POET PROFILE: ARDRA MANASI

Biography:

Ardra Manasi is a published poet in English and Malayalam. Alongside, she is a development practitioner living in New York City and has served as a former Policy Consultant with the United Nations (UN). Her poems have been published by India’s National Academy of Letters (Sahitya Akademi) and other magazines and anthologies including Parentheses Journal, Silk and Smoke, The Palm Leaf, Narrow Road, Bengaluru Review, Quesadilla and Other Adventures: Anthology of Food Poems (Hawakal Publishers) and Art in the Time of COVID-19 (San Fedele Press). Her essays and op-eds on global development have been published in Madras Courier, The News Minute, Asiaville, Agenda for International Development (A-id), Countering Violent Extremism Initiative and Huffington Post. 

Ardra Manasi

Poems:

We're Islands - 3 by Deepa Gopal

Years and Hours (Featured poem)

A friend told me once:

“When a cat purrs, bones heal.”

In the stories I read as a child,

an old woman sat with a cat–

her only companion for the night–

as she counted her years.

 

I have now become her.

 

But I count hours and not years

as I sit on a Poäng chair, 

sipping tea and watch

through my curtainless window,

these trees grow into

leafless apparitions.

 

Sometimes, all we need

is a chair to know

the shape of our being.

 

Next door, I hear my neighbour’s cat purr –

away from love and boredom,

she too now awaits,

like its owner

that secret hour to die,

alone.

 

My heart stirs, then stills.

Bonsai

 

The bonsai at my window

reminds my father

of a monk in silence

waiting for his disciple

to return from his

round of alms.

 

“A dwarf,” my husband

points at the tree and laughs,

“he reminds me

of the dead,

eaten by worms and time.”

 

I nod and agree with both

but insist that it is a ‘she.’

 

Do pronouns matter?

 

As the world outside my

window goes to sleep –

I tend to her,

dust those leaves,

sprinkle water ,

and tell her,

that she reminds me of a child

trapped in an adult body. 

An IKEA Painting

 

A polar bear and a reindeer

stand apart on our walls.

Two wooden panels of truth,

their striped bodies,

with trees rumbling inside their bellies.

They wander aimlessly on a mountain

which melts away, every summer

to become a river

flowing through our living room.

We're Islands - 4 by Deepa Gopal

Quartets for A Long Year

            I           

Women in Bergen County

invent new recipes of quinoa in milk,

read poems over the phone

and leave flowers at each other’s doors.

            II            

Women of Purasawalkam

make kolams and kara kuzhambu

They slice onions into squares for breakfast,

circles for lunch and strips for dinner.

           III           

Young girls in Kodagu ascend 

mountains with their mothers and sing,

night is a river pebbled with memories

of their ancestors, who are now stars above.

          IV         

To survive this year, I write these lines 

while I wait for my mother 

to stop cooking, cleaning, caring

so that she may write her lines.  

We're Islands - 1 by Deepa Gopal

Shadows

 

Slow brooding hours of a day

breathe into ceramic bowls

and bleached kitchen floors.

Conversations from yesterday

waft across the room,

with their sharpened tongues.

When the house is quiet,

I long for footsteps

An occasional visitor – 

a dragonfly wanders into my room

a carpenter visits to assemble a sofa

a friend leaves her baby

and two unruly cats with me.

When I run out of company, 

I remember the shadows 

that hide within myself.

Like an estranged family,

they return to me uninvited

And I feed them light.

Ardra Manasi is paired with Deepa Gopal. To see rest of her paintings and read about her, visit Deepa Gopal.

Poet Statement:

The poem “Years and Hours,” inspired by Deepa Gopal’s artwork “We’re Islands-- 3,” is about being stuck indoors during a pandemic-induced lockdown and surrendering to what seems inevitable. The poem explores boredom and mortality through the presence of a cat, all of which leads to a feeling that time does not move and years trickle within hours.

The poem “Bonsai” is a woman’s effort to find a voice of her own, amidst men who see the world differently. The poem delves into the interior – a bonsai tree defines her being in confinement.

The poem “An IKEA Painting” captures the new modes of living that the pandemic has brought about. Given the inability to step out during a lockdown, the narrator seeks company in two paintings in her living room. But over the weeks and months that follow, they acquire a life of their own and the writer/narrator becomes a part of their world.

The poem “Quartets for A Long Year,” inspired by Deepa Gopal’s quartet artwork “We’re Islands -- 4,” is about how women from different parts of the world experience the pandemic and how they seek meaning and relief in finding their own creative selves.

The poem “Shadows,” inspired by Deepa Gopal’s artwork “We’re Islands-- 1,” is an effort to describe moments of despair amidst the pandemic and how one can willfully work through unhappiness.

On Twitter, she is @ArdraManasi

Art & Poem

Vision & Concept by Deepa Gopal

Video by Anoushka Sunil

Intro clip and thumbnail- Vibhin P C

Introduction 

Video edit by Anoushka Sunil

Intro clip and thumbnail- Vibhin P C

CURATOR'S TIDBITS:

I met Ardra Manasi through her poetry, recently. Mini S Menon introduced me to her. I read Ardra’s poems that I found on her facebook wall, on Medium and those that I came across online. I meandered through her alley of words, somewhere there, entangled in her verses. I guess, I lingered there for long, feeling Zen. It’s the brevity and profundity of her words that captured me. Ardra participates with her inner self, the layers within her as is evident in her works. My works are also an introspection of emotions – fleeting and harbouring, and are autobiographical like Ardra’s. We did interact through emails and it felt good getting to know her, journeying a bit into her thoughts. Pensive and charming, all through I could ‘hear’ her zen-like smile. The first time I read “Years and Hours” as a response to my work, I was left overwhelmed!