wilted woe

to be still by the water, for my heart to know what it yearns.

[the-boundless-blue]

Walter Crane, The Grave of Keats, 1873, watercolor on paper,  24.4 cm x 34.3 cm.

D. Sampson, The Graves of John Keats and Joseph Severn, Protestant Cemetery, Rome, Italy, 1883, oil on canvas, 20 x 26 cm

[lesamis]

i wish people loved everything else about keats more than they love his death - before he was ill, keats carried home shells for his little sister from his travels, he planted saplings at wentworth place, he doodled flowers in his lecture notes, he was awkward and funny and had a gift for acting. he was angry only at cruelty inflicted on the weak before he was angry at the cruelty of his own illness; he wrote poetry with the explicit purpose of healing people - as a poet, if not as a physician. his love of humanity directed his words and acts until illness slowly and surely took that ability from him, and how morbid and depressed he became in his agony is the most brutal and uninteresting part of his life. 

[wiltedwoe]

in my dream you were picking up berries we were meant to love but we were young as the ripe age of sixteen you said love as if they walk on its feet yet, this love is a lot of work.. it was a few years later I kept having this recurring dream where we have everything to ourselves we befriend the stream, and walk this narrow alley our hearts in its nests, bodies floating in the misty rain, and our hands were cold.. you held mine all eyes on us.. love, this is awful, I know and I still adore you in my sleep

–l.r

[somerabbitholes]

Essays

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

happy reading :)

[wiltedwoe]

letter to my ex whose ghost I still converse with: the monologue

my lover and I cling into one another's picture perfect

it lasted for years

we kissed our supercuts I love you's, over and over it echoes

why would I sit on the edge of the bed

clutching on something cold

with my knife out

if it weren't for our ghosts?

so much of these, fondle our exposed skull

I've been out in the sun

still the faded picture of April tingles in the air,

every single thing in this house is burning

me

still I indulge on empty shivers of what we ought to be.

I watch how we kiss and kill each other,

you watch me committed murder under your breath

but still love is the villain

and I don't have anywhere to hide this swelling I hoard–

so then I write to you

until both of us grow sick–(we keep chanting I love you)

with nobody ever leaves the room

[wiltedwoe]

rain is falling again and your tongue roaring,

I had known this, I choose this method as

to how I would want to die.. clean and in your mouth

but learning these hands fit for holding

my heart wants to hold you

my bones ache, I don't let myself know it before

now I'm loved while being on my knees, voices bend

limbs shaky. still beautiful on my baby's lap

amid this, beams of your eyes lightly glimmering

like it's made of moonlight, smeared with

selfless rush in the dark room

as if you love me back, 

your heart has been blue, and you do, 

you love me back. 

you love me back not with the silenced– 

almost vague ode when you fill me up

with you trying to not crush my body

when the big moment ends. I think you do.

[wiltedwoe]

when the moon blooms in full, I'm touch starved

mark me up like your annotated books on your bedside table

[wiltedwoe]

I wish I had a name for this longing

when I watch your face soften, the skies too, grow flustered

I'm latched to the warmth of your tongue

and I become unaware of the weather

[wiltedwoe]

despair, despair,

quietly crawl

love, anyone, this is bigger than my room

[wiltedwoe]

I want to be your companion

to hold your fathomless desire

when it leaks ink in a lake of acids

until my palms are left with the sting

from your anger and your somber

and I will wait whenever the moon

is the kindest, to kiss you

until our wounds age here, anywhere

in this foreign mirages, this field of violets is ours

and you will read my lamenting

to celebrate it, you will tend my head

like a fragile child

we will lurk to weave the night

and earnestly, our song will haunt

–l.r

[wiltedwoe]

rhymes don't exist

(because I don't want to bother you)

you're everywhere where you leave

please don't give me the burden of being remembered

we say it at the same time,

the dawn breaks and this love ends

neither one of us are friends with keeping promises

which makes this the second on the list of things we can relate

and staying in love–I say horribly, you say awfully–

is placed first

[wiltedwoe]

those misty days we made a scene

your hands were reaching for my thighs

my pearls mingled among chunk of clothes

on your bedroom floor, I didn't care so much anymore

my head was welled up but not of grief nor war,

your hands were the moonlight

twinkling and shuddering, and I followed,

because we wanted to be bigger than a storm

our mouths stayed open as the rush pooled the room

but not enough to water our thirsts, never enough

and those misty days never ended

your flames found a home in my ribs

–l.r

[wiltedwoe]

this love tastes peculiar in my tongue

and I ought to know what this could mean

I lean in for a kiss but I'm tangled in rainy days

I allow it to come off and something is glaring

as I try to catch it, I end up chasing

a plume of smoke in your shape

so then I close the windows as I'm chewing it alone

–l.r

[wiltedwoe]

I'm the little girl whose name you tossed up in the dump, maybe. and maybe this is why you don't recognise me. but once we were in our small kitchen. I built this, and there's a window too. I board them up, you see. because the sun is atrocious, so are the street and this small town. I see us everywhere, and I keep seeing you in places we've never been. I watch your face glisten and you don't even remember me. not anymore. not that I know of. but you see, I go back to our small beach. recapturing when we keep them in photographs your friends took plenty. it makes me go back, always. like you, when it's convenient to you. and maybe I'm going to be trapped here forever, reliving every single April and June. while you have no idea. maybe you do, that's the reason why you're playing this game. maybe you don't remember your I love you's, and you don't mean it. that would be cruel. but I do.. I do.

–l.r

[wiltedwoe]

butterflies

love, these are my hands, and this is where you love me your heart is red, so do your cheeks I memorise every edges when you paint my face with colorful delights, and you lead my hands, we mold this soft thing together we remember this part, but questions arise when I wake up   darling, is it a secret to know where you keep your poetry?   you know better than me I whisper,   how about this time?   I keep it in a jar, but I got the wrong jar this one is for the caterpillars but you still love me and kiss my stomach    love, I just place it here

–l.r

[wiltedwoe]

She arose from her sleep, my daughter I gave birth to on the last day of June. The first mistake I committed was I molded her existence after a name I borrowed from the Greek, like everyone else before us. She spoke to me, so fondly of this little life, I couldn't yet explain.. everyone like her are confined from doing enormous thing.

–l.r

[wiltedwoe]

oh nectar, do me a favor and live in my wandering it wont be much! you'll be you, hands caressing my hair my fingers touching your face and I'll be the little rage who aches for sweetness, whose daydreams you knead whose head storms for you then my reverie filled with your soft water and I recite, I recite the proses, the sonnets, and sad love songs the half finished sleepy pieces until you you hum your part sweet like kisses, kisses like mirages, glisten this room will be like a garden tulips, wisteria, the drowsy fawn and ladybugs! with a little sunlight on our bare skin she will do it gently, gentle as the longing we share spilled from our lips "because we are in love, we'll be okay," this garden, this palace, and I'll be sitting on your lap (you have everything you dream of, I have everything I long) kissing your entire face this garden, this palace, with you, my lover in our ivory tower lulled by language so personal, they belong to us in the warm care of moonlight love belong to us.

–l.r