Regional Poetry in India - Sparkling

The regional poetry In India is sparkling with talent and some of the sharpest voices are from women.They are breaking barriers. They speak with irony,insight and courage. Here are samples from two of them – both young and original.

Salma/Tamil
When I pull him close
And fondly nuzzle his hair,
He flinches from the touch Of my breasts and moves away
Forgetting that they had once
Processed my blood to feed his hunger
When I reach with my hand
To run my fingers through his hair —Tendrils upright like reeds on a riverbank —He pushes it away, and moves on.

Sunanda Das/Orissa/Oriya
How is it possible ?
Everything smells of your body.
Detergents have no use.
However so much as I scrub,
The odour remains.
What do I do?
How do I escape ?
I am not able to lift
My little finger.
I can do nothing
Except lie down with eyes closed
And long for that fragrance.

Organised Retail Is Getting Back

Organised retail is getting its bearings back. The astronomical rentals are down. The frenetic increases in wages are a thing of the past. The supply chain and its evils/blessings are the focus of many retailers.

Many new entrants are close to store breakeven. The mall operators are more careful in planning and design. Most important of all, the customers have slowly and imperceptibly started realizing the value of modern retail – clean dealings, convenience and a good environment to shop. The problems of the store staff apathy remain but like in evolution, the customers have begun adapting to this.

Arvind Singhal published an interesting article two weeks back in Business Standard. The malls in Saket in South Delhi have taken away customers from South Ex and GK1-just last year amongst the priciest markets in the world. The productivity in these south Delhi traditional markets is down by close to fifty per cent. It was virtually impossible to imagine this and no retailer in his senses would have dared to predict that it will happen so soon. The malls have managed to do it with the right value proposition and delivery.

Even if things are still perceived as bad, I think twenty to thirty per cent growth for more two years in a row have also made things dramatically different.

Billions of Stars and Us

There are an estimated 140 billions of galaxies, many of them bigger than the Milky way. Each galaxy has probably hundred to four hundred billion stars. The Earth happens to be one planet in one ordinary star. The earth has millions of creatures. And the universe has been in existence for about 13.7 billion years.

Yet we think we are important. We think we have been specially created by an omniscient and omnipotent God who has sent us to this world with a special sense of purpose. He also keeps an eye on all our actions and thoughts and more interestingly he has a special interest in our kitchens and what we eat on specific days. He cares if we violate the customs defined in some old text. He cares if do not bathe and enter his abode: the temple. He loves fruits and sweets and is indifferent to vegetables.

Organised religion is curious to say the least.