Links to 2 experimental short films I made recently, which include verses and a stanza from my poetry and lyrics

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

Then as Revolution, Now as Rejig, a short experimental film by V. Shruti Devi [4 minutes, 18 seconds]

Sound Agendas, a short experimental film by V. Shruti Devi [2 minutes, 37 seconds]

A link to an industry story on some of my my writings

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

On republicworld:

Ink and Ideology: The Rise of Authors in the Digital Age

Happy Landings, Developmental Blitz (extracts from my forthcoming book, CANVASSING ART contd.)

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

Happy Landings, Developmental Blitz (written in the form of a Blitz)

Bombard development

Bombard education

Education with meaning

Education to free them

Free them, not make robots

Free them so they can soar

Soar to wherever they want to go

Soar to the moon, to space, or to no particular place

Place the basics of health-care

Place doctors, diagnostics, medicines, machines

Machines delivered by drones

Machines for telemedicine without depriving

Depriving them of their medicinal plants

Depriving anyone of ultra-modern remedies

Remedies of the law,

Remedies to access rights

Rights bestowed by the Constitution

Constitution of our Nation

Constitution as we interpret it

Interpret it and be sure to mete

Interpret it to mete out justice

Justice for you and me

Justice that will set them free

Free minds

Free people

People inhabit these vales

People expertly work these forests

Forests consist of diverse geographics, trees

Forests have definitions, have we made these?

These dictionaries

These pictionaries

Pictionary would do better

Better wall-art

Better craft

Crafting documents based on views

Crafting art-forms beyond paper

Paper tigers, real ones too

Paper planes to caper down

Down below, the woods approach

Down to the tarmac we do descend

Descend from the clouds

Descend from the fog

Fog out mosquitos

Fog’s not the answer

Answer the finer questions of culture

Culture’s our dance

Culture’s our gear

Gear up, it’s the agency

Gear up for some uphill tasks:

Task One.

 

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING; HAPPY LANDINGS by the poet, V. SHRUTI DEVI

Ekphrastic, Do You See? (previews to my upcoming book of poetry to illustrate art contd.)

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

There twirl toddlers

in party frocks

Balloons, festoons,

pastel icing

Helixes swirl,

Modern-day jukeboxes

Create waves,

Occupy the air

Mosquitos hum

Blithe, light marshmallows

Mini dervishes,

atomic energy

Flouncy, cloud-like, intangible

Ekphrastics be fantastic

-Do we cater to accessibility?

Tactile, audible,

Braille-book tracks

-Read the confetti

 

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: JASHN-E-JANNAT by the poet, V. SHRUTI DEVI

Ode to Technology (in a diamante) - sneak previews to CANVASSING ART contd.

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

Ode to Technology (in a diamante)

                                                    Tech

                                                 I hear thee

                                        And we are enmeshed

                            Philosophers refined, and technologists

                         Geniuses, corporate czars, with propellants

                                        Of various promptings

                                                 Temperance

PAINTING: SCIENCE by the poet, V. SHRUTI DEVI

PAINTING: ASTRO-DIMENSIONAL CONGLOMORATE by the poet, V. SHRUTI DEVI

PAINTING: LIFE ON THE MOON or LUNAR COTTON FIELDS by the poet, V. SHRUTI DEVI

Stylized Waves: Climate Change Haiku (previews to CANVASSING ART contd.)

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

Stylized Waves: Climate Change Haiku

No climate fanatics here

-add it to the mix

Waves go chasing solutions….

 

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: STYLIZED WAVES by the poet, V. SHRUTI DEVI

Aum Chanting ...sneak previews contd.

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

AUM CHANTING (written in the style of a Pantoum)

 

I chanted, I painted, the Mantra divine

Began with aum bhoo, all that is

Micro, macro, elemental spine

Things as they are before they fizz

 

Began with aum bhoo, all that is

Then intoned aum bhuvah, interactions of matter

Things as they are before they fizz

Turn to blendings, mergers, imbroglios that splatter

 

Then intonated aum bhuvah, interactions of matter

Before raising the level to aum swaha, the interplay with one

Turn to blendings, mergers, imbroglios that splatter

Mooladhara, Swadisthtana crossed, now the Solar Plexus to stun

 

Before raising the level to aum swaha, the interplay with one

Sounds purify nerves: electric, magnetic, there’s more

Mooladhara, Swadisthtana crossed, now the Solar Plexus to stun

Stunned, rarefied, climb to aum mahaha, the heart, the annahata’s lore

 

Sounds purify nerves: electric, magnetic, there’s more

Aum janaha, the throat chakra, Vishuddha, blue

Stunned, rarefied, climb to aum mahaha, the heart, the annahata’s lore

Surmount it, and the voice-box will speak true

 

Aum janaha, the throat chakra, Vishuddha, blue

Paint splashes to canvas, synchronous creator

Surmount it, and the vice-box will speak true

Once it has, you’re aum tapaha, ajna meditator

 

Paint splashes to canvas, synchronous creator

Aum satyam, truth, with starscapes you may now be in synch

Once it has, you’re aum tapaha, ajna meditator

You’ve painted a graph, you’re whatever you think.

 

By V. Shruti Devi

 

PAINTING: AUM CHANTING by the poet, V. SHRUTI DEVI

Poem: Estate ...sneak previews to my upcoming book contd.!

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

Estate (written in Acrostic style with alliterative inputs)

Larkspurs layered and swayed in the lull

Oriole, a golden oriole, and on a mag with the legend, 

                                                Friend Request, an Owl

Delhi deewane, O, in Lutyens’ zone we did dwell

Irises, iconic flora, avians intel

 

Eagles, enigmas (invisible stars), the odd egret, euphorbias

Spinach, starfish, aquarium-creatures, sparrows, squirrels,

Tall trees, termites, clipped grass, hollyhocks, phlox, peacocks 

                                                                                                trending

Aloe vera, araucaria, asparagus, astounding aura, never-ending

Tip-toeing feline, bees in a beeline, tomatoes and tea-time

Endgame: Eureka! Bird-baths, grains, -the mains! Earth Empire

 

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: LODI ESTATE by the poet, V. SHRUTI DEVI

FORMULA PEACE ...extracts from my forthcoming book contd.

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

FORMULA PEACE (a limmerick)

There was a fast bowler from 'stan

Rediscovered online, oh man!

Epic speeches, polls,

Siyasi, those roles

Now in stern pavilions; alleged scams

- By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: FORMULA AMAN by THE POET, V. SHRUTI DEVI

TIME MACHINE or L’ JAWAAB (THE ANSWER) - previews to CANVASSING ART contd.

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

TIME MACHINE or L' JAWAAB (THE ANSWER), written on Global Tiger Day

O mortal, mortal who didst write,

It’s possible, you could be right

-Some eternal brand and dye

Made grain and beast, diversified

 

Cocooned in their inner eyes

Sprang forth visions, fireflies

Dream-borne kings, queens on the wire

The Humane Band reached out higher

 

And science bolder, unsurpassed

Conjured alogrithms breeds apart

And though AI’s heart sought to defeat

Homo sapiens knew their beat

 

Whose the grammar? Chart the plains

Which Authorities did one train?

A blue-bird’s feather, a goat that gasped

Crumbling castle, the interiors rasp

 

Drones rain down, reach out to peers

-“We’re rich yellers with spears”

-“Wish we’re not poor”, I’m: “We’re free

-Someone outwitted the laboratory”

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: TIME MACHINE by the poet, V. SHRUTI DEVI

 

CHALICE - a sneak preview to my forthcoming book (evolving manuscript), CANVASSING ART contd.

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

CHALICE (written as a sonnet)

An evening drive, a reservoir’s a draw

Picture-perfect hillsides, hamlets tranquil

Sunset, flint-stones, boat-rides, houses of straw

Migratory geese, snail shells, photos to fill

 

Soundless waters, smoky abodes afar

Woodland ripples in the lake and the sky

Stillness, silence, clear air, quarries a scar

Almost pristine, weeds make bouquets -no why

 

Return to write, record the eve’s pink glow

Sipping from an earthen tea mug, pond-bath

In art, crystal lines are set to follow

trends of enchantment, rare golden star-paths

 

What’s seen, what’s heard, what’s done by human minds

Sometimes appears more fab in close rewinds

-By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: DRINK THE LIGHT or CHALICE by the poet, V. SHRUTI DEVI

By V. Shruti Devi

 

MARINE DRIVE, VIZAG (5 poems) Sneak previews to CANVASSING ART contd.

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

MARINE DRIVE, VIZAG: Dolphin’s Nose

A light-house appears

-pierces through the Dolphin’s Nose,

the hill that’s withstood

years of surf and sand,

docked seaward among its

spaced-out

peers

-Gently curves into the ocean

-Who set these lines in motion?

 

On the earth, on this artsy surface

Light skips light,

the creator’s heart, a beat

Did intruders dare render this work incomplete

and puncture in this nose-pin,

A Calcutta candy-stick

 

-the Bay of Bengal,

Swirling gin

by Vizag by the bay.

 

The repeated light

Marked a place, a time,

a regular evening sight

It came to be

-to wave ships off the jagged lee

 

Does it prevail

When storm-winds wail?

Do fish swim up with prayer and plea,

Radiant?

 

Who drew the dolphins on a receding tide?

The nose-line fades into the old city

The burgeoning beach-line

-the behemoth

Develops its way to a new aerocity.

 

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: DOLPHIN'S NOSE BY THE POET, V. SHRUTI DEVI

 

Marine Drive, Vizag: Coconut Groves

As the Dolphin’s Nose and dockyard

diminish in the rear-view mirror

A look-east policy

by and large

(Ingressions, outcrops, Feng Shui would know the stops)

would be in order to the right.

To the left,

Statues and a litany

of beach-road draws

 

A seaward crane

calls to sight

transplanted groves

 

Trussed-up coconut palms

Await their new-found fate.

-to unfurl and to flourish

(which they did).

 

More appeared in droves:

Symmetrical coco plazas

-square feet now dot the shore.

 

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: PALM TREE LANDINGS ON VIZAG BEACH, BY THE POET, V. SHRUTI DEVI

 

MARINE DRIVE, VIZAG: Lawson’s Bay

Past the city’s elite

Ramakrishna Beach

the wheels roll on

 

The juggernaut of development

slaps a tsunami of a road

across our lands.

Compensation?

Do clear that coast, O holy ghost! With solatium.

 

What a ship down,

a petition

up

whose street?

 

There’s salt in the air,

a steady breeze

past Gyan Vilas,

the ancestral monument

frieze to frieze

Time was

An ancestor meditated

Undisturbed

and Attained

-was it

Samadhi?

 

One registers

one’s mortal plot

As ships diminish at sea

and fishing fleets

present themselves

picturesquely

 

A hilly climb

by Lawson’s Bay

(a pirate, legend has it)

Winding past

dunes and stretches of ocean view,

Pathlets once led to streaky sand

 

We’d alight with picnic gear

Mats and beach buckets,

Sandwiches and tea-things

Not a human soul in sight

but the family band

casting footprints on the shore

 

The wave-break line,

jumping waves

gathering diverse shells galore

 

Jagged rocks

miniature sub-terrains:

pools

amidst crags

Insets of corals

spied at sunset

-the tongue of the sea,

cowrie shells, nabhi sea buttons,

conch-like pokey shells,

and what have we

 

Not a hint

             of human civilization

Not even from the

fishing village

that assails the nostrils

en route

-where gliding through the

atmosphere

Is a dried fish inhalation

that’s bound to sublimate

into

the body, mantra-filled 

Oxidized, Iodized,

I inhabit these zones

And beyond.

 

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: CORAL REEFS ONCE UPON A TIME, BY THE POET, V. SHRUTI DEVI

 

MARINE DRIVE, VIZAG: Cyan Meditations

Across the hills, and over the waves

The hypnotic buoyancy

of awareness

dwells

on impressions

-the hourglass a phantom:

-no co-ordinates, no dial, no moon-face

But granular views

of suspended animation

 

-The high gloss

of the ventral

side of a giant wave

as a surfer negotiates

an Old Spice ad.

How was the scene envisaged;

-When?

(I recall playing on the

       water’s line

And being taken unaware

by a gigantic wave

-a towering wall.

With family around,

one didn’t slip, didn’t fall,

But it was a watershed moment

-the sea wasn’t a breeze

the ocean’s floor was steep

was the crux of that summer vacation)

 

-One had lived a tale

and would tell it.

 

Decades later,

A road slashed through

the precarious cliff-side

                                         hairpin bend

The crag morphed

into a park

and wings of steps

descended

sea-ward

 

Predictably, crowds began to manifest

 

At the base of that hill

One eventually did alight

I think it was 2010,

in the early-morning light

to do the Suryanamaskaar

And to chant the Gayatri Mantra

unhindered by the

                            crystal japa mala

 

-Fortunately for me,

I had a family friend to count the beads

-a philosophical volunteer,

                            an aunt,

And another one

with whom I’d conversed

               the previous day

threw further light on my

      theories of breath

and chants

-articulating

“Yah Allah”

was also

a breathing exercise

 

At that post-dawn hour

As one did

God-knows how many

Suryanamaskaars

and rendered the mantra

into the dome of the horizon

In very considered, practiced, unique ways,

the hymn,

in my book,

acquired new syllables:

“Yah Allah!”

-I look heavenwards

and the “rosy-tinted dawn”

displays

the scribbles

of a jet-plane

flying north-by-north-west,

I suppose.

 

Clad in a flaming orange and yellow

two-piece swimsuit

from Greater Kailash, Delhi,

Energized, one began the ascent

                                      back to the road

Engulfed in a blue tie-dye

wrap-around

The environ

caught the surround-sound

 

In retrospect

I believe

Baywatchers, cops, whoever they were

Did keep a wary eye

Even if from atop the cliff.

 

Cell-phone cameras

had not yet come into their own

But the sparks on the shoreline

might well have been in the line of view

of the International Space Station’s view!

 

This marked my thirty-eighth

trip around the sun.

 

A close-up of the planet’s

aqua-lung.

 

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: MAKING WAVES, BY THE POET, V. SHRUTI DEVI

MARINE DRIVE, VIZAG: The Bheemli Stretch

 

Before the advent

     of intricate sign-boards

     and signages

The hour-long jaunt

from Vizag to the town of Bheemli

was thought of

as Bheemli beach,

and pronounced

Bimli

 

Pulling beams

of light-house waves

             of rippling illumination

   There once stood in B-town

    a beach house, a palace of the

                                                 nation

    that once was.

   -My mother’s mother, the heiress.

 

For years, one passed by the ruins

while driving into Vizag

   from Kurupam

if we took the Bimli route

 

A scene

from a tragic Hindi movie

had been shot there:

Ek Duje Ke Liye (For Each Other)

 

This thoroughfare meets a dead-end

                                    in this town

-A recent discovery

while traversing these paths

to survey lands.

It re-emerges

in the avatar

of the East Coast highway.

 

But on the Vizag-Bheemli stretch

Deciduous ghaats

overlook the tar,

the sea-ward terrain,

the narrow sandy bar

before the high-tide line

the low-tide line

…there are Coastal Regulation Zones

that are in play.

 

On flatter stretches

You’re treated

to navy-blue glimpses of the bay

the Eastern Naval Command holds sway.

 

Casurinas were once riddled

Into clearings after roadside clearings

You’d sometimes spot a stray vehicle

Around the Winter Solstice,

heaving home a maritime catch

-not a shoal of fish

but a trunk, a branch

of tropical greens

-Mistletoes to be adorned

with shimmering stars and cottony themes.

 

Where resorts and restaurants now capture the horizon

There once was a diversity,

a natural mix

of scrubby herbs and grasses….

 

The imagination puts acrylic to canvas

But would need to surpass

the artistic genius

of those who inspired this style

with palette knives and brushes:

Artists in the family:

-Glimpsing Greens by Kusum, and Terraqueous by Preeti

Masterpieces and exhibitions

   of the twentieth century.

 

The impressionists were a major factor

A bard’s eye-view,

-you get the picture.

 

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: OUTSKIRTS OF VIZAG, BY THE POET, V. SHRUTI DEVI

A SET OF FIVE PAINTINGS: MARINE DRIVE, VIZAG, BY THE POET, V. SHRUTI DEVI

Sneak previews to CANVASSING ART contd.: Antiquarian, Booketarian

By V. Shruti Devi (quill-o-the-wisp)

Apt, then

that the image

that one focuses on today

is a view

of books

On this, the eve of Guru Purnima

 

A heritage library,

personal.

 

The ancestor who peopled

these antique shelves

with thinkers, healers, cartographers, poets, playwrights

and their fancies’ elves

Kick-started one’s waking being

to the ways of Nature, humankind

 

Crumbling pages,

weevil-devoured

From dust to dust

proved in instant shards

of hard-bound litter

 

Sunning out the pages

-for not too long

lest the binding melts

lest the voltaic intensity

of monsoon storms

make short shrift

of encyclopediae,

gazettes,

and solemn law books all in a row

-Even the world’s first Oriya dictionary

penned by a relative of long ago.

 

Back into shelves,

solar-showered

Suryanarayana’s trove

and more

 

Armies of ‘modern’ medicine,

Of modern political thought

Treatises on astrology, history, wildlife, art

 

Religion was a later shoo-in

 

One cut one’s teeth

on Shakespearean delights

with Henry Irving’s complete works

and an exhaustive microcosm of miniatures

treasured, gem-like.

 

The glow-worms

of brilliant minds.

 

He must’ve liked Tennyson

there’s the complete works

and there’s the complete works

that explains one’s partiality to alliteration

in the days of Wright and elocution,

a win-win situation

at least.

Though one was leafing through Emily’s works

rescued from the stocks

of Sunday Daryaganj roadside strews

Looking for non-pedestrian verse

to toss into one’s stew

with eye of sophomore, the admission of Shrew:

and waltz into hallowed portals

to be interviewed to read some more at SSC

from nineteen ninety to ninety-three

-Three glorious years studying drama, poetry, prose,

Graduated with honours from Saint Stephen’s, Delhi

Gorged on samosas, burgers, gulab jamuns and neembu paani

Fuel to interpret those fort-bound tomes

and tea.

 

A book or few

made it to New Delhi

Talisman-like,

treasured

in book-cases from Lutyen’s to Gurgaon and Lutyen’s and back:

from a series of literary works; the ubiquitous Tennyson;

the manufacture of syrups and such-like.

 

In years past

we’ve striven to preserve

the library,

keep the books in condition

-Shaking off pests,

lining shelves

through our south-bound homeward-bound

summer, winter and other vacations

-enlisting guests

if they were close enough and eager

to be a part of the ongoing mission

to save those volumes.

 

Some were brittle, some had stamps,

signatures and labels too

With bated breath, one scours type-sets for handwritten notings (rare)

Over the years, we learnt a trick or two:

Dried tobacco leaves

are the best repellents

(of insects, rodents, reptiles, even)

Interested homo sapiens

do gravitate and peer

Sometimes startled by the snakeskin veneer

of those dehydrated arboreal placements

Smoking? You’re joking!

 

Present-day publishers and authors

have been transiting into gaps

created

by the churn.

 

Our own writings (my father’s book on electoral reforms; my solo works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and miscellany; my grandma’s recipe book)

and books by people we know

-the intelligentsia

of twenty-first century India

and of distant shores

 

The Constituent Assembly Debates,

the Madras Law Journals

Cookbooks, magazines, mores and journals

-Shikaar tales, poetry, poultry

 

One’s packs of tarot decks

and tarot guides

Books of mystery, of adventure: Childrens’ literature

And the comely Victorian romance or two

 

What you see in the picture

could well be a series,

a close-up

of volumes placed

on paper-lined shelves

Which have, on occasion,

made for equally gripping reading

-a startling head-line from a much-archived newspaper

Those glossy old calendars

and rolls of brown paper

have found berths

on this track (stay away, weevils, we will be back

to rock you)

 

As the digital age

makes its advances

And one often sits at a laptop

surrounded by these depicted pages

-the library of my ancestor,

The Zamindar-Rajah of Kurupam,

One mulls over

commending selections

to electronic media….

Once-in-a-cyclone,

whimsically crafting

one’s magna opera

of recycled handmade lib. souvenirs

 

In some instances

Republication could regale the masses

-dispatched straight from the rural fort.

 

As we concern ourselves

with more haute

collections of reading matter

in the nation’s present-day capital,

the Delhi NCR, Gurugram

At my sibling’s,

titles for children, young adults,

voracious readers. (And writers!)

 

Coffee-table books, biographies,

And, of course,

The cases of the Supreme Court

which, by now,

are all online,

and free

Though black-and-red volumes

line my urban walls

A bunch of cedar pencils

and cloves

keep silver-fish at bay

Zoom conferences, video calls

Visions surface in pools of lamp-light

 

In a zoom-in, you’re transported

to the original spot

that evoked

the representation.

 

By V. Shruti Devi

PAINTING: LAW LIBRARY CLOSE-UP BY THE POET, V. SHRUTI DEVI