THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 4th December 2025. Lakshmi Iyer - Guest Editor

editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh

Lorraine Haig has stepped down from being a mentor for this forum. Triveni Haikai India and The Haibun Gallery are grateful for her exceptional feedback and responses over the last few years.

Guest Editor: Lakshmi Iyer

Featured Poet: Kala Ramesh

A Thursday Feature 4th December

Greetings to all of you!

      My first baby step on Haibun was under the mentorship of Kala Ramesh. Kala had the ability to picturise her stories with simple and subtle words that pulled us to actually participate in every word, every line and every action. It is like getting a scene ready for a film and the director announces, "Action!" I get carried away in her moods of ecstacy, emotions and evolved experiences. 

      The following haibun takes us through the journey of music and painting; both evolved experiences that finally rests on the title, "Space After My Nose Ends". An exemplary craft of link and shift from the moment the reader reads the title, the story, the haiku in between and finally when we shift our minds to the title; we question the reality of the space where my nose ends! 

Week 1: 

       Has any piece of art shifted your thoughts more on the title and left you to wonder about the space created therein to allow oneself to think more on the story of what would have happened? Do you write your story and then find a title or the title followed by your story?  Let your inner silence speak out this time!

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Space After My Nose Ends

I vividly remember Pandit Kumar Gandharva’s last concert at Savai Gandharva Mahotsav, in Pune. He came on stage and waited, tuned the two tanpuras, waited, tuned the tanpuras again, and waited, just looking around. Handing over the instruments to his students, who were sitting behind him, he closed his eyes and simply immersed himself in the perfectly synchronised bass-note drone of the two tanpuras. Seconds, minutes ticked by. With 20,000 connoisseurs waiting expectantly for Kumar ji to begin his recital, a full 30 minutes passed. He had erased the previous musician’s recital from our minds. He began with Raga Shankara’s gandhar, which is the third note in the sol-fa scale—mi.

Nearly three decades later, I still remember that gandhar sitting perfectly in place and believe I understood the position of this note in the raga that day. Much later, I read an interview with Kumar ji’s son, who said that nobody understood or knew Gandhar as well as his father did.

I close the door 

– the birdsong lives 

in me

On my last visit to London, I entered Trafalgar Square’s art gallery to see a group of visitors following a curator who was explaining a few chosen paintings. We reached Caravaggio’s painting of Jesus Christ. The curator spoke about Christ’s smooth-shaven face. Particularly striking were the fruit bowl half-jutting off the dining table and the non-believer’s arm coming out towards the viewer. She spoke of Caravaggio’s use of lateral space in this painting, tempting the viewer to push back that fruit bowl before it falls off the table!

I was fascinated by her comments. I’ve known paintings that show space by not cluttering the canvas, by using negative space, or by different treatments of the brush strokes. Her description of lateral space was new to me that day.

entering

the room . . . I return

Mona Lisa's smile

                 village temple 

                  dewdrop-moons rock and roll 

                  on lotus pads

Kala Ramesh, Chennai 

contemporary haibun online: 16:2, August 2020

*****

Thank you so much, Lakshmi, for accepting to be the Guest Editor of The Haibun Gallery. Waiting for the weeks to unfold. You've always had that keen sense of being, and I'm waiting to see how to you going to take this month forward.

_kala

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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT NOTICE

              NOTICE

Dear Haibuneers

Starting from March 2025, we at haikuKATHA are moving on to a new submissions format for haibun submissions. (Only for haibun, please note!)

Writers are invited to submit one unpublished haibun per submission window.

Kindly note the submissions calendar.

1-20 March, to be considered for publication in May

1-20 June, to be considered for publication in August

1-20 September, to be considered for publication in November

1-20 December, to be considered for publication in February

All accepted submissions will receive an email to confirm their acceptance by the 5th day of the publication month.

Your unpublished (only one) haibun should be sent to: 

The Google link:

https://forms.gle/WkM9frPjtEzNTrVEA This form will only be available during the submission period. 

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The Haibun Gallery continues as is.

We will be having editors and prompts, and your sharing…