The Mistress

By Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

"The Mistress" despite the statements in R.M. Shanmugam's poetry 'dissecting' love into its stages as 'attraction', 'obsession', and 'attachment', and how it continues to perfection or aborts" itself on its way, love is torn into pieces in the days of lockdown. On the other hand, The Mistress, which is not essentially a book of love poems, but one on love, is a balm to the wounded heart, when the poet sprinkles his short poems as petals of a fragrant rose. 'Rain is love or love is rain', But Shanmugam feels the rain in love and love in the rain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pustaka Digital Media
• Release date: Jun 8, 2024
• ISBN: 6580574511094

Book preview

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The Mistress

(Poetry on Relationship and Woman)

Author:

Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

For more books

https://www.pustaka.co.in/home/author/rm-shanmugam-chettiar

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

1. LOVE

Eye Contact

Man And Woman, Two Hands

Subix. The Singer

Love For Spouse. Child And Parents

Be Eyes Of Any Colour

Honey Is Sweet

Distance Relationships

Love - Its Efficacy

Love Inspired Meetings Inspire

You Don’t Understand

The Innocent

Who Dominates In The Game?

The Greatest Entertainment

Eve Teasing And Ragging

Love’s Other Side

Release Of Libido

Flirting Gets Approval

Male And Female Unequal

To Get Attracted Is Pleasure

A Much Younger Bird

2. FORBIDDEN LOVE

The Instant Paramour

No Stigma To Sex

She Or Her Love?

Face To Acquire Grace

Derivation Of Pleasure

Is Cheating In Order?

Ignore Flings

Stalkers Vary

A partners

Passion Is A Rogue

He Deserves Corporal Punishment

3. RELATIONSHIPS

To Feel As Man And Woman

The Marriage Is Sacred

New Combination

Orgasm Defined

A Fool Not To Love

Pathos And Passions

Woman Looks For Man’s Liking

Marriage To Last

Be There No Discrimination

The Sanctity Of Marriage

Sexual Liberation

Utility Theory

Sexuality Defined

4. WOMAN

As Flame And Fire

Her Gratuity

Scars

A Woman Of High Profile

Relationships Are Short Lived

Woman Shows Manliness

Does A Woman Deserve A Rape?

Still Other Woman

Women To Predatory Men

Breast Feeding

Water Is Woman

5. MISCELLANEOUS

Solitude

A Grain Of Sand

Author’s Biodata

Author’s other published books (Print and e-Book)

Dedication

The author, Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar, dedicates this volume, The Mistress,

To his father

Rm. Ramanathan (Malaikolundu) Chettiar (1916 - 2007)

And his mother

Rm. Muthulakshmi (Kamalambal) Aachi (1921 - 1996)

C:\Users\ASUS\Desktop\New folder (2)\imagecompressor\1-min.jpg

கடாஅக் களிற்றின்மேற் கட்படாம் மாதர்

படாஅ முலைமேல் துகில்.

குறள் 1087

Vest on the buxom breast of her

Looks like rutting tusker’s eye-cover.

Kural 1087

(Tirukkural, 3rd Century, the scripture of Tamils)

Foreword

The Water of life...

2-min

Iam writing the foreword to The Mistress in the days when a boy from one village and a girl from another - the loving pair, have little chance to meet each other. The same had happened to a pair at Eyam of Derbyshire in England, a village, which is mentioned as ‘the village of the damned’ after hundreds of people died in a week with the outbreak of bubonic plague in the 17th century. Simon Armitage, the present-day poet laureate of England, recalls this in his recent verse Lockdown.

The sorry story of

Emmott Syddall and Rowland Torrie,

Star - crossed lovers on

Either side of

The quarantine line

Whose wordless courtship

Spanned the river

Till she came no longer...

Despite the statements in R.M. Shanmugam’s poetry ‘dissecting’ love into its stages as ‘attraction’, ‘obsession’, and ‘attachment’, and how it continues to perfection or ‘aborts’ itself on its way, love is torn into pieces in the days of lockdown. On the other hand, The Mistress, which is not essentially a book of love poems, but the one on love, is a balm to the wounded heart, when the poet sprinkles his short poems as petals of a fragrant rose. ‘Rain is love or love is rain’. But Shanmugam feels the rain in love and love in rain. Pleasant is the poet’s tracing the appearance and disappearance of a raindrop and looks for those in love too.

Rain falls. Each drop I watch

Its beginning is not at the sight

Its ending is out of sight

Love falls. Each fall I feel

Its beginning is not probed

Its ending is not in thought

Love falls. Each fall enthralls me.

The verses of Shanmugam are sometimes a feast in Romanticism. They also remind a reader of the love sonnets sung by the sonneteers of the Elizabethan age as Sir Thomas Wyatt, William Shakespeare, and Edmund Spenser.

Her fire ignited in him desire

The fire of the desire

Gave him the light to see her

Beauty enlarges and fuels

His desire

To burn further and further.

Shanmugam, like many other poets through ages, cannot help himself wondering at the magic of love, which Edmund Spenser defines in a sonnet from his Amoretti

... such is the power of love in gentle mind

That it can alter all the course of kind.

Most poems of Shanmugam draw strength from philosophy and they sound native in thought and expression. They stand far away from obscurity, hard – to - crack allusions, and other enigmatic symbols. The poet, I feel, could have kept himself away from such elements of modern English poetry lest he would lose even the handful of readers of English poetry in the cultural context of a little poetry - reading public. Besides being a book of poems on love, The Mistress can rather be called ‘a book on woman’, for she is present everywhere across its pages. Of all the women I met in Shanmugam’s book, the one is shapeless but deeply poetic.

Water takes the colour of the liquid.

Water takes the shape of the bottle.

Water lets in salts and particles.

Water washes the things it contacts.

Water quenches flora and fauna.

Water is a woman to the patriarch.

Unimaginable is the world without water.

Yes. Water cleanses everything it contacts. The water of life is a woman.

With love,

B. Meenakshi Sundaram

B. Meenakshi Sundaram is a bilingual poet, author, writer, and independent journalist in Coimbatore.

Mobile: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Preface

"It is better to love wisely, no doubt,

But to love foolishly is better

Than not to be able to love at all"

Said William M Thackeray

3-min

The volume of poetry titled The Mistress, is of 479 love poems, selected and edited of those penned by me during the period from the year 2011 to 2019, falling the third volume in the series of love poems, the previous two made for publication being ‘She alone can judge’ and ‘Other woman’. The verses have been grouped under Love, Forbidden Love. Relationships and Woman.

‘To burn with desire and keep quiet about is the great punishment we give on ourselves,’ said Frederica Lorca.

Many of the poems under Forbidden Love have been penned on this line. Conservatism in sex and patriarchal sadism have been questioned.

‘He stepped down, trying to not look at her, as if she was the Sun, yet he saw her like the Sun, even without looking.’ Said Leo Tolstoy in his forbidden love novel, Anna Karenna.

Many of the poems tear the hypocrisy of moral society and bring about the bliss the sexual love can bring to human beings. Some are sexology based, some woman oriented, some on the line from the finding of the survey and amendments of law and some pointing at holes in the relationship restriction. Poems marked as # are those widely read online. The month and year at the foot of each poem is the period when it was conceived. Names of persons are fictitious.

The USA based E Journals namely, www.poemhunter.com and www.voicecnet.com publish my poems regularly in their e-journals (10250 poems till date). One of my poems, Where is Socialism, finds a place in the 7th standard language book, ‘The Path To English - Reader 7, by C.J. Ridout, prescribed for CBSE syllabus.’

Another poem, Authenticity is not Art, has been invoked by author David A. Scot in his research book of UCLA - COTSEN institute of Archaeology Press (page 61 & 62) while discussing under the topic, Authenticity and its Agency.

The part II is under Other Woman that contains 442 selected love poems made between 2003 and 2010 is under process for publication with Educreation Publishing unit in 2020.

Author Press, New Delhi - 110016 has published in 2019 my bilingual poetry under the title, The Role of Soul and Body, consisting of my 50 poems selected and translated into Hindi by Dr. Rajesh Kumar Manjhi, listed in www.amazon.in.

I have edited and published a prestigious souvenir in Tamil on behalf of my village community inhabitants to commemorate the Kumbabishegam (renovation completion rituals) of Siva Temple in Shanmuganathapuram, (Sivaganga District) in 2018.

The Dumb Intimacy, a booklet, got literary review in a daily - New Indian Express, Coimbatore division, and a literary criticism in the bi-Annual UGC approved journal of language and literature in English, VIRTU, vol. 7, issue 2. Also, there are two Tamil poetry books of writer Subrabharathi, Thirupur, translated into English by me.

I remember all my online readers, a source of inspiration, and owe my gratitude to my friend Mr. B. Meenakshi Sundaram, a bilingual poet, author, writer, and independent journalist in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India, who meticulously went through the manuscript and gave an apt foreward for this volume of book. Also is my love for my granddaughters Niveda M. S. and Alka M. S. both were helps at a call.

‘Adultery is the application of democracy to love.’

Website: www.rmshanmugamchettir.com

Accessible by email: [e-mail];

Cell [phone],

WhatsApp: [phone] (Niveda), [phone](Suresh)

Postal: 10, First Street, Bharathi Avenue, Kotturpuram, Chennai, Pin 600085;

Malaikolundu Apartment, South First Street, Shanmuganathapuram, Sivaganga District, Pin 630314.

Rm. Shanmugam, author

Chennai, 01.10.2020

1. LOVE

(171 poems)

Eye Contact

Eyes are battle fields.

Where love is won

From looks that fake innocence,

From looks that fake indifference

And from looks that betray intentions.

Eye contacts ensure love.

Jan., 2011

***

Each Fall Enthralls

Rain falls; each drop I watch.

Its beginning is not at sight.

Its ending is out of sight.

Rain falls; each drop enthralls me.

Love falls; each fall I feel.

Its beginning is not probed.

Its ending is not in thought.

Love falls; each fall enthralls me.

March, 2011

***

Love Is Slippery

Love thrives in proximity

And dies from intimacy.

You will lose it on under - use.

You will leave it on overuse.

April, 2011

***

Love Is An Affair

A love affair consists of three phases.

Attraction, obsession and attachment

Are they; the order irrevocable,

The same couple cannot enact it again.

In the phase of attraction, which is short,

One will find oneself drawn by another

And one finds interested in another.

This is from impetus of libido.

It is man’s lust and woman’s passion.

Visual interest in woman prods his lust.

His pursuit, intellect, wealth or power

Or other attributes kindle her passion.

In the phase of obsession, a long one

With high voltage, the pair is intense

In love, longing for seeing each other,

With the release of Dopamine and adrenaline.

Love and attachment is the third phase,

Where the couple settles for warm bonding,

Induced by the release of oxytocin

In the course of orgasm and child bearing.

Man is a half and woman is a half

And they have an itch