A Purposeless Sunday Morning

I had met her at a poetry reading session. She was taking small notes in her journal, sometimes switching to Kannada. During the Q&A, she asked the very question I had been about to ask and quoted a book that lit up my curiosity. I passed my journal to her in a quiet gesture, asking her to write down the title. She wrote it down neatly.

After the show, I had to rush to get the poetry book signed, but not before I'd had the presence of mind to ask her for a social media handle. Later, at home, I found she had written her blog name beside my notes in her characteristic, beautiful penmanship. That is how I learned her name was Sourabha — like fragrance.

I had been following her blog ever since and came to know that she is a writer and filmmaker, deeply passionate about wildlife conservation. One of her recent films, Huliyappa, is currently doing the rounds at international film festivals. I left my first comment on her blog the very next morning, and regular conversation followed.

So when, this weekend, I came across her announcement of a poetry reading session — again on the blog, on a Sunday morning, and dedicated to one of my favourite poets, Wisława Szymborska — I couldn't stop myself. I made my way to Church Street, my copy of the poet's work tucked under my arm, quietly setting aside a long list of other weekend plans.

Five or six of us gathered there, cosy and close. Sourabha couldn't believe her eyes when she saw me and welcomed me onto the mat with a full heart.

The reading began. Sourabha, Nitya, and Ajay took turns, following a loose order they'd thought through.

But the real beauty of the session was the unhurried pauses — after every poem, we stopped to savour, to sit with whatever the words had stirred. We laughed and cheered at the wit of the woman who had written these verses. I wondered aloud what she must have been thinking when she blasphemed true love, or empathized with Darwin, or how she could have imagined Hitler as a baby after having lived through the war herself — what did she eat, what did she smoke?

Sourabha smiled and said, "She was cheeky, don't you see." I nodded, swimmingly.

All three of them, with open hearts, asked me to read my favourites. I gladly did. A couple of others read theirs as well.

After a long, long time, it felt like poetry came alive for me again. And what better way than through the words of Wisława Szymborska.

Some of the poems we read, in no particular order:

• Onion

• Possibilities

• Conversation with a Stone

• The Suicide's Room

• In Praise of Dreams

• Writing a Résumé

• Hitler's First Photograph

• True Love

• Consolation

• Golden Anniversary

  
  

Hope you enjoy them — and chuckle and imagine the world a little differently as you read through them.