Have you visited the market of words?
The words of the advertiser – full of lure, beauty, dreams and lies.
The words owned by telecom companies – thousands of words on sale for as little as Rs 98 a month
The words of the news papers – big words in big fonts with little meaning.
The easy words of bestselling authors.
The words of the political parties –words which become more important than the underlying events. Doublespeak.
The words of the news anchor – arrogant, non negotiable words.
The radio jockey’s words – interrupting every song you want to hear.
The words of the prescribed syllabus – carefully chosen, carefully represented.
Kindle Magazine’s May issue spoke about a market for every cause. A Mommy market, a Queer market, a Revolution Market. Not least, is the market for Words. And then there are some words which find no place in this market.
Contained in stacked sheafs of paper, scribbled on notebooks, safe kept in personal blogs.
Those, we explore in this edition. The poet’s words.
Undictated, unattached, ambiguous, mellifluous.
Find resonance in these words, for they originate from deep within spaces oft left unexplored. We received contributions from all over the country in many languages, both in English and translations in English (and some of the originals are on the website www.kindlemag.in). Gulzar, Jeet Thayil, Meena Kandasamy, K Satchidanandan, Tabish Khair, Sharanya Manivannan, Annie Zaidi, Sampurna Chattarji and R Raja Rao are some of the contributors to this issue.
These words have no owners, only claimants.
The poet’s words.
