Excerpts from Stranger than a Sun - Poems and Drawings by Amitabh Mitra

Arunachal is a place. I stood still as much as time that never moved. I breathed, I held on to skies that arrives there only to rest in brief interludes. China was just a fingerbreadth away. I remembered Ha in Bhutan. Beneath me were many such skies and many such suns. There were whispers all around. Petals of your odour touched me. In incessant places believing in a sun, I walked on such surfaces believing its there. I dreamt of you. It was a path entering a mountain pass and there were many people walking. In a stranger luminescence I felt I was talking to you again like older mountain peaks hiding in older skies. The gradual whirring of copter blades seem to merge in the surrounding mist. The glare seem to succumb, whiteness remained everywhere. In the popping of flashbulbs, you had once walked a ramp of demure whiteness in Delhi. Somewhere you must be there, even if it is not here at Tawang, even if it’s not Arunachal, even Delhi.

Acrylic on Canvas by Amitabh Mitra

Landscape

Acrylic on Canvas by Amitabh Mitra

Interview published at South African Medical Journal Insider

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Mdantsane, Eastern Cape

Acrylic on Canvas by Amitabh Mitra

Laurence Hope - Indian Love

This photograph is of Laurence Hope from her book Indian Love published in March 1917 by William Heinemann. This 1917 edition book is with me. Adela Florence Nicolson (née Cory) (9 April 1865-4 October 1904) was an English poet who wrote under the pseudonym Laurence Hope.

Adela Florence knew Urdu and Hindi and was well conversant with the culture of India during those times. Her poetry is a true reflection of those turbulent times and the passion and obsession of forbidden love.
The Spectator writes in a review in 1901 on the book Indian Love, ‘The poetry of Lawrence Hope must hold a unique place in modern letters. No woman has written lines so full of a strange primeval savagery – a haunting music – the living force of poetry.’

From her Poem, Yasin Khan

Thou hast enough caressed the scented hair
Of these soft-breasted girls who waste thee so.
Hast thou not sons for every adult year?
Let us arise, O Yasin Khan, and go!

Let us escape from out these prison bars
To gain the freedom of an open sky
Thy soul and mine, alone beneath the stars,
Intriguing danger, as in days gone by

The poetry of Laurence Hope remains till today, the finest in the traditions of Indo-English literature. A fitting memorial to her work would be to organize an International Festival on Love Poetry in Chennai where she lies buried in Saint Mary's Cemetery. She rightly deserves to be the pioneer in Anglo-Indian literature till today.

“For this is Wisdom; to love, to live To take what fate, or the Gods may give. To ask no question, to make no prayer, To kiss the lips and caress the hair, Speed passion's ebb as you greet its flow To have, - to hold - and - in time, - let go.”
Laurence Hope

More on Laurence Hope by Amitabh Mitra, Love poetry, the British Woman, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century India

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Gouache on Paper by Amitabh Mitra

At Off the Wall Poetry Performing, Cape Town

With fellow poet and convenor, Michael Rolfe