my letter to a hmming bird

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Friday, 12 November 2010 at 21:12

fresh as a morning dew on a lotus petal
that's how you came to me
the innocent soul who climbed my stairs
that's how i will remember thee


showered by your  promises
showered by your love
smitten by your hunger
i held your hand and smiled at the heavens above

tiny hands for the junkies soul
the gods had sent, or so i was told

the innocent soul who climbed my stairs
that's how i will remember thee
will try my best to understand
all the lies you said to me

A short note...taking off from HG Arun's photograph: The Other (from the series Feed)

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Thursday, 10 September 2009 at 06:45

A short note...taking off from a photograph: The Other (from the series Feed)


Images set off associations....a late saturday night party..staying up post party...reading some Tehelka back issues. This work of Arun's flashed across my mind as read through a report on the Sang Parivar's enterprise of making cow urin cola. So enamoured we are with our tradition, that we think lacing soda and poison with cow urin (gau jal) and calling it is our best retort to American cultural imperialism. This image came flashing back as I read on...and the head of the Haridawar based gau shala and manufacturing unit ( run by the Cow Protection Board of the RSS) was passionately explain how they built up a caste system, the caste hierarchy of the ox...he went on to talk about how it was scientifically proven that cow urine has beneficial for heath in an all encompassing way. I began to wonder what stops us from engaging a bit more closely with our common sense.

One does not need to a skeptic to realize that the properties of urine are dependent on consumption habits. Since Agnivesh Tantra was written ( a 4th century AD text containing the seeds of Ayurveda) the consumption habits and availability of fodder for cows in the sub continent have drastically been altered.
Am my mind woke up and started racing lazily I remembered an Indian Express article mentioning that the Cow Protection Board has been injecting steroids to increase urine production (administered with steroids to increase milk production), one did not know whether to laugh or to cry.


-------------
a note added by a friend:
Everything is distorted. The more i think about it, the more it seems that we function mostly due to our ability to distort what we see. Ugliness is masked under necessity, kitsch and charm, under a string of terms designed to subdue a need to cry foul at a visceral degradation of most things around us. steel and glass seems acceptable, until you step out of the city and notice it surrounded by hills and it finally dawns on you that there's something wrong with what you have accepted.

 
Image details: medium: digital photograph on archival paper, astroturf Size: 47" x 28" x 3"; unique work ( 119 x 71 x 7.7 cms) Exhibition History: Shown at the Nature Morte , and the Sakshi gallery. sold. Buyer unknown

with grit and in despair

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Wednesday, 28 April 2010 at 01:06

its not that i have nevr taken this path
never had no qualms about picking up a bag and walking alone
its just that a hand feels good when you know the rains have washed away your home
the pain of the absent hand..maybe its better to just pick that bag and walk alone


my home may not stand no more when i reach
home is where the heart is
heartlessly down a un trodden path
holding onto my home with grit...but in despair
feel the need to throw away the bag...to pick myself and walk alone


its not that loneliness is scary
have had my best nights alone..under the starts
but then home is where your heart is
the starlight night weeps at her heartless lover
fighting back his tears with grit but in despair

the twinkel in those eternal eyes
lashed away by the torrential rains
i will pick my bag and come to you one last time
with no grit..no despair
just to gather all my strenghts to be able to pick up my bag and walk alone

a lil maroon watch

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Monday, 25 July 2011 at 22:24

it was november in kolkata
but every-time i could take a breath
i could feel the cold.

that when you came to me
dignified and un assuming
just as your wearer used to be

time had stopped in its tracks
to pay homage to to the lady with the brightest eyes i ever knew
as time stood still...i held you and looked at you

a call came in that night
a lil voice calling from far
the heart felt warm...thinking you wont be alone

then a month later i learnt
you were a lil burden..
destined to be returned.carried you back with love...

promising i will never let ypu be alone
hid you, taking you out to kiss you sometimes
carried you back with all my heart..yet for you time had stopped

heart sinks feeling your loneliness
more so cause i know you are forgotten by now
all i can do is look at you and kiss you again

post utopia

flight flight flight
with wings of wax or maybe those of steel
fly into those sanitary napkins
as the insects fly out

flights of desire
flights of fear
flights for a journey
and flights away from yourself
flights towards sun burn


fly fly fly
with wings of hope and despair
fly into joys and their sorrows
as all my dreams fly out

flights of fancy
flights of pain
flights from trouble
fly towards yourself
but don't crash into a mirror



by Rahul Bhattacharya on Saturday, 05 June 2010 at 15:43

dear mr. fantasy - re take

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Tuesday, 08 June 2010 at 11:23

you are the one who can make it all right
but doing that you break out in tears
please don't leave me like the other men you have
without you there is no way out from my fears


do anything you want
and wallow in your blues
but love this world
and give it all its' dues

you are the one who can make birds fly
but doing so you have lost faith in flight
there is nothing to hide but i try to hide them
without you there is no way out from my lies

flight of justice (written in protest and despair over the bhopal verdict)

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Tuesday, 08 June 2010 at 23:50

 

fly away fly away to your new lover
do you need to twist the knife is as you leave
though blind you were always beautiful to me
take away all that i can give


go away go away...pretend you are not for us
a trail of blood will linger and follow you as you leave
though late you always came to me
today you leave me alone in this house of evil

on door one was truth on the other door was lie
which one to enter through was upto you to decide
but you like coloured rain and poison in the sky
i will be left holding the miscarried hopes of people who have died

Why Reva diaries?

Sometimes one takes oneself at face value, begins to do something without really explaining why. here is a simple note on why i am doing it.

but yes..this camp is rooted in the Marxist strategies of protest, and a certain Gramsian notion of citizenship.

there are two things that are central to the conception and the method adopted in Reva Diaries.

• citizenship
• voluntarism                

A close friend of mine has been volunteering with the Narmada Bachao Movement and though her i got to know how a group of volunteers run pillar to post to save farmlands, and to ensure that government at-least gives adequate and legal compensation. at the same time i learnt how large multinationals, would spend large sums of money to ensure that farmers . to my aghast i learnt that companies and industrial lobbies spend enormous amounts of money to deny paltry compensation.

hapeshwar temple submerged Aug 16 2004

the brutality of the colonizing project bit me brutally. and i realized that all this was being done in our name and our silence was being quoted as our consent.
madhya pradesh generates the highest amount of electricity in the country and suffers from the longest ever power-cuts.

we get agitated if there is a power cut during a seminar on environment and ecology...
i thought it's time to draw the line.

there is a cluster of villages that that will be sunk by large reservoir  that is built to take away water and resources away from the land and it people.
tradition fishermen are left jobless... cause now there is a centralized tendering of fishing rights.

in the face of this, i want to respond as a curator and also i knew that the human factor in development interested many of my artist friends.

i have always been vocal about contemporary indian art being disconnected to the large hinterlands over which we are now witnessing a war over resources.thats why the idea of a platform where one can come visit see here....the people, culture and landscape set to be destroyed for our benefit and on the back of our silence.

if to give me electricity  50 villages have to be submerged, how am i better than a terrorist.
with all its faults NBA is a voluntary based non violent  movement- two values that i think should be central to any public engagement.

i am not going to mention it in my bio or present it as a paper in a seminar till a more serious engagement happens....right now it's just an attempt to say if we want maybe not a single more village needs to be submerged.

And i can only react as a curator. i cant do rallies, or fight court cases ican only put artistic energies together and/or create a platform ...and hope

best

an ode to pink lips

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Saturday, 12 June 2010 at 14:10

there she goes again
off she goes for lunch
leaving me with a smile
that wipes away all pain


off she goes..yet stays with me for keeps
chomping into her punjaban lunch
waiting for her to come back with a happy tummy
and a smile at the end of those baby pink lips

off she goes gain
with my heart in her pocket
though she gets lost with it sometimes
she will always be my pink champagne

the writer...his smile..and some other stories

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Friday, 17 July 2009 at 21:27

another day went
it still escaped her whisper
the smile did not shine today
or maybe its just the sun
lost in the shade of a lost melancholia
the writer picked up his pen

an exciting evening passed
not even a breeze touched his soul
that longing for the lost shine that did not belong to him
cut short the memories that were to come
lost in the strains of a shared melody
the writer picked up his pen

the night approached as they knew it would
he had not seen the stars yet
as the consolation of the internet ruptured the soul yet again
baby pink and a smile surfaced in his memory
knowing that people are sitting down for dinner
the writer picked up his pen

i want to run...and other stories

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Sunday, 12 July 2009 at 03:13

dawn was yet far away
she still gave a sleepy smile
the moonlight flickered on the lake
as the window stood still

passed the moments before dawn
playing still lifes with the mirror
distracted , by the lake reflecting the sun
i want to run

as the time far away
entered my living room
nowhere is a far away word
where did that smile come from

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quite contary

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Friday, 10 July 2009 at 02:36

grow your plants in your own garden
so sang an off tune melody
the confusions that my garden grows
deserves no song at all

mary lost her little lamb
when she thought that she did not need the wool anymore
the grass was not greener on the other side
but mary did not think so at all

the dead ant stuck on the flowing honey
did not sense the hysteria of pain
as the tree huggers save the amazon
the vultures circled with no fear at all

a pillow for your thoughts
cold and damp on a winter night
the child played in the shadows
as confusion showed no remorse at all

death by the moonlight
the growing meaning of pain
the missing sparrow on my window sill
wish mornings carried no memories at all

'creative closure' the notice read
as he lost his home that night
the grass was not green on the other side
just wish there were no fences at all