stares. . .

i open the window. . .

stare at strangers?????

no one is required to stare back...


this is a simple take at things 

maybe this is as simple as it ill ever be

i open the window. . .

because. . .

because . . .
i could not sleep at night . . .
because. . .
i did not want to sleep during day
because. . .
there is a lot of irony in what i am saying. . .

i went for the seminar on social exclusion
only because. . .
i did not want to sleep. . .

because . . .
someone said that only women and children were saved when titanic was sinking
is social exclusion....

because. . .
someone claimed that being disabled demands an inclusion in social exclusion. . .

because . . .
i went for the seminar on social exclusion. . .

because. . .
i cannot sleep at night...
won't i gain inclusion in social exclusion
if i am nocturnally challenged?


all these becauses
only because. . .
i cannot sleep . . .

when words fail.....

..................................................

/////////////////////////////////////////////////

this is what i m tying to say

words fail........

cliches. . .

A firefly. . .
Out of the blue...
Out of the darkness...

the Darkness of the blue. ...
Plucked me back to reality!

a firefly . . .

Outside my window...
Jerking me out of the reverie

to call this an Epiphany

might be a cliche!

yet it did dawn on me
our life becomes a cliche
in our attempts to run away from cliches.....!

skeins of thoughts a response to kamala das's Summer in calcutta

“I have come, yes, with hunger, with faith and/A secret language, /All ready to be used.”(11-13). Going by these lines from the poem “A New City” the realm of poetry is given a new take by Kamala Das. It seems as if a poem is willed into existence merely by catching the many thoughts that cross the mind and fusing together all those different waves. Summer in Calcutta is such an oeuvre of poems that gushes forth from the deep abyss of her feminity. It is unconventional, as, at times, it seems like an outpouring, at other times, a child’s babble that is unfathomable. It is Das’s first collection of poetry, and the question that rises is whether she is simply playing with words. However, she is not at a loss as far as words are concerned as is evident from her poems and she even says in the poem “Words”:

                        All around me are words, and words and words,

                        They grow on me like leaves, they never

                        Seem to stop their slow growing

                        From within. . .

                        . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

                        They never seem to stop their coming

                        From a silence, somewhere deep within. . .   (1-4, 13-14)

            These 50 odd poems seem to gush forth like water, taking any shape a reader might concoct, a reason why these poems are difficult to place. They seem to be born out of a silence, but reverberating with many voices. The poems are not chiseled out as far as the structure and form are concerned - redefining the contours of poetry.  A lack of revision is a charge that is often levelled against her. But, as a writer, diving head on into a new domain, she bails out with these lines from the poem “An Introduction”:

Why not leave

                        Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,

                        Every one of you? Why not let me speak in

                        Any language I like? The language I speak

                        Becomes mine, its distortions, its queerness

                        All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half

                        Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,

                        It is as human as I am human, don’t

                        You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my

                        Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing

                        Is to crows or roaring to the lions, (7-17)

            Is this stance deliberate is another question. Could she be raising her reservations as to being a writer as this is her first foray into the realm of poetry? She was searching for an area where she could belong and she found her cocoon in her writing, especially poetry - donning the role to shift the gaze - to shift the contours of subject and object. It is as if taking a risk of losing the self, only to get an extent of self-realization. There are poems that seem to question the role of a writer and the process itself. For instance in the poem “Loud Posters”, she says:

                                                            I’ve put

                        My private voice away, adopted the

                        Typewriter’s click as my only speech; I

                        Click-click, click-click tiresomely into your

                        Ears, stranger, though you may have no need of

                        Me, I go on and on, not knowing why . . . (11 - 16)

            It seems to be a kind of therapy. It is not a quest but an attempt at understanding life. It as if by putting her thoughts down she is gaining an objectivity that is not possible otherwise. It seems as if poetry puts her at ease, giving her the much-needed liberty to give vent to her emotions. A few lines from “Without a Pause” go thus, “Write without/A pause, don’t search for pretty words which/Dilute the truth, but write in haste, of/Everything perceived, and known, and loved . . .”  (14-17)

            It is not exactly a search for herself even though ‘I’ is something that she is preoccupied with. The issues of being a woman as constructed by certain notions, of being given identities, and the way ‘I’ becomes just a name, are her concerns. “Be Amy, or be Kamala.Or, better/ Still,be Madhavikutty. It is time to/Choose a name, a role.”(38-40). When she writes so in “An Introduction” she seems to allude to the idea that everyone is a proper name with a set of significations or roles attached to it.  However, it comes out as an attempt at trying to place her somewhere within its many folds, out of her urge to belong, to carve out a niche for herself, as; in “An Introduction”, she says, “I too call myself I.”(59)

            There are no visible centres holding her poems together. Almost all the poems start somewhere, meander through many thoughts and reach somewhere else. There seems to be a recurrence of themes in her poems (love, desire, loss, loneliness, and the many nuances of man-woman relationships) but trying to find a common thread to her deluge would defeat the purpose and the essence of her poems. Her insight into the depths of relationships and the nuances of love is laudable. Love in its many forms making and breaking people. She says in the poem “The Freaks”:

                                . . . Can this man with

                        Nimble finger-tips unleash

                        Nothing more alive than the

                        Skin’s lazy hungers? Who can

                        Help us who have lived so long

                        And have failed in love? (9-14).

 Love becomes the other, as something that is not there, elusive. Love as something postponed.

            She inadvertently grabs all the pictures from life. It has all the shades of life – the happy, the sad, the clear and the blurred. It is a panoramic view that she captures. The images she tear out of life are powerful and striking. Most often on the brink of sarcasm, it is a cry for life and sometimes it is a cry against it. In the poem “The Testing of the Sirens”, her reply to her lover’s concern goes like this, “You look pale, he said. Not pale, not really/pale. It’s the lipstick’s/anaemia.”(15-17). Most of the poems come out as a testimony to the life that she has lived. The image of the city recurs throughout giving the idea that city becomes a witness to all her activities.

            Even when her themes seem to be endless, the depth of her vision lies in the way she uses language. She evokes an array of images using plain words. In the poem “Pigeons”, she writes, “The sun swells; then/Swollen like a fruit/It runs harsh silver threads/Lengthwise, my afternoon/Dream.”(8-12). Her poems are verbal collages born out of her keen sense of observation.

            The words she uses are simple but poignant. All the same, there are some poems that come out to be complex, some poems where the real is dovetailed with the fantastic or the bizarre. Some are almost obscure –vague thoughts on the verge of being philosophical. They are like flashes of lucidity merging into chaos. A good example would be “The Fear of the Year” where she starts with “This is no age for slow desires,” but goes off in a tangent after that ending with the lines:

                                                            so that we

                        Perceive the flying steel hands sow

                        Over mellow cities those dark,

                        Malevolent seeds and the red,

                        Red, mushrooms hotly sprout and grow

                        On an earth illogically

                        Stilled, and silenced, and dead,dead,dead. (12-18)

            Some poems begin in a colourful, active, lively note only to end up in the many subtleties of love lost, and loneliness gained, like “The Dance of the Eunuchs”. Love, lust and longing all coalesce into this sense of not belonging. It is as if there are many strangers inside her and the longing inside is many.

             She becomes a subject of the truth merging gradually into an object. In “Someone else’s Song” she says, “I am a million, million silences/Strung like crystal beads/ Onto someone else’s/ Song.” (13-16). She opens out a whole world yet there are some things that allude us. Most often in trying to say about the things she talks about, one ends up missing out most of it. This depth could be the strength of her poetry. On top of that, she might have chosen poetry as her vehicle as it gives her the flexibility, the fluidity and the elusiveness that she craves for. Nevertheless, she has the upper hand even in all these unanswered questions as she says in her autobiography, “But poetry does not grow ripe for us, we have to grow ripe enough for poetry.” (My Story, viii)

the view is changing!

the view out of my window is changing. . .
in fact the window has changed.....
makes me  wonder if a window is necessary. . .
what if the view is restricted by the window....
will my eyes ever succumb to this frame of a window?

the many things i dont see anymore!

it is strange i never got connected with my city , trivandrum.
maybe because i never really thought about it as my own city.
well its quite strange. not just me all the aspects of the city.
the idiosyncrasies of the people i meet on a daily basis.
the strange obsession of the people of being forever in a hurry even though the machine indicating the notion of hurriness might as well be dead on its track on their wrists.
i guess some things just don't change. people with dead watches on their wrists is really common like cliches.

maybe i have started seeing my city in its little nuances.
but i am afraid in this whole rush of development much has been lost.
i guess its always better to be late than never!