and you thought you got me .. huh?

discoveries...

Sleep, Amrita Sher Gil

This is the first nude painting that I remember seeing and its by Amrita Sher Gil, surprisingly, and not some generic renassaince nude. The painting happened to me when my mother took me to National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi. I remember being aware of its hugeness in the corner of the room while I and my mom circulated through the entire space before standing in front of it.

In an attempt to experience that startling moment again, I used to go to the NGMA every day when I had to work in the Delhi High Court (that is just next door). I have a faint memory of seeing it again, but it wasn't as big and dramatic as the first time. On the other side of the Delhi High Court is a dargah of sorts where once a man, maybe the maluvi, insisted that if I wanted something, I could ask for it there..



Women on Charpai, Amrita Sher Gil


This painting seems reminiscent of Lihaaf, Ismat Chugtai. Another Sher gil painting called Two Girls apparently has stronger queer ressonances...but the internet is not letting me discover it today ..




And there she is, looking very young - the Paris days

"A Style of Loving"

Light now restricts itself
To the top half of trees;
The angled sun
Slants honey-coloured rays
That lessen to the ground

As we bike through
The corridor of Palm Drive.
We two

Have reached a safety the years
Can claim to have created:
Unconsummated, therefore
Unjaded, unsated.
Picnic, movie, ice-cream;
Talk; to clear my head

Hot buttered rum -- coffee for you;
And so not to bed.

And so we have set the question
Aside, gently.
Were we to become lovers
Where would our best friends be?
You do not wish, nor I
To risk again

This savoured light for noon's
High joy or pain.

-- Vikram Seth

As always, this poem is for Hope-of-male-species

*The image is a still from Re-take of Amrita by Vivan Sundaram, a digital photomontage. And also made into an experimental film, one of my favourites...

because a lazy world returns me to poetry...

and because longing should always be
free off who you long for...

Incident

I look across the table and think
(fiery with love)
Ask me, go on, ask me
to do something impossible,
something freakishly useless,
something unimaginable and inimitable

Like making a finger break into blossom
or walking for half an hour in twenty minutes
or remembering tomorrow.

I will you to ask it.
But all you say is
Will you give me a cigarette?
And I smile and,
returning to the marvelous world
of possibility
I give you one
with a hand that trembles
with a human trembling.

-- Norman MacCaig


This is for a friend, who thinks only his grandmother told him about the lack of inner resources

Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

-- John Berryman


but irony doesn't bore me ... how could it

Winter '84

I tell the corner store owner
'pretty cold out there'
he says
'ain't what it used to be'
'oh', i say, 'why is that'
innocently
tensing
wondering if coloured immigration
has affected the seasons...
'they've been fooling around
with the weather',
he says.
[his wife nods]
'ever since they sent a man
to the moon
it hasn't been right'

oh, i say,
breathing out
intrigued
'yeah, i know what you mean'

-- Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta

aaaannnnd we're back....

bring on the fucking dwarves, the 'naive' exs and the writing jennys.. :-) apparently a whole lot of swearing is enough to deal with them.

what is the year without sarcasm and sickness

Sensitives (theme), Xavier Zimbardo

we're all special it seems
each one of us
and it'll work out for everyone
because it has to,
we'll all be happy
because we deserve it.
we'll all meet the right one
or ones
and all of them will love
us back
(and not each other)

we'll all make it through the night
the lonely one
the crazy one
the desperate night.
we'll all write good papers
and novels
that are inside us.
we'll all be happy not
just eventually
but right now,
while we're still sort of young.

we'll all apparently
always use the right amount of
sunscreen,
after having made a blockbuster movie.
we'll all avoid the bullets
and bombs
inevitable to our times

we'll all not fall that sick,
none of us will slip through
the cracks
and never be heard of again.
none of us will hold on too
desperately
or get too crazy,
just the right cool amount

none of us
will get so drunk as
to die, choking on a chicken bone.
we'll all somehow manage
to achieve each moment
every time, of our lives
without regret or sorrow.

none of us will ever get left out
straggling in the rain
wet cigarette hanging from swollen lips
we'll all make
it
because we're all that special

?
right?