The therapy of poetry

So, yesterday, I wrote another lyric — 'The Cherry Blossoms'. It is a part of a song-cycle of a dozen lyrics that mark time between Sunayani's journey to Eugene, Oregon (in August, 2011) and her return to Calcutta (in July, 2012).

Over the past seven months, I have written only six of these songs. I intend to write six more over the next three months. In the meanwhile, I have written 45,000 words of my novel and a nearly 5,000-word paper on Jack Kerouac.

Poetry is difficult. For prose, I need to sit down at my desk, in front of my computer and keep writing. But I can't write poems like that. In this series, all poems are inspired by some incident or piece of conversation with Sunayani. The last one was composed a week after she told me that cherry trees beside the road on which she walks to college had started to flower; then the leaves on the tree outside her window would sprout; then she will come back to me.

So, poetry, for me is therapeutic; like the Ancients, I feel poetry can regenerate all those higher feeling which slowly wear away, fade away, die in me as I struggle to stay afloat in the terrible shit hole that this world seems to have become. When I write poems, it is my escape from this cesspit, my transcendence...

The Big City

My best friend, Shrirupa Sengupta (see picture) has refused to follow my blog because she thinks I have not been completely honest with my writing. She is harsh critic but an honest one, and so I write this to please her, and convince her to follow my blog:

Sometimes the mornings are pregnant and the nights mean nothing. Sometimes we begin to write a note and then feel that it's so pointless. For, we are all like those creatures in Beckett's novel: crawling through the mud, meeting briefly, and not being able to communicate.

Words are redundant: what I want to say will always mean something else to you! So, "Do not ask what is it?/Let us go and make our visit."

How does one write poetry when one does not have the time to be lazy? Why does one have to suffer because one is a musician in a country where everyone is deaf?

The big city is always more beautiful than the small town. The big city does not confuse you, if you are a big city person. If you are small town person, you are sure to get lost in big city. The big city does not smell of rose gardens, it smells of the arm-pits of a bitch. It smells of the bed sheets in your friendly, neighbourhood brothel. It smells of the public urinal under the bridge. It smells of the rotting corpse of the junky on the pavement.

How does one write poetry if one does not feel the roads of the big city burning holes in the soles of your shoes, when you walk? Small town poetry smells good — of rose and tulip gardens. But that's all that it smells of. If you are not in the middle of the strife. If you don't see your comrade shot through the eye. If you don't smell the cold sweat on your spine on a hot day. If you don't taste the blood of the man you have killed. If you are not torn to shreds by the sharp nails of the woman you have raped... What have you done?

The big city is not beautiful! It has never been beautiful! It is ugly, it is obnoxious. It is a whore feeding her infant with dirty nipples.

The big city is a monster... It will eat you. So beware!

Why would you want to go away from here? Do you not feel sick if you have to? We are the big city people. This is what we do: We throw Molotov Cocktails at each other for fun and games!

Thank God they lost

When the last wicket of the Australian team fell last evening, I breathed a sigh of relief and cheered for Sri Lanka. Both those teams deserve to win, and our national cricket squad deserves to return home.

You cannot hope to qualify to the finals of a tournament depending on the performance of other teams. If you do, you deserve to be eliminated.

I felt ashamed that I had been cheering for Hilfenhaus and commenting on how Virat Kohli had destroyed Lasith Malinga's confidence by taking him to the cleaners the other day. I am ashamed: Hilfenhaus and Malinga will play in the final(s). Kohli will return home.

I am sure the members of the Indian cricket team would also have breathed a sigh of relief. International season over, they will now be able to concentrate on IPL. But as the hullabaloo begins, I would like to draw their attention to the picture above.

Those who love cricket know who that is; those who don't, don't need to know. As Ravi Shastri recently said, cricketers don't need to know about history, they should rather be aware of how to bowl, bat and field.

I only wish that the Indian team members knew either.