Shillong Suite
Description:
Pages: 52
Year of Publication: 2010
Price: HB Rs 100, FB Rs 80
ISBN:
HB
FB
About the Author:
Hoshang Merchant is India’s first openly gay poet. He has published over 20 volumes of poetry with Writers Workshop, India, since 1989. He is a respected Queer Theorist with three critical studies on the subject published by national and international presses and has also published a study of Anais Nin with Writers Workshop. He translates from Urdu as well. He has been a professor of English at Hyderabad University for the last 24 years.
Teaser:
Return to Shillong in Rain
Rain pelts my Tata Sumo Travelling
On the mountain-road
– I breathe free
2
Winding walkways
And misty mountain-top:
A hundred heroines sing love songs
from a hundred Hindi movies
3
My young Assamese driver
adjusts the rear-view mirror:
Our eyes meet
– There is no more commerce between us
4
An over-wound clock
I wind down
On mountain-top
5
At Police Bazaar
We get lost
He lends me his cell-phone
his arm
But I say:
Like time and tide
wait for no man!
He melts away:
an afternoon’s rain.
(Summer 2010)
Contents:
Rain / 11
Return to Shillong in Rain / 14
‘Ram’ / 16
‘Coorg’ / 17
‘Shesher Kobita’ / 18
‘Theyyam’ / 19
Shillong English / 20
An Old Bearded Poet Walks the City / 21
Full Moon in Shillong / 23
Revolutions / 24
Love-song the Death (after Tagore) / 25
Sex in Shillong (Two Poems) / 26
In Praise of Limestone / 28
Wine Suite / 30
Sunday Best / 31
Visit to St. Edmund’s, Shillong / 33
Cupid and Psyche / 34
India / 36
Christ of Bombay / 37
Elwin Verrier’s House, Shillong / 44
Song / 45
‘Jefferson Shillo’ / 46
(for my lover from Bihar) / 47
Poem / 48
(Everything is in the eye) / 49