Recently got Paul Muldoon Poems 1968-1998 as a gift. Can't read anything else (except trash that doesn't occupy one's mind) with any degree of concentration. I've read his book length Madoc: A Mystery three times and now feel like a kite that's caught on a branch but is impatient for the sky.
Not posting a whole poem here but urge you to read 'Sillyhow Stride' or visit his site.
In the meanwhile, I can't help wondering if Ranjit Hoskote's poem, 'The Randomiser's Survival Guide'* has met Muldoon's 'Symposium' and said hello.
***
In other news, I'm in mental hibernation, doing the minimum necessary for survival. If you ask me, even that's too much. I'm trying not to allude to things I've promised to do but haven't got around to. This includes posts, off-blog mails etc. Soon. That's all I can say.
*Can't find the poem online. Look out for it when the book's out - whenever that is.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Ta Pyme A Pout
Sopo apa fapew dapays bapack mapie sapun apasks mapee ipif Apie capan spapeak ipin papee lapangwapedge.
Apie thipink fopor apa mipinapit apand, lapike Apern Gupoon, lupoosepen mapie tapungue. Apand Apie fapind thapat Apie capan spapeak flupuepent papee lapangwapedge. Lapike sapo.
Ipeevepen theper mopost capunfapuesaping, mupultapisapyllabic wapords dopo nopot dipiscopourapage mepee.
Apie fepeel Apie opought tpoo bepee copongrgapatupoolapataped.
Thapat's apall, Fopolks!
Apie thipink fopor apa mipinapit apand, lapike Apern Gupoon, lupoosepen mapie tapungue. Apand Apie fapind thapat Apie capan spapeak flupuepent papee lapangwapedge. Lapike sapo.
Ipeevepen theper mopost capunfapuesaping, mupultapisapyllabic wapords dopo nopot dipiscopourapage mepee.
Apie fepeel Apie opought tpoo bepee copongrgapatupoolapataped.
Thapat's apall, Fopolks!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Charminar
Apologies about the indifferent photos. The light was directly overhead but that's no excuse. I just wasn't in the mood for taking photographs.
The Rayaprol/Thayil Reading
I may as well warn you that this is going to be a frivolous and mostly irrelevant post about the reading.
My great moment of joy came when a friend said he's pick us up for the reading, since he was also going to be there. This meant I didn't have to drive. What's more, the car was an Ambassador (and old-fashioned one, which I'm reliably told, is better than the new ones that are very crumple-able) and my son's cup overflowed.
The University's School of Humanities was where the reading was happening. We were told by a very busy looking HoD that we had to go to the Ashes Building. I was, frankly, perplexed. In the course of the evening, the venue would be variously referred to as the Ashes, Ashish and (just a couple of times in the privacy of my own thoughts) Asses. It's a complicated acronym that I can't spell now after an interval of two days. Sorry.
So basically, we sat around and waited for a quorum. Then we tripped outside (at least, I did. I was wearing Cinderella heels that my sari hid) and had tea under a still-under-construction tent and came back in to wait for some Univ person. Speeches. More speeches. Screeching mikes.
I read and was thankful that I didn't cough.
Jeet was to have half an hour; what with all the speechifying, he managed to do five or six poems. Not that he didn't have time but he very wisely stopped while everyone was still wishing he'd done a few more. Oh - the fuse tripped twice while he read and afterwards (this is a non sequitur) he was mobbed for autographs. Poets are rock stars, I tell you.
The Rayaprol Trust announced a Poetry Prize. Announcements of details later. Jeet suggested that they republish Rayaprol's work so that it's actually available (right now there are a sum total of two copies left of his books with his family). More importantly, he suggested that all the issues of East West that Rayaprol edited - issues of which have contributions by William Carlos Williams (who corresponded with Rayaprol for many years, as did Lowell) and Henry Miller - be republished.
Then we all left for dinner but got stuck in various traffic jams.
The next day I promised Jeet I'd show him Charminar but instead dragged him from one bangle shop to another in Laad Bazaar. I feel remorse (but the bling I picked up!) now.
Photos later.
My great moment of joy came when a friend said he's pick us up for the reading, since he was also going to be there. This meant I didn't have to drive. What's more, the car was an Ambassador (and old-fashioned one, which I'm reliably told, is better than the new ones that are very crumple-able) and my son's cup overflowed.
The University's School of Humanities was where the reading was happening. We were told by a very busy looking HoD that we had to go to the Ashes Building. I was, frankly, perplexed. In the course of the evening, the venue would be variously referred to as the Ashes, Ashish and (just a couple of times in the privacy of my own thoughts) Asses. It's a complicated acronym that I can't spell now after an interval of two days. Sorry.
So basically, we sat around and waited for a quorum. Then we tripped outside (at least, I did. I was wearing Cinderella heels that my sari hid) and had tea under a still-under-construction tent and came back in to wait for some Univ person. Speeches. More speeches. Screeching mikes.
I read and was thankful that I didn't cough.
Jeet was to have half an hour; what with all the speechifying, he managed to do five or six poems. Not that he didn't have time but he very wisely stopped while everyone was still wishing he'd done a few more. Oh - the fuse tripped twice while he read and afterwards (this is a non sequitur) he was mobbed for autographs. Poets are rock stars, I tell you.
The Rayaprol Trust announced a Poetry Prize. Announcements of details later. Jeet suggested that they republish Rayaprol's work so that it's actually available (right now there are a sum total of two copies left of his books with his family). More importantly, he suggested that all the issues of East West that Rayaprol edited - issues of which have contributions by William Carlos Williams (who corresponded with Rayaprol for many years, as did Lowell) and Henry Miller - be republished.
Then we all left for dinner but got stuck in various traffic jams.
The next day I promised Jeet I'd show him Charminar but instead dragged him from one bangle shop to another in Laad Bazaar. I feel remorse (but the bling I picked up!) now.
Photos later.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Diwali...huh
That was last year.
This year, I woke up late and did pretty much nothing all day long.
Some hour some time, I might feel like logging on again to relive Saturday and Sunday (as if once isn't enough, even if it was a good couple of days).
Diwali...huh*
*What a useful word I've learnt from Equivocal. It's practically the word-of-the-what's-left-of-the-year for me.
This year, I woke up late and did pretty much nothing all day long.
Some hour some time, I might feel like logging on again to relive Saturday and Sunday (as if once isn't enough, even if it was a good couple of days).
Diwali...huh*
*What a useful word I've learnt from Equivocal. It's practically the word-of-the-what's-left-of-the-year for me.
Friday, October 24, 2008
The Srinivas Rayaprol Memorial Reading
Have been trying to remove all the highlighting but can't get rid of the wretched thing. And since I'm not about to rewrite the whole thing, here it is, stet.
Anyone who's in town and interested, please do come.
Invite you
to
An Evening of Poetry
By
Jeet Thayil,
Eminent Indian English poet
in memory of Srinivas Rayaprol
Sridala Swami, poet, will read selections
from Srinivas Rayaprol's poetry
Saturday, October 25, 2008, at 4.30 pm
Venue: Department of English, University of Hyderabad Campus, Gachibowli
Please join us for tea at 4.00 pm
Anyone who's in town and interested, please do come.
The Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust
and
The Department of English, UoH
and
The Department of English, UoH
Invite you
to
An Evening of Poetry
By
Jeet Thayil,
Eminent Indian English poet
in memory of Srinivas Rayaprol
Sridala Swami, poet, will read selections
from Srinivas Rayaprol's poetry
Saturday, October 25, 2008, at 4.30 pm
Venue: Department of English, University of Hyderabad Campus, Gachibowli
Please join us for tea at 4.00 pm
174
All the clocks say something different. The TV gives me a different time and the cellphone and the generator at the institute next door that's usually turned off at half past five in the morning was still running at what my wrist watch says is a quarter past six.
I call 174.
Samay hai. Aaru gantala. Forty-nine minutes. Bees second.
I'm thinking of those three women sitting in some studio recording the day in ten second packets, covering twenty four hours. How long did it take them? How many takes? Are they even alive?
My computer says I still have 15 hours of the day left before I can decently pack it away.
Oh god.
I call 174.
Samay hai. Aaru gantala. Forty-nine minutes. Bees second.
I'm thinking of those three women sitting in some studio recording the day in ten second packets, covering twenty four hours. How long did it take them? How many takes? Are they even alive?
My computer says I still have 15 hours of the day left before I can decently pack it away.
Oh god.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Chandrayaan
is off!
None of the live feeds people are linking to actually work. DD News it was. The launch went off well, though seconds later nothing was visible because of cloudy skies. All appears to be well but let's see.
None of the live feeds people are linking to actually work. DD News it was. The launch went off well, though seconds later nothing was visible because of cloudy skies. All appears to be well but let's see.
Monday, October 20, 2008
A Lot of Hot Air
Or, How Not To Spend A Saturday.
Having skipped the Inauguration (we had someone else's passes; were instructed NOT to say how we came by them; it was in the morning on a school day; I had to be at the University just a couple of hours later; there were politicians going to make speeches) I had to promise to buy tickets and take my son to the last day of the Aviation Show.
Bought tickets. Armed with sunscreen, bottles of water and caps, we left early. Not sure of entrances and Gate numbers, we asked a cop standing undera brightly decorated arch. After some fluttering of hands and some typical 'but you don't have this pass, you need to go so many kilometres away to buy it and return here', they let us into the parking lot. It was empty. Not people dispensing tickets, no people at all, actually. So we parked under a tree and having decided to ignore written instructions, walked into Gate 5 (meant for VIPs) with a Gate 1,3 and 4 ticket.
They let us in. No, really. After just a couple of minutes of hand waving etc., they let us in through this gate and I can tell you now that we got to walk over one dusty red carpet, up a few steps and to the pavilion where the business end of the aviation show was being conducted.
Not knowing any better, we walked into this first. It was standard-issue trade fair stuff. In two minutes, we were out. My son was, at this point, still skipping along next to me in excitement. Turning the corner, we found the planes.
Now, we knew that the Airbus A 380 was there only for one day and this day was not that one day. Still and all, it was with extreme disappointment that we viewed the six or seven planes assembled for our viewing pleasure (no photographs. I stook the instructions on the ticket seriously and went without camera, handbag etc. I should ahve known better. Everyone there was brandishing something that could take photographs. Bah.).
One little plane was something that folks assembled like a model plane. I'm not sure it could fly, and they weren't going to prove it to us. It just sat there looking frail. Just as well it was hot and still. Just as well there were no Big Bad Wolves around.
So: small plane. Boeing 777, three choppers in different colours, one mid-sized plane.
"Amma, I must say I'm a little disappointed, arent you?"
"Really? How unahppy are you? Aren't you the one who wanted to stay from 10am to 5pm?"
"Ya, but there's nothing to see. I think we should leave. This is boring."
To distract him, we walked around the enclosure to where some more standard issue planes were resting. We asked if any of these planes were expected to actually fly or if they were just going to sit there. Apparently one just had and others would. We waited.
In the next 45 minutes, this si what we saw:
1. One plane taking off never to return.
2. One propeller plane that flew low, made another pass over the runway and settled down to soem seirous looping-the-loop before ti landed.
3. One flight simulator video played for a group of 20 people at a time, while the real flight simulator stood next to us looking strong and silent.
4. A History of Civil Aviation in India museum where there were uninspiring photos of JRD and various planes; a wall of the Maharaja's ads; some models of planes. Someone came and gave the kid a booklet about planes in India.
5. Two guys in rainbow coloured parathutes doing a jump.
6. One helicopter taking off.
11 am and already it felt as if we'd been there too long. We decided to leave. This is where the nightmare began.
Someone directed us to a wrong exit. Once we were out, we realised that (1) getting to our parking meant walking and walking and walking (2) given the crowds thronging and pleading and offering bribes to the cops, getting back in was not an option. So we walked. And walked and tripped and walked. The entrance was jammed with people and vehicles. The main road was worse, with two wheelers on every inch of what passed for the pavement.
It took us half an hour to walk tot he parking and another hour to get out from there to just pas the airport (a distance of 200 metres at most). We were the lucky ones. The traffic jam that was just beginning wouldn;t unsnarl until late in the evening. Apparently they were expecting 30,000 visitors, but 50,000 or more turned up, Finally the cops ahd ot request the organisers to stop selling tickets. There was a mild lathi charge to disperse annoyed people who'd already waited in line for hours.
It was a mess. We got back at 4, having spent a sum total of one hour at the show and three in the traffic.
Never again. Really.
**
In other news, we had lunch at Paradise and since the kid could not finish an entire biryani on his own, I helped him. This makes it the first time in nine years that I was having meat of any description. Is that a 'yay!' I hear? I was suprised to not feel any ickiness - I kind of thought I'd feel this great revulsion and all, but nothing happened. Huh.
Having skipped the Inauguration (we had someone else's passes; were instructed NOT to say how we came by them; it was in the morning on a school day; I had to be at the University just a couple of hours later; there were politicians going to make speeches) I had to promise to buy tickets and take my son to the last day of the Aviation Show.
Bought tickets. Armed with sunscreen, bottles of water and caps, we left early. Not sure of entrances and Gate numbers, we asked a cop standing undera brightly decorated arch. After some fluttering of hands and some typical 'but you don't have this pass, you need to go so many kilometres away to buy it and return here', they let us into the parking lot. It was empty. Not people dispensing tickets, no people at all, actually. So we parked under a tree and having decided to ignore written instructions, walked into Gate 5 (meant for VIPs) with a Gate 1,3 and 4 ticket.
They let us in. No, really. After just a couple of minutes of hand waving etc., they let us in through this gate and I can tell you now that we got to walk over one dusty red carpet, up a few steps and to the pavilion where the business end of the aviation show was being conducted.
Not knowing any better, we walked into this first. It was standard-issue trade fair stuff. In two minutes, we were out. My son was, at this point, still skipping along next to me in excitement. Turning the corner, we found the planes.
Now, we knew that the Airbus A 380 was there only for one day and this day was not that one day. Still and all, it was with extreme disappointment that we viewed the six or seven planes assembled for our viewing pleasure (no photographs. I stook the instructions on the ticket seriously and went without camera, handbag etc. I should ahve known better. Everyone there was brandishing something that could take photographs. Bah.).
One little plane was something that folks assembled like a model plane. I'm not sure it could fly, and they weren't going to prove it to us. It just sat there looking frail. Just as well it was hot and still. Just as well there were no Big Bad Wolves around.
So: small plane. Boeing 777, three choppers in different colours, one mid-sized plane.
"Amma, I must say I'm a little disappointed, arent you?"
"Really? How unahppy are you? Aren't you the one who wanted to stay from 10am to 5pm?"
"Ya, but there's nothing to see. I think we should leave. This is boring."
To distract him, we walked around the enclosure to where some more standard issue planes were resting. We asked if any of these planes were expected to actually fly or if they were just going to sit there. Apparently one just had and others would. We waited.
In the next 45 minutes, this si what we saw:
1. One plane taking off never to return.
2. One propeller plane that flew low, made another pass over the runway and settled down to soem seirous looping-the-loop before ti landed.
3. One flight simulator video played for a group of 20 people at a time, while the real flight simulator stood next to us looking strong and silent.
4. A History of Civil Aviation in India museum where there were uninspiring photos of JRD and various planes; a wall of the Maharaja's ads; some models of planes. Someone came and gave the kid a booklet about planes in India.
5. Two guys in rainbow coloured parathutes doing a jump.
6. One helicopter taking off.
11 am and already it felt as if we'd been there too long. We decided to leave. This is where the nightmare began.
Someone directed us to a wrong exit. Once we were out, we realised that (1) getting to our parking meant walking and walking and walking (2) given the crowds thronging and pleading and offering bribes to the cops, getting back in was not an option. So we walked. And walked and tripped and walked. The entrance was jammed with people and vehicles. The main road was worse, with two wheelers on every inch of what passed for the pavement.
It took us half an hour to walk tot he parking and another hour to get out from there to just pas the airport (a distance of 200 metres at most). We were the lucky ones. The traffic jam that was just beginning wouldn;t unsnarl until late in the evening. Apparently they were expecting 30,000 visitors, but 50,000 or more turned up, Finally the cops ahd ot request the organisers to stop selling tickets. There was a mild lathi charge to disperse annoyed people who'd already waited in line for hours.
It was a mess. We got back at 4, having spent a sum total of one hour at the show and three in the traffic.
Never again. Really.
**
In other news, we had lunch at Paradise and since the kid could not finish an entire biryani on his own, I helped him. This makes it the first time in nine years that I was having meat of any description. Is that a 'yay!' I hear? I was suprised to not feel any ickiness - I kind of thought I'd feel this great revulsion and all, but nothing happened. Huh.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Many things to many people
Reproduced here with the permission of the author.
[This is a piece I wrote for India Today but the version that has appeared in the magazine is an edit that I did not agree to. It's not clear to me how that happened since I edited the longer article down to this final version and sent it in to them. But the magazine is out and I am both angry and saddened at their careless editing of ideas that are particularly under siege at this point of time.
So, here is my edit and I would be glad if it was circulated widely on the net - more widely than the magazine!
Samina]
Being Muslim means many things to many people
by Samina Mishra
Not far from L18, in the posh part of Jamia Nagar, is a house on a tree-lined avenue that will always be home to me. But my life, with all its easy privileges, could not be more different from Atif and Sajid's, the two young men shot as alleged terrorists at L18. I contain multitudes, Whitman so eloquently said. But we live in a time when even multitudes are forced to lay claim to a singular label. And so by writing this, perhaps, I will forever be labelled the voice of the liberal secular Muslim. A voice that is accused of not speaking up. Ironically, it is this very tyranny of labels that grants me this space in a mainstream national magazine.
As someone with a Muslim first name and a Hindu surname, I suppose I have always swung between labels - a poster girl for communal harmony or a confused, rootless individual, depending on who was doing the labelling. I went to a public school and have never worn a burkha. I might escape being thrown in the big cauldron with "Islamic Terrorists" but I will certainly be added to the one for "misguided intellectuals" . While there is no mistaking
that it is zealous nationalists who seek to light the fire under the first cauldron, the other is a bone of contention between those who seek to define for me how to be Indian and those who seek to define for me how to be Muslim. My condemnation of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Imrana's rape or the media circus around Gudiya will always be seen in the context of my
privileged background, my gender, my religious identity. Perhaps, it can be no other way.
In this rhetoric of binaries of "us and them", it is difficult to find the space to create a new paradigm of discussion. And so, in conversations that throw up Islamic terrorists, rigid religious beliefs, Pakistan and madrasas, the response is inevitably another set of questions - why is the Bajrang Dal not labelled a terrorist outfit, why is the growing public display of Hindu festivals like Navratras and Karva Chauth not considered rigid religious beliefs, why should Muslims in India be answerable for what goes on in Pakistan, what spaces other than madrasas are available for thousands of believing Muslims who choose to get educated and still retain their Muslim-ness. As a Muslim in India today, not only are you fighting to shrug off the label of fundamentalist- if not terrorist - but you are also succumbing to a paradigm of dialogue which has been set for homogenous communities with clear markers of identities.
But how does one fight that when shared cultural spaces, other than those created by the market, shrink? How does one speak of the diversity of being Indian when Diwali is celebrated in schools and Eid just in Muslim homes? How does one avoid a singular label for experiences that are diverse and yet have a common thread running through them - the experience of a tailor in
Ahmedabad whose Hindu patrons have stopped giving work to, the butcher in Batla House who couldn't get a bank loan, the software professional who will now have to watch every single byte that leaves his computer.
Being Muslim in India today means many things to many people. But how easy it is to forget that one fundamental reality. How easy it is to say, as someone said to me after the Delhi blasts - "These are all educated Muslims. Don't they know that their bombs can also kill their own?" As if everyone with a Muslim name is a terrorist's very "own".
In the India Today
About Samina Mishra
[This is a piece I wrote for India Today but the version that has appeared in the magazine is an edit that I did not agree to. It's not clear to me how that happened since I edited the longer article down to this final version and sent it in to them. But the magazine is out and I am both angry and saddened at their careless editing of ideas that are particularly under siege at this point of time.
So, here is my edit and I would be glad if it was circulated widely on the net - more widely than the magazine!
Samina]
Being Muslim means many things to many people
by Samina Mishra
Not far from L18, in the posh part of Jamia Nagar, is a house on a tree-lined avenue that will always be home to me. But my life, with all its easy privileges, could not be more different from Atif and Sajid's, the two young men shot as alleged terrorists at L18. I contain multitudes, Whitman so eloquently said. But we live in a time when even multitudes are forced to lay claim to a singular label. And so by writing this, perhaps, I will forever be labelled the voice of the liberal secular Muslim. A voice that is accused of not speaking up. Ironically, it is this very tyranny of labels that grants me this space in a mainstream national magazine.
As someone with a Muslim first name and a Hindu surname, I suppose I have always swung between labels - a poster girl for communal harmony or a confused, rootless individual, depending on who was doing the labelling. I went to a public school and have never worn a burkha. I might escape being thrown in the big cauldron with "Islamic Terrorists" but I will certainly be added to the one for "misguided intellectuals" . While there is no mistaking
that it is zealous nationalists who seek to light the fire under the first cauldron, the other is a bone of contention between those who seek to define for me how to be Indian and those who seek to define for me how to be Muslim. My condemnation of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Imrana's rape or the media circus around Gudiya will always be seen in the context of my
privileged background, my gender, my religious identity. Perhaps, it can be no other way.
In this rhetoric of binaries of "us and them", it is difficult to find the space to create a new paradigm of discussion. And so, in conversations that throw up Islamic terrorists, rigid religious beliefs, Pakistan and madrasas, the response is inevitably another set of questions - why is the Bajrang Dal not labelled a terrorist outfit, why is the growing public display of Hindu festivals like Navratras and Karva Chauth not considered rigid religious beliefs, why should Muslims in India be answerable for what goes on in Pakistan, what spaces other than madrasas are available for thousands of believing Muslims who choose to get educated and still retain their Muslim-ness. As a Muslim in India today, not only are you fighting to shrug off the label of fundamentalist- if not terrorist - but you are also succumbing to a paradigm of dialogue which has been set for homogenous communities with clear markers of identities.
But how does one fight that when shared cultural spaces, other than those created by the market, shrink? How does one speak of the diversity of being Indian when Diwali is celebrated in schools and Eid just in Muslim homes? How does one avoid a singular label for experiences that are diverse and yet have a common thread running through them - the experience of a tailor in
Ahmedabad whose Hindu patrons have stopped giving work to, the butcher in Batla House who couldn't get a bank loan, the software professional who will now have to watch every single byte that leaves his computer.
Being Muslim in India today means many things to many people. But how easy it is to forget that one fundamental reality. How easy it is to say, as someone said to me after the Delhi blasts - "These are all educated Muslims. Don't they know that their bombs can also kill their own?" As if everyone with a Muslim name is a terrorist's very "own".
In the India Today
About Samina Mishra
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