Some such inspiration from Firenze and Roma (Musei Vaticani)

Image 1:
A close-up by a Yanko Malinov in the iconic Loggia dei Lanzi, Piazza Della Signoria. Once known as Menelaus carrying the body of Patroclus. But now it has been widely accepted that this group of sculpture is Ajax carrying the body of Achilles. The limp-ness that the Italians have achieved in the darned marble! You see, we have amazing ancient sculptures whose intricate carvings are unparalleled, too. It would have also been wonderful to have such heroes from our epics sculpted realistically, too. It’s just greed for art talking, not to discriminate. Art is art at the end of the day, no matter where it happens. That we humans are even capable of it is endlessly inspiring. I mean, all the glorious characters of our epics coming alive this way! Imagine a Vishwaroopa Darshanam carved out! I mean, sometimes I wonder what the Romans would have done if we gave them the troubled and the glorious heroes from our epics here. Just how many scenes would have come alive like this, goodness gracious!

Image 2:
Although Homer does not mention Laocoön or his sons in the _Iliad_, these characters come into life in the Epic Cycle on the Trojan Wars. Whatever little you learn from the guides in the Vatican Museums itself ignites an interest in you. Such mastery over stone was achieved millennia ago, the Hellenistic original at least. Mad, mad, mad real antiquity. And what the Greek achieved as original art, the Romans took it to a whole new stratosphere. Argh, annoyingly wonderful! It has been a day of digging into some Greco-Roman mythology and history and art again. Want more realistic sculptures in here, too, please! There’s so much that can burst into life in stone here, so much!!! No dearth of stories what.so.ever. Come on! 

Ajax and/in art: a study

Ajax and/in art: a study. Although there aren’t obvious parallels between Bheema of the Mahābhārata and Ajax in the Iliad, it’s hard for an Indian exposed to some Greek literature to not think of them both, especially in the glorious poetic descriptions of their physical prowesses. Achilles, the obvious hero — always on top of the Iliad’s hierarchy of heroes — dying and his limp body being carried by Ajax is one of the finest tragic scenes ever conceived and articulated by any human mind anywhere. And witnessing Ajax’s depiction in person, in the half-ruined torso in the Vatican Museum and the scene itself standing eternal as sculpture in Firenze (oh, my darling, darling Florence, you cruel beauty!) was physically painful. The first pot was also in the Vatican; the other (the only photo in here borrowed, from the the Walters Art Museum website). In one, they’re playing and in another, one is dead. Achilles’ end rightfully begets tears but what about Ajax’s? Isn’t it rib-bitingly chilling in its own way?

My heart, my sweet clutter. All these words. And him.

Tigers and tiger lovers

From the priceless treasure chest called The Bookworm on Church Street (thanks much to our unfailing guardian Preetham). Picked up this precious baby yesterday as a surprise gift for my tiger-worshipper boy. A December 1997 edition! I was completing only the eighth year of my existence, running around in pig tails and frilly frocks and this boy’s dreams were already striped with feline fascination. Incidentally, he says he has even written about this very issue, for it was the beginning of his introduction to this cat that has forever haunted the alleyways of the human heart. His spiritual home that Bandhavgarh leaped through these pages at him for the first time. I had no idea when I picked this up. I need to read the old blog of this fabulous storyteller properly! So here’s a small bundle of pages carrying a story, enriching a day like this, enriching two lives like this.

The Buddha. Siddhartha. Yashodharā. Rahulā. Abandonment. Enlightenment.

Siddhartha was a husband and father before he came the Buddha. How do we use our humanity to witness a great journey that originates in abandonment?

Book Brahma Kannada publishes my poem, ‘Yashodharégé’ (‘For Yashodharā’), which tries to understand her pain, and the way she might have seen his leaving in the middle of the night she births their baby, Rāhula.

Thank you for picking up a poem dedicated to a forgotten woman, about inconvenient truths, Book Brahma!

There is a poem in English that happened on this same woman if anyone is interested. Not a translation but a different poem:

Padayaatre hangover

My dear friend, M. A Marathi gal who was my pen-friend and a fellow Tumblogger in another life. (Remember Tumblr? 🥹) We’ve had a few non-Kannadigas join our sessions in the past, too; poetry lovers who wanted to witness a Kannada group sharing their love for poetry. They have seen us go ‘aaah’ in unison at the end of a line, they have seen us argue vehemently in disagreement about a poet’s belief or some such thing. But then they have seen us laughing with one another over coffee and paani puri after all the reading. Debate or disagreement have only enriched us and not led to awkwardness or falling apart. The infectious positive energy everyone brings and the love for this human phenomenon have thus broken language barriers in their own ways in such witnessing. As for me, I’m just a happy spectator of all this happening to me and around me.

Padayaatre: its solitude and its celebration

Before the celebration of Kannada poetry every month in the name of Padayaatre, there are a few moments of silence and solitude that move me when I’m picking the poems and passages (sometimes short-stories). This solitude is pregnant with the anticipation of mingling with the solitudes of my fellow poetry lovers who would also be spending these solitary moments in their respective nests. This is our ‘habba’, our celebration of a shared love. And my very existence buoys with gratitude and joy every time I think of this.

Who or what is your Krishna?

The idea of Krishna: as many hearts, so many emotions. The eternal beloved. He is fluid, changing form and teasing you in formlessness, too. He is in the pining, he is in the pleasure. He is Earth, he is ether. He is the muse, he is the poetry. You, the tongue; he, the song. You, lovelorn; he, love. A bunch of poems and couplets and one-liners from a time of turmoil and pining. A world of nostalgia thus opens up. Who or what is your Krishna?

Such simple sorcery…

Poetry happens. And you can only put your head down and let it pour out of you, shiver and let go as if a ghost were passing through you. It’s a strange privilege. It wasn’t yours until it happened and it isn’t yours once it is on a page. And you are only fortunate if the same words mean something to another human being at all. And so it multiplies with newer meanings after the labour pain you went through, acquiring new guardians. One such gentle guardian of poetry is Ashok Subramanian, whose reviews of any poet’s work brim with a rare kindness and a curiosity that brings forth rarer meanings out of the poems the poet herself wasn’t privy to. I’m grateful for this unexpected graciousness today. This is my ‘habba‘, the daily festival of poetry… of keeping one word after another and seeing if they throw meaning at you. Such simple sorcery.
https://author-ashok.medium.com/poem-review-miracles-in-stillness-and-the-flow-e0a9293749e3

Bhakti

this devotion to the force of life that forms us all

its continuity, its fractal flow

as mysterious as running your finger along a mobius strip

it bubbles up within and pours out of you

spills in spite of you

and you tell yourself again and again

like it were a sacred hymn

you are terrified of your own strength

to bare it all, to bear it all

Dr., Pandit, Vidwaan Shankar Mahadevan

When “Dr.”, “Pandit”, “Vidwan” Shankar Mahadevan goes “Yééé jaya jaya jackeTTu jayan ganDa raakeTTu” with all that tappaanguchchi beat, you know it’s a philosophy of its own: have a ton of fun no matter what purists and people of great (?) restraint think of it! Life’s too short to take oneself seriously. Screw the titles, screw seriousness; at least sometimes be silly, say the word “chindhi” and put one tappaanguchi step I say, local style! Since Shankar da is a national treasure, I hereby request all my non-Kannadiga friends also to listen to ‘jaya jaya jackeTTu’! Come on! Happy habba!

A Modern Renaissance Man

Have been following Rajiv’s work for a while and there’s no exaggeration in some people calling him the modern Renaissance man. He’s into painting, pottery, playing harp, cooking, calligraphy, letter-writing, antique collection, his knowledge of art is deep. He cares about handmade things: a quilt he got made with his mum’s and granny’s sarees, the last little cleaning brush he has in his apartment filled with pieces chosen lovingly, thoughtfully. His adoration for beauty in EVERYDAY things is infectious. Not waiting for some once-in-a-lifetime magic but to make everything around us magical every day. Our days are what add up to a well-lived life, shouldn’t we care a little more perhaps?💗