Love Letters to Myself and Others/ANarchaeology

Mrs. Shulka Adhikary:Love Song #1

I studied the songs of Mirabai and Tagore
(from red velvet -covered books,now long gone)
through my Bengali teacher who'd sing and count the meter
dada DIN ! out.
One night,wading through floodwaters
up to my knees in the London Underground,
holding the tambura in its cloth bag high above my head
in case it fell apart like tissue paper,
I missed the last train home.
No trains were running
so I walked in a Northerly direction
just like I was walking the New York streets alone
always a tramp for beauty.
All London was drowning from Christopher Wren's church
to houseboats in Camden,
I was in love like I always am
and was thinking of my Bengali teacher and the rhythm
caught in what she called her loveless arranged marriage
singing transcendental love songs
in her Council housing cage there-Clapham tube stop?
But remember this:
Lace on the windows,so far away from her home,
her heart flew to Tagore,the only true love
she said she'd ever known
and she told me
that it was enough.

4/4/2009 (On occasion of "I Love You" day on Twitter)

DayBook Pages,London 1973 with writing to David Damrosch in car coming from Connecticut into

New York on brief trip back from UK...looks like I scribbled:and riding home in the rain,windshield

wipers slapping a gentle rhythm,we spoke of the wonders of life,and what more wonder my friend

than sitting down to a poem to one you love or building an ingenious box or drawing a maze with

I Love You at every turning. David had built a box maze for Lori that was a magical thing full of hieroglyphs

and treasures.

 

Pages from DayBook,1973,These weeks back in New York from England.  British Airways flight back again.16 yrs old,I see there was a D Amram concert scheduled there and was taking a workshop with musician Pandit Pran Nath somewhere in a downtown lofty space.

Same Daybook (1973/74): London Tube Map and bus route map.

Ricky with Punita Gupta,one of his teachers and a performer of rare grace. 1974