Exams and Vikram Seth, again.

Four down, two to go. And then I'll be in final year. Which sounds very, very spooky.

Yesterday, I woke up and looked at the clock on top of my pc cabinet. NINE FIVE! Okay, watchistwentyminutesfastthatmeansits QUARTER TO NINE and my exam starts in 15 minutes! And I haven't revised or anything! Bewildered, I open my door and look out at the corridor. Why didn't anyone wake me up? And I'm totally distraught and come back to look at the clock in desperation. It says three five - and then I remember, that I'd written the exam, came back at 12 pm and slept.

This is the second time this is happening. The last time, I was sleeping (again, after the exam) and Pitti knocked. I was so sure that I'd missed my exam, I almost fell on her, crying :D. She looked at me, surprised and then I realized that I'd already written the exam. Tsk tsk. First the knee problem and now this. Warning bells?

***
Someone is being very kind to me. The other day Sat handed me Vikram Seth's 'The Humble Administrator's Garden'. Some of his poems left me sighing again, but I didn't have the time to type them out.

Today I found 'The Three Chinese Poets' and 'To All Who Sleep Tonight'. And then, this made me burst out laughing. Luckily, there were very few people in the lib, the girl sitting opposite me a table away, was staring at me curiously.

Prandial Plaint

My love, I love your breasts. I love your nose.
I love your accent and I love your toes.
I am your slave. One word and I obey.
But please don't slurp your coffee this way.

I usually don't like poems that use uncommon, 'big' sounding words. They seem too contrived, yet while reading 'The Humble Administrator's Garden', I made note of a few words he'd used. Latinate, compleat, inchoate, chives, burble, nugatory, inveigle, libation and like prandial above ... In spite of all this, there's some charm in his poems that I can't define.

I wasn't that impressed by A Suitable Boy, though I did fall for most of his poems in that one too. What I liked best about that book was that, it seemed like he was thinking in Hindi and writing down in English, that made him write the way he did.

Sigh. One day I shall have a cosy library of my own and dear VS' poems shall be the first to decorate those shelves ...