Indian Love Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) »

Meena Alexander is an award-winning poet and the author of the memoir Fault Lines. She is a professor of English at Hunter College and lives in New York City.

According to the Kama Sutra, the erotic handbook written two thousand years ago, when the wheel of ecstasy is in motion “there is no textbook at all, and no order.” Indian Love Poems is a unique gathering of poems from across more than two and a half millennia that attempts to catalog the disordered ecstasies of love, ranging from the Kama Sutra and earlier works up to present-day India and the poets of the Indian diaspora.

Indian Love Poems features works from the classical languages of Sanskrit and Tamil and such later languages as Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Bengali, and English. Emerging from many Indian cultures and eras, the poems collected here reflect a variety of erotic and spiritual passions, and celebrate the powerful role of desire–both male and female–in the intricate dance of existence. From the twelfth-century female poet Mahadeviyakka to the twentieth-century Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore to such contemporary poets as Kamala Das and Vikram Seth, this glittering tapestry of lyric voices beautifully and sensually evokes the transfiguring force of love.

Foreword

WAITING
From Subhashitavali of Vallabhadeva
My Love

VATSYAYANA From Kamasutra
Four Embraces

MILAIPPERUNKANTAN From Kuruntokai
What He Said

ALLUR NANMULLAI From Kuruntokai
What She Said

ORERURAVANAR From Kuruntokai
What He Said

KALIDASA From Meghadutam
The Loom of Time

ANONYMOUS A Small Request

SRINATHA Love Letter

JAGANATHA From Bhamini Vilasa
A Word of Warning

CHANDIDAS
‘I have blackened my golden skin’

ANURADHA MAHAPATRA God

MAMULANAR From Kuruntokai
What She Said

CHANDIDAS
‘I throw ashes at all laws’

KAPILAR From Ainkurunuru
What Her Friend Said

TEVAKULATTAR From Kuruntokai
What She Said

From Gathasaptasati
‘Even in a reeling world’
‘How can you describe her?’

From Amarusataka
‘All I have to do’
‘She’s in the house’

VARATUNKARAMAPANTIYAN’S WIFE Space to Space

KABIR
‘Like a sharp arrow’

JAYANTA MAHAPATRA A Day of Rain

MANORAMA MAHAPATRA My Whole Life for Him

AMRITA PRITAM Early Spring

K. SATCHIDANANDAN Loving aWoman

BALAMANIAMMA Gift of Love

SHAKUNT MATHUR A New Way of Waiting

GHALIB Desires Come by the Thousands Behind the Curtain

NISSIM EZEKIEL Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher

MIRAJI Love Song of the Clerk

SURESH JOSHI Darkness

SITANSHU YASHASHCHANDRA Solar

NIRALA Love Song

A. K. RAMANUJAN Looking for a Cousin on a Swing

MEENA ALEXANDER Indian Sandstone

FAHMIDAH RIAZ Tongue of Stone

PRATIBHA SATPATHY Dew Drop

SAROOP DHRUV Beyond the Flapdoor

KEKI N. DARUWALLA From Night River
‘Dream and reality’

MEETING
VATSYAYANA From Kamasutra
‘When men ask about all the ways of embracing’
‘Whatever wound a man inflicts on a woman’

KALIDASA From Sakuntala
‘Craving sweet’
‘Seeing rare beauty’

ANONYMOUS Kamasutra

From Amarusataka ‘Held her’

KUMARADASA From Janakiharana
‘In their quarrel’

CANDRAKA From Sarngadharapaddhati
‘A long time back’

FAIZ AHMED FAIZ
‘Before you came’

FAHMIDAH RIAZ Deep Kiss

SUDEEP SEN Desire Caress

MIRABAI
‘Here she comes’
‘Hari is a dhobi’
‘On a sudden’

CHANDIDAS
‘I have hardened my mind’

SUJATA BHATT The Kamasutra Retold

KABIR
‘To say that the love’
‘Lying beside you’

VIDYA Love in the Countryside

VIKATANITAMBA Recollection

VALLANA
‘When he had taken off my clothes’

BHAVABHUTI From Uttara Rama Charita
‘Deep in love’

CHAVALI BANGARAMMA My Brother

RABINDRANATH TAGORE Black Blossom One Day

AKHTAR-UL-IMAN Compromise

ISMAIL You

BASAVANNA
‘Look here, dear fellow’

ILANKO ATIKAL From The Cilappatikaram From The Round Dance of the Herdswomen

MAHADEVIYANKKA
‘Like a silkworm weaving’
‘When I didn’t know myself ’

D. VINAYACHANDRAN From Hell Writes a Love Poem
‘When the gigantic bulls with broken horns’
‘For love’
‘It is heaven and hell’
‘Standing naked before the mirror’

From Amarusataka
‘When my face turned toward his’

CEMPULAPPEYANIRAR From Kuruntokai
What He Said

From Amarusataka
‘My girl’
‘Tender-limbed girl’

DOM MORAES Container What I Meant

A. S. MUKTHAYAKKA Little Poems

AYYAPPA PANIKER The Prison

O. V. USHA Doubt

KEDARNATH SINGH On Reading a Love Poem

JYOTSNA MILAN Woman, 2

AMRITA PRITAM Talk DailyWages

UMASHANKAR JOSHI
‘Before I met you’
An Apology

SUNANDA TRIPATHY Tryst

NABANEETA DEV SEN Fig Tree Antara

HIRA BANSODE Woman

ANONYMOUS Drowning

MUDDUPALANI Radha Instructs Ila, Krsna’s New Bride, in the Arts of Love

NANDURI SUBBARAO Blow Out the Lamp

NABANEETA DEV SEN Beginning and End

ANURADHA MAHAPATRA Guiltful

TEJI GROVER Jealousy 1

BHASWATI ROY CHAUDHURI Side by Side

GAGAN GILL She Touches Him

RAJANI PARULEKAR The Snake Couple

AYYAPPA PANIKER
‘To me your body’

FAHMIDAH RIAZ
‘Come, give me your hand’

A. K. RAMANUJAN Love Poem for a Wife, 2

JAYANTA MAHAPATRA The IndianWay

VIKRAM SETH Unclaimed

KAMALA DAS (KAMALA SURAYYA)
The Old Playhouse

KEKI N. DARUWALLA To My Daughter Rookzain

SUJATA BHATT Sherdi

ARUN KOLATKAR Chaitanya

VIKRAM SETH From The Golden Gate

JAYADEVA From Gitagovinda
Joyful Krishna Ecstatic Krishna

PARTING
From Amarusataka
‘To go’

MUTTA
‘So free am I, so gloriously free’

SUMANGALAMATA
‘A woman well set free!’

MIRABAI
‘He’s left me’

JAYADEVA From Gitagovinda
Careless Krishna

MAMALATAN From Kuruntokai
What She Said

KACCIPETTU NANNAKAIYAR From Kuruntokai
What She Said

KAPILAR From Kuruntokai
What She Said

From Gathasaptasati
‘Separation’s fire’
‘Aunt’

From Gahakoso ‘Scornfully’

KAPILAR From Ainkurunuru
What Her Friend Said

CANDRAKA From Sarngadharapaddhati
‘At day’s end’

SRIVARA From Subhashitavali of Vallabhadeva
‘I know’

GHALIB Near the Zam ZamWell Some Exaggerations

FAIZ AHMED FAIZ Any Lover to Any Beloved

From Gathasaptasati
‘They whisper the cruel one’
‘Unable to count’
‘Distance destroys love’
‘His form’

RABINDRANATH TAGORE
‘He never came to me’
Comings and Goings From I Won’t Let You Go

DILIP CHITRE From Travelling in a Cage

CHINU MODI Elegy

KAIFI AZMI Humiliation

AYYAPPA PANIKER How Well Have I Forgotten!

AMRITA PRITAM The Sigh That Breathes Fire

FAHMIDAH RIAZ Stoning

AGHA SHAHDID ALI A Rehearsal of Loss

NIRENDRANATH CHAKRAVARTY The Bloodstained Trophies

AMRITA PRITAM The Tale of Fire

SUGATHA KUMARI Night Rain

P. BHASKARAN Sometimes, Remember Me

KABITA SINHA The Last Door’s Name is Sorrow

JAYANATA MAHAPATRA Poem for Angela Elston

AGHA SHAHID ALI From A Nostalgist’s Map of America

VIKRAM SETH From The Golden Gate

NISSIM EZEKIEL Description

AGHA SHAHID ALI Film Bhajan Found on a 78 RPM

MEENA ALEXANDER Closing the Kamasutra

KISHWAR NAHEED A Story Among Many History Does Not Repeat Itself Agreement

FAIZ AHMED FAIZ
‘Do not ask of me, my love’

Acknowledgments