Keats-Shelley prize

The Small Boy and the Mouse by D H Maitreyabandhu

When he closed his eyes and asked the question,

he saw an egg, a boiled egg, lodged

above his heart. The shell had been broken off,

with a teaspoon he supposed, it was pure curd white

and still warm. Inside – he could see inside –

there was a garden with rows of potatoes,

sweet peas in a tangle, and a few tomatoes, red

and green ones, along with that funny sulphur smell

coming from split sacks. There was an enamel bathtub

in the garden, with chipped edges, a brown puddle

staining around itself, and a few wet leaves.

He could see down the plughole, so the sun must have shone,

and he heard his father digging potatoes,

knocking off the soil, and his mother fetching the washing in

because the sky promised a shower. There was a hole

or rather a pipe under the tub, where the water went,

and down at the bottom was a mouse – its ribs were poking out,

its damp fur clung together. The mouse was holding

a black-and-white photograph of a boy

who might have been three or four years old;

the boy was playing with boxes, or were they saucepans

from the kitchen? – he was leaning forward and slightly blurred.

And what was strange about the picture,

apart from being held by a mouse who sat on his haunches

and gripped it in his forepaws, was that the space

around the boy, the paleness around him, expanded,

got very bright and engulfed the mouse, the bathtub, the garden,

and the egg with its shell cracked off.

After that there was nothing, apart from the dark

inside the boy’s head and a kind of quiet

he’d never had before. He opened his eyes. All the furniture

looked strange, as if someone had rearranged it.

From here. More about the poet and the prize on that page. Go read.

I want a popotamus. Now.

Once upon a time…

Somehow Vimeo won’t embed. Click on the link and watch. Immédiatement!

untitled

the waters take my lies
down the street merging with
other untruths, deceptions, escapes
in a small river
of the world as it is not.

you float little boats
unsullied, unafraid, undeniable
in these murky waters.

fragile, absorbent, artless
they capsize. an afternoon
tragedy. a spattered heart,
a smudged brown face

come home to cry.
punishment has small
feet, leaves muddy prints
on the floor.

Doors and windows of Europe – Segona Part

In Gandesa, Catalunya, Spain

Horta de Sant Juan, Catalunya, Spain

Arnes, Catalunya, Spain

Poblet Monastery, Catalunya, Spain

Poblet Monastery, Catalunya, Spain

Barcelona, Spain

Brugge, Belgium

Brugge, Belgium

Brugge, Belgium

Doors and windows of Europe – First Part

Cardiff City Hall

Salisbury Cathedral

Oxford. Don't remember which college this was.

Also Oxford

Some church in Oxford

Oxford, again

Undergraduate humour in Oxford

Pattum paatum

Briefly, very briefly, I enrolled for optional music classes in school. They were taught by a lady in her mid-thirties who was too sweet and gentle to handle 13-year olds. There were six of us in her class, which took place twice a week for an hour and a half.

At that time, school was small place – parents and teachers made friends, sometimes we grew to know their families and they ours. One Navaratri, Music Ma’am as she was called, invited our class home to see the golu and eat sundal. There was also something about singing a kriti she had taught us, but we paid no attention to that part.

Dressed in shiny pavadai chattais, four of the six of us arrived at the address she’d given us. Even before we had opened the gate, we could hear music. Inside, there were about ten girls and women of all ages, including Ma’am, singing Devi Neeye Thunai. At the back was an elderly lady in a rust-coloured saree, joining the rendition only occasionally, but smiling at everyone who came in, nodding happily when the higher notes turned out without apaswaram. She looked familiar, but I made no attempt to recall where I might have seen her.

After Devi…another kriti began (the one we had been taught!) and when this one ended, Ma’am got up to see to the guests. There were others who had arrived after us and those who were among the singers. A dozen conversations, swishing silks, someone humming, coffee tumblers clanging against davaras, the gecko-call doorbell, myriad sounds of a south Indian household in celebration swirled around the four of us who sat talking among ourselves, hoping for channa sundal, rather than payaru. Neat paper potlams appeared, we couldn’t see what kind of sundal it was. They were distributed and vettalai paaku was handed to everyone.

The namaskarams began as people started to leave – all of them for the elderly lady, who we assumed was Ma’am’s mother-in-law. A quick consultation among ourselves and we decided to would be safer to do a namaskaram as well, than stand out by not doing it!

Just as we were about to rise and say polite things before leaving, K grabbed my arm and hissed something in my ear. I could hear nothing of what she was saying, so she dragged me to a corner and said, “I know why that maami looks familiar! She is Pattammal!”

I could have fainted. DK Pattammal was a legend in our family. My grandfather thought her music vastly superior to MS’ and declared that she was the only woman he could bear to listen to. A perfect imitation of her rendition of Poonguyil Koovum was mandatory at bride ‘viewing’ events, and the first song my grandmother asked a new daughter-in-law to sing was Eppadi Paadinaro. My father had an old recording of a concert by DKP at Mylapore Fine Arts, which he made copies of and distributed to cousins who hoped to become musicians, with strict instructions to listen to it each morning and learn from it!

And she was here! I was in her house! And my music teacher was her daughter-in-law! I was practically her student! My head buzzed. I thought of the things my family would ask – they would want to know the exact colour of her saree, what sort of bangles and necklace she wore, if I actually heard her singing in her own house, if the sundal had enough salt, if other celebrity musicians had been there, oh, the grilling would be endless!

We did our namaskarams, with great respect and care. Pattammal said something about studying with shraddhai and doing well in life. Then it was time to say our poitu varens and leave. The family didn’t go as overboard as I had expected them to, but all Navaratri visitors that week were told that I had been to DKP’s house for vettalai paaku.

It turned out that Music ma’am was DK Jayaraman’s daughter-in-law, not Pattamal’s. For a few weeks afterwards, I actually practised and tried to sing reasonably in class. But even blessings from Pattammal herself couldn’t help with that.

Sevai sei

Delicate, graceful, white. Exactly
as you should be.

No sign of the sweaty,
unappetising dumpling
you once were.

What won’t a little effort
do

Sevai of rice
and a
wife of you.

Tempered

Hot oil is what the
fiery mustard needs,

Fifteen seconds of rebellion,
fizzled
into soothing sambaar.

~

On your last maiden bath
by the seventh village well
a dozen knowing hands oil your
mustard skin.

I watch the chicken stroll by;
tomorrow they will be
at the wedding feast,
fried, spiced, tempered.

One year

Most of it out of tune, I suspect.

What did you think?

This one was easy

Think of it as a warming up session. It wasn’t so much our victory as their loss. It is the next one that will be real battle, comrades: Modi vs Rahul. If the Congress becomes overconfident (such a big victory cannot be without side-effects) and botches up the next few years, we’ll have a much, much harder fight next time. I feel all melodramatic now: it is not yet time to sit back, let alone sleep in peace. Jaagte Raho!

ps. Chidambaram riding ahead at the very end of the count seemed rather suspicious. Ditto with Shibu Soren and Laloo at Pataliputra. No?

sym phony

i smash a glass
for each time you laugh;
percussion for your
flute.

only, some of them
don’t quite shatter;
i blame the cheap
acoustics.

cold comfort

i pluck words
from your vapour sentences,
they condense on my cold hands

and slowly freeze.
i apply their icy compress
to a bruised memory,
blue, swollen, silent.

September

September cools,
the laundry flies

Like paintings
brushed against
the skies.

The skies are seas
of azure blue,

And clouds scud
by like sailboats
do!

~

That picture and poem are part of a hand-painted calendar a friend’s friend made a few years ago. She is an artist who makes her living doing exactly this sort of whimsical and utterly delightful thing.

I have this sheet put up above my desk. Just looking at it transports me to the world of that painting. What could possibly be lovelier than lying on the grass on a breezy, sunny September evening, empty of all thought, watching the washing flying above you? Mind, it is not a complete escape. It acknowledges that the washing has to be done, but also that it will indeed get done just in time to let you lie, pleasantly exhausted from the exertion, on the cool earth and feel the wind blow your cares away.

Voting

So the booth was this government school. Most people were queued up outside the main building but we were directed to a little room at the back where there were no observers, no agents, not even the mandatory policeman. Only some very bored looking teachers on duty who cheered up somewhat when we turned up. They looked at the card, located my number on the list, marked it off, marked my finger with ink (which is manufactured in Mysore, by the way) and made me sign against my name on yet another list and gave me some receipt-like thing which I handed to yet another officer who then pointed me to the Electronic Voting Machine.

It was on a small, rickety table with the voter’s privacy protected by a corrugated cardboard box whose bottom and one side had been removed and the rest placed around the EVM. To make sure it didn’t get blown away, some brown packing tape had been used.

That was it. The nation’s fate hung on one long beep. And the secret ballot amounted to a recycled cardboard box. But the potential symbolism, that went right through the roof.

Internet on the Shatabdi

Free wireless internet. On the Shatabdi Express. Discovered entirely by accident. Provided by a Chennai-based company called Zylog. Being used to post this.

Clearly, I am too thrilled to speak (type) in full, coherent sentences.

Updated to ask: Who does one thank for this marvellousness? Been trying to locate a number to call, an email or regular mail address to write to, a name I can use in what is likely to be a rhapsodic communication, but can’t find anything. May have to resort to writing a letter to some editor.