Before weaving a dark tapestry With your hair across my face, Kannamma, how your body moved - A torch of red flames over mine, Just like these reflections in the lake.

Is Mithun da, even when he is standing around with a bouffant hairstyle, scowling, the baap of M.I.A? Absolutely. That said mad props to her for reusing "Third World" music - including folk rhythms - in an intelligent fashion. Previously we had former Soviet Bloc folks singing along to "Disco Dancer" (along with Raj Kapoor standards), now we have New York hipsters mouthing "Jimmy Ajaa Ajaa".

Oh, and dear readers, Happy Dussehra et al. May y'all be victorious in killing your Ravans.

Body on a horizon of water, body open to the slow intoxication of fingers, body defended by the splendour of apples, surrendered hill by hill, body lovingly made moist by the tongue’s pliant sun.

Body with the taste of cropped grass in a secret garden, body where I am at home, body where I lie down to suck up silence, to hear the murmur of blades of grain, to breathe the deep dark sweetness of the bramble bush.

Body of a thousand mouths, all tawny with joy, all ready to sip, ready to bite till a scream bursts from the bowels and mounts to the towers and pleads for a dagger. Body for surrendering to tears. Body ripe for death.

Body for imbibing to the end – my ocean, brief and white, my secret vessel, my propitious wind, my errant, unknown, endless navigation.

Translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin