‘Flow love flow flawlessly’: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s poetry contemplates truth and justice in Venice

“Not an obituary. We cannot write an obituary about an ‘idea’ that illuminated so many generations transcending geopolitical borders,” as my friend and journalist Pooja Mitra so eloquently puts it.

Celebrating instead his love for truth and justice and generosity by sharing a suite of his Venice poems with my photographs of Venice. The photographs do not in anyway interpret the poems. Nor were the poems written for the photographs! At different moments in time both. The only common factor was his “choosing to like” the nocturnal ones from a host of many.

From:[email protected]

To:Naveen Kishore

Sat, 24 Aug, 2019 at 12:47 pm

Dear Naveen

And yes, please let us share our take on Venice! The camera and the pen on Venice!!!

Best

Ngugi

The thing about cities like Venice is their singularity. Nothing quite like it exists. Night-time Venice empties itself of people. And becomes shadow. Unlike other “nights” in “other” cities there is a resigned melancholy to these shadows. Not furtive. Or filled with the “scurry-home” that accompanies fear. Just a combination of light and shade that causes these shadows into being. Almost a nightly re-birth. For the day-time brings bustle. And the Babel of languages carried by each individual traveller-tourist. The night is safe in the absence of sound.

Unless you listen to...

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