ON A MOON-LIT NIGHT

KAVITA ASIA ASIAN POETRY FESTIVAL
19TH OF MARCH 1988


ON A MOON-LIT NIGHT


On a sky-lit night, long before,
The Goddess among goddess, my mother,
Under the honeying full-moon rays,
evened out the softy sands
paving our cottage frontal square,
called me tenderly to her side,
hugging held my light fore-finger,
taught me right, to write the ‘A’-
over and over erasing it,
the mother letter of the alphabet!

And here I am……
destined by providence to hold the pen,
by profession to scribe poems and prose!
But yet I dare, oh Mother Tamil,
You are now in my hands a sword
to fight the battle of the daily trampled
hungry, clotheless souls in pain -
Unto that commitment I surrender
at your feet, beloved Tamil, my mother !

- Sillaiyoor Selvarajan

NEW YEAR DAY!

NEW YEAR DAY!

Today is New Year day, they say,
But nay, for us, no, it's not today!
If today was New Year,
At our home,There would have been merriment
In what and what form!
Eating and drinking in festival norm!
Chinese crackers and fireworks galore!
We would have made pancakes and sweets,
Carried them in covered trays in ancestral kins!
Clad in new and silky garments
We would roam the streets
Wishing each other!
Wife, child and all
As dusk tends to fall
Gone to the village hall
For the fain damsels' ball,
On enjoyed a show and shared with comrades
The local sweet brew!A total full date
Of joyous night lateToday would have been!
Today is New Year Day, they say,
But nay, for us, no, it's not today!
Bread there's none,
No milk for the little one,
No timely meal, no rice, no porridge,
Even pure water is scarce!
For the shell-cup of black coffee
No sugar to palm-lick!
No clothing to change, so we take no bath;
No shelter under which
Our heads could we lay!
Today is New Year Day, they say,
But nay, for us, no, it's not today!
This Earth-cart to pull,The worker is bull;
The tiller who tillsThe granary till,
By no choice of his will,
To eat he has nil!
So, New Year Day,
For us, not today!
Then, when will that day,
Dawn for us pray?Nay, for us, no, it's not today!
The day man does plunder
Another's bread and butter,
The day humanity seizes
To be divided by races,Caste, creed or colour,
No by national valour;
The day world enacts
A universal lawOf live and let live…
Until that dayThere's no New Year's Dawn!

Sillaiyoor Selvarajan

AJ: THE ROOTED COSMOPOLITAN

AJ: THE ROOTED COSMOPOLITAN

Aasai Rasiah's Portrait Painting of Prof. K. Kailasapathy.

Prof. K. Kailasapathy was a renouned scholar of the Thamils of Sri Lanka.
A specialist on comparative Literature.

Prominant Folklorist of Thamils of Sri Lanka-Thamilaruvi Tha.Shanmuhasundaram

Versatile Thamil Poet Sillaiyoor Selvarajan

NEW YEAR DAY!

Today is New Year day, they say,
But nay, for us, no, it’s not today!

If today was New Year,
At our home,
There would have been merriment
In what and what form!
Eating and drinking in festival norm!
Chinese crackers and fireworks galore!
We would have made pancakes and sweets,
Carried them in covered trays in ancestral kins!
Clad in new and silky garments
We would roam the streets
Wishing each other!
Wife, child and all
As dusk tends to fall
Gone to the village hall
For the fain damsels’ ball,
On enjoyed a show and shared with comrades
The local sweet brew!
A total full date
Of joyous night late
Today would have been!

Today is New Year Day, they say,
But nay, for us, no, it’s not today!

Bread there’s none,
No milk for the little one,
No timely meal, no rice, no porridge,
Even pure water is scarce!
For the shell-cup of black coffee
No sugar to palm-lick!
No clothing to change, so we take no bath;
No shelter under which
Our heads could we lay!

Today is New Year Day, they say,
But nay, for us, no, it’s not today!

This Earth-cart to pull,
The worker is bull;
The tiller who tills
The granary till,
By no choice of his will,
To eat he has nil!

So, New Year Day,
For us, not today!

Then, when will that day,
Dawn for us pray?
Nay, for us, no, it’s not today!

The day man does plunder
Another’s bread and butter,
The day humanity seizes
To be divided by races,
Caste, creed or colour,
No by national valour;
The day world enacts
A universal law
Of live and let live…

Until that day
There’s no New Year’s Dawn!

Sillaiyoor Selvarajan

Reading Against the Orientalist Grain:

Syed Jamil Ahmed

Reading Against the Orientalist Grain:

Performance and Politics Entwined with a Buddhist Strain

Kolkata: Anderson, 2008

357 + xv pp, 173 colour images

ISBN: 978-81-906719-0-3

Available at: Anderson House, EN 11, Sector V, Salt Lake City, Kolkata 700091, India.

Reading Against the Orientalist Grain: Performance and Politics Entwined with a Buddhist Strain is exploratory and self-questioning, crystallized around the post-colonial location of the author. From this location, the phrase ‘against the grain’ connotes a bit of wry humour. The grain in wood, if planed in the wrong direction, will tear rather than lie smoothly. And that precisely is the intention of this volume. Recognizing 'politics' as a pervasive struggle for power and the ‘political’ as that which seeks to expose, subvert or enhance transactions of power, this volume is unashamedly political on two fronts: Orientalism’s ‘natural’ tendency for dealing with the ‘Orient’ and the hegemony of culture mobilized in ‘benign’ and ‘exotic’ ‘Oriental’ performances.

Reading Against the Orientalist Grain, as a study of performances, intends to read, i.e., to make sense of, to construct meaning out of eight performances. These are Caryā Nṛtya and Indra Jātrā from Nepal, Pangtoed Cham from Sikkim, Lhamo from Tibet, Paro Tsechu from Bhutan, Devol Maduva from Sri Lanka, Yoke Thay from Burma and Bauddha Kīrtan from Bangladesh. These performances are entwined with one common thread — Buddhism — more specifically, Theravāda and Vajrayāna Buddhism. The volume is the product of and an attempt to communicate the author’s experience of Buddhism as transience — ironically, in the past tense of these pages — against the Orientalist grain. It seeks to examine how various representations of ‘Buddhist’ performances, as networks of signs where the signified is infinitely delayed, are constructed and to what effects and consequences these representations are mobilized.


Syed Jamil Ahmed (b. 1955) is a director in theatre based in Bangladesh and Professor of Theatre at the Department of Theatre and Music in the University of Dhaka. He graduated from the National School of Drama (New Delhi, India) in 1978, obtained his MA in Theatre from the University of Warwick (Coventry, England) in 1989, and his PhD from the University of Dhaka (Bangladesh) in 1997. His reputation as a director is well established with credits such as Biñād Sindhu (based on the Karbala legend) and Behulār Bhāsān (an adaptation of the Manasā-maìgal) in Bangladesh, The Wheel in the USA, Ek Hazar Aur Ek Theen Ratein (an adaptation of One Thousand and One Nights) in Pakistan, and Pāhiye in India. His design credits include Acalāyatan, Kittankholā, Kerāmat Maìgal, TheTempest, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, The Measures Taken, Oedipus Rex and Urubhaìgam in Bangladesh, Iphigenia in Tauris and Good Woman of Setzuan in India. His works stand out distinctly because he succeeds in impinging ‘traditional’ materials with a sharp contemporary relevance, and because he seeks passionate flights of imagination by blending Euro-American theatre practice with elements drawn from the indigenous/folk theatre of Bangladesh. He has published in the New Theatre Quarterly, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Asian Theatre Journal, TDR: The Drama Review, and Research in Drama Education. His full-length publications include Acinpākhi Infinity: Indigenous Theatre in Bangladesh (Dhaka: University Press Ltd, 2000) and In Praise of Niraan: Islam, Theatre, and Bangladesh (Dhaka: Pathak Samabesh, 2001). He has traveled extensively in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America, and has taught as a scholar-in-residence under Fulbright Fellowship at the Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, USA (1990), a visiting faculty at the King Alfred's College, Winchester, UK (2002) and a visiting scholar at the San Francisco City College under Fulbright Visiting Specialist Programme (2005).