Kalpana R.J.
Kalpana R J is an erudite scholar and a perceptive critic. She obtained her Doctorate in English from the University of Mumbai. Her Doctoral thesis "A Critique of Feminism" was highly eulogized for its original thought content and refreshingly lucid style. She has published a three volume set on Feminist Issues In Indian Literature - Feminism and Family, Feminism and The Individual, Feminism and Sexual Poetics, which was released during the International Conference for Commonwealth Literature. In addition, she has had published a book of poetry titled - Temple Dreams. She is currently working on two biographies - one of which is on the Life and Times of a Hindu Missionary. Professionally, she is a Management Consultant on Knowledge Management.
Poems –
TEMPLE DREAMS
From the beginning, I have known
I would come back here
To the sounds of temple bells, languid frescoes
Glinting from the shadow, you stand in Holy wedlock
Full of shy, bridal gentleness to his amorous touch
He comes to parted lips, kissing outthrust breasts
Your face riding high on crests of passion
As he slides his fingers between creamy thighs
And licks your perfumed navel
Mated and blessed and complete
With thousand years of Vedic tradition
And mystic Tantrik knowledge: Triumphant
You stand with proud breast fondling
Flexed muscles of god himself. And he slumbers
Cradled in your lap, a careless arm flung across hips
Lips nestled in your cleft – tell me
Under the formed surface of love, is your
Secreting heart yet starved? Maybe one
Did feel a quickening of pulse, as he
Carved you out of the cold stillness of night
Drunk with divine desire, he flirted
With stones and your magic, to engrave
Souls feast on ornate walls, casting you
In revelations of flesh: have you
On full moon nights left the sanctity
Of hallowed halls to processional defeat?
Gods confused with naked men’s brief lives
Abandoned you to turbulent intrigues
To freeze or burn
Stone dancing to death songs.
Exposed, fingered with knowing scars
You stand in frozen silence, a granite sacrifice
An idyllic death. Forever redeemed.
To flung open doors you stay pledged
To satisfy foreign lusts. Till one
With primitive longings in forgotten loins
Caresses ancient anklets to hear
The rush of dancing feet in laughing gaiety
I stare at primeval ecstasy molded in time
When fragments of ritual power will pluck you
Out of burning stone. A sliver of touches will
Dream you to me tonight.
The baths, the rituals, the sun kissed hair
The waiting, the dreams, the cries to heaven
I thrash on the edge of knowing
As you rise to haunt me in temple dreams.
MISSING DATES
Slowly Time uncoils itself
Takes a child’s hesitant steps
The unceasing oceanic roar fills the ear
Floating in amniotic fluid, I dive
To find a remembrance shell
Haunting cries throttle my thoughts
Voices from long ago
Between now and then, there is nothing
A nothing emptiness,
A nothing darkness.
Unrolling reels of memories
Frescoes flash past mind’s eye
Vaguely familiar disturbing sights
Running feet and psychedelic lights
Punctured cries from blasts of fire
Running from constellated images
I walk the ambiguous questions
Anonymous and seduced by Time’s trickery
I pause -
Meditating
Life’s broken chord I try to find
And in life’s parenthesis
There are still some,
Missing dates.
DEATH PACT
A rainbow in the sky
Coloring the wretched weather of the day
Proverbial promise of happiness
Spurred her on to dizzying heights of a ‘must do’
I thought she had it all
A room full of light, a shelf of classics
A spray of water to tickle her toes
Constant presence of company
Spells of advice, of drifting laughter
Grace of reminiscence, possessive preferences
She was culture to a dying civilization.
No doubt these things happen
Even I drive with rolled up windows
Past pleading crowds. I only live
For summer madness. Then,
Just for a season I am born again
The bright blue and noisy crickets
Running water and the timeless certainity of
The summer moon. So here I am
Still driving on.
There is always something there
All the dead and their dying
Driven fancies in shimmering mists
Thin grip of memory from the past
The nervousness, the shaking, the vomiting
One final shudder and
The terror of retirement before dawn.
Questions come back as does
The sun and the phases of moon
How? When? Why?
Did she embrace death in peace?
Can death be equated with peace?
The open canister rolled from clutching fingers
Spilled its contents onto the floor
Displacing autopsical need and
A post mortem dirge.
She died like a coward
- don’t we all-
So I notice the quiet room
The advice spelled no instant formula
The laughter just drifted away
With slow time and faded portraits
She will be just a ghost from the other side
An ectoplasmic reality. Gone forever
Death is no fun. I fear
With tears, with gloves and
The glimmer of a kitchen knife
Running past chill past terror
Created horrors of the mind
Dragging chains of iron through corridors
In the dead, dead summer night
And no moon.
RELICS
I found myself knee deep
In stained yellow leaves of
Memory clusters that refuse
To get biodegradable.
A crowd of people drift
Fattened with recognition
They come chattered constantly
Infiltrating my thoughts.
At their million societal collisions
Against my ears, it is to
Ablutions make and take
Or shun such a stake.
Yet these visitations
Shuttling annually – I am told
Were promised to each name,
Granting fulfilment. |
