Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Pagalkavi, Hari Nagar City Poetry by The Delhi Walla - August 17, 2015August 17, 20153 Poetry in the city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] One raining afternoon The Delhi Walla arranged to meet poet Pagalkavi at his apartment near Tanki Walla Park in West Delhi’s Hari Nagar. “I live with my parents and they don’t know I’m pagalkavi (mad-poet),” he warned me. “In fact they would go pagal (mad) if they get to know that.” The poet’s parents had named him Ronak Bhasin but his readers on Instagram know him by his aforementioned pseudonym. Apparently this social networking service has greatly shaped Pagalkavi’s life as a young poet. In his 20s, Mr Bhasin, who joined Instagram a year ago, says, “I met a lot of great poets on the gram. One day I shared my Delhi address asking people to send me an original unpublished poem by post and that I would send one in return.” Pagalkavi received large stamped envelopes from across the world. Yet despite his online presence, the Mad Poet largely lives outside the world of today. A graduate in electronics and communication engineering, he has not tried to find a day job to the dismay of his father, a retired banker. Instead, he spends his days writing poems on old typewriters. Pagalkavi has more than 20 typewriters. His dark windowless room is a world at consensual strife. It is cluttered with objects as unexpected as plastic buckets filled with film reels. (Pagalkavi has an analog camera that was made in the USSR.) A taste for old things demands a life of endless rummaging. Since Mr Bhasin prefers to produce his poetry on aged musty sheets, he constantly searches the dusty shelves of neighborhood stationery stores for forgotten bundles of yellowing pages. Expressing his philosophy of verse, the Hari Nagar poet says, “I believe we are obsessed with finding patterns, reason and sense in everything. We see shapes in clouds and fortune in coffee grounds. A poem sometimes is a direct assault on this. It often doesn’t make sense as we would like it to make or as we thought it would. Usually we leave with more than what we came looking for.” To Mr Bhasin, poetry is only sounds and entangled words. “There’s no salvation at the end of poetry,” he says. “Just more lust to merge the forbidden. Delicately. A melting sofplosion of that sweet sweet ache.” Pagalkavi shares his poem ‘Mad Rush’ with us. Mad Rush picture me if you will the same dingy back alley sitting on the same red coca cola crate teeth clenched on the rag contemplating the butterfly perched between my fingertips ready to dip mainline you know what I did? I let you in my veins I let you flow in me I let you dissolve I let you part my lips I let you lull me to sleep I let you know, me. you did your part you watched me bloom you watched me ease my wrinkled wings you watched me spread them long you watched me float over blue you watched me my eyes closed you watched me drown at your will I didn’t stop you I closed my eyes I ceased to desist I let them fall I buried my song you killed me slowly with soft abandon I wallowed in it breathing in shame you slit my tongue I stopped to breathe if little things you do get me high then why do I need the whole of you? you had me on my knees I dangled by the tip of your tongue I heard your voice dead and empty like your eyes feeding on me I masticated and distilled the whole world for you but you took only what you came for then spat me right out my puréed world out the window of your lifeless soul So here am I the butterfly perched between my fingertips quivering and lumbering with all the remaining beauty in this mad world ready to dip mainline at any moment I wish nobody will ever notice nobody ever will Sensibly mad 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. FacebookX Related Related posts: Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Ankita Surabhi’s Heartbreak Poetry, Lajpat Nagar Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Cecilia Abraham, Raghu Nagar Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Mantra Mukim, Kamla Nagar Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Akhil Katyal’s Poem ‘He was as arrogant as a Chattarpur Farmhouse’, Jangpura Extension Delhi’s Bandaged Heart – Kandala Singh’s Poem Birdwatching, Munirka Enclave
Film reels and ink-ribbons are very flammable. His room needs a couple of fire extinguishers. I hope he doesn’t smoke cigarettes or burn incense anywhere near that pile.