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Mutatis Mutandis
About the Book
Through sex-dolls and addictions, for whom poetry can be just another narcotic throbbing in your vein. Khandekar’s man has stretched himself to the limits of the Machiavellian primate, modifying his behaviour and absurdum to fit in with the changing patterns of a world spinning out of control on the wheel of progress. Meet the ghost in the machine Sanjeev Khandekar’s poetry grins impishly, then socks you in the eye. It makes you feel horns on your head and inspect your skin for green stripes. Khandekar breaks conventions of belief, language and genre to offer a world with no certainties, where you are just a gob of self-awareness floating in a matrix of virtual reality, mutating every moment to balance your inner needs with social expectations. You are the Mutatis Mutandis Man the human ‘with necessary changes’ carried out the modified man tossed between inscrutable science and enigmatic religious faith, the creature who gropes for love and creativity that may lure you towards self-destruction. Meet Khandekar’s Monster and see if he seems familiar.
Khandekar’s poetry, like his art, is disturbingly unconventional; and Abhay Sardesai and Nandita Wagle’s excellent translation from Marathi now brings it to the English reader.
-Antara Dev Sen -
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As Is, Where Is
About the Book
Lost Images (For Ashay) I am backing home where you died. One year later, to find Changes that mask our surrender To the inevitability of life. I remember my Ambulance Ride With my friend whom you called Daddy. It took me a whole year To under
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Says Tuka-Selected poems of Tukaram
About the Book
1938″2009 was an outstanding bilingual poet Marathi and English, fiction writer, translator and critic, with numerous publications, honours and awards to his credit. In particular, he won the Sahitya Akademi Award 1994 for Ekoon Kavita ” 1, his book of Marathi poems, and the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize 1994 for Says Tuka Penguin Classics, 1991, his English translation of Tukaram?s selected verse. From 2002 to 2009 he was honorary editor of the quarterly journal New Quest. He was also a recognized painter and film-maker.
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Brouhahas Of Cocks
About the Book
Hardback awakening The air is thick, and has revived my books, anticipating the first spell of a Bombay monsoon. Ambient moisture has slaked pages that shuffle and twist, arise to a wakefulness, unleaving. Feeling the discomfort of nearness,
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Body Language
About the Book
Elegy One by one they fall away, Some gently like brown leaves. Others with gnarled roots Hold fast to their Bleak and emptied plot To which no water or salt, Prayer or miracle can Grant another lease. But sure as the turning days, There will be
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Absent Muses
About the Book
Cities So tell me. Is it hot? Does it rain? Are there places you can sit on a sunny day, away from the crowd? Is it beautiful? Is it loud? What do the streets smell like? What do the women wear? Are they pretty? Do you love it? Could you leave?
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The Acrobat Of Oblivion
About the book
Maximum Security Guilt is a jail built around the soul brick on brick it holds back the free movement of the mind, the simple gesture of the heart. Brick on brick the sinful bricklayer learns the mastery of the engineer, of the painstaking.
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Skin, Spam & Other Fake Encounters
About the Book
The Psychiatrist Considers My Multiplex Mind At night I watch five different films On five different screens Of my multiplex mind Spider-man consults George Bush To save Titanic on one On another screen Ram Gopal Verma’s Bhoot Comes for