#52: On Indian poetry and finding happiness

Jul 22, 2019

Artwork by me (Rohini) to represent the inspired mood I'm currently in :)

Poems of the Week:

After attending the Bengaluru Poetry Festival this weekend, I've decided to turn my attention back to Indian poets. Here are some poems I fell in love with:

"Meeting poets I am

disconcerted sometimes
by the colour of their socks
the suspicion of a wig
the wasp in the voice
and an air, sometimes, of dankness.

Best to meet in poems:
cool speckled shells
in which one hears
a sad but distant sea."

-Meeting Poets by Eunice deSouza

"Find the poets, my friend said.
They will not speak of the things you and I speak about.
They will not speak of economic integration
or fiscal consolidation.

They could not tell you anything about the burden of adjustment.

But they could sit you down
and tell you how poems are born in silence
and sometimes, in moments of great noise,
of how they arrive like the rain,
unexpectedly cracking open the sky.

They will talk of love, of course,
as if it were the only thing that mattered,
about chestnut trees and mountain tops,
and how much they miss their dead fathers.

They will talk as they have been talking
for centuries, about holding the throat of life,
till all the sunsets and lies are choked out,
till only the bones of truth remain." -from Find The Poets by Tishani Doshi

"I was eight when I looked through a keyhole
and saw my mother in the drawing room in her hibiscus silk sari,
her fingers slender around a glass of iced cola
and I grew suddenly shy for never having seen her before." -from When Landscape Becomes Woman by Arundhathi Subramaniam

"A letter arrives—
still odorous, crushed voile

of childhood sleep; I tear it to pieces,
taste each one, separately." -from Exile by Subhashini Kaligotla "When it rains, the dead descend, you appear,
the smell of rainwater in your hair,

wearing the ring I placed on your finger,
a scent like heat and a voice not yours, a
child's voice singing of age-old danger,
in Hindi, a lover's lament from Pyaasa.

Your lips, clear of the color you wear,
are not new to me, are lovely and bare,

and our old argument still burns.
How soon will you forget me if I die?
By the river in this room and the way it returns,
I swear, If I forget you, let everything die." -from Poem With Prediction by Jeet Thayil
"Images consult
one
another,

a conscience-
stricken
jury,

and come
slowly
to a sentence."
-On The Death of A Poem by A.K.Ramanujan