How you got your name

I like poetry straight, stark but sensuously fulsome, and carrying a hint of tragedy, romance and earthiness. That is how I discovered Neruda and why I fell in love with him. In the mushy throes of my teen years, struggling for a poetic equivalent of that moment when eyes meet, the heart skips a beat and unknown stirrings besot you, my lifelong love for Neruda was ignited.

It is strange that when I could not afford to buy his volumes, I coveted them and when I can, I no more wish to possess them. For me, he makes sense when I touch the creased and severely underlined printouts I took of his poems. That’s how I like him and will always cherish him and that’s how this blog got its name.

(I just found the above bit in my drafts and I loved it. It might not make much sense but then what does on this blog )

Another Pablo ki pankhi

It hits you and drenches you at the most unlikeliest of times and manifests in the most unlikeliest of people. Someone I never expected to be a Neruda fan (pablo ki pankhi), turned out to be one. A colleague at work gave me her visiting card recently. On its backside I discovered a beautiful extract from Neruda’s poem, Your Feet. And it seems just apt to write the lines here and for all of you who stumble upon my blog…

...But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.