Home page                                                    The Journey to Mount Kailash

     Robert Leach                                                                        by Robert Leach

  

 

 

***   The Journey to Mount Kailash    ***    Book Launch   ***

 

 

Word Power Books, West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh –  7.0pm Friday 15 October 2010

and

Latimer Books, Kelso, Scottish Borders – 11.0am Saturday 16 October 2010

 

Admission free!

***                                                                                                                         ***
 
                kailashcover.jpg

 

 

               

The sun that shines on snow-mottled Kailash

Gives light, not warmth. The air

Text Box: The Journey to Mount Kailash “I just loved it … it’s whole, it’s complete, it’s brilliantly written … very accessible, very warm, very vivid … The journey, the quest, is such a marvellous theme. We sink into south India, and it’s so rich and sensuous. I loved the way it used colour and spices.” Angela Bull, prize-winning children’s author Crisps, your lungs

Cringe. The sun slides away.

Quick dusk

Sprays the sky

Indigo, auburn, green,

Purple as wine.

Crimson as blood.

 

Darkness glows,

Icy winds creep, sweep over Mansarovar,

Bite into bones.

You lie, clenched under rough rocks,

And the freeze storm screeches

Its witch’s brew, gobbles up

Your desperation, scours

The barnacles of your belief.

 

Out of grey, wet, gloomy mist,

The blizzard rears up like a whinnying horse

Shrieking its grief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crab

 

Lunch: crabmeat scrounged from jaggy shells,

Grilled with cumin and cardamom.

 

On the foreshore, fishermen lay out their catch

On plastic platters:

 

Marlin, snapper, mullet, prawn.

Two too-lively crabs

 

Crawl greedily for the prawn pile.

The babachee curses with unfathomable fury,

 

Flings them back

Where they belong.

 

I bite the brittle claw, its broken edge

Tears my tongue, brings blood
 
Text Box: The Journey to Mount Kailash “Together with the author we are amazed, delighted, sometimes infuriated and bewildered by this encounter, and with him we experience both a personal journey and the journey of India from colonial rule to contemporary politics. And the fabric which brings all this together is one steeped in colours, textures and flavours, one that appeals to our body, soul and mind.” – Olga Taxidou, Reader in English Literature, University of Edinburgh  

 

 

                                               

                               

                               

 

 

 

                                               

 

                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text Box: The Journey to Mount Kailash “I particularly admired the ways in which it draws the reader into a very different culture and exploits the tremendous range of literary forms employed, often virtuosically … For someone who knows next to nothing about India, it was informative, humane, and, often, immediate. Beggars, poverty and yet gods and immanence.” John Topping Head of Performing Arts University of Cumbria                                

                                The Cricket and the Bony Cow

               

                                Six a.m.                               

                                And a cricket under my window

                                Is rasping at the darkness

                                While I

                                Am dreaming of a bony cow,

                                Horns painted

                                Orange and blue.

 

                                Light begins to leak.

                                The cricket goes on

                                Scraping away

                                While I

                                Forget the bony cow,

                                Dream of something

                                Entirely new.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                               

Rabindranath Tagore Concert

 

                The young singer sits, leans

                Towards his unseen inspiration,

                And behind him his musicians –

                Cymbals, drums, sitar, flute –

                Flow and fall

                In the lagoons and rapids of the melody.

                It’s a tide that tilts and trickles,

                Tickling your ear

                Till you hear the tingle of

                The crisp northern winter,

                The tips of spring’s first buds,

                Love that longs,

                Is lost,

                And stretches taut in lean goodbyes

                That mean:

                ‘Again … come again …’

                - The soft sari of Bengal

                Caught in a waft of air,

                The unheard step

                On the stair.

 

 
 
 


                                               

Text Box: The Journey to Mount Kailash This is a travelogue – a love story, poetry and song, myths, legends, history and politics. Mount Kailash is the Indian Olympus, where the gods dwell. Two people seek renewal, a new destiny, what Indian people call their dharma. They travel through India from Kerala in the far south towards the holy mountain of Kailash in the Himalaya, through the hills, cities, mangrove swamps and deserts of the subcontinent. They encounter people, festivals, myths and history, as they learn about living and performing life. It’s an epic journey, told in a virtuoso variety of poetic forms and styles, reflecting the vibrancy of Indian poetic traditions. As the pair travel, they gradually discover they are re-performing the ancient shadowy myths of Lord Shiva and the goddess Kali, and in a climactic scene in the erotically-carved temples of Khajuraho, their coupling seems to reawaken poetry itself. The journey draws to its end: the way becomes harder, the path steeper, the air thinner. Is their dharma simply the journey itself, or will its end reveal something more?
 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  The Journey to Mount Kailash

may be ordered from:

 

Distributors: Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN

(orders@centralbooks.com)

or

 

Publishers: Indigo Dreams Publishing, 132 Hinckley Road, Stoney Stanton, Leicestershire, LE9 4LN

(www.indigodreams.co.uk)

 

or

 

Snakebird

(snakebird@snakebird.net)