First shooting day for Multimedia Poetry project by Susmita Paul and Vuong Bich Ngoc on Friday 27th 2012
Sundays @ 12 noon
Some nights the elbow stretches straight, running
Over the edge –
A perfect tout feeling at the shoulder
The elbow angled at that perfect degree
Inwards and paused. The palms meet gravity,
Hanging
Half open unlaced mushthi*1. No cribbing
In dreams. I carried the hundred bells threaded to the feet
Half across the globe, and then retraced;
Spaces between them widening, emptying
With the moon-tides. The mirror
Still
Has a say. Hypnosis I dream. It
Tugs and pulls and draws me into
That hall. No one sees, no one feels. Ghost-busting
Is not their call. Only once your eyes
Fall
On the mirror. The bells make a call. Did you feel
The glass quivering? I spread my feet
Across the new floor, unable
To remember the position I take
Ardhamandala
Purnamandala
Sthanaka*2
*1 mushthi is a hand gesture used in Bharatnatyam, an Indian classical dance. It means ‘closed fist’.
*2 ardhamandala, purnamandala and sthanaka are the three different positions of standing in Bharatnatyam.
© Susmita Paul 2012
Indian traditional dance by Namrata Gupta at Natarani Theater, Ahmedabad, India