Tishani Doshi

Tishani Doshi

Tishani Doshi

Born: Madras, 1975 – Welsh mother who met her Gujurati chemist father in Canada and followed him to India. Went to an avant garde school based in a palace, where she made her first appearance on stage age 3 in a dance production.Indian-born Tishani Doshi, 31, won the £5,000 best first collection prize for Countries of the Body.

Early career: Suffered reverse culture shock when aged 18 she went from her liberal home background to college in Charlotte, North Carolina to study American literature, where she also began to write poetry. Went on to do a Masters at Baltimore. Often visited London as a child; came to work for Harpers & Queen’s advertising department in 1999 for ten months until she realised she didn’t want to be ad exec. On her return to India began a career as a dancer after meeting choreographer Chandralekha.

Poetry in her own words: Poems about home and the idea of belonging, “the basics” of love and life. Writes long-hand when composing. “Impossible” for her dancing not to influence her poems – “there is almost a physicality you need for writing”.

Inspirations: Contemporary American poets like Mary Oliver, James Tate and Mark Strand

London life: Has lived in Lewisham, Wimbledon and Finchley Road. Comes back to London every year and finds a connection with a huge community of people all over the world who have also had a spell living in London. Feels she couldn’t live here, because of the weather and the cost

Things She likes about Chennai
1. The coastline, without which this city wouldn't be able to breathe.
2. The Theosophical Society, a haven of green in an otherwise concrete jungle.
3. The cuisine. Nothing makes me happier than paying Rs.7 for a plate of vishranti idlis.
Things She 'd like to change about it
1. I'd impose fines for bad mobile phone etiquette, extra-loud speaking, excessive horn usage and cars that make musical noises when they reverse.
2. Lessons in civic consciousness like no urinating in public or dumping garbage in your neighbour's property.
3. The roads, public transport,pathways for pedestrians. Plant more trees.And how about breathing life into our dead, sludgy rivers?

Some of her Poems:

Buffaloes

 Impossible to imagine.
Buffaloes—a dream of them:
coats thick with rain,
bodies like continents.
A whole world thundering
through Indian laburnum.

Think of beginnings:
amusement parks at dawn,
pianos, bedrooms, gods.
Think of all the invisible
insurrections it takes
to wake a city from slumber.
In these woods, a single man
will do, armed with a stick
and a paltry collection of stones.
When I see buffaloes run
I think of love—how it is held
in the meaty, muscled pink
of the tongue; how quickly
it is beaten from us—
all that brute resolve
            disappearing
in the undergrowth

THE DAY WE WENT TO THE SEA

The day we went to the sea

Mothers in Madras were mining

The Marina for missing children.

Thatch flew in the sky, prisoners

Ran free, houses danced like danger

In the wind. I saw a woman hold

The tattered edge of the world

In her hand, look past the temple

Which was still standing, as she was —

Miraculously whole in the debris of gaudy

South Indian sun. When she moved

Her other hand across her brow,

In a single arcing sweep of grace,

It was as if she alone could alter things,

Bring us to the wordless safety of our beds.

THE DELIVERER

OUR LADY OF THE LIGHT CONVENT, KERALA

The sister here is telling my mother

How she came to collect children

Because they were crippled or dark or girls.

Found naked in the streets,

Covered in garbage, stuffed in bags,

Abandoned at their doorstep.

One of them was dug up by a dog,

Thinking the head barely poking above the ground

Was bone or wood, something to chew.

This is the one my mother will bring.

* * *

MILWAUKEE AIRPORT, USA

The parents wait at the gates.

They are American so they know about ceremony

And tradition, about doing things right.

They haven’t seen or touched her yet.

Don’t know of her fetish for plucking hair off hands,

Or how her mother tried to bury her.

But they are crying.

We couldn’t stop crying, my mother said,

Feeling the strangeness of her empty arms.

* * *

This girl grows up on video tapes,

Sees how she’s passed from woman

To woman. She returns to twilight corners.

To the day of her birth,

How it happens in some desolate hut

Outside village boundaries

Where mothers go to squeeze out life,

Watch body slither out from body,

Feel for penis or no penis,

Toss the baby to the heap of others,

Trudge home to lie down for their men again.

AT THE RODIN MUSEUM

Rilke is following me everywhere

With his tailor-made suits

And vegetarian smile.

He says because I’m young,

I’m always beginning,

And cannot know love.

He sees how I’m a giant piece

Of glass again, trying

To catch the sun

In remote corners of rooms,

Mountain tops, uncertain

Places of light.

He speaks of the cruelty

Of hospitals, the stillness

Of cathedrals,

Takes me through bodies

And arms and legs

Of such extravagant size,

The ancient sky burrows in

With all the dead words

We carry and cannot use.

He holds up mirrors

From which our reflections fall —

Half-battered existences,

Where we lose ourselves

For the sake of the other,

And the others still to come.

ANOTHER MAN’S WOMAN

My lover has failed to come to the trysting place,

It is perhaps that his mind is dazed,

Or perhaps that he went to another woman,

Or lured perhaps by festive folk, that he delays,

Or perhaps along the dark fringe

Of the forest he wanders lost

-- JAYADEVA

If we’d lived in another age,

I’d have been the kind of woman

who refused to cast down her eyes.

The kind of woman

the other maids in town despise

because she forgets to tie up the calves

and split the curds.

You know the kind ¾

with a tilt in her hips

and hair that slips

continually

from her braids.

But since we live in a world

that’s just reflection,

mere illusions of the mind;

perhaps I can be her after all ¾

the one whose hips defeat the mountains

with their greatness,

whose breasts are heavy,

close and high –

sandal-pasted;

who walks through moonless nights

with lotus skin and lotus feet

across forbidden boundaries.

I’ll be the kind who sallies out

to wait for love

with musk-kissed hair

and navel bared

in a thousand secret places –

past the cowsheds

and the balsam grove,

across the river,

to the garden of hibiscus.

And although the night be dark

and fierce enough to stir

the seven sleeping oceans,

I’ll deceive the forest

like a shadow,

slipping noiselessly past

evil eyes and serpent tongues

and the husband who lies inside

jealous of my devotion.

But if I should reach the river bank

and see you there ¾

combing another woman’s hair.

If I should see the girdle

loosen from her waist

while you string jasmine

round her supine face.

If you should drink the honeyed sweet

from the petals

of her crimsoned lips ¾

I won’t question this betrayal,

or ask who this other woman is.

I’ll simply walk

into the darkness

where every trunk

and branch and leaf

looks like you, feels like you,

speaks like you: deep-chested

yellow-limbed

rain-cloud blue.

And later, while the husband sleeps,

I’ll make my way

to the town’s cremation grounds.

I’ll strip away my clothes

and dance among the mounds of ash

to command the churning of a storm.

For I have been with you

since you were born

and will stay with you

till you return ¾

soaked with the lasting dawn.

                                                           ODE TO THE WALKING WOMAN

                                                               After Alberto Giacometti

                                                               Sit ¾

         you must be tired

       of walking,

       of losing yourself

        this way:

      a bronzed rib

      of exhaustion

       thinned out

      against the dark.

Sit ¾

there are still things

to believe in;

like civilizations

and birthing

and love.

And ancestors

who move

like silent tributaries

from red-earthed villages

with history cradled

in their mythical arms.

But listen,

what if they swell

through the gates

of your glistening city?

Will you walk down

to the water’s edge,

immerse your feet

so you can feel them

dancing underneath?

Mohenjodaro’s brassy girls

with bangled wrists

and cinnabar lips;

turbaned Harappan mothers

standing wide

on terracotta legs;

egg-breasted Artemis –

Inana, Isthar, Cybele,

clutching their bounteous hearts

in the unrepentant dark,

crying: Daughter,

where have the granaries

and great baths disappeared?

Won’t you resurrect yourself,

make love to the sky,

reclaim the world