Until the Lions

by Karthika Nair

  Soli (2006). Choreography: Anthony Egéa. Music: Tedd Zahmal. Lighting: Florent Blanchon. Performance: Emilie Sudre. Producer: Compagnie Rêvolution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It8Nnvh2wjE

  TeZukA (2011). Choreography: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Music: Nitin Sawhney. Additional / traditional music: Tsubasa Hori, Woojae Park, Olga Wojciechowska. Set design & lighting: Willy Cessa. Calligraphy: Tosui Suzuki. Costume design: Sasa Kovacevic. Video: Taiki Ueda. Producer: Sadler’s Wells, Bunkamura, Eastman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plbEvqGNFOo

  The Crimson House (2014). Choreography, concept, stage design & direction: Lemi Ponifasio. Lighting: Helen Todd. Production: MAU.

  The Testament of Mary (2013). Playwright: Colm Tóibin. Director: Deborah Warner. Performance: Fiona Shaw. Set design: Tom Pye. Costumes: Ann Roth. Lighting: Jennifer Tipton. Music & sound design: Mel Mercier. Producer: Barbican.

  Umwelt (2004). Concept & Choreography: Maguy Marin in collaboration with Ulises Alvarez, Mary Chebbah, Teresa Cunha, Renaud Golo, Thierry Partaud, Cathy Polo, Denis Mariotte, François Renard, Jeanne Vallauri. Music/Sound design: Denis Mariotte. Lighting: Alexandre Béneteaud. Costumes: Cathy Ray. Production: Compagnie Maguy Marin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-cGS5oTWUo

  Véronique Doisneau (2004). Concept: Jérôme Bel. With Véronique Doisneau. Excerpts of ballets by Jean Coralli & Jules Perrot (Giselle), Merce Cunningham (Points in Space), Mats Ek (Giselle), Rudolf Noureev (La Bayadère – Marius Petipa & Le Lac des Cygnes – Marius Petipa & Lev Ivanov). Commissioned and produced by l’Opéra national d Paris. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoX6hn3RL9o

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I thank the editors of the following publications in which certain poems from Until the Lions first appeared, sometimes in slightly different forms:

  Poetry International Web (December 2013): ‘Constancy I, III, V & VI’;

  Indian Quarterly (July 2015): ‘Satyavati: Fault Lines II-IV’;

  The Wolf Magazine (Summer 2014): ‘Amba-Shikhandi: Manual for Revenge & Remembrance’;

  Granta 130: India (January 2015): ‘Shunaka: Blood Count’;

  Antiserious (February 2015): ‘Satyavati: Fault Lines VIII’;

  Blackbox Manifold no. 13 (Winter 2014): ‘I. Blood Moon Rising: Poorna with Vyaasa’ and ‘II. Poorna to Satyavati: The Handmaid’s Grail’;

  Scroll India (March 2015): ‘Ulupi: The Capillaries of Cosmic Bodies’;

  Almost Island (Summer 2015): ‘Krishna: Blueprint for a Victory’; ‘Kunti: Ossature of Maternal Conquest & Reign’; ‘Testament: Vrishali with Duryodhana’;

  The Caravan (May 2012): ‘Uttaraa: I. Life Sentences’;

  POEM (Summer 2014): ‘Uttaraa: II. To Abhimanyu: Memorabilia’;

  Prairie Schooner (Volume 88, No. 4, Winter 2014): ‘Uttaraa: III. Note to the Unborn Child’.

  For the sanctuary, support – financial or infrastructural, always vital – and time they provided during the writing of this book, I am very thankful to

  Sangam House (India): specifically, for a residency in November 2012; for the close-knit community of writers it fosters;

  Wonju City and Toji Cultural Foundation (South Korea): for a residency across September-October 2013; for the generosity and reliable presence of the personnel Foundation;

  The Villa Départementale Marguerite Yourcenar and the Département du Nord (France): for a grant and a residency at the Villa in March 2015; for grand and caring hospitality; unforgettable vistas and possibly the finest, healthiest cuisine in France.

  Abiding gratitude, more than I can express, to the many, many people who – in a myriad of ways – helped make this book a reality, among whom

  Karthika V.K.: for the five years of unflagging patience it took for an inchoate idea to become something slightly more; for not abandoning that idea despite my detours around dance scripts and productions, children’s fables and hospitals; for numerous chocolate sorties that worked wonders with temporal glitches and diegetic voices; and a much-admired, gimlet gaze on all possible semantic, zoological and other anomalies, especially the poor beaver;

  James Byrne: for greeting ‘Amba’ so warmly – together with Sandeep Parmar – and giving her a cherished platform; for leading Until the Lions to another arc-en- ciel; for steadfast belief and encouragement and an eagle’s eye, especially on the calendar;

  Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Ajitha G.S., Amrita Talwar, Prerna Gill, Bonita Shimray and Jojy Philip (in random order): for attention and expertise and unfailing good humour;

  Tony Ward, Angela Jarman and the team at Arc Publications: for the second chapter in this journey; for a beautifully produced book;

  Marielle Morin and Rick Simonson for their belief in these voices, for generously casting a bridge across the Atlantic Ocean;

  Anjali Singh of Ayesha Pande Literary for being at the other end of that bridge; for her immediate response, immense kindness, sparkling discussions and priceless counsel;

  Jill Schoolman at Archipelago Books: for her warmth and attentiveness in welcoming the lionesses to a new land and Emma Raddatz, for all the care, and unfailingly swift and thoughtful responses;

  The French Book Office, New Delhi & Prakriti Foundation: For continued support and warmth; for the invitation to India;

  Antony Gormley: for the generous loan of Another Singularity as cover for the Arc edition – a dream come true;

  Bryony McLennan and Philip Boot at Antony Gormley Studio: for their prompt and cheerful help with the formalities and technical elements;

  Pramod Kumar K.G.: for catalysing the cover image of the HC edition; for sourcing so much of the reference material and spotting ones I didn’t know existed; for his dining table where ideas and poems germinate and where much soy milk and baingan bartha are consumed, though not together; mostly, for being – and the difference that makes to me;

  Mita Kapur and Siyahi: for the formalities;

  Marilyn Hacker, Sandeep Parmar, Anand Murty and Swarup B.R.: for repeated, close readings and insightful suggestions on time lines and voices, skeletal systems and connective tissue; for regular, valuable encouragement;

  David Shulman, Marilyn Hacker, Jeet Thayil, Alistair Spalding, Amit Chaudhuri and Thomas Meyer: for their time and words, both dearly cherished;

  R. Sivapriya, Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Juhi Saklani, Laetitia Zecchini and Kenneth Maennchen: for the early, lively discussions on multiple narratives;

  Sankar Mohan Radhakrishnan: for reading ‘Satyavati: Fault Lines’ with the grave focus and the red pen of the editorial martinet he is, despite the distractions provided by the content;

  Narayani Harigovindan, Vahni Capildeo, Siddhartha Bose, Arunava Sinha, Vivek Narayanan, Sumana Roy, Urvashi Butalia, Tishani Doshi, Arundhathi Subramaniam and Chandrahas Choudhury: for opportunities I wouldn’t otherwise have dared to seek;

  Sreekishen Nair: for sharing scholarship on fascinating performing art and ritual practices and parallel belief systems sprung from the Mahabharata – all too often submerged in a majoritarian discourse;

  Retna Nair and Sukumaran Nair: for the patience and goodness to read out entire books aloud over Skype in the name of research;

  Ranvir Shah and Meera Krishnan: for procuring and dispatching a much-coveted copy of Parva; for the loan of The Cult of Draupadi;

  Leesa Gazi: for the conviction, very early on, that these voices clamoured to be staged;

  Françoise Gillard; for her fiery, fragile and luminous Antigone – inspiration to some of the voices in this collection;

  Farooq Chaudhry: for his immediate and unequiv
ocal response to the early poems, his belief that they would be the right work for Akram Khan to explore and Akram Khan Company to produce;

  Jai Arjun Singh: for his own enduring Mahabharata obsession; for the months and years of feisty, intricate debate and dissections of character, motive, philosophy, politics and morality; for the kilogrammes of correspondence (that could well presage another book) on the many adaptations and retellings through time, from Urubanga to Draupadi in High Heels; for transforming this from a solitary, somewhat pathological endeavour to a decidedly more high-spirited, sometimes rollicking, peregrination;

  Koen Vandyke: for making it possible to carpe diem, though diem then was a bloodthirsty beast with too many fangs;

  The teams at St-Louis, Rothschild, André Mignot and Lariboisière Hospitals: for keeping me alive and relatively functional these last years; for being so fully invested in the everyday battle with EB and its attendant triffids;

  Sabine Kasbarian, Ginette Dansereau, Philippe Bruguière, Isabelle Pichon-Varin, Nicolas Renault, Marion Bastien, Nicolas Six, Adele and Bruce King, Sunithi Bhandari and Lakshman Rao: for reminding me of meals, and for ensuring these happened, even during the worst of triffid-attacks;

  Nandini Krishnan, Dawn Prentice, Adam Carrée and MJ: for laughter and cheer and memorable, if indefinable, meals in far-flung meridians;

  Pierre Marcolini and Pierre Hermé: without whose delicacies there wouldn’t have been self-defined incentives and rewards for the completion of each voice, nor replenishment for fast-depleting grey cells;

  David Jays: for writing that lights up the dreariest of days;

  Mariko Nagai, Sally Altshuler, Rahul Soni, Karen Jennings and Raghu Karnad, my wonderful fellow Sangam-ites: for imagination and cheer and doubts and chatter and demons and dreams that provided the perfect Petri dish for wild ideas and surreal ghazals to breed;

  Sanjoy Roy: for attentiveness to – and shared delight in – form and structure, in poetry and in dance (especially Vortex Temporum); for being my 3 AM person on design and layout and blood-brain barriers breaches; for the discovery of ostinato and Shaken Udders, both of which had a marked impact on writing; and for a cornucopia of culinary treats in Islington, Holborn and St. Pancras;

  Anita Roy, the most resourceful, cheerful, incisive and rigorous of editorial Bonbibis: for presence and razor-sharp attention, precision and unfailing belief, for walking with this book from the first day to the last.