has been pointed out by some (American) critics as an "educated" approach to writing verse. I think educated is a snobbish word, at least for our own "Western-educated" sensibilities and there's no denying that we tend to use it as a tool for either conscious rejection of others or a vague alignment with other 'educated' milieu about which we have little or no idea. Therefore to me, reading Hass seemed less of an educated act, more of a reconciliation with the motions of history. The way it does reading any poet from the classical ages to the present times in the Indian subcontinent. Is it because Hass was influenced early on by Hinduism and Buddhism? Not sure yet, I've just discovered him!
Before I pen my thoughts further, I must say this is no scholarly article. Really, these are just my inner ramblings, my vagrant thoughts. So read it that way!

I reproduce one of my favorite Hass poems:

THAT MUSIC

The creek's silver in the sun of almost August,
And bright dry air, and last runnels of snowmelt,
Percolating through the roots of mountain grasses
Vinegar weed, golden smoke, or meadow rust,
Do they confer, do the lovers' bodies
In the summer dusk, his breath, her sleeping face,
Confer --, does the slow breeze in the pines?
If you were the interpreter, if that were your task.


So this is where Robert Hass is a poet of interaction, in the last line. And this is where my interest gets aroused and I read the poem backwards again and again. He leaves it to the reader, the 'interpreter' to say and see what the poem and its idea does. Here I remember that Hass is a naturalist with passion for environmental concerns and hence, the topography is alive with descriptions of the sky, creek, air, grasses, trees, "almost August" being the hallmark of his nature iconography. But wait, you may say, every poet evokes descriptions of nature. I do too! But this is Hass' California/West Coast nature and like it or not, last runnels of snowmelt, vinegar weed etc. (real or not), are pretty much his poetic decoration of that nature.

Now that as readers we already know the poem is about "that music", the notational relationship between the items of nature, the lovers ("his breath, her sleeping face"), the slow breeze etc. is highlighted by his leitmotif of interrogation (sounds really bad, this word): "Do they confer". The verb conferring immediately determines the indeterminate act of hearing, playing, feeling 'that music'. I cannot analyse this any more, because as the 'interpreter', my task was only to say how much I am in tune (pun intended!) with this little poem.

Another poem that I will not reproduce here in its entirety is FUTURES IN LILACS. Just consider the opening lines:

"Tender little Buddha," she said
Of my least Buddha-like member.
She was probably quoting Allen Ginsberg,
Who was probably paraphrasing Walt Whitman.


Here, I was ready to notice some mock-scornful tone about the lady -- she -- in question, who would, with all seriousness, quote an erudite source, to the extent of risking bathos! And even when in the heat of seduction

She was taking off a blouse,
Almost transparent, the color of a silky tangerine.

the sound of the syllables here and the tangerine texture evokes the tenderness that 'she' refers to in the beginning, but I thought by this time Hass' tone was far gone meandering into the parables of American history (not so much in the lady who is romantically engaged with the poet), where Walt Whitman's romance with a "trolley conductor" is recalled almost casually and dismissively:

He was in love with a trolley conductor
In the summer of -- what was it? -- 1867? 1868?

I'm still pondering about the title. Hence, no comment on that.

Now the last poem by Hass I'll refer to here is ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS. The very first line tells of a story displaced temporally and historically:

In one version of the legend the sirens couldn't sing.

Okay, I am game for the other version! And Hass doesn't disappoint.

It was only a sailor's story that they could.

The layering of the 'non-story' on the 'story' itself is the marvellous craft of this poem. It's worth reading this poem again and again to see language create a quasi-logic of reasoning. So, yes, read it on your own. As for envy? Yes, I have so much of that for Hass' work!

My other favorites are HEROIC SIMILE (more about this superb poem later), BETWEEN THE WARS and AFTER GOETHE.

You may find his poems online at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/.

Reading Kay Ryan (above, right), the current US poet laureate, was like looking into a mirror where an infinitely magnificent me stared back at this pathetic 'me'. Uh, oh, it sounds narcissistic again, my "mood favori"! No, but really yes, Kay Ryan's poems are something that should have been written by me, not her. The very 'tongue-in-cheek' and angular quality of her poems I find is amazing and strangely 'alter-egoistic'. But to say that, is to make a pedestrian comment about Ryan's work. Her poems open up to me amazing sounds in their twists and turns, indignantly flavorsome phrases and a fable-like prophetic capability, a cool recollection of quaintly impressionistic images presented in compact little forms glittering like fine Persian jewelry! I read this poem (bold mine) and was stoned, literally:

AMONG ENGLISH VERBS

Among English verbs
to die is oddest in its
eagerness to be dead,
immodest in its
haste to be told --
a verb alchemical
in the head:
one speck of its gold
and a whole life's lead.

Tell me what is unpredictable here...

For me, Ryan's etching of just one "verb" sums up her prophecy about all other verbs -- "to die is oddest in its/eagerness to be dead". This is a spectrum within which she speaks of all other actionable acts that life may hold. And yes, that verb is alchemical. It literally and physically is in a haste to be dead, to be over with, to be told. at the same time it sums up a life and the material and moral quests that accompany it.
Now:

GREEN HILLS

Their green flanks
and swells are not
flesh in any sense
matching ours,
we tell ourselves.
Nor their green
breast nor their
green shoulder nor
the langour of their
rolling over.

The reader can see how Ryan's topography, as compared to Hass' topography, is a continuous changing, rolling, engulfing entity quite akin to the anatomical flexing of human or rather, animate forms. For Hass, the icons of nature are signposts of a mood, time (history) and things that constitute the specific moment for his poetry (is this why the title Time and Materials?). Ryan nature, as well as any other topography she considers, is a thoughtful, even erratic, actionable entity that competes with her own declared sense of compactness and prophetic conclusions (fable). In THE LIGHT OF INTERIORS, this relationality comes alive when she writes:

... But, in
any case, the light,
once in, bounces
toward the interior,
glancing off glassy
enamels and polishes,
softened by the scuffed
and often-handled, muffled
in carpet and toweling,
buffeted down hallways,
baffled in equally
by the scatter and order
of love and failure
to an ideal and now
sourceless texture which,
when mixed with silence,
makes of a simple
table with flowers
an island.

I'll not point to the lovely and obvious alliterative craft at work in this part of the poem. What strikes me is the kinetic force of her words embodied by the description of 'light' that lights up her topography almost meandering and running through a clutter of objects, finally to rest upon the final poetic imagery of a "table with flowers/an island", so Vermeer-like, a static image throbbing with calm energy. Again you may find Ryan's poems listed on http://www.poetryfoundation.org/. Do let me know how you find these two poets if you read them.

NFI Northeast Media Exchange Programme Fellows

2000; Shillong, Meghalaya; NFI Northeast Media Exchange Programme Fellows.

Its amazing how a photograph can make you feel good. This one above is taken years ago. At the Northeast Media Fellowship's grand conference held in Shillong by National Foundation for India, one my former employers. Their flagship project used to be advised by Sanjoy Hazarika, the noted journalist and writer from Assam (Fellow, C-NES, New Delhi; he blogs at http://hazarika.c-nes.org/) and at that time was just handed down to me as the media coordinator, from Sunita Bhadauria, my former colleague and a very good friend.
We are standing outside on the front lawn of the famous Pinewood lodge in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya. It's sunny and pleasantly warm because of Shillong's calm hilly weather. The only women in the photo are Sunita and I. She is far taller than I am, so you know who's who!

Apart from Sanjoy Hazarika, there are our prominent Media Consultants in this picture -- D N Bezbaruah, former Editor of The Sentinel newspaper in Guwahati, Assam, where I began my journalistic sojourn as a fledgling reporter and subeditor in 1988 (ahem, I'm really that old!); Dileep Chandan, Editor, Asom Bani (affiliated to The Assam Tribune newspaper) in Guwahati, and A J Phillips, another media stalwart.

Of the Fellows from the "Northeast", the one standing next to Sunita (in dark shawl) was from Nagaland. A fine man with a great sense of humor. He told me about his recovery from substance abuse and his experience of violence from insurgency in Nagaland. He had to leave the conference early and I kind of missed him. Also, the Fellow from Manipur, don't remember his name, was apparently an active member of an underground outfit. I used to notice him a lot during our sessions. A very quiet and surly man, he barely spoke or replied to questions. When I tried making a conversation, he told me very briefly how aghast he was at the "incorrect reportings" by the mainstream media in Manipur. I felt I had to apologize on behalf of the "mainstream media". But I was a northeasterner too, I understood his points.

I thought this man will never open up, never really participate in our fantastic sessions because he was such an angry man. Well, at the after-party, I was proven wrong! At that informal gathering at the lovely guesthouse at the majestic Barapani reservoir of the Umiam river, when we began to read poems and sing songs, one of us strumming a guitar, he began humming too. Then clapping. And singing loudly. He even requested me for a particular song (when I told my colleagues with sufficient embarrassment that I tried singing for the radio and TV a couple of times) -- I think, Old Man River. I think I saw his eyes get moist and he quickly turned his face away from my curious gaze.

Subir Ghosh, a fine reporter and writer (married to my former schoolmate Richa Bansal, a journalist too), is standing fourth from the right in the picture. He is the one who posted this memorable photo on his facebook page! Thank you Subir (he blogs at http://www.write2kill.in/ about politics, media and art)!

Of cyber-writers, my slowness and Nirmalprabha Bordoloi

Since I have been writing quite a bit these days (nonjournalistic), and reading people's blogs and websites, suddenly I am overwhelmed. When I worked as a fulltime journalist in India and the US, very few of us blogged (The Ithaca Journal launched blogging on their site just the other day). I mean even writers and poets I met up in the last five years, always made it a point to express their low-level preference for blogging or similar such cyber-presentation of their writing activities. Now, most creative writers I have been meeting in the last two years all have facebook pages, blogs or websites. Even journalists. What they publish or plan to publish, gets posted on their personal blogs. This reminds me of the huge stack of print-out sheets I accumulated in our Delhi and Guwahati homes, trying to stuff them inside cardboard boxes for posterity. My articles, reports, commentaries. Even some poetry. Was there fiction? Can't remember. But poetry in Assamese, Bengali and English. If I wrote all that today, I'd have a humongous blog! And everything at the click of a mouse. No cardboard boxes needed and no worries about mice (the real ones) making a mincemeat of my published work. But then, I have to do what I do now. Maybe if time permits, transcribe each of those printed works to file in my blog (maybe have a blanket headline like 'words from the past' or whatever). Well, that'll be an adventure of sorts. Especially because my Tehelka.com writings have most of their web links now inactivated (that was the old Tehelka, not the new one). Right now my slowness taunts me.
And now that I'm talking about the past, and my writing, somehow my mind (always a spinning wheel) is bringing up a quaint memory. Then I wrote poems everyday, like a mad person. and I had sent out some poems to be published, recommended by my father's colleague and poet Shibaprasad Barua, for an Assamese journal that's probably defunct now. Barua uncle loved my work and he insisted I send stuff out. He returned a few weeks later with the journal containing my poems in print.
"Do you know who edited your poems?" He asked me.
"No." I was a little apprehensive.
"It's Nirmalprabha Bordoloi, our baideu!"
Wow! Nirmalprabha was the prima donna of Assamese poetry. That was an honor. Barua uncle told me how baideu (older sister) praised my work saying "for her age, she has handled very complex imageries..." or something like that. I wasn't too young, perhaps sixteen, seventeen. Still!
Now that I remember this, I feel how badly I have ignored my work. Perhaps that journal is not to be found anymore, I don't even remember its name. Perhaps I never kept a copy/photocopy of my work, that work and several other work. Moreover, it's sad how I never took this opportunity of working more, writing better and seeking the guidance of the likes of Nirmalprabha Bordoloi, who, despite her excellence, was a down-to-earth and approachable person.
Well, one thing for sure, if I find that journal and my poems that bear the editing of baideu, I'll certainly have them up on my blog.
Meanwhile, the memory of baideu's kind words (she is no more) should propel me to do some real work, now!

My poems in KRITYA

Dr. Rati Saxena, the multi-lingual writer-editor of the Indian poetry journal KRITYA (http://www.kritya.in/0203/En/index.html), has written back saying my poems will come out in their September issue. I am delighted. They have a terrific International Poetry Festival coming up in November. Apart from the giants of Indian poetry, the festival will feature poets from Uzbekistan, Mexico, Israel, Estonia, Vietnam, USA, and several European countries -- it's truly fascinating(http://www.kritya.in/Kritya2008/Participation.html)! Rati definitely thinks I must attend the festival in case I am in India. It's being held in Chandigarh this year, not very far from New Delhi. She also suggested I could share my work in the Open Forum. Well, I do have plans to be in India in November, will have to see if the timing matches.
The three poems that KRITYA will publish are titled "Buddha's Children; Lost Landscapes, and Dialogues With Dilli".
More later. Ciao.