New Blog Alert! Over to Meraki I Querencia

 Dear all, 

I started this blog when I had barely finished my MA final exams. There's a lot of cringe-worthy juvenilia here if you probe which I would happily disown. Also, this blog has been hibernating and dormant now for over 3 years since the pandemic period where somehow I languished, life languished, although writing and publishing did not. But I did not update the new publications on my blog. 

I'm at a different turn now, I have new and different writing projects in mind, and I thought of starting a new one in a new way, with a better idea of what and how I write-- excessively attached though I am to people, places, and well to blogs too, this one will always remain a testament to how I began my journey and to that foolish and naive kid who still, in many ways, lives on. 

Cutting out the literary rhetoric and the emotional crap, please find me henceforth at Meraki I Querencia (meraki-querencia.blogspot.com)

I look forward to your visits! 

Puking at pettiness and cancel culture!!

Puking at pettiness and cancel-culture!!

Poets Sharanya Manivannan, Monica Mody and Sohini Basak have publicly cancelled me, refused permissions, and withdrawn their work from my forthcoming routledge monographs. 

And why? Because they got some smattering of knowledge information about me. I arrived in this city at 18 years of age. I was queer but i did not know it. I was autistic but i did not know it. My parents were divorced, yes I surely knew this. Thanks to the aforementioned factors, i fell in lifelong passionate obsessive love with a professor poet who was extremely kind to me. Let me be loyal enough to the love of my life not to take her name here. I was accused of stalking her ultimately. My story is written in detail in my book forthcoming in 2024. 

They have some superficial idea or knowledge about this extremely complex scenario, and therefore choose to cancel me publicly, judging and believing me to be a bad person. My Routledge monographs about trends in poetry are being shattered. If people can cancel billionaire bestseller J K Rowling, they can cancel me, i suppose. 

I remain, most traumatised, and more shattered than my monographs. 

The Bestest, Beautifullest News of All

 And finally, the bestest, beautifullest, most splendid news of all. My very own poetry book, A Witch Like You, equal to the length of two usual poetry books, has been accepted by feminist press, Girls on Key Poetry, Australia, and is scheduled for an April 2021 release. Woohoo!! <3 <3 <3 

Keep watching this space for more good news, cos I'm telling ya, stuff will be happening very, very soon! 

'Diwali: A Holy Night' won a prize!

 So this old poem, written and posted on this blog earlier during my MPhil days, won a prize! Beyond the panorama, a journal operating from Bangalore, had a poetry competition on 'Lights' on the occasion of Diali, the fstival of lights, and this little poem won a prize for it!! I got a poetry books as a prize, along with a cloth stationery pouch and a handwritten note! 

See the website here

This Amavasya night
This glow of candles
This lit-up darkness
Makes me believe.
Tracing your name
In smoke-trails with the phuljhadi
Makes me believe.
Green-yellow lights wind snakily in the lawn
Up-vine-down-trellis, strangely eerie
The burning flame in me grows stronger
Creating magic with quicksilver heat
the flame of my belief in you.
This is the flame which lights me regardless
All doubts scatter in surrounding darkness
Rangoli patterns my fingers etch draw life
From this flame which makes
This smoke-strewn, flame-strewn
Night holy.
I am the blue of the flame
Beyond touch, beyond reach.

---

Written by Shruti Sareen

Three more poems in Hakara, September 2020

So three more poems in Hakara, the journal edited by Ashutosh Potdar and Noopur Desai from Mumbai-Pune. The poems are- 'Frankenstein', 'The All Consuming Question', and, 'My Anger is Rising Like the Brahmaputra'. Accompanying the poems is an illustration / painting by my very own friend, Abhipsa Chakraborty! 

back

My Anger is Rising Like the Brahmaputra 

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam
Flooding its banks, drowning, destroying everything in sight 
My anger is like the bloody sunset on the river 
Glorious, ferocious, burning, sinking only to rise again 
Nature’s fury is as merciless as man’s against nature. 

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam
Anger at politicians touring luxury Assamese resorts
While commoners, sighing dying, make another trip, Pay lives as cost 
Angry that those with fake histories and forged marksheets
Serve protesting Miya poets with chargesheets 
Those with fake qualifications and degrees
Expect the precarious poor to produce proof for NRC 
Angry that parents kill their own children 
For the honour of a girl or an inter caste union 
Angry that sewers reveal dead Dalit body parts 
We have reached the moon but not their hearts 
Once, we had unity in diversity 
Today, hearts divided, only relics of unity

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam 
Temples of solid gold, opulent towers, masterpieces 
Farmers dying, children starving, death in the gutter, death in the penis 
Angry that little children die crying for food
that rapists go scot free and girls are abused
Angry that workers are humiliated with cruelty
When corporates are culprits, criminals with impunity 
Angry that lakhs of mangroves are cut down 
For a new metro station, or a tinsel town 
Angry that we learnt of lynchings from Alice Walker
Today’s children must cry “Oh no! Not another!” 
Angry that cows and people alike are used as pawns
For evil machinations with no sign of a dawn 

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam 
With the force of Kerala’s floods, Chennai’s tsunami and Odisha’sFani
Like a dancing serpent raising his hood
As my anger reaches epic proportions 
This poem remains castrated, impotent, no promise of fruition 
***

The All Consuming Question

So let’s settle this finally.
The all consuming question
as vital as the difference
Between breath and death: do you
Like me or dislike me? The gravity
of this may escape you, but consider
the weightiness of a world built and
a world destroyed, a life born
and a life broken. My heart
speaks two separate truths,
one immediate, the other analytic.
The immediate says- you fool!
She stays away from you, cannot
See you nor speak to you, of course
She dislikes you, it is clear and simple.
Thus saying, the immediate proceeds
To be deeply jealous, to break itself
With its own immediacy, the haunting
Terror that you like her and her and her
And her and him and all of them
Whereas you choose to banish me to exile.
The immediate is a candle which burns itself
Out and dies. The immediate lands itself
In deep depression.It wants to become you
In order to desperately clutch at you. But that
Path is murky and dirty and all messed up.
The analytic tries to ponder. It wants to revise
The earlier notion that you are a sadist,
That you get pleasure out of
hurting me. The analytic
Says that you do this to save yourself,
Not to punish me, just as I
did not mean to cause you injury.
The analytic says that you have been
Patient and forebearing for a long,
Long time. The analytic says that silence
Need not necessarily be war. It could
Be peace too. The analytic remembers
That you did not tell them the secret
Between me and you. It recollects
The times when you looked at me
In the distance, even while surrounded
By them. How you even smiled, though I
Was not meant to see. How you refrained
From hurting me back in return all those times.
Some say this is forgiveness: not hurting the
One who hurt you back in revenge.That you
Are there with me in spirit, that I need not
Desperately clutch at straws in panic.

I like to believe the analytic
Even as the immediate runs
After me lashing out at my heels,
Baying for my blood, spreading terror
Saying the analytic is a lie.
The all consuming question will never
Hear an answer, the battle between
The immediate and the analytic rages on
Though the analytic still nurses hopes
Of faraway, distant dawn.
***

Frankenstein

Your fearful eyes
pierce a hole in my heart. 
the red mess oozes out
There is paucity of oxygen. 
I struggle to breathe
The air is suddenly cold. 
Too cold. Sadness has replaced oxygen.
My heart fills with deep grief which expands,
pushing against auricular and ventricular walls,
Am I Frankenstein, or the monster?
Do you see me as such? 
Does fear indicate aversion?
That is the primal question of my life.
An affirmative answer could lead to cardiac arrest. 
The memory of you, the idea of you 
is my pacemaker now. 
You are also the womb, giving primal womb nurture 
But I have been selfish. I am astounded 
At your extreme fear.
The Creature that Frankenstein created 
Brought him grief, guilt and finally death. 
That is the monster that chases me.
The revenge of the monster on F. 
Long ago, you compared it to Tom and Jerry.
Today I liken it to Frankenstein. We have come so far. 
I rehearse the act of shattering and breaking with grief
over and over again. I love you.
***

Image courtesy: Abhipsa Chakraborty

'Hair' and 'Birthing the Body' in Samyukta Poetry

 So Samyukta Poetry had a queer themed issue in June 2020 (my birth month!), so a couple of poems got featured there. As well as a youtube video--- my very first-- WOW!!

A link to the journal issue here and to the youtube video here

Hair 

She told me you cut those long black tresses

 suli in Axomiya, falling to your waist since a time

before I can remember. She showed me a picture

of you with new frizzy hair.

I wish I could have collected your beautiful fallen hair

I wish I could have preserved a piece of you

which you no longer wanted..

I wonder how your juda stick will feel from disuse and neglect now

Will you discard it, throw it away?

Will you keep your hair short now, send out short hair pictures?

Or let it grow long again?

My hair is emotion for me.

I caress it, twirl it, fiddle with it constantly

When I am upset. You are the only person

Who could make me cut it. On an impulse,

I want to cut my hair to be like you.

To keep you in me. To forsake the hair

Instead of forsaking you. Hair is precious,

But you are priceless. But that would

Be silly. I will preserve the old you for a while longer

My long black waist length tresses like yours

Tied up with a stick the way yours used to be,

Can I keep my hair and keep you too, I wonder?

 

Someday I will cut my hair like you

(Only you can make me do it).

Some of my hair turned white with PhD anxiety.

Sometimes, when macabre and gloomy, I think of killing

Myself, and presenting all my long cut-hair to you as proof.

I will cut my hair short when it’s mostly white

Like yours, or maybe like your sister’s

I will prance around with hair, blue, purple and green.

 So my hair is growing ripe and white and I am about to turn 32

You were 32 when I met you first. It’s been fourteen whole years.

Birthing the Body

“You dress just like your mother”, you said. “Why?”

I was flummoxed.

I had never thought I dressed like my mother

I had hardly thought about the way I dressed at all.

I wore whatever people gave me

I privileged the inner over the exterior

I thought fancy clothes as being frivolous

I did not know that I repeated the age-old privileging

of mind over body, man over woman, spiritual over physical

 

You taught me how to own my body

To play with it, experiment

the purpose of dressing is to feel beautiful

 not only to look

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

And my physique was similar to yours

The dark skin, the long face, the lean frame, and the long black rippled hair

So as I darkened my eyes, put up my hair, slipped in danglers,

pierced navel and nose and inked a tattoo like you,

Truthfully the most beautiful woman I have ever seen

I started to fall in love with the image I saw in the mirror

My body, and the way I adorned it, owned it

Even when thoughts and emotions were in disarray

 

Instead of dressing like my mother, I started dressing like you

If my mother birthed my body, so equally did you.

'In the Woods' in Narrow Road Journal

 Narrow Road Journal had a special issue called 'A New World' edited by Smeetha Bhoumik. Here's the poem ''In the Woods' which I wrote for it! 

In the Woods (a ghazal)

 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees in the woods

Murmuring humming buzzing bees in the woods

 

No daffodils, but lantana-  red orange yellow pink

Music, songs and love float on a breeze in the woods

 

Children run jump dance and play in joy

No school rules, no school fees in the woods

 

The birds know no caste and the deer no politics

Human ideas of money power privilege freeze in the woods

 

There’s no lies, malice, selfish greed in the forest

No oil pollution petrol diesel grease in the woods

 

A big bright rainbow hangs splendid in the sky

Across the field, a flock of geese in the woods

 

No dairy cows are traumatised beyond horror

Because nobody eats cheese in the woods.

 

Hues of orange pink purple blue red green

Peacocks and their mates tease in the woods.

 

 

The sun sets like a jewel, beyond the hill

The world is so beautiful, oh jeez, in the woods

 

Birds chirp and twitter, rabbits and squirrels hop

Life gets a new lease in the woods

 

Can we leave the muck and rot, create a new world

Won’t you come and live, says Shruti, please, in the woods?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Baidew' in Queer Poetry from South Asia

So this beloved poem 'Baidew', which is one of my favouritest, was published in the Harper Collins anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia edited by Aditi Angiras and Akhil Katyal, The World Belongs To Us, wow!! An honour and a privilege. Incidentally, Aditi and Akhil are both friends. 

 

Baidew

 

You said I remind you of your sister

When she was very young.

Sometimes I think I could have been

Your littlest sister. Could have played

With you, read with you and

Grown up with you.

Sometimes I think I could have been Axomiya

I look at your sister, she is like you

But not a mirror image. Sometimes I think

I could be her. I could be her sister too. You, her,

And me too. I could sister-love you, sister-look-up-to-you

And sister-tease you then.

I could take that as fundamental fact

Before I took on the world.

Sometimes I think I could have

Called you Baidew.

 

 

Food poems anthology!

 These two were especially written for, and published in, a food poems print anthology called Quesadilla and other food poems edited by Somrita Urni Ganguly, who's also a friend, so cheers to her-- yay!! 

Learning Balance Through Food 

 

Salt is an essential requirement in food. 

So heap it up. No, not so much as to become 

too much! You are cooking vegetables, not salt, you see. 

Salt is what you call a spice, or a condiment. 

It can make you, or it can break you. That’s the thing with salt. 

And the thing with hot crackling spluttering oil too. And with sugar. 

And with a zillion other things. Heck, it’s the thing with cooking itself. 

How did our ancestors live without fire

Cooking is vital but too much only leaves you with charred remains. 

So how much do you need of a good thing 

Are you making gobhi-aloo or aloo-gobhi? 

Do you want to balance the green with red and yellow bell peppers? 

What mix of sociology, history and poetry in a literature PhD? 

 How many poets is too many poets? You need to decide. 

Of course you may have milky sugary tea. I prefer it without

Then there are those who leave the tea leaves out of the tea and make it herbal

What proportion vodka in a glass of orange juice? Or vice versa. 

As a Facebook meme said, a balanced diet is red wine with white, milk chocolate with dark

Or let’s take rasgullasgulabjamunsladdoos and mithais. 

They are first and foremost sweets, Madame. 

But some like my mother like their sweets less-sweet. 

Or those like my taste-buds who mature with age

Leaving childish chocoholism and cottage cheese cravings behind 

You may be at the political centre, sir. I, surely left of centre 

But fundamental extremes only bind us in circles of continuum 

And next time you obsess, Asperger’s like  (note to self) 

over an unironed crease or some bit of dirt 

An incomplete footnote or an excluded poet 

Unbounded optimism-pessimism, emotion-reason, kindness-firmness 

And perhaps even the next time you exercise militant vegetarianism to spare those poor animals 

(So exercise it yes, but decide how much salt, what kind of salt) 

Maybe, just maybe remember (I need to learn but so do you) 

that although salt is an extremely important ingredient in cooking, 

And must certainly never be overlooked 

Salt must still be used in proportion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making Love Through Food

 

Conveying love through serving food

offerings upon heaped offerings, platefuls

is common in a culture which shies away

from expressing love in other ways.

Taste also as a marker of love is a common

motif in poetry. Tasting tea together,

wine together, cooking together, tasting

the beloved’s lips, nose, skin, eating

the desired one. Only, I make love

to you differently. Making love in absentia.

I try to connect with you whom I yearn for

by connecting with your culture.

Axomiya food. In my case, Axomiya everything.

But this poem is about food.

The mashed aloo pitika. The bamboo shoots I love.

Dried. Or pickled. Or fried. Bamboo shoots are bamboo shoots.

The khobong raspberry tea. So many myriad teas.

The laishak. I haven’t tasted the other

green leafies. The temulpaan which burned my throat,

I had so much. The big bright yellow nemus.

The brown Kumool chawal which swells in water.

The curd with rice flakes and jaggery. The payesh.

And sweet rice pithas. Narikollaru. The tangy dal

with the outenga in it. Did you grow up eating these?

You wrote poetry and prose about consuming home

through food. I so want to eat all of that.

I have very limited experience. I would anyway

Not have the maasortenga, the duck, the pork, the bacon.

Forever a divide between you and me. How does he make

love to you, not knowing how these feel and taste

upon your tongue. He has never eaten, never will.

How does he make love to you, not knowing that?

In absentia, I eat the bhogalichowmein (like I ate

with you once, remember? Aloo paranthas, popcorn,

chowmein – not axomiya). I try to adopt Axom land

I try to eat and dream my way back to you. 

Three poems in CultureCult, September 2019

 Hello folks, 

so these three poems got published in a print anthology called Culture Cult in the 'Nocturne' issue edited by Jay Chakravarti in September last year. Here you go! 

Exile : An Ode to My Happy Place 

 

It is a wound, ceaselessly burning, that no medicine can ever heal.

You cannot speak about it in the first person. I tried. I couldn’t. 

It is in my bloodstream. It is in my silences when I look away. It is in my hot secret tears. It is rarely in my speech.

Sometimes I try to distance it while speaking, jocularly, like a face painted masked clown at the circus

Because how else do I speak that which is too intimate for speech

That with which my pulse and heartbeat throbs night and day

That which is tattooed on my heart skin soul with indelible ink

That which I live in my dreams when I cannot in reality 

That which is mine, with me always, no matter how far away I am from it

That which I always hold magical memories of, 

No matter how bitter the hurt, how devastating the grief

O beautiful wondrous place, you are precious, you are loved 

You are mine, you are forever home.  

 

 

Grief

 

It is a thin, translucent lining

Wrapping itself around various

Organs. It forms the inner lining

Of the gut, of the colon, it covers

The limbs and the breasts. It thickens

Around the heart like a protecting wall.

At the corners of the eyes, it dissolves

Into tear drops. It pains at the joints,

like rheumatism. It is delicate

as spiderweb, and is easily perforated.

Sword-words are fatal. Dealt with such weapons

It shudders, shakes and violently trembles

Threatening to collapse and turn you into

Non-being. Even pin-prick words and

Hasty clumsy words can be fatal.

The membrane is fragile, and needs

Special care in a hospital. Rough and rude

Knocks produce agitations. The membrane

Of grief is tired of being perforated.

It wants a sterilized space to recuperate.

The membrane will become a wall.

The membrane will not allow

Perforations. The membrane

Will close into itself like a field

That lies fallow. The membrane will stop

Trying to interact with beings

In outer space. The membrane

Will preserve itself like pickle or jelly.

It will learn (regardless of the pain) the art

Of wearing masks, which come undone

Only in solitude.

 

 

 My Anger is Rising Like the Brahmaputra 

 

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam

Flooding its banks, drowning, destroying everything in sight 

My anger is like the bloody sunset on the river 

Glorious, ferocious, burning, sinking only to rise again 

Nature’s fury is as merciless as man’s against nature. 

 

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam

Anger at politicians touring luxury Assamese resorts

While commoners, sighing dying, make another trip, Pay lives as cost 

Angry that those with fake histories and forged marksheets

Serve protesting Miya poets with chargesheets 

Those with fake qualifications and degrees

Expect the precarious poor to produce proof for NRC 

Angry that parents kill their own children 

For the honour of a girl or an inter caste union 

Angry that sewers reveal dead Dalit body parts 

We have reached the moon but not their hearts 

Once, we had unity in diversity 

Today, hearts divided, only relics of unity

 

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam 

Temples of solid gold, opulent towers, masterpieces 

Farmers dying, children starving, death in the gutter, death in the penis 

Angry that little children die crying for food

that rapists go scot free and girls are abused

Angry that workers are humiliated with cruelty

When corporates are culprits, criminals with impunity 

Angry that lakhs of mangroves are cut down 

For a new metro station, or a tinsel town 

Angry that we learnt of lynchings from Alice Walker

Today’s children must cry “Oh no! Not another!” 

Angry that cows and people alike are used as pawns

For evil machinations with no sign of a dawn 

 

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam 

With the force of Kerala’s floods, Chennai’s tsunami and Odisha’sFani

Like a dancing serpent raising his hood

As my anger reaches epic proportions 

This poem remains castrated, impotent, no promise of fruition