For Mistress Camellia Sinensis

For a long time I wrote nonsense verse, most were on my friends (sadly I can write them no more). And for the longest time I drank loads of tea till I moved to Australia and was hard put to find a decent cuppa unless I went to one of the tea shops or made it myself. This poem is from my archives and it's sort of slight and amusing when read now. The title and tone comes from the medieval poets I was obsessed with then e.g. Skelton's poems. The nerd in me went for the botanical names for tea and coffee. Here is the poem below.

Camellia's a lovely lady
Wonderful, totally heady
And I swear by God above
She's the one I truly love.

Sweet Camellia's wonderful colour
the rich honey, the amber pallor
do completely intoxicate.
My love shall never abate.

The fragrance of Camille
makes my senses reel
I long to hold her close
And then my love disclose.

Camellia, I shall never leave her
For I suffer the love fever
Men long for Coffea's kisses
But I wait for Camellia Sinensis'.

Sunny Side Up!

Not quite living up to the egg yolk yellow of the title here. But citrus yellow seems equally upbeat and with white surprisingly cool. In anticipation of a coming summer which will no doubt combine white heat and brilliant sun. And your imagination needs to set this in the azure blue of the Sydney sea and sky.

The feather in the centre is a real feather that I found and is not painted. For the rest, the paints are acrylic and the shapes are inspired by my 2 year old niece's building block set. It helps that it didn't require much more than her painting skills :-)

Tamil Geometry

I am partial to the geometric unadorned motifs of Tamil Nadu and had a few ideas for my tiny canvases based on these designs/motifs. Further I wanted to restrict the palette to white, brick red and ochre. In part this is because these colours as well as abstract geometric designs are integral to much aboriginal art in Australia and I like to think about the links between the two.

The first one is inspired by temple walls in the state. I wish I could have got some of the faded nature of these walls but it was a bit difficult with the paints I had and my painting skills are fairly rudimentary.

The second is inspired by Saivite caste marks in the state.

The third is of course inspired by the ubiquitous kolams of Tamil Nadu. My intial idea was to reproduce three kolams for the three canvases I had which I subsequently abandoned. The colour scheme here is an inverse of most kolams where the main design would be made with white rice paste, the border would be formed by "kaavi" (red brick paste) and the base would be mud or black slate. I decided to go with the white background but am still undecided on which colour scheme might have been the best.

The lines are not very symmetrical partly because I wanted to retain some of the rough nature of the designs (though that is also an excuse for my poor skills - kolams of course tend to be beautifully precise more often than not).

Mixed Media

Its been a long time since I did craft of any kind. Last week, in a sudden burst of enthusiasm I took out the box that contained rusted iron bits that I had collected and decided to make a simple collage by adding a few twigs and string. The canvas was of course first painted ochre. It wasn't a flash assembly but I still like the look of the piece. I don't have a camera at the moment so I had to make do with photo booth.

Separately, this weekend over at my aunt's we decided to rent "Love Aaj Kal". I am not sure what the reviews of the movie were like but it was a real turkey. Apart from the poor execution of almost every movie, why does the dialogue in Indian movies always sound fake? Either the people I know are a rarefied lot or the dialogue writers are actually paid to write this bullshit. On David & Margaret's scale, this one was a one at most.

Beside the lake, Beneath the trees

On the IIT Campus, Powai Lake is the more respectable lake. The Director’s bungalow is adjacent to the lake, so is the Guest House and so is a temple and you can walk or cycle along its length at any time though I have known the odd mugging to happen. On the other hand, Vihar Lake is its much wilder cousin. It lies outside the campus and behind a swathe of hostels and when I was a student at the Institute it was well known for illicit swims, illicit pot and police patrols. Not much I think has changed though the campus itself has. On my last visit a few years back I was stopped by men in uniform for trespassing and rescued myself and my companions by a simple show of temper.

I like Vihar Lake because I feel at ease with it, I never tire of it.

It was in IIT that I had my first serious relationship. In the beginning it was sweet, tender and passionate and of course the deepening of a relationship signifies a transition into adulthood when you begin to make plans to marry, to last the distance. But that phase didn’t last very long and it got caught up with other events in my life, mainly my mother’s illness. There was a long period of confusion and pain before whatever lay at its core disintegrated. In retrospect, it is surprising that both of us lasted the five odd years in a suspended state unable to step off or go ahead. In that period and even before we began the relationship, we used to go often to Vihar Lake. Then of course it all ended - and The End was bold, italicised and underlined. In its aftermath I felt unmoored, unhinged and then tender with hurt, much had been lost far too quickly. For a long time I felt adrift and tired. I think I wanted peace between us, instead everything was silent and cold. And any attempts to change that went badly awry so it was left at that and life resumed its normal rhythms. The poem below was written around that time. Sometime after writing the poem, I destroyed the pictures taken at Vihar as I did everything else. Yet you don’t bargain for the fact that despite this you remember the details of the pictures.

When we meet again
Green lava is softly poured
Mud is moulded, paths bored
And hills are sculpted by falling rain

When we meet again
The lake lies spread beneath
Grasses are trampled underneath
Bedraggled by the falling rain

When we meet again
You trail heavy equipment
To capture hills, lake, contentment
And us under falling rain

When we meet again
Set aside a few hours of idleness
Set aside the recent bitterness
And watch silently the falling rain.

Many years have passed since I wrote the poem. I recognise the sentiments in it, in many ways I am still the same person. Yet I have changed and been tempered by life and subsequent experiences so it’s not a poem I would write today. People are always eagerly bustling into the future and claiming that the past is a forgotten land. But the past is always with us, it’s how we look at it that changes. Now when I read the poem I feel regret for the past. I remember us not saying enough and declaring every passing emotion. I miss our foolish young selves, I miss our earnestness. But I also recognise these feelings as a simple nostalgia for my youth. Slightly rearranging the quote from In the Mood for Love, though the things that belonged to it by and large exist, that era has passed.

Image taken from the IIT Site

The Garden Circa 1987

I don't believe I have written any poetry since the beginning of the present decade. At one point, it was an obsession and a lot of it was imprecise rhymes. Some of it was simply a recordal of the events of my life; a large part of it was doggerel written for the amusement of my friends (needless to add they had star parts). I keep things I write because reading it many years later helps recapture a long forgotten mood.

My grandmother is now 82, our relationship much changed from when she visited my student hostel in 1987 for my graduation ceremony. Reading this poem again reminded me of her view of education as a state of purity. Her feel for flowers, fragrances, the neatness of her person. And it also reminded me of the courtyard around which our rooms were laid out. Here the tulsi grew wild and fast, in this it was a lot like the girls in the hotel. But to my grandmother it was a signal that auspicious things are found where Saraswati resides. As for the white ghostly blooms that grew in abundance and had their own distinct perfume, they are the "sontakka" (picture below). I can never pass one without recalling one of the happier times of my life.

THE GARDEN

My grandmother stands and observes

The careless, vagrant growth of basil

As under a morning sun that enerves

Flowers slowly unfold to dazzle.

In the evening, the scent of flowers

Hangs heavy over the rooms

In the fading light my grandmother hovers

Over white, ghostly blooms.

She has now spent many years

Coaxing growth in several plants

Urging life, gently wiping fears

Catering to every whim, fancy, want

Yet they reward her with hesitant buds

Or an occasional bloom that delights

Today she is wistful that here life floods

Unheralded, uncared, impervious to slight

In my room, she falls to musing

"This soil is imbued with learning

And innocence, chastity, desire fusing

Fill this air, this soil with yearning".

Thus consoled, she now returns

And thinks perhaps her garden could

bloom if her ancient bones relearn

The lessons of her past girlhood.

1994

~*~

Image Source