‘...Echoing around, etched in the edifice’: This artist’s poetry is inspired by her paintings

Phantom Thoughts and Ideas

If you garland and gilt frame the thoughts
that you carefully conjure,
if you add life and fertiliser
to their roots;
till the spiral of thoughts
gets larger and firmer
like the entwining arms
of a poison ivy,
you are no different today
than yesterday.
You will expect the world
to bend and kneel
to facilitate and appropriate
acquiesce
to your phantom thoughts and ideas
till such time you learn to
Control Alt Delete.

Imaginary Specks of Dust

From dust to dust
the drama does not exist
in-between
Except in your mind
in your imagination.
Measuring each day
its depth and quality.
Waiting and waiting
for nothing
but more imagination
to unfold.

Magic Pill

I took a magic pill last night
and the morning brought on
a landscape devoid of any data points.
No past. No present. No relationships
And therefore, no webs.
And so I ran into the sunset and into the dawn
To make new drawings and paintings
that will be a sketch
for my life hereafter
After all, if life is precious,
why should one dot just follow another?
Family, societal dictum
marriages, taxes, currency, visa
are all man-made to control.
A societal dictum so there is law and order.
I drew those lines while I was barefoot on the sand
and looked back as the waves wiped them away.
For with every generation that just died
those lines ceased to exist, for them.
They did not know this while they lived.

A Huge Film Set

Just like a huge film set
is erected with elaborate props and characters,
likewise, is the drama of our own lives.
And just like the grand sets are taken down one day
and replaced by other sets from other stories;
so are our stages dismantled one by one
till every prop and character leaves a curious tale.
resonating on the stage that once was.
The flimsy sets are fickle, they sometimes sway and flap
anxiously in the energy emitted in their folds
and at other times glisten brightly in gold.
The different characters enact their roles
each one under the assumption that it’s all real.

The heartache and agony are real while the sets are temporary.
The mirage is an illusion, yet the soul oscillates
between agony and ecstasy till it is spent.
The show is over and the seats are empty.
The re-runs of the tired show have no takers.
The theatre resonates the hollow sound of a vacuum.
A few other myriad sounds bounce around and vaporise.

The curtains that had come down fall heavily like lead.
And yet one can hear and see faint impressions
of what once was, echoing around, etched in the edifice.

Corked Bottle

She carefully placed
her thoughts and ideas
of envy and resentment
in a bottle
and shut the ironclad cork tight
hoping no one would see or know.
But just like water can seep
out of a microscopic hole
drop by drop,
so do the thoughts
leak into the stratosphere.
Unmasked.
Uncontainable.
They slide unmitigated
through the folds of the tongue
and the depths of the eyes
unleashed
drop by drop.

Excerpted with permission from Unmasked: Reflections in Brush and Ink, Nandita Chaudhuri, Mapin Publishing.