Madhavikutty

Winter It smelt of new rains and of tender Shoots of plants- and its warmth was the warmth Of earth groping for roots… even my Soul, I thought, must send its roots somewhere And, I loved his body without shame, On winter evenings as cold winds Chuckled against the white window-panes. Krishna Your body is my prison, Krishna, I cannot see beyond it. Your darkness blinds me,Your love words shut out the wise world's din. [From Only The Soul Knows How To Sing]  Love Until I found you, I wrote verse, drew pictures, And, went out with friends For walks… Now that I love you, Curled like an old mongrel My life lies, content, In you…. [From Summer in Calcutta] 

All round me are words, and words and words, They grow on me like leaves, they never Seem to stop their slow growing From within... But I tell my self, words Are a nuisance, beware of them, they Can be so many things, a Chasm where running feet must pause, to Look, a sea with paralyzing waves, A blast of burning air or, A knife most willing to cut your best Friend's throat... Words are a nuisance, but. They grow on me like leaves ona tree, They never seem to stop their coming, From a silence, somewhere deep within... 

The night, dark-cloaked like a procuress, brought him to me, willing, light as a shadow, speaking words of love in some tender language I do not know ... With the crows came the morning, and my limbs warm of love, were once again so lonely... At my doorstep I saw a pock-marked face, a friendly smile and a rolleiflex. We will go for a drive, he said. Or go see the lakes. I have washed my face with soap and water, brushed my hair a dozen times, draped myself in six yards of printed voile. Ah... does it still show, my night of love? You look pale, he said. Not pale, not really pale. It's the lipstick's anemia. Out in the street, we heard The sirens go, and I paused in talk to weave their wail with the sound of his mirthless laughter. He said, they are testing the sirens today. I am happy. He really was lavish with words. I am happy, just being with you. But you . . . you love another, I know, he said, perhaps a handsome man, a young and handsome man. Not young, not handsome, I th...

He talks, turning a sun-stained Cheek to me, his mouth, a dark Cavern, where stalactites of Uneven teeth gleam, his right Hand on my knee, while our minds Are willed to race towards love; But, they only wander, tripping Idly over puddles of Desire. .... .Can this man with Nimble finger-tips unleash Nothing more alive than the Skin's lazy hungers? Who can Help us who have lived so long And have failed in love? The heart, An empty cistern, waiting Through long hours, fills itself With coiling snakes of silence. ..... I am a freak. It's only To save my face, I flaunt, at Times, a grand, flamboyant lust. 

What is this drink but The April sun, squeezed Like an orange in My glass? I sip the Fire, I drink and drink Again, I am drunk Yes, but on the gold of suns, What noble venom now flows through my veins and fills my mind with unhurried laughter? My worries doze. Wee bubblesring my glass, like a brides nervous smile, and meet my lips. Dear, forgive this moments lull in wanting you, the blur in memory. How brief the term of my devotion, how brief your reign when i with glass in hand, drink, drink, and drink again this Juice of April suns. 

This love older than I by myriad Saddened centuries was once a prayer In his bones that made them grow in years of Adolescence to this favored height; yes, It was my desire that made him male And beautiful, so that when at last we Met, to believe that once I knew not his Form, his quiet touch, or the blind kindness Of his lips was hard indeed. Betray me? Yes, he can, but never physically Only with words that curl their limbs at Touch of air and die with metallic sighs. Why care I for their quick sterile sting, while My body's wisdom tells and tells again That I shall find my rest, my sleep, my peace And even death nowhere else but here in My betrayer's arms... 

Today the world is a little more my own. No need to remember the pain A blue-frocked woman caused, throwing Words at me like pots and pans, to drain That honey-coloured day of peace. ‘Why don't you join the others, what A peculiar child you are! ' On the lawn, in clusters, sat my schoolmates sipping Sugarcane, they turned and laughed;  Children are funny things, they laugh In mirth at others' tears, I buried My face in the sun-warmed hedge And smelt the flowers and the pain. The words are muffled now, the laughing Faces only a blur. The years have Sped along, stopping briefly At beloved halts and moving Sadly on. My mind has found An adult peace. No need to remember That picnic day when I lay hidden By a hedge, watching the steel-white sun Standing lonely in the sky. 

O what does the burning mouth Of sun, burning in today's, Sky, remind me….oh, yes, his Mouth, and….his limbs like pale and Carnivorous plants reaching out for me, and the sad lie of my unending lust. Where is room, excuse or even Need for love, for, isn't each Embrace a complete thing a finished Jigsaw, when mouth on mouth, i lie, Ignoring my poor moody mind While pleasure, with deliberate gaeity Trumpets harshly into the silence of the room… At noon I watch the sleek crows flying Like poison on wings-and at Night, from behind the Burdwan Road, the corpse-bearers cry ‘Bol, Hari Bol' , a strange lacing For moonless nights, while I walk The verandah sleepless, a Million questions awake in Me, and all about him, and This skin-communicated Thing that I dare not yet in His presence call our love. [From Summer in Calcutta] 

Of late I have begun to feel a hunger To take in with greed, like a forest fire that Consumes and with each killing gains a wilder, Brighter charm, all that comes my way. Bald child in Open pram, you think I only look, and you Too, slim lovers behind the tree and you, old Man with paper in your hand and sunlight in Your hair... My eyes lick at you like flames, my nerves Consume ; and, when I finish with you, in the Pram, near the tree and, on the park bench, I spit Out small heaps of ash, nothing else. But in me The sights and smells and sounds shall thrive and go on And on and on. In me shall sleep the baby That sat in prams and sleep and wake and smile its Toothless smile. In me shall walk the lovers hand In hand and in me, where else, the old shall sit And feel the touch of sun. In me, the street-lamps Shall glimmer, the cabaret girls cavort, the Wedding drums resound, the eunuchs swirl coloured Skirts and sing sad songs of love, the wounded moan, And in me the dying mother with ho...

A nnette, At the dresser. Pale fingers over mirror-fields Reaping That wheat brown hair. Beauty Falling as chaff in old mirrors, While calenders In all The cities turn…. [From Only The Soul Knows How To Sing] 

Beginning a new column is like entering into a marriage arranged by others. One worries about a possible incompatibility with the conceptual audience. Am I likable? Do the topics I fancy writing about interest others? Such questions provide unease and delay the decisions. This is to be a column directed at the largest audience imaginable. What is common in me and in all of them? . Not poetry. Not art. Not even the political manifesto of a non-political person living in the small town of Cochin. An editor of a Bombay papers weekend issue advised me not to write on Cochin in my column. Bombayites only like to read of their own city or of the metros of the West. The readers were anglicised and impatient with desk talk. The upper middle classes are more westernised today than their ancestors were, while the British ruled Indian. Dress might be ethnic but the dialect was most certainly a hybrid with touches of Goanese. "Yawl are good people Mrs Das although yawl...

Was your husband jealous of all the attention you got? Not at all. As long as I went out with an umbrella when it rained. I used to get headaches walking in the sun so he asked my escort to carry a sunshade or tell them, see, she doesn't walk in the sun. That's all. He was much older, and he felt that I should move about with people of my age. He was very understanding about it. He didn't want to go to the theatre or for a drive, so he would choose a very harmless looking young man and ask him to take me out. No complications. It was not as if I was leading a wicked life. If I went out, I went out with my children too. We all had a good time. Now Shobha De writes about sex and nobody criticises her. When you wrote about love... Shobha De is different. Shobha De writes what probably she enjoys. I may have written about love affairs, but I have not glorified lust. There was nothing obscene about love. My love was fashioned after the love of Radha and Krishna. Th...

Do you believe in God? Of course, I do. In what form? I believe that God is there is a very cell of my body, your body, every cell of this world. Some kind of power, that is how I think of God. That God is good enough for me. I don't need Gods trapped in mausoleums, temples, churches, mosques. I don't need such Gods who can be imprisoned. You are quite unconventional in your writings, lifestyle and opinions. May be because of that, you created a lot of controversies too. Do you enjoy being a controversial figure? No, I don't enjoy it at all. I suffer from such controversies. It don't know the mind of society so well so, sometimes I astonish them by my frankness and they are not willing to accept the fact that a Hindu woman could be unconventional and not-so-traditional. Probably because I have some courage to be what I am, and I don't see my faults as faults -- I see them as characteristics; strengths too. Why not, if you realise that you are only ...