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Nagamandala: Umar Nizarudeen

Umar Nizarudeen works with the University of Calicut in Kerala. He has a PhD in Bhakti Studies from the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. In an eclectic career spanning over a decade, he has taught in various colleges of Delhi University, University of Kerala and has worked as staff reporter for the New Indian Express, and as Proof Reader for Mckinsey & Co. Muse India, Vayavya, Culture Cafe journal of the British Library are some of the journals amongst many others where his poems have appeared. A few poems by him were also broadcast by the Yuvavani program of the All India Radio.

 

At first, a whiff of childish glee
Was that an apparition,
From the Amar Chitra Katha?
Her Toupee and costume,
Navel salacious, ribald
This danseuse from medieval Chola,
At a convention of post-modernists
Toasting Bharata and Artaud
Rousing Bhavas, Rasa-Dhwani
Exalted emotions, archaic realms
Primordial in this morgue, the coldness
Shattered by carnivalesque
Marx, Derrida, Gandhi and Ranciere
Performance theory? she pirouettes
The interred snake, nagamandala
And fallen dame, saree of epic fails
Shimmering spangled, gorgeous.
In the end all that could be found was
The Indigo episteme of her
Tilak-dipped feet.


 

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