I picked up Suketu Mehta's "Maximum City" at the bookstore, and found it to be a very well written book. I have read some 100 pages of it, and I shall return to the bookstore to polish off the rest this weekend. On the same note, I found an old copy of 'Natural Capitalism' - I had read parts of this book, all of which is available online, previously - and this gave me further fodder to think on the subject of cities, city planning, closed loop systems etc.

In a chapter titled 'Human Capital' ( www.natcap.org ), the authors report on and about Curitiba, a city in Southeast Brazil, and the remarkable stratergies this city had adopted to deal with all the typical 'third world' megaplois problems - explosive population growth, traffic, pressure on greenspace, water etc.

Further, it was interesting to read this chapter, thinking of Hyderabad, the city I grew up in, and how 'fucked' it is currently. To solve the same problems, notably traffic, the acclaimed technocratic ex Chief Minster, ringed the city with "flyovers". However the last time I visited, in 2004, traffic had overtaken the little effeciency these flyovers created. As my father joked, as we were crawling around, soon a time will come when people will have to heft their vehicles over their heads and walk to get anywhere.

Coming to poetry, I have begun chewing on the tomes you gave me over course of 2004 (thank you again for these), starting with that thick A.K. Ramanujan collection. 'Speaking of Shiva' - his volume of translations of Kannada Shivate poets gave me an idea of taking up, at some distant point of time, the task of bringing over into English poetry, the great Indian epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana. There are some fine prose translations/re-tellings, C. Rajagopalachari's are my favourites.

As I wrote to a friend, in all Indian vernaculars, bringing one of the epics over from Sanskrit is considered to be the foremost literary task - Tulsi Das's Ramayana in Hindi; Nannaya, Tikkana & Errana's Mahabharata in Telugu etc - why shouldn't such a thing attempted in English, given that it too has become another Indian vernacular? I was also thinking of this as I was re-reading, in bits and pieces, Seamus Heaney's version of Beowulf, especially the ship burial ending:

A Geat woman too sang out in grief; with hair bound up, she unburdened herself of her worst fears, a wild litany of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded, enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles, slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke.

I wonder how and where I will find the voice to such a thing for these epics of ours.

I pull from your hair A ribbon of shining water, And turn my parched Desert face to your Liquid lips, to your Dolphin eyes, to your Honeyed tongue.

I strip bare everything We wear. I press my Stony ribs into your Breasts of gloaming. I press you into my Body, your quick laughter, Your crystal innocence, Your godawful moaning.

You gouge your name On my back with your Oyster nails. I redden Your pearl body with The rust of my lips. You core through my hips. Fountains leap from My fingers. You enter My center, become My whirling center.

Waters of the creek Flow from under This bridge hauling Light of this fading Day and its long hours,

In whose shadows I have wandered Among fossil fires Of upturned roots, Between the flakes Shaken from snow Clad firs, through The open grave Of winter into which Sunlight fell all day,

Looking for the word, Which perhaps could Hold everything I want To speak to you:

A brown envelope With your address scrawled On it, covered with foreign Stamps and postmarks, Resonant of those sounds Which don’t mean anything Per se; laughter and weeping.

I have failed. Listen to the waters.