Ladies and Gentlemen
Its my honour and pleasure to be here
As a keynote speaker
In the International Conference on `Erotic Love’
Though I think I am not the man for the job
It is precisely because
Millions of women and men
Have been madly in love with me
And billions of poems
Have been inflicted on me
That I have nothing interesting
To offer on the subject
Excuse me for using a Shaivaite metaphor
I am simply crushed
Under the Kailasa of clichés.
I am better off
As a Professor of Metaphysics
And pontificate on morality
Or as teaching the bunch of idiots here
Cheap underarm tricks
Of hitting effectively below the belt
However
Let me take up this opportunity
To make some things clear.
Love has nothing to do with the Gopis
Garbas, Flutes and the like
It has absolutely nothing to do
With the things like Bhakti blah blah
(I leave such things to people like Narada
You know what kind of guy he is)
And as any speaker
In the pre-lunch sessions of academic conferences
Is allowed to indulge
In an analogy or two
Love, all that I can say about it
Resembles what Yudhishtira mumbled
To his teacher
When the venerable Guru inquired about his son
Or that love resembles
That stray arrow
Of the non-descript hunter
Which clearly saw through me
3 July 2010
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