Poetry Reads: On A Mythical Mumbai Weekend by Snehith Kumbla

On A Mythical Mumbai Weekend

by Snehith Kumbla 

On a mythical Mumbai weekend, 

of no serene start or dubious end, 

with imaginary beauties, invisible friends,

I stepped out of a puffing train, 

my long unkempt hair a lion's mane, 

getting used to my twitching tail,

Posing on the Gateway of India, 

the extraordinary explorer pose, 

took a boat to Elephanta (sans the hose),

and when my shivering co-passengers

had finished feverishly taking pictures

and started screaming holy mothers and sisters, 

I took off from the starboard end, 

and became the first man-lion to 

cross the polluted Indian channel, 

surviving to make the news channels,

my scientific name listed as a brand new mammal, 

my mating call recognized as a gushing gargle, 

On a mythical Mumbai weekend, 

of no serene start or dubious end, 

with imaginary beauties, invisible friends,

I devoured deep-kissing lovers for lunch 

at Bandstand's low-tide on a hunch,

to the delicious sound of munch! munch!

even as Shah Rukh Khan watched disgusted 

from his big big bungalow by the sea, 

and as the city sharpshooters came after me,    

and later when they brought me down, 

from Nariman Point building, like KING KONG,

I tuned a dusty guitar and sang a melancholy song,

on the death of adventure, love and reality, 

dangers of delusions, lethargy and self-pity,

repression, horniness and too much TV,

down in a shower of bullets when I went, 

sky like the coming of rain, godspeed, godsend, 

in a mythical city, where nothing is really meant, 

On a mythical Mumbai weekend, 

of no serene start or dubious end, 

with imaginary beauties, invisible friends...

>>>

(As published on https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1672207/on-a-mythical-mumbai-weekend/)

Mingling fantasy, boredom (epic ennui), love for the movies and alleged diary entries, On a Mythical Mumbai Weekend, is also my call out to meeting childhood, college, journalism and travel friends, visiting Elephanta Caves, browsing books at Flora Fountain, walking down Marine Drive, discovering Prithvi Theatre and many other South Mumbai memories.  

(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

Fiction Reads: Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh

In the summer of 1947, a gruesome, violent bloodbath ensues during the turbulent India-Pakistan partition, killing millions in its wake. 

Menwhile at the border village of Mano Majra, life goes on as usual. 

The residents time their daily routine of chores, meals, work, prayers and sleep to the sound of trains arriving-departing at the railway station. 

This fragile peace is soon smashed to bits. The local moneylender's murder ruffles up the denizens. Then, a train arrives at Mano Majra, ominously quiet, bearing ghostly tidings.

First published in 1956, Train to Pakistan is up there among Singh's best novels, notably Delhi (1990). Instead of the latter's epic sweep, Singh slashes at the jugular here. 

He fleshes out life-mirroring characters, rough, raw and hapless to the circumstances. 

From the giant-like Sikh rogue Juggat Singh, the well-intending, yet conniving, district magistrate Hukum Chand, city-dwelling communist Iqbal, Sikh priest Meet Singh to Nooran, the vulnerable Muslim girl, Singh is in his element here.

Symbolisms and insights
Trains running haywire and disrupting tranquil lives makes for strong symbolism here, as does the reading out of Guru Nanak's teachings, a downplayed, pivotal moment in the story.

As the Sutlej river swells with the monsoon's advent, dead bloated bodies come floating by. A madness tardily, surely grips the village. It only takes a young mob-rouser to light the flame and the stage is set for mayhem and murder. 

Singh masterfully dissects the times, emotions and short-sightedness of the general public. No individual, independent thoughts prevail here. In a snatch, a crowd transforms into a killing mob.

Nightmarish, brutal descriptions follow. The unsettling analogy to Nehru's Tryst with destiny speech is haunting. 

An abrupt stunning climax winds up this powerful gritty tale. 

Unsentimental, effectively dry and humane, this is a surprisingly redeeming partition novel. 

A definitive classic, a necessary cautionary tale of our times. Sadly, still contemporary and immediate in the 70th year of India's independence.



(Article by Snehith Kumbla)    

A partition photograph by Margaret Bourke-White for LIFE magazine.
(Courtesy: time.com)

Fiction Reads: Turbulence by Samit Basu

All passengers on a London-Delhi flight mysteriously end up with superpowers. Soon, the new, uncertain beings take sides. The meek are done away with and only a few remain of the lot. A battle for survival and domination ensues. Meanwhile, film, comic book, music and other popular culture references populate the plot, keeping it light and downright silly.

A deliberate hyper-imaginative spoofy take on every other superhero story, Turbulence is Samit Basu at the height of his powers in mockery. Basu's humour is the stuff of parody films, bordering on the juvenile, but always entertaining.

Don't look for depth, truth and literature here. Latch on to vivid, comic-book, 'too much TV'-fueled imagery instead. From a flying man, a sleepwalking scientist, weather-maker, mind-bender, manga animation-transforming warrior, notorious strongman, body multiplier to the Internet manipulator, this is super-nerdy, teenage-dreamy stuff.

Turbulence cries out for a graphic novel version, it's superficial, damn funny, lampooned narrative is best suited for that format. A mad celebration of superhero plots and all things Marvel, DC and beyond, you have to be a comic book/manga/anime fan for this one. Roll it up like a 3D sandwich over multiple reading sessions and let your mind go low, groovy and loose in suspended disbelief.



(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

A collage of various Turbulence front covers.

Author Quotes: Henning Mankell Quote on How Big is the World...

Sailing Boat, Mozambique

Henning Mankell (1948-2015), the Swedish crime writer, narrated this incident at a literary festival. I happen to have a documented, undated magazine cutting of the same, paraphrased below.  

Mankell was apparently interacting with an audience at Inhaca, Mozambique once. On an unexpected tangent, some curious teenagers, inadvertently infused a twist into the proceedings. It was an inquiry posed with utmost seriousness. Baffling as it may seem, the query was probably more surprising than all the ingenious plot deviations of  any crime thriller: When a boy and girl kiss each other, who is the one that must close their eyes? 

Sometimes a question can glint with a hundred radiant answers. Mankell discovered that kissing played no part in lovemaking on the island. They just didn't know it. All attempts at kissing were an imitation sourced from movies and magazines. There are people in the world that do not know what we do in our part of the world at all. Mankell ended his story with the following quote.   

"Many people say the world of today is so small. I say no.The world of today is really as big as it really is. If you are young today, go out in the world, and search to see how big is the world, not how small is the world. This story I give you as a present." 

-  Henning Mankell

(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

Henning Mankell

Poetry Reads: I Like You to be Still by Pablo Neruda

Sometimes, a book finds you, like it wanted to be found.

Pablo Neruda's second collection of poetry lay furtively read and untouched in my bookshelf for over a year. 

Yesterday night, as if in a haze I picked it up and discovered in euphoric shock what I had missed. It's like I were asleep in my waking hours and suddenly, blessedly discovered vision. For the wavering reader, it is probably better to read less then, but in intense, still fervour.

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair was published when Neruda was all of 19.

The Chilean poet wrote in Spanish.

I do not know to what degree the English translation mitigates/alters the original.

An elusive scent emanates from the words. 

A rare, elevating feeling for a reader of poetry.

I Like For You To Be Still 

by Pablo Neruda

I like for you to be still

It is as though you are absent

And you hear me from far away

And my voice does not touch you

It seems as though your eyes had flown away

And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth

As all things are filled with my soul

You emerge from the things

Filled with my soul

You are like my soul

A butterfly of dream

And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still

And you seem far away

It sounds as though you are lamenting

A butterfly cooing like a dove

And you hear me from far away

And my voice does not reach you

Let me come to be still in your silence

And let me talk to you with your silence

That is bright as a lamp

Simple, as a ring

You are like the night

With its stillness and constellations

Your silence is that of a star

As remote and candid

I like for you to be still

It is as though you are absent

Distant and full of sorrow

So you would've died

One word then, One smile is enough

And I'm happy;

Happy that it's not true

(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

Fiction Reads: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Now Chil the Kite brings home the night 

That Mang the Bat sets free - 

The herds are shut in byre and hut 

For loosed till dawn are we.

This is the hour of pride and power, 

Talon and Tush and claw. 

Oh hear the call! - Good Hunting all

That keep the Jungle Law! 

                                                     NIGHT-SONG IN THE JUNGLE

We talk here, oh non-forest folk, of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Apart from the popular stories that feature Mowgli and his jungle friends, it also features other imaginative animal stories.

Even though there is the guise of a novel, the stories in The Jungle Book are singular short stories in their narration, each containing, either at story's start or conclusion - a poem. Kipling’s passion and hold over poetry is in all spark here, he writes with simplicity and playfulness, deft skill in rhyme.The book looks favourably at British colonial rule, the image is predominantly romantic.

Kipling's animals speak in classic English with a scatter of Indian slang. Yet it does not seem odd that the creatures are speaking. There is a Peter Pan kind of timelessness to their talk. Humans linger as a threat, his intrusive danger always lurking. Kipling gets his message across:

The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason , forbids every beast  to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting-grounds of his pack or tribe. 

The first story, Mowgli’s Brothers chronicles the induction of a ‘man-cub’ to the wolf pack, introduces his friends Baloo, the jungle law teaching strict, kind bear and Bagheera, the inky-black panther. We are also introduced to the menace of Shere Khan, an able nemesis. The story ends with Mowgli’s decision to leave the wolf pack. Why does he take such a drastic decision? You have to read the book for that.

Kaa’s Hunting is another Mowgli tale that flashbacks to a confrontation between a giant rock python and the wayward Bandar-log: as monkeys are defamed here. Tiger! Tiger! chronicles the final face-off between Mowgli and Shere Khan. The Mowgli stories in the book end there. The Second Jungle Book contains other stories featuring Mowgli and his friends.

Moving on, The White Seal, fabled to be heard from a traveling and truthful sea bird that the narrator nursed to health on a ship, takes a diversion to the snow-frozen Arctic region. A relevant tale on the devastating role humans play in mixing livelihood with killing.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is the most celebrated of mongoose vs cobra stories, with a whiff of fairy-tale in its depiction of cobra as a cruel, merciless villain. One story where humans feature prominently as the ones protected by a valiant mongoose.

Toomai of the Elephants tells the tale of a young Indian boy mahout, who gets a rare insight into a secret ritual of elephants. Servants of the Queen serves as a parody of the imperial, all-conquering British army. The comic conversation between the animals is lively, as the night before the big parade, they enumerate their experiences to each other.      

Kipling and Mowgli

Much of Kipling’s writing for the book was sourced from his stay in India. Kipling was born in 1865 in Bombay (presently Mumbai). Mowgli’s character is said to be inspired from Kipling’s isolation when, at the age of three, he and his sister were left by his parents with a couple in England for five years.The author has written bitterly about this five-year period in his autobiography. That Mowgli grows up with wolves, and there is no mention of his parents, except a sentence that he is a woodcutter’s son, seems the outlet of that memory, if not distinctly so.

Kipling returned to India at the age of 17, his experiences resulted in an astounding seven volumes of stories.  The writer had left India in 1889 and moved to London. He traveled extensively during this period, got married and wrote prolifically. The Jungle Book was an outcome of this lush period of youth, change and success.

Edition

Watch out for an omnibus edition that contains the duo - The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book.

(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

Poetry Reads: The Firefly by Ogden Nash

Ahoy, Wolf here.  

It is certainly a surprise of momentous proportion 

that we hadn't yet featured on this blog, 

a poet of Ogden Nash's literary calibre and position. 

After all his poems are witty and funny, 

for Nash (1902 - 1971) had a talent for the humourous, 

a quality often found wanting in numerous. 

The use of rhyme that we attempt here in prose, 

the American poet created in verse. 

He could rhyme any word to another,

as if  words were tickling us to laughter - with a feather.

The following poem is just a sample 

of a prolific poetry collection that can be best described as ample. 

If you want to read more there is certainly a book that is handy; 

and it is titled - Candy is Dandy. 

The Firefly
by Ogden Nash

The firefly's flame
Is something for which science has no name
I can think of nothing eerier
Than flying around with an unidentified glow on a
person's posteerier.

#

(Article by Snehith Kumbla)