On the First Frost

The dew drops may freeze into tiny white stones
Does blood freeze when people bleed?
Into rubies red adorning
The skin like pimples.
Does blood throw a pattern on face
Indicating emotions quantitatively?
Dew drops are the night dreams of trees
Hardened by cold, evaporated by heat
Do blood clots dye the body
When boxed out of a day dream?

Craving for Creativity by Shweta Rao is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at www.devishankari.blogspot.com.

RAMBLINGS

Today I was bought face to face with an escapable question – what is my voice, what is my language. The best comparison is my painting skills – if I have bottles of primary poster colors and a paint brush I could paint objects in the remote likeliness. I would color things with my own strokes – the knowledge of creating universe with colors was never fully revealed to me. I am no different than a child given a crayon box to color a book. That is me. Uncouth, unrefined, bold and just me. My writings never have the finishing that a fine piece should have; at their best they reflect my thoughts, though strewn with cliches. My writings smell of my vaginal fluids, they are erratic liquid spells. They remind me how inadequate I am in expressing myself because I am not at home with this language. If not, which language am I at home with?
I had a mother tongue, then a regional tongue, a national tongue then an international. I am a goddess with multiple tongues, multiple mouths to be fucked by peoples and cultures. I did not even make a conscious choice while writing in English – I could think in several languages but could write in only one. English was a privilege and a limitation. English was mine and yet never mine. I could never master the intricacies of the language – the nouns and the verbs make me go crazy, I can never understand how things are pronounced ‘right’. And to make the matters worse, I take English Literature as my specialization – as if I was eagerly waiting for the theories to make me realize that I am a huge postcolonial joke. Articulating my inadequacies in a language which is inherently alien, and thus appropriating my alien-ness doesnt fall short of a joke. Considering the fact that alien-ness is not even a word, my defense is this - I am made to believe that this language is a living organism and is not particularly allergic to new coinages. But will this language accept the humble gift of a bumbling speaker? Will my mistakes be elevated to new words and concepts? Will Oxford ever include my word, as it has included 'jungle', 'shampoo', 'dekho', 'curry'? Ah, talking of curry, I just realized how I smell of it. But you have ever smelt beef as you smack it? You are no more nauseous of it as I am of curry.
Yes, I too, Caesar, suffer from the Holy Cow syndrome. I might die of malnutrition just above the IMF drawn poverty line, but won’t butcher the Mother with four legs and a tail for my selfish nourishment. I utilize her excreta and her urine. I am content to boil her milk and sieve off the cream for my sons to eat. Can ‘cow dung’ ever sound sacred in English? Or can ‘cow pee’ acquire the serenity to purify your house of negative vibes and replace the perfumed bottles of Domex?


Craving for Creativity by Shweta Rao is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at www.devishankari.blogspot.com.

AUNTY

My fascination with gold
Does not end with stodgy jewelry.
The tinkling sound of my kadas while I drive,
The men who stare and women who sigh
Give me a day long high.
I ignore prickly heat
As my neckpiece puts sun to shame,
Rollick with the steeping rates
As I invest plastic money on the metal.
And the parlour lady uses gold bleach
For the skin that carries countless carats.

Craving for Creativity by Shweta Rao is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http://www.blogger.com/www.devishankari.blogspot.com.

TEA

Every morning, when sun decides to brew
The aroma in the air and spread his shiny hue
A tea thought comes scampering to my bed
Up, she says, peep out from your blanket
‘I am called tea
And you can’t do without me…’
When I push it out, it is quick to say,
‘I facilitate the first ritual of your day’
And I jump out to make
The potion that keeps me awake

Craving for Creativity by Shweta Rao is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http://www.blogger.com/www.devishankari.blogspot.com.

CURRY

Illegitimate offspring of an imperial affair,
A tantalizing aftereffect of a linguistic fallacy,
But plaint curry conceals all its existential anxieties
For you to taste and appreciate
The steamy aroma and rich spicy blend,
With misty eyes and burning tongue.
The taste that transports you into the continent of
Snake charmers, camel rides, and brown beauties

Where curry remains uncooked, largely unknown…
A pure post colonial legacy
Though curry doesn’t exist in actuality
Taste and participate in this concoction of history.

Craving for Creativity by Shweta Rao is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http://www.blogger.com/www.devishankari.blogspot.com.

A LOVE SONG

I am sick of love songs that are not about love
Sick of Shelley’s devotion that
Can put divine order to shame
Eliot’s evening skies of etherized patient
And his clever cynicism tasting like acid,
I am nauseous of.
Undying filmy tropes of ‘pyar-mohabbat’
Where one song is a paraphrase of yet another!
Kalidasa’s sringara and Shakespeare’s sonnet
I can never outdo them.
But can ever I get a love song for you, without sounding stale?
Which you can comprehend as love, and I can write with ease?
Without the regular heart, soul, life, death, sex, pain, betrayal?
Or without the mandatory ‘I love you’
Without flowers which bloom in your presence
Without the stars that shine brighter every time I think about you
Or without the moon, who peeps in my ugly window
To see me weeping for you? Boo hoo.
Without this false declaration –
‘I can do anything for you’

A poem without rhyme or blank verse
Maybe not a poem at all, but prose.
Maybe not in English
Maybe in no language
Neither signs, symbols
Nor silences
A love song, for you, from me
Will have to be as ordinary
Like we sipping evening tea,
However, a little less slurpy
Or maybe a love song is too lofty
For non-commercial, personal use
And I am afraid

Anything to do with love
Will finally resort to cliché
Lets plagiarize then, you and I
Bulldoze copyright , with no guilt
Sing other people’s love songs

Craving for Creativity by Shweta Rao is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http://www.blogger.com/www.devishankari.blogspot.com.

ON HOLI

One of my dear friends, bhang induced, remarked rather philosophically, on the nature of this festival of colours. The colours covering the face, she confabulated, is symptomatic of the primitive Dionysian human tendency of using mask. Either her theorization on Holi was very high-funda, or because I didn’t hear that conversation first hand, I could not make more sense out of it. But I liked her alluding to masks – that’s how my friend is, profound in any state!

Hmm, so how is mask of Holi different from the mask of Zorro?

Ok, it’s a stupid comparison.

Smear you face with hues of the season, intoxicate yourself with either March pollens or Bhang – then monkey around. Do all you wanted to do, in the guise of Holi. Not just leaching, but also touching! As the Holi oneliner goes – ‘Bura na mano Holi hai’, i.e., Don’t mind, its Holi. Someone touched you a little more than necessary for applying colours – remember, all is fair in Holi. Better still, alls colourful in Holi. Not just bright and beautiful colours of life, but somber, swarthy hues too. The dark side of the people and the bright, Holi legitimizes it all! The only day when our purdah driven society, lifts its veil to experience the storm of life, openly.

Lift the veil, catch the colours, preserve the beauty and the squalor. As this is the only day in the year, when you discard your strict sense of propriety, and dress in the colours of the nature – across the class-line.

Craving for Creativity by Shweta Rao is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http://www.blogger.com/www.devishankari.blogspot.com.