breakthrough

2012-01-12T09:11:00.000-08:00

Interventionist/Constitutive Potentials in Sarojini Sahoo’s Waiting for Manna

By Sangeeta Singh

“It is easy to flow with the current, it makes no demands, and it costs no effort… But who fight the current and struggle it, know what the demands are and what it costs to meet them” (Dalmia interview 1979: 13)

Sarojini Sahoo is a distinguished bilingual South Asian feminist writer, well known for her frankness. She is a prime figure and trendsetter of feminism in contemporary Indian literature. Sarojini Sahoo has emerged as a writer crusading for the cause of feminism through various experimentations in fiction. Her stories and novels have become ‘no-holds-barred’ exploration into the ‘feminist self’ of a ‘female soul’.This paper attempts to explore the interventionist potentials in the four short stories from the anthology Waiting for Manna by Sarojini Sahoo. The focus of this paper is to discuss how far Sarojini Sahoo has been successful in creating an alternative construct of woman’s identity in terms of her sexuality. This paper addresses to foreground conscious subversion of traditional notions of womanhood, in particular her sexuality. The paper also explores the narratives as a means to articulate counter cultural spaces for women.

Sarojini Sahoo’s writing is marked with a female consciousness, her body and her experience as a woman. Her stories and novels depict a feminine sensibility. She argues that women cannot deny their body, their sexual differentiation and as a consequence should consider it a source rather than a limitation and a disadvantaged destiny. In her blog ‘Sense & Sensuality’ she writes “Let us emphasize our femininity rather than impose the so-called stereotyped feministic attitude of the second wave”. As an Indian feminist, many of Sarojini Sahoo’s writings deal candidly with female sexuality, the emotional lives of women, and the intricate fabric of human relationships. She delineates explicitly about the interior experiences of women and how their ‘burgeoning sexuality’ is seen as a threat to traditional patriarchal societies. This anthology is avant garde fiction in the Indian context as it raises questions about issues that have never been discussed so far in any Indian discourse. Sahoo accepts feminism as an integral part of femaleness separate from the masculine world. Writing with a heightened awareness of women’s bodies, she has developed an appropriate style that exploits openness, fragmentation, and nonlinearity. Sahoo, however contents that while the woman’s identity is certainly constitutionally different from that of man; men and women still share a basic human equality. Thus, the harmful asymmetric sex /gender "Othering" arises accidentally and ‘passively’ from natural, unavoidable intersubjectivity. Hence it is quite evident that at ontological level there is differentiation of gender but it does not imply gender discrimination.

Her feminism prioritizes the sexual politics of a woman over other issues. She identifies women's sexual liberation as the real motive behind the women's movement. In South Asian Outlook, an e-magazine published from Canada, Menka Walia writes: “Sahoo typically evolves her stories around Indian women and sexuality, which is something not commonly written about, but is rather discouraged in a traditionalist society.” Sarojini’s novels and short stories treat women as sexual beings and probe culturally sensitive topics such as rape, motherhood and marriage from a female perspective. Waiting for Manna consists of ten short stories out of which six stories are related to female world.The protagonist’s refusal to be completely absorbed into the cultural system within which she finds herself placed is the cut off point in all the stories. For this paper I have chosen four of her stories which include ‘Waiting for Manna’, ‘Threshold’, ‘Few Pages from Vacant lots’ and ‘Rape’.

The first story ‘Waiting for Manna’ is about a childless woman Paramita who is obsessed about having a baby and is under a constant fear and a sense of insecurity. And when she has a baby she questions the futility of becoming a mother at the cost of woman’s identity. Since she is admitted to a hospital for few days before delivery, she gets a chance to interact and observe people from close quarters.

I don’t need any thing, neither children, nor family. Jayanti began to sob as she rose to speak. I am so far without a child, what if I don’t have one now? How long shall I live? Because of lack of this, I will have to tolerate so much. Mama lashes with her words at whomever she wants my husband rages whenever he feels. And simply because I am one’s daughter, and other’s wife.

These lines are an emotional out burst of Jayanti who like Paramita is in the same nursing home. She has been unable to bear any children even after twelve years of her marriage. Her identity crisis is juxtaposed with another woman who is now old and has a grown up son. The irony in the life of this woman is that both her son and her husband; for whom she must have undergone the similar waiting and pain as Paramita is going through now; are totally indifferent towards her and treat her as a liability that they have to toe. And yet, she is self effacing. Children who were once central to parent’s existence get engrossed in their own life and forget about their parents; who brought them up so lovingly. “This valorization of motherhood has its own built in paradoxes; the mother’s quasi divine status is associated with her capacity for voluntary self sacrifice.”(Chakaravarty Radha: Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers Rethinking Subjectivity p. 34). Once Paramita gets her baby, she wonders about motherhood, its rewards and finallyconfronts her disenchantment with motherhood.

Hema who too is waiting for “manna”, the pleasure of motherhood has chosen an exile of insecurity and suspicion for herself. Paramita is able to see through Hema’s veneer of ‘incessant chatter”. She knows that Hema too has lost herself in the quest of having a child. Waiting for Manna is a story which provokes the reader to think that is motherhood the only criteria for happiness in a woman’s life? A woman’s identity is tethered to a pre condition of her ability to bear children, particularly a male child (in India). “In India, women’s self-worth and value is usually dependent on their reproductive functions.”(Gandhi and Shah 1991: p. 138). The society puts a lot of pressure on woman to bear a male child that in the process she forgets her identity and is constantly plagued by all, in this regard. It is engrained into her mind that her happiness is incomplete without a child. A woman is made to forget that she had lived a complete life even when she was not a mother.

You have forgotten that life of some previous birth.

Now you are a prisoner among moments

And yet timeless.

Before your eyes only your shadow.

No world is before you.

Yet sweat drips from the body in the sweltering heat

And in the bosom –a devastating thirst.

You have torn all pages from the calendar,

Like falling flowers, in the sun of timelessness. (WFM p. 16)

Paramita goes through the transition of a woman to a mother and she realizes that how the society has different set of moral laws and customs, values and validities for a mother. “She had so far been hiding her breast thinking them as the most secret part of her body. Who took away all her shyness? Strange were the feelings and experiences in the world, where all obscenities were decent” (WFM p. 26). While it seems perfectly sane to discuss “breast cancer” or “breastfeeding” without rousing a controversy, a woman is not allowed to talk about her breasts in other contexts. For a writer, it is completely natural to want to express every experience and how is one supposed to categorize these needs and inhibit oneself? Sarojini Sahoo is very candid about describing the natural process of womanhood which is generally not talked about. She questions the futility of becoming a mother at the cost of woman’s happiness and identity. The attainment of motherhood is termed futile by Paramita if it amounts to a non identity. The desperation of Jayanti to become a mother is obvious. Paramita desires to bless Jayanti with motherhood so that Jayanti herself realizes her lost self in a quest to have a baby.

A woman can think of herself as an individual only when she has either attained some level of security , be it emotional or economic , or when she has no strings attached; which means when she has nothing to loose. And at this juncture Jayanti belongs to neither of the two categories. ‘Waiting for Manna’ depicts a link between a private sorrows and a collective social trauma that women bereft of motherhood undergo. The metaphor of woman as idealized traditionally passive is evoked deliberately in the stories, to be dismantled by deconstructing the patriarchal metanarrative. In her blog Sense & Sensuality Sarojini Sahoo writes about Waiting for Manna as a story which discusses ‘the queries after a lifetime of wondering, whether to have children, wondering if the sacrifices are worth it, wondering if life is full to bursting enough already -- how does our generation of women decide to have children?’

“Threshold” is the story of Ipsita, a girl who runs away from her home to elope with her boyfriend and her anxiety and desperation to forget her parents. Even though she consciously violates the intellectual paradigms of the patriarchal world her perspective is shadowed by her ambivalent relationship. Privileging of stability has led to women to spend their lives in obedient compliance with the traditional patriarchal set up. A woman survives with humiliation and forbearance as her constant companions in order to nurture and sustain the patriarchal construct of womanhood. It is considered sinful for a woman to desire anything for herself. And Ipsita has crossed that ‘threshold’ not with a sense of freedom but with a predominant sense of guilt. Sahoo has tried to recover and explore the aspects of social relations that have been suppressed, unarticulated, or denied within male dominant view points. Her narratives simultaneously lament the patrachial framework of ‘womanhood’ and at the same time attempt to celebrate feminine selfhood and freedom. Her narratives are partially constituted by their location within the web of social relations that make up any society. Sarojini is a progressive writer who doesn’t sever her ties from the society. For Sarojini the idea of freedom is thus paradoxically combined with a strong emphasis on responsibility towards oneself and others. She thus suggests alternative forms of liberty, beyond current notions of individualism. One feature that predominates all stories is that all protagonists feel that autonomy of freedom at an individual level has dangerous overtures for the society. And a sense of social and ethical responsibility is a must to evoke the maximum potential of freedom on a more pervasive scale. They all feel a need for connectedness. But stories also highlight the fact that all forms of connectedness are not the same while some bonds are constricting and need to be challenged or discarded, others especially those forged through choice and commitment are represented as transforming and empowering. As in the story “Few Pages from Vacant Lots” Deepa chooses to establish a new relation breaking away from her family.

In “Rape” she tells the story of a female fantasy. A naïve woman dreams about being sexually crossed by the doctor and confesses it to her husband. And he is quick to retort back, while being wide awake, in his full senses that he too would like to make love to somebody other than his wife. From then on an innocent relationship between husband and wife changes; the change actually is subtle but a simple dream affects their marital status. The story dwells on consequences of being truthful to her husband. The husband goes on nagging his wife and cannot accept the sexuality of his wife. Women have no independent identities they are not independent human beings. And they are not given the liberty to express talk or even think about their sexuality. Men also like to think of women as an extension of themselves. When women violate these standards this is a direct blow to the man’s sense of identity. The writer asks a question whether a woman has no right to her sexual desires even if in her dream. She denies patriarchal limits of sexual expression for a woman through her narrative and interrogates previous constructs of ‘womanhood’ and her focus is on an emergence of self. Rape is a conscious subversive narrative. It is subversive in terms of a woman being vocal about her sexuality.

Through her use of narrative Sarojini Sahoo tries to create an identity, she constructs a collective history and effectuates a cultural critique and offers an alternative epistemology. However, the writer herself seems to be implicated in the system which she sets to critique. She has used her narrative as a means of re imagining woman’s own process of identification through revising and subverting the givens of the society. Making a dent in the so called Indian code of righteousness; Sarojini Sahoo’s writings are trying to validate their counter desertion of the patriarchal code ofdharma in an attempt to assert the selfhood of women. Sarojini Sahoo has tried to re construct a woman’s sexuality in her stories where she gives a free expression to what a woman as an individual wants. In the narratives of Sarojini Sahoo there is a telescoping of the inner crisis of the protagonist in response to the realities outside: an effective dynamics through which the inner layers of the protagonist are laid bare. Through the double frame of reference, one alluding to a public world in a state of suspicion and conflict, and the other to private agony of a woman’s struggle with her own split subjectivity, Sarojini questions the hierarchical model of patriarchial discourse which privileges public history over personal story. Sahoo seeks to expose the hypocrisy latent in the dominant discourses of maternity and marriage. The target of transformation is the reader, rather than any fictional character. These stories seek to unsettle perceived hierarchies and force a rethinking of accepted social frameworks. Sarojini deals with the social issues but she is basically a writer of individual values. A reader can see there is always a conflict between social values and individual values in her stories. In the expression of self there is a tension between individualistic urges and societal expectations. And her protagonists live in a nebulous borderland in search of coherence.

‘Self hood is about freedom, choice, rights, equality, rationality and control of one’s self.’ These stories articulate counter cultural spaces for women. In other words they do invert traditional notions of womanhood. Her protagonists are poised between submission and resistance, passivity and action. The very instability of this subject contains within it the possibility of initiating a change. These narratives do have an interventionist potential. However, total revolutionary and constitutive transformation is a distant dream, only piece meal changes in the society can be co-opted in the society and that too very gradually. I thinkWaiting for Manna is a step further in this direction.

Works Cited

Primary sources

Sahoo, Sarojini : Waiting for Manna. Indian AGE Communication Vadodra 2008.

Secondary Sources

Chakarvarty, Radha. Feminism and Contemporary Women Writers: Rethinking Subjectivity.

Routledge : New Delhi 2008.

Dalmia, Yashodhara. 1979. ‘‘An Interview with Anita Desai.’’The Times of India, 29 April.

Gandhi , Nandita and Nandita Shah. 1991. The Issues at Stake : Theory and Practice in the Contemporary

Women’s Movement in India. New Delhi : Kali for Women and The book Review Literary Trust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarojini_Sahoo#cite_note-10

http://www.sarojinisahoo.blogspot.com/

(The author of this article is an Assistant Proffessor at Himachal Pradesh University and she lives in Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh. She can be reached at sangeetachauhan9(AT)hotmail.com)

(Published in January 2012 issue of International Journal on Multicultural Literature, ISSN 2231-6248)

2009-05-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

P.Raja: The Master of Words

“The notion that ‘poets are born’ is dead and gone. Inspiration, creativity and talent have become misnomers as far as poetry is concerned. The saying now is ‘poets are made’. Yes. Poets are made, not by any intensive study of the masters of that art, but by the all powerful Lord MONEY.”

(‘If you have got the money they will make you a poet’)

“It is said that wise men read books but only the fools buy them. Beware! There are many wise men around.”

(‘Book Snatchers’)

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” wrote T.S. Eliot. But what the Christian poet could show in a handful, Hindus could with just a pinch of ash. All that one has to do is to go to a temple and stretch one’s palm before the poojari.”

(“Fear freezes up the heart of life’)

“While the conditions of women are changing all over the world, nothing dramatic has happened to Indian women. Blamed be our culture.”

(‘Women’s Lib. and the Indian psyche’)

“I have seen my father shouting at my mother whenever he found in his food a long hair immaterial of its ownership. It took days for my mother to cool down. I too have shouted at my wife for that same flimsy reason and got back nicely when the hair was a small one. What we say to others matters little while what really matters is how we say it. This is applicable to all those who care for human relationship and want to establish a pleasant form of rapport with others.”

(‘Small Things Matter’)

‘Female mosquitoes are real vampires. None can escape their wrath-filled tiny needle like sucker. Many of these winged vampires get killed when we are awake. And when we are asleep they administer slow poison to us. Without our knowledge we barter away a few c.c. of our precious blood for the wide variety of diseases they hawk. And that happens almost every night. The only consolation the scientists offer (let us have faith in them) is that the mosquitoes do not have AIDS for sale. Praised by Allah, Jesus and the Hindu Trinity.”

(‘Mosquitoes are thankless creatures’)

These are some quotes from P.Raja’s essays and the readers could assess the vibrant feelings of the author about which Professor R.K.Singh writes, “P. Raja writes with experience. He is motivated by the inner need to live more deeply and fully, and with greater awareness to know the experience of others and to better his own experience. He shares with readers his observations and evaluations, and thus, creates new experiences for them, well-formed and focused, imparting a better understanding of our world.”

P. Raja is a known profile for IWE readers and has published articles,short stories,poems,interviews,one act plays,reviews,skits and featuresin more than 300 newspapers and magazines, both India and abroad.
He is also a script writer for All India Radio (Pondicherry & Karaikal)) and Doordarshan (Delhi). He has contributed special articles to Encyclopaedia of Post-colonial Literatures in English [London], Encyclopaedia of Tamil literature in English and several edited volumes. He is also a regular contributor to The Hindu, The New Indian Express & The Statesman.
He belongs to Sarojini Naidu’s family and now he resides at D 88, Poincare Street, Olandai Keerapalayam of Pondicherry with his family. Busy Bee Books is his publishing house, established and managed by his wife Periyanayaki

Periyanayaki was his constant inspiration and she is the woman behind writer’s success.The writer married her when he was twenty three.

P.Raja and Periyanayaki have three children.

Their first son is Raghu , an M.A., M.Phil in English. After a short stint in a local college as lecturer he chose to become a copy-editor in an e-publishing house in Pondicherry. He is also a writer and regularly contributes to newspapers. He is married to his colleague Niranjana. They have a daughter Ranjeetha, two years old.

Author’s second son Rajni is M.S. in Agro-Economics. He works for Novpo Scotia bank, Toranto as Risk Analyst. He is married to his classmate Jothi and now they are settled in British Canada.

The writer’s third child is a daughter. She is Radhika Devi. She has completed her MCS degree and is hunting for a job. she is very fast on the computer keyboard and so she is of great help to the writer in his writing career.

She is Ranjeetha , a living doll for P.Raja and Periyanayaki

SELECTED POEMS OF P. RAJA

13 DIFFERENT WAYS OF LOOKING AT BREASTS
NOT YET MANHANDLED

Good grenadiers
at attention.
Spiked helmets –
spikes standing up
like pointed thimbles.

Juicy jugs and
mammoth melons
topped with a straw
awaiting thirsty lips.

Two globes –
the seats of drunken pleasure
headed with
two rich round rubies –
a feast for the unwearied eyes.

Upturned goblets
holding wine of life
solidified,
ready to melt
at the touch of magic wands.

Two sullen officers
blocking the passage
to a woman’s heart –
an ocean of mystery.

Soft buxom pillows
for the dizzy head
to rest.

Wonder fruit
from the Hanging Garden of Babylon
not edible, yet tasty.

Fair hills with a narrow gap
where little Raja takes his nap,
when mystic masseur gives him a rap
O! see the hills are full of zap.

Tempting round bubbies
heaving with delight
provoke a sensation
too killing to bear.

Oh, those two black bees
resting on those shapely mounds!
What are they up to?

The Hill of Dreams
on which manly eyes –
both young and old –
rest riveted and let
the mind roll in fantasies.

Restless companions
vying with each other
to feel men’s pulses
only to set them aflame.

A Book of Twins
with layers and layers of
mystic meanings
only to be read
on a cosy bed.
***

TEA WITH BELLES

Over plum cakes and black coffee
I chit chat with
well chiselled Italian belles
about
promiscuity in a permissive society.
My mediating poet-wife
charmingly dressed for the occasion
enlivens the situation
amidst a cloud of tobacco smoke.

“Marriage and children
may find no place
in the 21st Century
Italian Dictionary,”
says a belle
lighting a third cigarette
while the other two stubs
still smoulder in the glass ashtray.

“On a par with gays!”
I chortle and proceed to add,
“What will happen to Italy
in the next century?
That’s my only worry now”.

“Hei! Come on, yar!
We Indians
will easily compensate their loss,”
coos my writer wife across the table.

A discussion on ‘Italian Courtesy’
starts with a bang
but ends with a chuckle.
“Is that why
you like to visit Italy?”
giggles the passive smoking belle
admiring her own proud breasts.

Women rarely guffaw.
But Italian women do.
Their gleaming teeth
overshadow
the flashing light
of the clicking camera.

My poet wife holds her temples.
Smoke affects her sinuses.
Amidst the rattling
of cups and teaspoons,
the maid cleans up
the oval dining table.
***

THEORY OF RELATIVITY

On the left wing
of your comely nose
snugly sits that golden dot.
The winking gem inlaid
beckons my pounding heart
leaving my head reel
with the poser
whether by your nose
the gem is graced, or
by the gem
your nose is graced.
***

YOUR NOSE

Your well chiselled nose
impressed me as my eyes
buzzed over your physique
in full bloom.

The Divine Shaper, I know,
is a moody fellow.
Badly shaped noses
betray His bad moods.

I know for certain that
an impressive nose as yours
is loved by the air too it breathes –
the life energy that supports
every nerve, bone and hair too.

I for one believe that
a lovely nose speaks
for all its dependants.
The nose in its proper shape,
then everything else in their proper places.
***

AT CLOSE QUARTERS

Do not come so close to me, O beauty!
if you want me to lend you my ears.
At close quarters,
my inquisitive eyes,
as if propelled by a sensor,
start roving around you.

Your ivory teeth vie with
the splendour and radiance of your skin.

Your wavy, shiny black hair
puts black velvet to shame.

Your doe eyes and quivering brows
teach me lessons in love.

Your beaming face with that cute little nose
casts a spell and muffles my words.

Don’t you know now, my doe, my dove,
why I go dumb and deaf
when you want me to speak to you
or listen to your whispering voice?
***

THE WOMAN BEHIND
(July 17, 2002)

Small was my world.
It dawned on me this day
that the world is wide.
You are the dawn.

I was on all fours.
The helping hand came.
Now I am determined
to stand on my feet.
The hand is yours.

The struggle was long
to know myself.
Now I know who I am.
You are the discoverer.

I was only half a man.
Now I see myself neatly clothed.
I’m in love with myself.
You tailored my clothes.

“A somebody out of a nobody,”
Your sincere wishes for my future.
Behind my sure success
You’ll be the woman.
***

A JOURNALIST’S LIFE

To make both ends meet
I work like the minute hand
Running after
the sluggish hour hand,
all to increase
my bank balance,
only to feed the mouths
I brought on myself.

I cringe before my speeding clock.
Deadlines have to be met.
The clock is sympathetic
but not always.
Insults have to be stomached.

Tension mounts,
callously gobbling up
my pathetically earned time
without any qualms.

Your feathery touch,
your energizing kiss,
your warm hug,
your affectionate look,
your enticing smile –
Oh, they put my tension to flight!

You know, my angel!
I would have gone mad,
had I not found you
at this half spent hour of my life.
***

PARADISE LOST

The greasy alien cap
between you and me
curtails the pleasure
of our stolen moments.

Stolen fruits are sweeter.
Trespassing is real thrill.
It’s fun to enter
a forbidden land
especially with no slipper on.
To merge with the land
is to feel its vibration.

Cap and slipper
are symbols of precaution,
artificial though.
Yet they deny us of
the boon the nature
has in store for us.
With them on, it is Paradise Lost.
***

EMBEDDED

Of late, I’ve stopped
squeezing my eyes.
Motes are born trouble-makers,
an embodiment of mischief.
Yet I’ll not squeeze my eyes.
Let streaming tears
wash them away.
I’ve become blind
to what others see,
for all that I have
in my eyes is your image.
***

TO LIVE IN HIGH LOVE

Cover me, my sweet heart,
with all your love,
and let us wing our way
to lands forlorn.

There we shall walk hand in hand
on the shores of ever active sea,
and sing melodious notes
that no maestro ever dared to play.

There you shall pluck fruits
standing on my willing shoulders,
and together we shall dig up roots.
Rain shall be our nourishing drink.

Under greenwood trees we shall bed,
to count every tiny mole and bulging wart
and grace all with our roving lips,
before we dovetail in a tight embrace.

There, my love, we shall forget forever
the green eyed society we left behind
and live merrily in high love till
cruel Death lays his icy hands on us.
***

A LONELY MAN FORESEES HIS DEATH

Cheated by the near
and the dear ones
of all kinds of love,
this uncared for
love-crazy lonely man
felt his long and cold days
weighing heavily on him.

Has his life’s journey
come to a close?
Is his sojourn on Planet Earth
a waste of breath?

When such posers began
eating into him,
a lady kind to the core,
came into his life,
with soothing balm in her eyes
and comforting oil in her lips.

The man and the woman
drove their loneliness
by unburdening themselves
of their ill-fated past
to rejuvenate their present.

Is not life worth living
if only the trauma
of the past gets
submerged in the
Ocean of Amnesia?

The deserts of their lives bloomed.
Music of buzzing bees
and humming birds returned.

Fear, perhaps fear of the unknown,
gripping the unhappily-happy woman,
she brought back into her life
the Sadist who once made a fool of her,
all to save herself
from slander and ignominy.

What bush can hold
two robins?
What scabbard can hold
two swords?

Will the lonely man
be left to his loneliness again?
Will the woman
whom he considers Heaven sent
prove to be a bird of passage?

The day she leaves him
will be the day of his funeral.
***

SWEET FIFTY

Can there ever be a present
more precious than
the invaluable fifty
you magnanimously planted
on the vital parts of my anatomy,
all in celebration
of the fifty miles
I’ve traversed in my life
filled with deserts and thorns,
now transformed
into a garden of Eden
by your magic lips?

Ah! Will fifty million sovereigns of gold
ever equal one of the fifty
you’ve showered on me
with all your love?

Or will fifty thousand women
ever show the affection
you’ve poured on me
with all your heart?

Or will the innumerable varieties
from your expert cuisine
ever be able to satisfy
my insatiable heart
the way your sweet fifty
went tingling down
to make it whisper
‘Ah! It’ll last for a life-time’.
***

ON LOOKING AT A PAINTING BY SEEMA DEVI

Surely you’re waiting
Oh, you faceless young man
Of robust build!

Who’ll wait in this wilderness
But a lover crazy to the core
Anxious about his beloved’s arrival.

I know, you gleefully feel her breast
In the lotus bud that you hold
And unite yourself with her
In the leaf that sits cutely
On your eager lap.

Oh, how I love to see your
Hair hidden face brighten up
And watch your love-laden soul
In your glee filled eyes!

Ah! Who’ll do that for me?
Will it be your beloved
Making you wait so long
For reasons known only to her stars?

Or will it be your Brahma, Seema Devi,
By sending a whiff of fresh air
To this breezeless wild?
***

WOMAN POWER

Without you, my man,
O my identity card!
mine would have been
a vegetable life.

I would not have ever known
the errands of wifehood
had you not
spared me a rib!

I would not have ever known
I am fertile
had you not tilled
my virgin land!

I would not have ever known
the pleasures of motherhood
had you not made my sleepy womb
throb with life!

I adore you, my man,
for guiding me
from one stage to another
enhancing my identity every time.

For divulging my woman power
O my man!
I will forever remain
your prized possession.
***

DISTURBED FLOWERS

I had never seen them there before.
Those engaging flowers afar.
They must have been buds yesterday.
But I saw no bud there.
I knew for certain that
Crotons never took pains to bear flowers.
Yet I saw them there now.
Was there a plant ever blessed
With such flowers? –
Flowers of different sizes
That challenged the hues of the rainbow.
Amazed beyond amazement
I moved to have a closer look.
Alas! The disturbed flowers
Took to their wings.
***

COLD STEEL

It saw its death in my eyes
And hell in the cold steel I held.
The poor partridge in chains.

Fluttering its clipped wings
It struggled in vain
For a freedom of flight.

It prayed in a breath purer than rain.
The holy god in his great goodness
Played deaf.

I mumbled a hurried prayer
Before the eager steel could lick
The blood of the helpless bird.

The holy god in his great fear
Heeded mine. Oh, who will not
In the presence of cold steel?

But I heard Him whisper thus:
“Claws – needle sharp – can’t pierce
A heart cold as his steel.”
***

THE TRAITOR

He had never heard
Such music before –
A music so enthralling and sweet.
What power in those clinking discs!

Dreaming of his good fortune
He strode. Cheerfully they jingled
As the wallet at his belt
Swayed with each step.

What use!...What use
Should he make of them?
Those thirty pieces of winking silver
Must be a Heaven’s worth.
Should he buy
The honeyed lips of a harlot
Or the century-old casks of wine
To wash his lips of sin?

His head was thronged with ideas.
His heart, like an army in rout,
Raced in blinding darkness.
At the tunnel’s end he saw Light.

He found solace in a piece of rope.
The all-powerful discs laughed
With their eyes at the heavy heart
Of the dangling Judas Iscariot.
***

A BALANCE LOST

The clock died of a heart attack
at 8.50 a.m. on January 26, 2001.

The chicken hearted clock
took the great leap,
before the citizens of Bhuj
could make a guess:

Did Mother Earth lose her balance?
Or did she heave a sigh?
Then there was no one to answer.

Blessed are the buried dead
for they have no tears to wipe.

Think of the maimed.
Think of the bruised.
Think of the orphaned,
the destitute and the damned.

Around them only grief and anguish,
loss and destruction.

No amount of aid
from reincarnated Karnas,
no words of consolation
from the wise and the revered,
no holy man with all his
miraculous powers mustered up,
could ever barricade
the cascading tears of the fated to live
or bring back the dead mother
to her surviving suckling.

Time never stands still.
And the Earth has to move.
***

MY FANS

They are veritably my fans
Though
They never proclaimed themselves so.
From cover to cover
They have gone through a pile of books
All authored by me,
And they were glad enough
To leave their impressions
On every page.
“O” is the grade
They have generously marked
Systematically and without a break
On all pages.

“O” in academic circles
Represents “Outstanding”.

Oh! What a great writer I am!
Don’t my fans, the worms,
Tell me that my books
Are worthy enough
To be chewed and digested?
What is fame if not this?
***
CIGARETTE

A submissive white woman
graciously ready
for immolation
any time,
any place,
braving any weather,
all for the kiss of
manly lips and
a ruffian touch.
***

And a short story by the author

SORROW OF SANITY

Professor Arasu parked his car in front of his house but hesitated to get down. Something in him stopped him from doing so. He was a straight forward man and took little time to take decisions. And once he took his decisions he never went back on them. Yet on that particular day he wavered to push open the car door.
The little ‘glitsch’ sound that came from under the car, sent tremors down his spine. He was sure that something alive got crushed under his wheels. The very thought of it made him dizzy and uncomfortable.
To say that Arasu is a pure vegetarian would only amount to exaggeration. In fact, he is a connoisseur of good food and spends a fortune in getting them on his table. He is one among those who believe in the saying: “The sin of killing gets washed down the gullet once the killed is eaten”.
Once when he was heading towards his house on his motorcycle after visiting a friend in a village, a cock flew from somewhere and got hit by the speeding wheels and became immobile. Professor Arasu had no regrets. He picked up the dead cock and carried it home to make chicken soup.
Arasu was sure that it was not a fowl that got crushed by his car.
During his boyhood days, Arasu’s father never said ‘no’ to him and he got him all that he wanted just for the asking. Wild rabbit, mynah, love birds, white rats were brought home to be Arasu’s pets. And along with the pets, Arasu’s father brought in skilled carpenters and made beautiful cages to house the pets. He was happy to see his son wallow in joy.
One of his favourite pets, a white rabbit, once fell a prey to a stray dog. The dead rabbit was kept in the same position till Arasu came back home in the evening after school. At the very sight of his dead pet, Arasu screamed, cried and howled, and thereby created such a scene that the entire village gathered in front of his house to console the bereaved boy..
On another occasion he helplessly watched a cat carry away his pet parrot while the bird screeched for help in human tongue.. The pitiable sight of the pet got so deep into his heart that he fell sick and had to be absent from school for days together.
Arasu never loved to have a cat or a dog for his pet. His father had once told him of a French lady by name Madame Monier who was willing to give away an Alsatian pup in exchange for a male wild rabbit of his. But all that his father got from Arasu was a scream and a howl. And his father had to cut a sorry figure before Madame Monier for not fulfilling her desires.
Arasu’s refusal to have a dog or a cat at home as his pet should not be construed that he had no love for them. He never hurled a stone at them. He never poured boiling water on them. That was proof enough to show that he had no hatred for them.
Arasu had gone all the way to Velankanni Church to marry a girl of his mother’s choice. And on his way back home in a taxi with his newly wedded wife, the taxi driver mercilessly killed all the stray dogs that crossed his way.
At first Arasu took them for accident. But when the driver did it for the third time, Arasu was a bit shocked. In a perturbed tone he told the driver: “Your rash driving makes many a dog loose its life”.
The driver guffawed. “Auspicious days demand sacrifices, sir”, he said casually without slowing down his speed.
Arasu lost his temper and gave a bit of his mind to the driver. As a professor he invariably lectured to his students that castes and religions were all man made; there can be only one force that can rule the world; and all the stupid beliefs have to be erased from the earth.
Imagine what would happen to such a man if one talks of blood sacrifice. The driver found himself in a quagmire of silence. Broken hearted he slowed down his speed and could not raise it above 40 km per hour. At the sight of a stray dog at a distance he had no way but bring down his speed further and helplessly watch cyclists overtaking his taxi.
Such was the love our professor showed to stray animals on the streets. Buses, lorries and other heavy vehicles that mercilessly commit daylight murders and also murders in the dark under the pretext of accidents have given him sleepless nights.
What if it is a cat or a rat? A life is a life. When we can show a lot of sympathy towards a man killed by a speeding vehicle, what deters us from having such a feeling when it comes to stray animals? That was our professor’s philosophy and question.
Hence it was no wonder that the crushing sound he heard from under his car disturbed his heart to its very auricles and ventricles.
But how long can one afford to hide inside a car? Mustering up all his courage he put his right foot out and bent himself sideways and turned his head as far as he could stretch. He then began his search. He could find nothing. He then bent down even to the verge of breaking his backbone and looked at the two wheels to his right. He found nothing.
He sniffed like a police trained dog to know if that spot smacked of fresh blood. His olfactory senses could not detect anything of that sort.
With stupid confidence he placed his other foot too out and got out of his car and banged its door shut.
He then took just two steps forward towards the back of his car. His feet got arrested. At least that was what he thought. The sight was quite unbearable. And his face turned pale.
Something was found lying there like a pouch, used by oldies half-a-century ago meant for carrying in it betel leaves, nuts, the round quarter anna with a big hole in it, the square half anna and the curve edged one anna.
Two further steps…he felt as if a little ray of lightning were crossing his body.
Poor thing! It was a dead cat. A very young one at that…may be a month old.
Arasu felt a sharp pain darting deep into his heart; a deep sense of guilt entered him. His mind was so thoroughly confused that he felt as though his heart got pounded in an electrical mixing jar.
Unable to bear the sight of the kitten lying almost folded twice, he walked into his house and fell on the sofa with a thud. The sponge too turned hard like a stone for him. He stretched his legs forward and leaned back and rested his head on the top spine of the seat. As if unable to face the world he closed his eyes.
His mind, now a drunken mad monkey, began to hop from one branch to another. It danced a gruesome dance. Showing all its ugly teeth it teased him. And finally it bit the professor here and there.
Arasu being very sensitive, it took several days to find himself healed when he was just scratched by the monkey. But now it has bitten him. Only his Creator knows whether it will take weeks or months to heal.
A voice that came floating from his back served as a boost and he propped himself up.
“Huh! Hours ago I told you people to throw the dead cat into the dustbin at the street corner. It is still lying there. What obedient children I am blessed with?” said Periyanayaki, the Professor’s wife, as she entered the house.
“Oh! You are already here. You look so tired, dear!. Wait a minute. I will make lemon tea for you,” she said to her husband.
Periyanayaki looked cute in her new yellow coloured silk sari. A long string of jasmine flowers adorned her pepper and salt tresses woven into a pigtail. A kumkum tilak on her forehead, a platter in her hand carrying a coconut broken into two halves, a few betel leaves, areca nuts, a little string of different flowers and a couple of ripe bananas all spoke to the professor that she was straight from the temple. And to the professor she looked as if the Goddess herself had entered the house to console him.
“Wait a minute,” he said to his wife as she was moving into the kitchen. “You said something about a cat. What is it all about?” he asked with curiosity filled eyes.
“Oh! That’s a story,” said Periyanayaki, “I got ready to participate in the special pooja arranged by the poojari in Gangai Muthu Mariamman temple. When I moved out of the house, I saw a frightened cat running here and there vainly attempting to cross the road. A speeding auto rickshaw bumped it off and the kitten badly hit was thrown in front of our house. It fell with a thud. It wriggled like a worm on hot sand before it breathed its last. And as I left for the temple, I told our children to throw the dead cat into the bin. I told them two hours ago. And look at the response I had from our children. The carcass should be removed immediately before it could make a mess of itself.
Professor Arasu sat up as the haunting guilt slithered away from him. He felt the sofa seat as soft as ever.

***

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

He was recipient of
Literary Award (Pondicherry University, Pondicherry-1987),
International Eminent Poet award (Madras-1988),
Michael Madhusudan Academy Award (Calcutta-1991),
Gold medal and citation (American Biographical Institute, USA-1996),
Best Poem of the Year Award (Una Poesia Per La Vita, Italy – 2002),
Academy of Indo-Asian Literature Award (Delhi, 2003);
Nalli Thisai-Ettum Award for Translation (Chennai – 2007);
Indian Literature Golden Jubilee Literary Translation Prize (Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, 2007)
Excellence in Literature Award (Govt. of Pondicherry, Pondicherry, 2009)

P. Raja can be reached at : rajbusybee@gmail.com

or at +91-9443617124

മുറിവുകള്‍: ഭ്രാന്തിനു ചിറകു മുളച്ചാല്‍

2009-04-15T03:39:00.000-07:00

മുറിവുകള്‍: ഭ്രാന്തിനു ചിറകു മുളച്ചാല്‍
ഓരോ സ്‌റ്റാന്‍സയും ഓരോ നല്ലകവിത. ആത്യന്തികമായി അനേകം കവിതകളുടെ സമന്വയം. അതെന്താണങ്ങനെ? കുട്ടികൃഷ്‌ണമാരാരാണ്‌ ഇത്‌ കാണുന്നതെങക്ഷ്‌കില്‍, പ്രകരണശുദ്ധിയില്ലെന്ന്‌ പറയുമായിരുന്നു. ഹന്‍ല്ലലത്തിന്റെ കവിത എനിക്കെത്രയും ഇഷ്ടമാകയാല്‍ അത്തരം അശ്രദ്ധകള്‍ ഞാന്‍ കാര്യമാക്കുന്നില്ല. ഇമേജുകളുടെ സമൃദ്ധി നിമിത്തം വസന്തകാലത്തെന്നപോലെ മരങ്ങളിലെല്ലാം പൂക്കള്‍ നിറഞ്ഞിരിക്കുന്നു.

2009-03-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

( Poet Danny Naicker with his grand son Shivan )

Danny Naicker : A Diaspora Poet

Gona Pragasen Kathan Naicker or Danny Naicker is a 2nd generation South African poet of Indian slave decent. His fore father Adackan came from India in 1888, from Trichinpoly of south India .His Colonial Registration No. 36701. Umvoti VVI was the ship that brought him to South Africa.They were brought to South Africa by Hill. S & Co to engage them as worker at sugar cane fields .Adackan was poet’s grand father’s father .as per the records from the colonial archives..
MY FOREFATHER

The fiery spirit of adventure
burning in his nineteen year old breast
his naive youthful mind
lost in the ignorance
and the innocence of youth
unable to discern the woods
from the trees
trusting the white man’s stories
of a distant land of milk and honey
where trees bore ripened fruits
all year round
and wheat and cornfields stretched
further than the eye could see
and gold could be panned
from crystal clear streams
rushing from high mountain peaks

he couldn’t read or write
the white mans language
his thumb imprint,
to a piece of paper they pressed
he grasped not the dire consequences
of this unsuspecting simple act
that from this time onwards
his body and soul was now owned
by a white land baron
in a far, far distant land

this man named Kathan
garbed in his traditional loincloth
draped around his black lanky body
He came with hope
seeking good fortune
and a dream of a new life
his only wealth , his bare hands
and his deep affinity with the earth
his soul and his hands loved the soil
and were one with the richness
of the earth

he came with memories
from his rich ancient heritage
with epic stories and fables
of mighty mythical warrior gods
who walked side by side
with ordinary mortals
stories passed down and told
in the ancient Tamil vernacular
stories learned from one generation
and carried to the next
in the age old,
oral tradition of his people

I am the descendent of this man
this proud indentured slave
I am the son of Kamatchee
the daughter he adored
named after the sacred ‘Light’
she a beacon of hope
that would carry the culture and history
in the same age old tradition
of this man, her father and his people
through the lives of her children

through my mother’s eyes
I have seen him
through her stories
I have come to know him
through her voice
I have spoken to him
through her music
I have danced with him
through her poetic songs
I have listened to the beauty
of the land of his birth
through her indomitable spirit
I have felt his courage
through her pain
I have experienced his subjugation
through her resilience
I have breathed and lived his struggles
through her laughter
I have experienced his joys

Through the bonding of our spirits
I have walked hand in hand with him
and through his spirit
I have talked to the voices
of my ancient ancestors

His grandfather died when Danny’s mother was 17 years old, He never saw his grandfather . All he knows about him is from the stories his late mother told him. Later he conducted his own research through the colonial archives and managed to trace his roots .

They Came to Azania
They came, from a easterly distant shore
swept by the monsoon tide waters
of the Indian ocean
alienated, from blood and kin
lured by promises of riches untold
of brick stone roads paved in gold

shipped to an alien land
snared under false pretences
indentured slaves,
confined to forced labour camps,
by the devious forked pen
wielded by the imperialist hand

they toiled,
under the pitiless African sun.
long before Suria* rose
their day of work began
their labours’ ceased not,
long after Suria's eye lids closed .

fertile plantations
their blood callused
slave hands did hew
from unyielding tenacious undergrowth,
reclaimed land by slash and burn
defied harsh, hostile tropical swamps
by some twist of fate,
some survived
swift painful death,
from sweltering fatal swamp fever

the dreaded cursed scourge,
consumption*
attacked wasted bodies
lungs coughed blood of death
the ill omen spread its dark deathly shadow.
annihilated cursed infected, derelict,
internment labour camps
strangled breaths,
spared not, young or old

the grim monsters' cold precise hands, buried, so many,

in forgotten, unmarked graves
in an alien land.
far, far from home.

*Suria – The Sun . Sanskrit
*Consumption - pulmonary tuberculosis

*Azania –
The name given to South Africa by the Black Consciousness Liberation Movement

( Poets grand son Shaylen )

His late mother was an abused woman and his father subjected her to the most horrendous abuse.(See attached Poem "My Father Was A Good Man") His mother would not accept that this was her fate and she must just lie down and subject herself to this kind of subjugation. Pregnant with her 5th child and without a black cent to her name only with the clothes on her back and her four children my mother walked out on his father. Danny was 5 years old. When his mother left hem in the care of his Grandmother and went back to work. In the 1950's the world of work was predominately a male reserved world and there was no place for a ambitious determined woman. His mother persevered and met every challenge with courage and eventually she ran the entire operation and became the Supervisor with Males having to take instructions and orders from her.
Single handed she raised, educated and disciplined five children. Sadly his mother passed away on the 1st September 2001 at the age of 84.
MY FATHER WAS A GOOD MAN

My father was a good man
he prayed without fail
five times a day
sometimes after many weeks
he’d come home in the evenings
my mother would say
there is no food for the children
his anger would erupt
like a mount Etna
and he would beat her
to the ground
where she lay writhing in pain

my father was a good man
he feared the lord his god
and to redeem himself
he prayed five times a day
most times my father
never came home for weeks
and the rent was never paid
when my father came home
he called my mother a fucken bitch
and accused of sleeping around
with every Tom Dick and Harry
and he’d beat her senseless
to the ground

my father was a good man
in the eyes of his community
he was a god-fearing man
he could sing the lords praises
in a voice so sweet
that the angels would weep
when my father came home
after an absence of months
my mother would turn to him
and say
the children need food and clothes
his contempt rose
like an unstoppable tsunami
he’d drag her by the hair
and bang her head to the ground
were she lay still,
only a feeble breath from her body

My father was a good man
He went to prayer every Friday
He’d come home after many,
many days
with a loaf of bread under his arms
and a pint of milk
to provide nourishment for his children
my mother would say
where were you all these days
I had to walk from door to door
begging for any kind of work
finding some domestic chores
washing and ironing for a pittance
so that I could feed my children
he would explode like a lose cannon
you ungrateful bitch
he would scream
and he would beat her
until her body turned black and blue

My father was a good man
he always read the holy book
and recited chapter and verse
from memory
sometimes he stayed at home
and we children were happy
but the happiness was
always short lived
he only stayed to fulfil
his matrimonial rights
and now my mother was
pregnant with the fifth child.

My father was a good man
he wanted all his children
to practise his faith
but he was never at home
to give guidance and provide
the simple things
for a good life
my mother believed
he’d come home
she waited, and waited
her belly growing big
and her children
their bellies bloated

the pain of waiting
does things to the mind
thoughts of suicide and infanticide
ran rampant through her head
she believed there was no escape
from the hardships of life

the ironies of life mocked her
my mother vowed in silence
fate will not rob her children of their life
she gathered us all
with our meagre possessions
and set of to find a new life

the man you see today
standing here before you
I am her son
The proud creation
of a resilient woman
she taught me all I need to know about how to live a good moral life
my mother was a woman
my father did not deserve

At 15 he left school and went to work in the Bata shoe Company as an ordinary production line worker, He became involved in the Trade Union Movement and fought against the repression of the workers under the Apartheid White Racist Government. After 14 years of service Bata shoe dismissed me because of his Trade Union Activities. he was unemployed for a long time and then managed to secure a job in another Shoe Company were he spent 5 years. The union that he belonged to then took him in as a full time Organiser.After 14 years with the Union and after South Africa attained its political freedom in 1994, In 1996 he decided to leave the Trade Union Movement because he felt that, now the Political struggle for freedom was over.

He received an offer from Engineering Company to join them as their Human Resources Manager a position He still holds to this day. It would be interesting for him to find out more about your views on Spiritualism,
SILENCE

We never stop to listen,
to the deeper silence living within
we never stop to listen
to the spirits of silence singing within
we never stop to listen
to the voices of silence crying from within
we are lost in a world of dark shadows
and we cannot feel and touch
the light shining within

sometimes! do you not hear ?
in the stillness of your heart beat
the silence struggling from your soul
If only, you stop momentarily
for just a second
and listen to the silence
you will feel the peace and tranquility serenading, from deep, deep, within
it’s the voices of your spirit soul
reminding you, to seek
for the inner sanctuary
dormant in the deep silence within
once explored , once realized,
there will be peace forever
with the true silence from within

We never stop to listen
to the silence living within
we never stop to listen
to the voices of silence
calling from within
we never stop to listen
to the true silence that dwells within
cause we lost in a world of illusions
and we cannot feel and hear
the harmony from the songs
of silence, echoing within

when, the silence awakens
you would suffer its incredible
subtle beauty and eternal divine bliss
that will whirl your eternal soul
to new heights of unimagined grandeur
till it takes flight on invisible wings
on a voyage into the realms

of a greater deeper silence within
unlocking the boundless mystical secrets
hidden in the deep recesses
of our sub consciousness
finding everlasting peace
in deep meditative trances
all life becomes enchanting melodies
of unending serenity
when you voyage into the deeper
silence within

when you travel the journey of silence
true peace you will perceive
there will be a conversion of the spirit,
a rebirth, a renewal of the self
life will be a supreme gift
your spirit will rapture with joy
and whirl into a glowing radiant light
bless will flow and become a gentle stream
and the silence can be discerned
in the gentle breeze that blows
endless, peace, and love
will move your being
higher than the universe
and raise your spirit soul
above all worldly mundane woes,
and all sorrows will be freed
if only you take the time to listen
to the deeper silence living within

when we behold
the inner deeper silent self,
It becomes a wondrous illuminated light
all the causes and reasons
of life’s joys, delusions and strife
will crystal clear become
if we take that journey
and become one with
the deeper silence within

(Poet's grand daughter Thiasha )

Danny doesn’t consider himself a religious person and he does not subscribe to any religion or doctrine. (Although his upbringing has been in a very orthodox Hindu home) He believes religion has always been the problem of the world ever since man invented it and its horrors still haunts mankind to this day . The caste system is an abomination, it irks his sensibilities and makes him angry the same as fanatics killing in the name of their so called Gods.According to him , religion should be eradicated and replaced by a Universal Spiritualism. Maybe my views are being to harsh.

I WILL NOT KILL

I am a secular human being
that is my choice
that is my right
you label me an infidel
you call me an unbeliever
an agnostic
you throw these descriptions at me

because I
do not conform to your norms
do not practise your beliefs
do not believe your doctrines
do not prase some supernatural being
I have never seen
I have never heard
I have never witnessed
the miracles you claim

you despise me
because I will not be indoctrinated
I refuse to be brain washed
you can murder me
you can kill me
in the name
of your Inquisitions
in the name of your fatwas
I will not brandish a sword
against my kind
In the defence
of any man made religion

you may murder me
you may kill me
I will not take up arms
In the name
of any crusade or jihad
against my kind
in prase and glory
of a supernatural being
that I don’t know

I will lay down my life
for truth and freedom
which are beyond
the narrow precincts of
your rigid dogmas

I will give up my life
for truth and freedom
for they are sacrosanct
to all our lives
I will not kill in the name
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva

I will not kill in the name
of Jehovah, Jesus, Allah
I will not kill in the name
of the Buddha
nor in the name of Krishna

you that want me to kill
how can I kill in the name
of these revered pacifist
great avatars
whom you, have yourself
proclaimed
are the messengers
of peace, love and truth
and are all forgiving and merciful

Danny writes poetry .He doesn’t know if that makes him a Poet. Academics and intellectuals are constantly engaged in a futile exercise pondering and trying to decipher and label the mysteries of Sensual Love whether it is in the form of Literature, Poetry Sculpture or Art .and trying to decipher and label them with their own conceived ideologies and idiosyncrasy. Danny just writes poetry and deal with the realities of his own feelings . The Hudson View ‘s editor Dr Amitabh Mitra is his very good friend and Danny’s Poetry has been published in that journal Danny has been planning to publish her anthology of poems this year ..

Danny is married to Gussie and in October this year they will be married for 40 years. Gussie is not into Literature and Poetry, she leaves the poet to his own devices.She loves to cook, she is a keep fit fanatic goes to gym and trains in areboics. Very dedicated to poet’s two children although they are grown adults. They have 3 grandchildren, Thiasha 11years, Shaylen 6 Years and the baby Shivan 1 year.

2009-02-11T09:25:00.000-08:00

K.V.Dominic : Voicing Today’s Visions

K. V. DOMINIC (born 1956 ) , an Indian English poet, critic, editor and short story writer was born on 13 February 1956 at Kalady in the State of Kerala in India. . He is a faculty member of the Post Graduate Department of English, Newman College, Thodupuzha East P. O., Idukki District , Kerala, India., Prof. Dominic has been teaching Under Graduate and Post Graduate students since 1985. His research topics are “Pathos in the Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore” and “East-West Conflicts in the Novels of R. K. Narayan with Special Reference to The Vendor of Sweets, Waiting for the Mahatma, The Painter of Signs and The Guide .” .(Source : WIKIPEDIA )

Besides poetry writing he is also editing the Indian Journal of Postcolonial Literatures (IJPCL), (ISSN : 7370 0974-7370 ),established in 2000 , a biannually journal comes out on 1st June and 1st December regularly The journal has achieved an international reputation.

Ann is his wife, his actual life mate and his source of inspiration .

Rose ,his daughter is now in Delhi for her higher studies

Joe, his son is now in schooling .

A BLISSFUL VOYAGE
Let my mind soar high
on the wings of the Muses
and visit the places
where my body
fails to reach.

Had I the wings of a mallard
I could fly to the States,
shake the hand of Obama,
and thank my American sisters and brothers.

I wish I had the claws of a vulture
to fetch the skeletons from Iraq
and build a bone-palace
to imprison Bush in it.

If I could fly like an angel,
would plead Christ, Muhammad and Krishna
to exterminate the high priests
who inject communal venom
to millions’ innocent minds.
I would meet Gandhi too
who is weeping at his shattered dreams.

I wish I were a bullet
and shoot into the chest of that terrorist
who compels that teen age boy
to explode and kill that innocent mob.

CELIBACY

Proton, electron; positive, negative;
Male, female; made for each other.
Pains and pleasures: God’s own gifts;
None can reject them.

Divine sex, divine organs;
Instincts divine, divine pleasures;
Who can abstain them?

The dancing of the plant;
The smiling of the flower;
The chirping of the bird;
And all merry cries of other beings;
Herald onward march of Life on earth..

Celibacy is all unnatural;
A question mark to one’s existence;
Threat to the human race;
Torpedo to the Divine Plan;
Hence nothing but a sin itself.

A woman is forbidden entry
to her Father’s Holy Abode;
A criminal offence and a cardinal sin.

I am Just a Mango Tree

I am just a Mango Tree;
Still an accomplished life;
I’ve fulfilled my Creator’s plan.
Standing like a Himalayan umbrella,
I shelter my student-friends
waiting for the buses.
The Sun can’t wither them,
nor Rain wets them.
Their innocent smiles and laughter;
The lovers sighs and sobs,
tickle me or weep me.
When my friend the Wind comes,
I welcome him with myriad hands.
My saviour Sun fosters me,
his rays cook food for me;
I grow and bear fruits for others.
When I blossom, flies kiss me.
My branches are the beds for birds;
Cuckoos, crows and mynahs come;
When my fruits are ripe, a feast to them.
Their chirps and songs lull me often;
When night comes they sleep on my lap;
I too sleep standing on my feet.
Nightly breeze and dews caress me;
I drop mellow yellow fruits
to my beggar friend who sleeps below.
My God, how happy I am!
A happiness gained by service alone.
Hark! What’s that boy telling the girl?
“Darling, where shall we wait
when they cut this tree?”
“Dear, why do they cut this tree,
a harbour to hundreds of us?”
“They plan to build a waiting shed here.”
God, what do I hear? Is it true?
‘True, my daughter, I am helpless.’
Can’t they spare me and
build it somewhere else?
Don’t I do them good
as I do to other fellow beings?
Haven’t I feelings and pains
though I bear them mute?
Haven’t I the right to live
as they legally claim here?
God, why is your Man so selfish and cruel?
Why did you create him,
who topples this earth’s balance?
This planet would be a paradise
if you kindly withdraw him.
‘My child, it was a blunder, a Himalayan blunder;
I shouldn’t have created this human species;
But how can a father kill his sons?’

GODS WILL BE PLEASED

Sacred ornaments
of Krishna
are stolen.

Elsewhere,
the golden rosary
of Our Lady
was missing.

Sleeplessness for the police.
No trace
was found.

The devotees say
the gods are
angry hence.
The gods must be
gold crazy!

How foolishly
people attribute
their weaknesses
to their gods!

The priests in golden robes
dressing gods
in golden clothes
exploit
people’s weaknesses.

Take all ornaments
from temples and churches,
turn them food
and serve
to hungry mouths;
AND GODS
WILL BE PLEASED.

A NIGHTMARE

I had a nightmare the overnight;
turned into a hawk, I was hovering in the sky.

I could view the cry of an obese boy
whose mother was beating him to eat more.
A cry of a different note was heard from the next door,
where a bony child was crying out of hunger.

A wedding feast was served in the town hall,
where expensive delicacies heaped on the plates.
I could see two ragged girls outside
struggling with the dogs in the garbage bin.

My wings took me to a public school;
A boy in tears stood on the verandah:
A punishment for not wearing his tie!
In the humid weather of forty degree
a slavish mimic, a legacy of the West.

What’s that long queue I find before that shop?
Like a line of ants before their hole.
God! It’s a liquor shop run by the government!
That leper who begged at my door is also in the line!
A similar queue is found on the other side,
where poor women wait for their rations.

Then I found a public water tap
that changed the road to a black coloured river.
Elsewhere I noticed a waterless tap
which could draw like a magnet
all the pots of the neighbourhood.

See, what a mansion that double-storeyed edifice!
Luxury rooms with A/C, lawn and swimming pool;
An old man and his wife resided there;
sitting at the phone with sighs and moans,
longed for the calls from their sons abroad.
Not far away were the slums of the city;
Three generations lived in each hut;
Grandpa, grandma, their sons and their wives,
and their little kids sleep in a room!

The terrible sights filled my eyes with tears;
I could see nothing more;
neither did I wish for it;
The siren sounded at five
and I woke up from the nightmare

Lal Salaam to Labourers

Lal Salaam to Labourers,
The backbone of the country!

They sow the seed,
Reap the corn,
And we eat and sleep.

They spin and weave,
Make beautiful clothes,
And we wear and ‘shine.’

They build houses,
Where they never rest,
And there we live and snore.

They sweat in factories,
Produce numberless goods,
And we use and enjoy.

They tar the road,
Melt in the furnace,
And we ride and drive.

They clean roads and markets,
Are shunned by us very often,
And we make them filthier and filthier.

They envy our lives,
Nurse bubbles of dreams,
But reality pricks them of,
And many find haven in tavern.

Lal Salaam to Labourers!
For without them we have no life.

Let us not be stingy
When we pay them wages,
For we can’t do what they do.

Give them more than what is due;
The more we give, the more we get;
A spiritual bliss that never dies.

WORK IS WORSHIP

My parish priest advised me once:
“Sir, I rarely meet you at Sunday Services.”
“Right, Father, I have little time to waste;
IGNOU students wait for my classes;
for they are free only on Sundays;
and for me work is worship.”
(“You are right, my son,”
whispered God to my ears,
“I’ve never asked my children
to waste a day flattering me.”)
“Waste? Prayer is waste?
And work on Sabbath days?”
“Father, when God is with me
why should I seek him else where?”
“But collective prayer is
stronger than a single voice.”
“Prayer? If prayer is communication with God,
don’t we need some silence?
How can I talk to Him,
when hundreds roar stale words?”
(“You are right again, son,”
whispered God to my ears,
“I am shuddered by their cries
which never come from their minds.
My dear son, live in Karma,
Love all creations,
For I am in everything.”)

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

The Cuckoo through his divine flute
Used to wake me up at every dawn;
But lately having little sleep,
I lie restless for hours and hours,
Longing vainly to wake him up.

The Cuckoo lies on his God-given bed;
The gentle breeze always caresses him;
The nocturnal music lulls him throughout,
And he sleeps having no worries.

I lie in my concrete house,
Fighting against the man-made heat,
And the dreary sound of the hot-wave fan.
The late and heavy supper in stomach,
And all such unnatural ways of life
Take away that God’s own gift.

Ah, the Cuckoo finally calls me out;
Let me get up, get out of my cell,
And have a bath in the pool of morning beauty.

A SHEEP’S WAIL

Hark, you Man
to my wail,
your enslaved sheep’s.

You are possessed with
some special powers
that we do not have.

With your brain
and with your tongue
you conquered us.

Superior you boast,
but inferior you become
to the microbes that kill you.

The fur God gave me,
mercilessly you shear
to make you cosy.

The milk for my lamb
you suck and drain
and grow fat and cruel.

I have seen with my eyes
and heard with my ears
the last cries of my parents.

When they became old
you cut their heads
and ate their flesh.

Man, you are the cruelest,
you are the most ungrateful
of all God’s creations.

Yet you find justification
and bring false philosophies
to make you His choicest.

Some of you believe
that you are the centre
and all other beings are for you.

You say God did send His son
to redeem you from your sins
and thus penance for your crimes.

Nothing can be more absurd!
Aren’t we His children?
How can He forgive you?

If a heaven is there
we will reach there first
and pray to God to shut you out.

HARVEST FEAST

That photograph in the newspaper
flashes to my mind very often;
those little pupils from Kozhikode,
avidly feasting rice and payasam;
the harvest banquet of their sweated labour.
Nothing can be tastier than this.

Those nimble, soft feet,
which ran after butterflies;
those little velvety hands
which caressed plants and flowers,
moved through the rough fields;
ploughed the land; sowed the seed;
plucked the weed; reaped the corn;
carried sheaves on their tender heads;
threshed, husked, cooked.

Their teachers taught them the great lessons:
how education can be vocational;
and the beauty and dignity of labour;
a lesson too to the adult world:
the way to solve the food crisis,
and save the world from poverty.

AND DOMINIK'S

HAIKU

NATURE’S BOUNTIES

The song of cuckoo
Night’s dirge
Day’s trumpet

The birth of morn
Hymns from temples and mosques
Heaven on earth

The sun kisses
The eye opens
Lotus blooms

Fragrance of the rose
Intoxication to the fly
Dancing round the plant

Jasmine’s hand
Touches my neck
Utter dilemma

Mellow yellow papaya
Longing violent kisses
Feasting to crows and mynahs

Lightening and thunder
God’s fire works
Man fears!

Summer showers
Roof of GI sheet
Divine fingers on drums

Snow-white Manikutty
Melodious meow
“Stroke me please”

Amminikutty’s emerald eyes
Tempting the eyes
Dancing of my mind

The poet can be reached at :

K. V. Dominic

Editor

Indian Journal of Postcolonial Literatures

PG Department of English

Newman College

Thodupuzha East P. O.

Idukki District

Kerala

Pin: 685585

Phone: 04862 225758

Mob: 9947949159

2009-01-15T09:48:00.001-08:00

BIPLAB MAJEE AND HIS POEMS

Biplab Majee (b.1947) is a well known poet and prose writer in Bengali literature.His first poem came to light in Parichay ,the leading literary journal of West Bengal. So far 12 books of poem, 16 books of prose and 5 books on translation, 5 books of Children literature are published in Bengali. And his books Love Poems and Others (2005) and Global Village ( 2008) are published in English translation. He was a delegate in 4th Afro-Asian Writers’ Conference held in New Delhi, 1970 and 4th International Writers’ Festival -India held in Ambala Canttonment, Haryana in 2008., Bachelors of Science from the University of Calcutta in 1971.He got Teachers’ Training Diploma in Russian Language from Moscow State University in 1976 -[ [1977]]. Winner of Lenin Award from Moscow State University in 1977 and won an award for International Political Songs held in Moscow State University in 1977 . Revisited Moscow in 1984 to participate in an International Russian Language Seminar for one and a half months. He edited and published Samay Sarani, a Literary and Cultural Magazine since 1981 to 2000. Edited Cine News, a Monthly bulletin of Midnapore Film Society more than 6 years and Pratibimba, an yearly magazine for more than 6 years. A columnist in local daily news paper Dainik Upatyaka. Contributor of articles and poems in a number of Journals and Magazines in West Bengal and Bangladesh .He was Director, PRAKASHANA, a publishing house since 1984 to 2006. Consulting editor of Who’s Who of American Biographical Institute and Honorary Re search Board Advisor of American Biographical Institute, USA. He was editor, Chalachittra Barta (Monthly Cine News), Midnapore Film Society, Midnapore from 2002 to 2006. President, Medinipur Kabita Utsab Committee since 2003 to 2008.
He can be reached at mbiplab@rediffmail.com
(through the courtesy of: Wikipedia )

The poems are translated by Nandita Bhattacharya, poet’s wife and also an M.A in English and also a translator cum Editor of Writers' Forum .

Few Poems from his poetry book Global Village

In which
global villages
do you take me down

In which global village do you take me down
What to do here
The Corporate House has purchased
All the fields pf Paus month
If I protest against them
I will be marked as a Politician

The wise leaders are like blind Dhritarashtra
They keep quiet even when Sanjay speaks
I am a rustic man
I donot understand any statistics
I know only that there are no drops of
blood,tears and sighs of the poor……

The story of Kafka

The cyber city
The son of a farmer
Becomes an insect

He flies
From the flyover
And enters into the metro
With him
everything appears
Like that of fairy tales

Quickly
The metro train enters
Into the breast of a mod woman
Secretly
The poor son of the farmer
Does not know how to get out of
this metro station

A dead body is left
In the delusion
And in the labyrinth

The cyber city
does not know
When the son of a farmer
enters into the story of Kafka
and say
We will die again and again
When the villages will disappear one after
another ….

If the poets
turn in to atom bombs

Quite a good number of young men and women
Live their lives taking shelter in poetry
Coming to this earth in poetry
Coming to this earth they fly like
Molecules and atoms
In the human explosion
Blair and bush get scared

If really the poets turn into atom bombs
Then the forecast of Plato will come out…..

And from his another poetry book Love Poems and Others

Then why

Do you belong to me ? then why,why
I am playing this lonely game
with you in the twilight
Is this thick love
as thick as steel ?
There is darkness in the heart
skyful of dew like pain
don’t you say farewell one day ? forgetting
everything…..
But still why, why I dip myself down
In this eternal twilight & loose
Myself
And I again and again believe in love beyond
death why ?I don’t
know really…….

Lady Love

You are complete with all the particles of light, water and air
and so,when I looked at the sea
I got your complexion and figure

When I looked at the cruelty of vast storm
I got the colour and the shape of your face.

When I looked at the glorious sun rise
I got the face and eyes which I want to love
And the whole earth responds
to my happiness….

Blood-window

You were standing in the eternal
light then .
The starry boulevard was floating there
in the blood like sky of twilight
Your sinless face is like a letter wet
in morning dew.
I saw you for the first time
tearing my heart
Your invisible eyes read hieroglyphics……

2008-12-02T09:38:00.001-08:00

orkut - Forum

2008-12-02T09:38:00.000-08:00

orkut - Forum

2008-09-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

(one)
Oh, beloved,
You shouldn’t speak of floods;
Frightened,
I would curl tight around you.
Shores are far, far away;
No bird is seen in the empty skies
With soil-stained beak,
Or an olive twig in the claws.
(Two)
Yonder days, it was trunkful of kisses
I sent you;
Derailing stars
Masked into bunches of fruits
Hung in array on mountain trees

(Three)
The sweet dried figs, and dates from deserts;
And the colours of dreams and jewels
Mined in fathoms
Hadn’t someone said
That shades where fig trees
Wouldn’t bear fruits will come;
Saplings of ages and dreams
Would lose their seasons;
Check dams would be made in oases;
And deserts would be spread over mountains?
(Four)
I know you have preserved my kisses;
Love can be great floods,
Or steep falls,
Or even oceans.
Still I knew then and always:
Love would remain uneroded.
(Five)
You swam in the endless empires
Angel hadn’t seen;
You flowed smooth in the torrents
Where zebras bathe and game.
I saw the foot steps you left on the hills
Where coffee shrubs had flowered,
And in the fields
Where tiny flowers bloomed,
Spreading fragrance of love and sweat
Still I knew then and always:
Love is an eternal sprout,
It never ceases to flow.

(Six)
At last we rejoin now.
Oh, beloved, You shouldn’t speak of floods;
Let us speak only about love;
About changing springs and summers;
Let us kiss intense love,
And, then shrink into bright-lit stars;
Let us dart as arrow stars
To the lovers of times to come

Fusion of Journalism and Poetry: An

2008-09-02T17:50:00.001-07:00

Fusion of Journalism and Poetry: An
email Interview with Mamang Dai
Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal
Mamang Dai is a journalist accredited to the government of Arunachal Pradesh. She is also an active radio and TV journalist covering news programmes and interviews for All India Radio and Door Darshan, Itanagar. This leading journalist of the North East, who was also the President of Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists (APUWJ), has to her credit a poetry collection and also a work of fiction. Her poetry collection River Poems was published by Writers Workshop, while Penguin Books India brought out her fictional work The Legends of Pensam.
A former member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), she left the service to pursue a career in writing. She is also the author of Arunachal Pradesh-- The Hidden Land & a recipient of the state’s first Annual Verrier Elwin Awards, 2003 (in the field of publication in print media) for the book.
She was a programme officer with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) during the first years of its establishment in the state, and worked with the Bio-diversity Hotspots Conservation programmne in the field of research, survey and protection of the flora and fauna of the eastern Himalayas.
Dai is a Member, North East Writers’ Forum (NEWF), an organization dedicated to the cause of promoting the literature of North East India.
Her writings are completely soaked in North-Eastern culture of India. Beneath this regional exterior, her works show certain values and issues which are truly universal. The expression “The jungle is a big eater, / hiding terror in the carnivorous green” from the poem “Remembrance” is one such example of universal element in her poetry. Every human being will be disturbed by the just-mentioned ferocity of nature.
This leading journalist of North East, having a poetic heart, discusses with Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal the features of her poetry, condition of North-Eastern literature
And several other literary and social issues.

NKA: Your poetry abounds in evocative nature imagery. It appears the poet in you creates vibrating sensations in your heart, when you see ‘the colours of the morning’, ‘afternoon’s golden chain’ and ‘the silver anklets of the moon’. To be very honest, natural beauty of the land makes you sing in ‘a full-throated ease’. How has your association with World Wide Fund For Nature and Bio-Diversity Hotspots Conservation Programme helped you in becoming a supreme worshipper of Nature? Obviously, the just mentioned organizations must have provided you with the necessary input for the play of your creative imagination. Or are there certain other sources for this nature adoration, working at the unconscious/subconscious layers of your psyche? Please elaborate.
MD: It has more to do with the environment. If you come to Arunachal I think you will see what I mean. It is very green, it is quiet and one can be quite absorbed by this abundance if one has the temperament for it. My stint with WWF helped with facts, data collection and scientific surveys but I was writing before this.
NKA: In many a poems, nature appears to be the starting point. Beginning with nature, you touch several other human issues. In a way, nature seems to remind you of eternal note of human misery. In the poem “A Stone Breaks the Sleeping Water”, there is a perfect union between human mood and nature, when you say, “Now when it rains/ I equate the white magnolia with perfect joy./Spring clouds, stroke of sunlight,/the brushstrokes of my transformed heart.” Is this union between nature and man not like the monism/ non dualism of ancient Indian philosophy? Or is there any other influence in forming this image of Nature-Man union in your mind, heart and soul? Please illumine.
MD: The traditional belief of the Adi community to which I belong is full of this union. Everything has life -- rocks, stones, trees, rivers, hills, and all life is sacred. This is called Donyi- Polo, literally meaning Donyi- Sun, and Polo- moon as the physical manifestation of a supreme deity, or what I like to interpret as ‘world spirit.’ Yes, in this way it is a set of values like ancient Indian philosophy or ancient Mayan / Aztec, Northern Europe, Egyptian, Chinese beliefs where similarities between ancient civilizations and the first glimmerings of man’s quest for faith are tied together. We also have a rich oral tradition with narrative ballads of birth and creation of man and his surroundings that can last for many days, chanted by special priests. There is hardship in life, yes, but there is also human effort and human belief.
NKA: In some of the poems, you have given notes. These notes explicate certain North-Eastern cultural aspects. The poems like “Tapu”, “Let No Tear”, “Song of the Dancers”, “Man and Brother” and “The Missing Link” use these explanatory notes. What is the necessity of these notes in your poetry? Are these notes not because you are writing about your own culture in an alien language? Will it not be better to write about our indigenous culture in our own native languages? The expression of indigenous culture in alien language will definitely raise these problems. Moreover, this dragon like alien language may eliminate the regional languages one day. We must do something to preserve our languages. To be short, what should be the language of poetic expression’ our native regional language or an alien one? Your views, please.
MD: The notes are there because some of the references are to special customary practice and belief. If I write in Adi I will still have to use Roman script since we are a non-script language. Currently there is a move to devise a new script for the Tani group of tribes of Arunachal. i.e. the tribes practising Donyi-Polo and who claim common ancestry from a legendary forefather called Tani, but we have 26 tribes in Arunachal and more than a 100 sub-clans so the consensus is more for English and Hindi as the lingua franca and for writing. At the moment we have also launched an Arunachal Pradesh Literary Society to promote writing in local languages / dialects/ which may be translated into English or Hindi or other major Indian languages. About the language of poetic expression – people say -- well, Spanish and French for love, Urdu for ghazal, something else for Haiku, but I think poetry in any language will have meaning depending on the honesty of feeling.
NKA: Poetry is the emotional outburst of personal feelings. A poet transmits his own subjective feelings in his poetry. In a way, a poet universalizes his personal emotions in his poetry. In your poetry, I have found that beneath the treatment of nature and social customs of Arunachal Pradesh, there is an undercurrent of pain. The opening lines of “Broken Verse” hint towards that grief. Are there certain personal concerns responsible for this treatment of grief? What personal factors are responsible for poetry in you? Please illuminate.
MD: Always difficult to pin point what started anyone on a particular course or path, or why one writes the way one does. There are many changes happening in Arunachal today so the treatment of nature and social customs is something that I feel an affinity for and it is my way of viewing this change or the passage of time. Things happen. We learn only to learn that there is more to learn and it goes on. There’s a new understanding for everything if one doesn’t lose faith and writing is of course an act of hope, in the sense that you will overcome barriers of misunderstanding, grief, loss, through some new creation like an act of transformation, metamorphosis.
NKA: You left IAS. You are a journalist and also a poet. Out of the three, which profession is closest to your heart and why? Has your career as a journalist helped you as a poet? Please enlighten the readers.
MD: Journalism combines a lot of things because it is about information, collecting it and reporting/ and so even if I were an administrator I might have been asking questions like a journalist (albeit certainly more restricted!) and it keeps one, hopefully, from getting too sentimental since the shorter one can write to tell a story the better. It is also about evidence, truth, and that is about poetry.
NKA: As a woman poet and journalist, did you feel disturbed in the patriarchal male Indian society? Are the males prejudiced towards a woman poet? Your views, please.
MD: No. I have never felt this. As it is we have very few writers (published ) in Arunachal, and we have few readers too! But all the same my own society, friends and relatives have been encouraging.
NKA: What are the other important poetic voices from Arunachal Pradesh? As a member of North East Writers’ Forum, what do you think are the major problems, faced by the North Eastern poets?
MD: There is Y.D. Thongchi and late Lummer Dai, well known authors of Arunachal Pradesh. Both their works are in Assamese and Thongchi is a Sahitya Akademi Award winner, 2005, for his novel ‘Mouna Ounth Mukhar Hriday,’written in Assamese.
The major problems faced by NE poets must be language- translations. There are many fine poets writing in Meitei, Bodo, Mishing, regional languages but translated copies/ good translators/ of their works are few and hard to find. This has kept a large body of literature of the region hidden.
NKA: In your article “Arunachal Pradesh: The Myth of Tranquility”, you have emphasized that your state is outside the sphere of change. Tribal customs are protected there. You had emphatically stated in that article, ”Arunachal is still one of the last frontiers of the world where the indigenous faith and practices still survive in a form close to the original beliefs handed down since generations.” It is nice to see that tribal culture is being preserved there. What factors, in your opinion, are responsible for the preservation of the tribal culture in Arunachal Pradesh? Can those measures be applied to other tribes too? Please tell.
The strict adherence to the traditional culture may hamper the educational development of the tribes on modern lines. In a way, the tribes may be streamlined. Though, the world has become a global village, the tribes, in order to preserve their cultural identity, may avoid contact with the outside world. It may, in the long run, prove injurious to the well-being of the tribes. Which methods may bring them into the mainstream Indian society without disturbance to their culture? Please enlighten.
MD: Well, I will have to qualify that… it is still a bastion of indigenous culture but I did not mean this to be in favour of absolute preservation. We are fortunate not to be displaced from our territory, this was also due to historical and geographical reasons in the past -- The British policy of non-intervention and the Inner Line Regulation Act, etc, followed by the Nehruvian policy of keeping the region safe from the influence of more dominant societies until they had more time to adapt, etc. Today Non locals coming from abroad and from other parts of the country require Inner Line permits and Restricted Area Permits(RAP) . This has come into focus recently -- whether it is still relevant especially as the state wants to project itself as a tourist destination. I, personally believe in change -- as a form of evolving, but then a lot depends on our leaders if change for a whole society is for the better and whether it is made as an informed choice. Changes are happening -- religious, political, socio-economic. At the same time feelings of insecurity or an increasing gap between the beneficiaries of change and those left out, vis-à-vis access to education, health, opportunities, employment, empowerment for women, can bring on a militant reaction against change and a return to ‘pure’ indigenous antecedents that becomes moral policing and vigilantism. It will be good if the benefits of change as modern societies at par with the rest of the world can come about with less conflict. Here civil society and media attention and awareness will come into play, and good governance. After all, what should government give it’s citizens? Good policies.

The interviewer Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal is Senior Lecturer in English at Feroze Gandhi College, Rae Bareli, (U.P.).

Poetry of Immense Grief: An Interview with Kamla Kapur

2008-09-02T17:49:00.001-07:00

Poetry of Immense Grief: An Interview with Kamla Kapur
Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal

Kamla Kapur is a sensitive poetic voice, who lives half the year in a remote Kullu Valley in the Himalayas and the other half in California. Her poetry and short stories have been published in the original English and in Hindi and Punjabi translation in several journals and magazines. In 1977, she won the prestigious The Sultan Padamsee Award for Playwriting in English. Her full length play, The Curlew's Cry, was produced by Yatrik, New Delhi. A Punjabi translation of her play, Clytemnestra was produced by The Company in Chandigarh. Her award-winning Zanana, was produced at the National School of Drama, New Delhi. Seven of her plays were published in Enact, New Delhi.
Since 1985, Ms Kapur has been commuting between the USA and India. Her full length plays, Hamlet's Father, Kepler Dreams, and Clytemnestra were showcased at the Marin Shakespeare Festival in San Francisco, Gas Lamp Quarter Theatre in San Diego, and Dramatic Risks Theatre Group in New York, respectively. She was selected by the New Mexico Arts Division as the Playwright in Residence for two years. She has recently completed her first novel, The Autobiography of Saint Padma the Whore, a chapter of which was published by in Our Feet Walk The Sky (Aunt Lute Press, Berkeley, California, USA), and a fantasy novel, Malini in Whirlwood.
Ms. Kapur has published two books of poetry: the critically acclaimed, As A Fountain In A Garden (Tarang Press.Del Mar,CA,USA-Hemkunt Publishers Private, Ltd., India, 2005) and Radha Sings (Rolling Drum and Dark Child Press, USA, 1987).
Ms. Kapur was also on the faculty of Grossmont College in San Diego, California for 18 years and taught creative writing courses in play writing, poetry, creative non-fiction, fiction, and courses in mythology, Shakespeare, and Women's Literature. Kamla Kapur was also a freelance writer for The Times of India, The Hindustan Times and The Tribune; she had taught English Literature at Delhi University too. This multi-faceted literary genius talks to Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal in an illuminating email interview.

NKA: Pain is of paramount importance in As A Fountain In A Garden. For example, the expression “and left me/ here, / with this absence, this gif/ of grief” emotionally presents a glimpse of the seething volcano of grief inside. Has the production of the just-mentioned poetry collection helped you in the release of your emotions of grief, anxiety and pain? I suppose, by the creation of this collection, you must have found some release, as literature is cathartic and therapeutic. What do you say?
KK: I don’t know how I would have survived the experience of my husband’s suicide without processing it through poetry. It’s not to say that people who don’t write poetry don’t survive, or survive well, but without the outlet of poetry I might have fossilized in my grief, or developed a chronic habit of sorrow or even bitterness, and certainly a debilitating regret and guilt. Poetry that is not merely release – crying is also that – is an adventure of the soul in its journey towards itself. It demands an utter honesty of experience and expression without which writing remains only cathartic and does not touch the depth at which it becomes art. The discipline of crafting a poem with patience and honesty gave me the perspective and the detachment to pursue a subject that was very painful for me. Making art in this sense is the highest spiritual activity of humans, for it takes one through suffering beyond it.
NKA: Besides this despair, caused by the husband’s suicide, are there certain other factors too, responsible for poetry in you?
KK: I was writing poetry long before Donald’s suicide. Despair is not the only subject for poetry, though the passion of despair is always strong enough to make poetry well up if one is so inclined. Who can tell what the original impulses for poetry are? It is a mystery, though some causes, superficial at best, can be isolated. From the time I wrote my first poem at the age of sixteen, I loved the intense introspection and inversion, the dialogue with my soul through words that the experience afforded. I think the impulse to make poetry – to express one’s inmost self, to connect and commune with the universe that is bounded within our souls, to give words to the amorphous stuff of our experience and thereby own it in some ways -- is common to all human beings, a basic instinct; what distinguishes the poet is the discipline and the life-long dedication to the craft which allows her to express the inexpressible.
I write in many genres but poetry – which goes deeper than any other modes – is nearest to my heart.
NKA: What are the important literary works of Donald? How will you describe him as a poet?
KK: Most of Donald’s work is still in manuscript form, and though he was published in many poetry journals he was never published in book form. He has a long poem called Trace which is as fine as the best of poetry. He combined narrative and lyrics and was very influenced by Ezra Pound, who he considered his poetry Guru.
One day when I have the leisure I want to put a book of his poems into the world. It is the fate of most poets to live and die in obscurity. Unfortunately good poetry requires a highly educated, introspective, sensitized and aware sensibility, which is not very common and getting more so in our busy and fast-paced world. This has always been so, and may never really change.
NKA: How has your association with the Kullu valley of Himachal Pradesh assisted you in your career as a creative poet? The glittering scenic beauty of the place must have provided your poetic heart with a lot of literary fodder. Please say something.
KK: I wouldn’t say it has helped my career, though it has certainly helped in forming, or rather, in-forming me as a writer. Our home here in the Kullu Valley is a retreat from life in the city which tends to be, whether one likes it or not, anxiety-ridden. We don’t even realize how the noise and the crowds affect our psyches, drain and devitalize us. Being here – we live six months out of every year here in this remote and beautiful valley --, being connected with nature, its beauty and changing moods on a daily basis, helps us (my husband, Payson R. Stevens, is also a writer and an artist) to connect with ourselves more than with people, and allows us a contemplative and reflective life which is always best for creativity, for me especially. Though I have written some poetry here, and hope to write more in the future when my other writing projects are complete, I have in the last two years completed two books, GANESHA GOES TO LUNCH, Classics from Mystic India, and PILGRIMAGE TO PARADISE, Sufi Tales from Rumi. The first book was published in 2007 by Mandala (USA), and the second will be published in 2009 by Mandala and Penguin India. But I must add that I am not dependent on geography for creativity. Given time and solitude, I can write wherever I am.
NKA: You have been commuting between India and USA since 1985. Any special reason for this movement? How has this mobility affected you (positively/ negatively) as a creative writer? Please make a statement.
KK: Till 2006 I was teaching English (Composition, Literature, Creative Writing) in a college in California, and I would come to India very often – sometimes taking a semester off, during my sabbatical, and summer and winter holidays. I reduced my workload to 50% in 2001, and my husband and I began to look for a place to settle in India for half the year. My husband is American and we have up till now not wanted to shift to India permanently. We began work on our house in the Kullu Valley in 2003 and have continued to come here since then. I love this double life that we lead for many reasons, many of them quite personal. But I feel it has brought me into contact with India which is fertile in terms of subject matter. It has allowed me to explore my Indian-ness further. I am currently working on a novel that is set both in India and the USA. The characters are both Indian and Western (though mainly Indian). This double life used to be hard, but in coping with it I have learned some essential lessons – being flexible, being at home wherever I am, being detached from place and, in a way, time. This shunting back and forth has also compressed my time, put boundaries around it, so I am very conscious of its passing, and thus more disciplined about writing.
NKA: As an awakened Indian writer living in the States, what do you think are the major tangling problems faced by Indian Diaspora in USA?
KK: I don’t know how ‘awakened’ I am! Certainly it continues to be my endeavor and my passion. I can only speak for myself, though many books have come out in the subject that I haven’t read. The characters in my current novel are not “Diaspora” characters as such, though they are characters with some of its concerns, especially the concerns of first generation Indians in America: missing India, missing family, missing the “rawnuk,” finding it difficult to cope with a culture that puts so much emphasis on individuality when people in India are more used to communal lives. The subject is immense and would take more time to explicate than I have here.
NKA: What are the major cultural differences between America and India?
KK: Now this is a huge question that I cannot even begin to address in an interview like this. It would take tomes! If I had to isolate just one of the differences (quite arbitrarily), and deal with it very superficially in a paragraph, I would say it has to do with the way family continues to be of prime importance in India while the West, still going through the growing pains of individuality, is moving more and more in the direction of individuation, a journey that Indians haven’t even embarked upon yet. But global capitalization is a unifying force and we are already seeing its effects on family life in India. It is inevitable, though not quite imminent. And with this difference comes a whole host of different ways of living and being.

NKA: As a woman writer, did you feel any problems in your literary career? How will you describe the two cultural groups—Eastern and Western—in their approach towards a female author?
KK: The difficulties in my writing career have had nothing to do with my gender. If anything, this is a very fertile period for women’s voices to be heard. We have female writers whose voices have reached the global stage. My difficulties were entirely my own. I think both cultures are open to female voices, and about time, too.
NKA: In your long career, you have been a teacher, journalist and a creative writer. Out of these, which one is closest to your heart? Or, do you find some inner relationship among these various roles? Please explicate.
KK: I have given up the first two roles to focus on the last. As I get older I have limited energy and time. I had to prioritize. I gave up journalism first, because I did not want to be writing edible, fleeting print. Teaching was far more congenial in that I taught subjects I myself have learned immensely from. But it was time consuming, and now I am happily focusing on writing alone. I am also moving towards more yoga, meditation, and exercise, and reading a lot.
NKA: What will you say about your two novels--The Autobiography of Saint Padma the Whore and Malini in Whirlwood?
KK: The Autobiography of Saint Padma the Whore is the fictional story of a woman’s quest for love and freedom. Spanning three decades, from the 60's to the 90's, it moves between India, the USA, and Saudi Arabia. It is loosely structured on the myth of Ulysses and Penelope, less as a parallel than as a contrast. An abyss of time separates Padma and Penelope, yet they share some important connections. While waiting for their mates, both weave tapestries, the former with yarn, and the latter with words; both long for a kind of partner that is truly an equal. Their stories serve as portraits of artists as women.

Malini in Whirlwood is the first volume of a trilogy. Malini, a young girl disenchanted and bored with the normal world, succeeds in becoming a character in a fantastic story book whose author is a magician. She finds herself aboard a magic Red Boat in a place called Whirlwood where the laws of physics do not apply, and time and space are warped. She meets the members of her crew who are strange beings called Fractidians. She doesn’t quite know if they are her allies or her enemies, but each of them, whether negative or positive, teaches her a great deal. Nono teaches her to endure, Thimble the ethic and value of work, Fluff the necessity for fun, Ender hope and courage, and Tozy trust in the sometimes tortuous, meandering paths of her adventures. In the end Malini, transformed by her experiences, returns to the ordinary world, ready to participate in it while maintaining a close connection with the fecund world of fantasy and myth.

NKA: Tell something about Ganesha Goes To Lunch and Radha Sings.
KK: Like myths around the world, Ganesha Goes to Lunch, Classics from Mystic India are traditional Indian stories which offer both a window into a fascinating culture that has endured for thousands of years, and a code for living that can be applied to the modern world. Kamla K. Kapur's GANESHA GOES TO LUNCH: Classics from Mystic India (Mandala Publishing, $14.95 trade paperback, April 27, 2007), is an offering of 24 insightful tales. "They are reminders from spaceless eternity of the fabric of which we are made. They awaken us, and help us live with, and within, the mystery that is the matrix of our being."

Six one-page introductions to the sections give easy backgrounds to the major gods in Indian mythology. The myths themselves, recreated and embellished, reveal timeless insights into the human condition. Shiva and Parvati’s wedding shows a love that includes, but transcends the battle of the sexes. Vishnu’s incarnation as a boar demonstrates the strength of the bonds of attachment that even gods can’t escape. Brahma’s entrapment in the web of Maya leads him to free himself with his mind. Krishna’s compassion for a little bird ensures that creation continues even within the destruction of war. Markandeya’s fall out of Vishnu’s mouth into the ocean of chaos, humbles him in the face of the mystery of life. These are a few of the fascinating, immensely readable and instructive tales included in the collection.

Radha Sings are contemporary, semi-erotic poems written from the point of view of a modern Radha to her Krishnas.
NKA: What are your future writing projects?
KK: I am currently in the beginning stages of writing two novels.

The interviewer Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal is Senior Lecturer in English at Feroze Gandhi College, Rae Bareli, (U.P.), India. His interviews with a number of contemporary literary figures, as well as his research papers, book reviews, articles and poems have appeared in publications, including The Vedic Path, Quest, Pegasus, IJOWLAC, The Journal, Promise, The Raven Chronicles, Yellow Bat Review, Carved in Sand, Turning the Tide, Blue Collar Review, Bridge-in-Making, Confluence, Poetcrit, Kafla Intercontinental, Hyphen and South Asian Review. His book on Stephen Gill is to be published shortly.

Poetry from the Innermost Recesses of the Heart: An Interview with D. C. Chambial

2008-09-02T17:48:00.001-07:00

Poetry from the Innermost Recesses of the Heart: An Interview with D. C. Chambial

Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal

D. C. Chambial, one of the significant contemporary poets from Himachal Pradesh, started writing poetry right from his school days. He has won the prestigious Michael Madhusudan Academy Award for his poetry. He has six books of poetry to his credit. A number of students have written their Ph.D. and M. Phil. dissertations on his works. His poems have been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, German, French, Greek and, Bengali languages. He also edits Poetcrit, a bi-annual journal of literary criticism and contemporary poetry. This poetic genius, who is called ‘a very promising poet’ by Prof. Shiv K. Kumar, is engaged by Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal in an illuminating interview.

NKA: You are quite a prolific poet with six collections. In your poetic corpus, do you think all the poems are from the innermost recesses of your heart? Or, at some times, is head more dominant than the heart? What are your views about the origin of poetry in a poet? I think poetry is the bubbling of the excessive emotions in the poet’s heart. But, if a poet is highly versatile, does every poetic creation come out of the heart? Is this process possible throughout the career of a poet? Or do you think at some moments, poetry is created by intellect and scientific reasoning of the poet? Your ideas, please.
DCC: Once again, you have also asked the same question which other interviewers have often asked. These collections have come out after I took to writing poetry about four decades ago. Then I was still in my High School. The poems which were included in our syllabus, their themes and music attracted me to compose my poems. Since then there has been no looking back.
Yes, I very much believe that the poems evolve from the deep recesses of one's heart. Absolutely, I agree with your observation that "poetry is the bubbling of excessive emotions". So is the case with me. All these poems have come up from the deeps of my heart. I have often heard people saying that poems can be written at any time about anything. Some workshops are also organized by some people/universities, though little in India but very frequent overseas, about creative writing. In my case, some idea, word, or thought strikes mind and it sets into action in association with heart and poems are born spontaneously. There have been moments when I tried to write without any emotional leaven, the result has been futile. On the contrary, when supported by emotional back up, I have composed even 3-4 poems within very short span of time. The image/picture appears on the canvas of mind, hand moves on paper and the result is a poem or poems. Whenever I have deferred composition, because of fatigue or ennui for some later time, it has always completely disappeared from my mind and I could never capture that idea/image with the same vigour again. When emotionally charged, I have composed about a dozen poems within a week: two to three at a time. There has been a non-fecund period ranging over several months. There is no bar to imagination, yet mostly the spring and summer months have been more fertile in my case. As the winter begins to fall, my creativity also becomes passive.
Creative process, in my case, has always been like a river flowing without any pause. No time to think anything besides concentrating on the images that flash upon my mind. This process is so continuous that sometimes pen lags behind the movement of the mind, but once the image has been captured, the words can be taken care of after finishing the composition. Later on when I go through the poem the whole image reappears and the missing word/words are given their due place.
Poetic creation, in my case, always comes out of the heart. It has happened with me till date. About future, I can't say. However, I can say it with the potency of certitude that so far I have never composed any poem only with my head.
Intellect and scientific reasoning do play their role but later on. When one sits to revise after composition in one's leisure and if one also happens to be a critic then one weighs the composition with intellectual and scientific parameters.
NKA: Why do you write poetry? Is it to reform the society or for self-pleasure? Or, is there no reason in the creation of poetry? I suppose, it comes quite naturally and spontaneously to a poetic heart. What do you think?
DCC: Why do I write poetry? Ha! Ha! Ha! Have you ever asked any prospective mother/woman why does she give birth to her child? Poems are poets' children. Poet is the mother. As a mother can't help giving birth to her child in her womb, likewise, a poet also feels restless unless he has delivered his poem conceived by some image/spectacle/idea, matured in mind and nourished by heart. Since I started writing poetry, my idea about creative writing has been out and out procreative.
The creative process is spontaneous without any inkling of society. However, it is the pleasure that one gets while creating remains supreme. One forgets everything else even one's own self. One merges with the thought, with the image and work of creation is the result. Social reform, though it is one endemic in the process, if the work aims at it, remains subaltern objective. Reformation by poetry is one of its aim. Creation seen from the viewpoint of the artist gives joy/pleasure first to the artist, at the time of composition, and second, to the readers later on.
Yes, verily. Poetry, no, all work of art, comes quite naturally and spontaneously to a poet/artist. Everything is poetic provided we have that intuitive eye to see through the scheme of things in nature. Tragedy and comedy are the two sides of life: they, when viewed with discerning eye, also manifest the inherent poetry in it. Poetry is not only a composition, metrical or based on its rhythm, but in its totality and brings within its compass the whole creation, animate or inanimate.

NKA: Why do release your poetic creations in English language? Can an alien language express the native experience spontaneously? How will the natives of Himachal Pradesh—not well versed in English language—comprehend the poetic upsurge of your heart? And how will the English speaking people of alien culture/ other countries understand the poetry suffused with Indian mythological references? My point is that Indian poetry in English suffers from a terrible lack of readership. It can not be easily comprehended both by the ordinary Indians and Englishmen. It is a poetry to be enjoyed, chiefly by the elite class of Indian metros. What do you say?
DCC: Why to write in English, an alien language? To me language does not belong to a particular place, confined within geographical boundaries; or to specific group/community of people who have learnt it in the lap of their mothers, but to those who can use it in their communication whether oral or written. Good language is always learnt whether by the native or alien speakers.
So far as the natives of Himachal Pradesh [or any part of our country] are concerned , a writer writes to give vent to his own emotions and ideology without caring for whether majority will understand or not. Even if the idea comes home to a handful of men and women it is far better than to scatter it among the multitude who fail to grasp its quintessence. [So far as English, as a language, is concerned, there is mushrooming of English medium schools; every Tom, Dick and Harry wants his children to be educated in such schools.] When an artist paints something, does he care for how many of his neighbours or countrymen will be able to comprehend/appreciate it? So, it is a relative question. Those who know will appreciate. Similarly, those, who can read, explore and interpret, (not paraphrase) a poem, will certainly appreciate it. People in Himachal, as elsewhere, do read, comprehend, and appreciate my poetry.
When it comes to English speaking people of alien cultures of other countries, the basic tenets, the truths of life everywhere remain the same, from prehistoric times to the present technologically most advanced age; the technology is ever advancing. It makes little difference to an artist/poet/writer. How do we, in India, while reading/studying the poetry of British/American poets, comprehend them? Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Browning, Hardy, Whitman or Frost, I think never been to India, yet we study, explore and comprehend them as well as their countrymen do. Their works have British or American ethos and mythological references. Similarly, those Indian writers who are being studied in British or/and American universities, as a part of their curricula, are being comprehended. I construe that Indian ethos or mythological references do no stand in the way of understanding the works. My foreign friends understand my poems as well as the people of Himachal or India. Do you have any qualm?
Readership. Yes, readership is certainly less but that does not hinder the imagination of a poet/artist. This idea for whom or how many one is creating/writing never enters the mind of the artist. One creates because one has to create. Nothing can impede creation. Here, I recall that all poems of Emily Dickinson were found in her box after her death. She did not tell any body about them when she was alive. It is only after her poems and their worth came to be known, her poetry is being explored and enjoyed by the earnest students of literature as well as the general reader alike.
Any work of art is understood and interpreted only by the elite class or a few only. How many of the common men know or comprehend Greek, Roman, or Byzantine architecture; the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, or Raphael; Webster, Shaw, Ibsen, Eliot, Rimbaud, Patanjali, Bhartrihari,or Kalidas? It is always one's learning and interest that matter. A man of less academic qualification can be interested in the classics, while even a doctorate may be disinterested. … Interest and one's inclination are the foremost ingredients to enjoy any work of art. There have been writers/poets, like Kabir and Tulsidas who never went to school, yet they are everyman's writers. While Eliot, Pound, Yeats and Sri Aurobindo are the centre of interest to the only few. …
NKA: What is the significance of nature symbols in your poetry?
DCC: Symbols play significant role in poetry. In poetry, the poet does not state something directly in plain words; if one does so, it becomes flat. The poet uses economy of words and says, what he wants to say, indirectly; then leaves it to the imagination of the reader to capture his point of view. It has often been noticed that various readers/critics interpret the same poem/work of art differently. This imparts kaleidoscopic beauty to the poem or work of art. Herein lies the beauty of any creation. Why diamond is held so valuable? Certainly, for its quality of dispersion of light seen differently from different angles.
Symbols, on the one hand, impart economy to the work, and, on the other, imbue it with plurisignation and ambiguity [Philip Wheelright & William Empson]; the charm of any poem lies in its mystery and/or ambiguity. The pains, that one puts in in demystifying this riddle, give immense joy to the student/reader in unravelling that mystery or making sense of that ambiguity.
Human life is integral with nature. They complement each other. One is incomplete without the other. One cannot be severed from the other. Thus, nature symbols go down in my poetry as naturally as "leaves to a tree". I think it hard to live in the absence of nature. I think poetry jejune without nature. I live in the lap of nature and cannot estrange myself from it. Do you remember Wordsworth used to wander in nature whenever he got time to be one with it, to enjoy it, to know it? While using nature symbols, I, in my consciousness, thaw into nature and become one with it. Transcendental mysticism also teaches so. Animate and inanimate all are one in the Greater Consciousness.
NKA: Titles of some of your collections are highly symbolic. For example, mark the titles-- Broken Images, The Cargoes of the Bleeding Hearts, Gyrating Hawks and Sinking Roads and Before the Petals Unfold. They are steeped in deep symbolism. What is the role of symbolism in poetry? Do you think that poetry is a curved or pseudo statement, where artistic excellence can be achieved through indirect communication of symbols and myths? Please make a point.
DCC: Yes. I do agree with you. Most of the titles of my poems and almost all collections are symbolic. These symbols, particularly for me, give pleasure. They make the reader sit up and think about the exact thing that the poet wants to suggest by using such symbols. In their absence, I feel, the reader remains relaxed because what a writer is saying goes directly to his mind. Symbols not only make the reader alert, insinuate him to track the poet's thought and derive pleasure from that. It is a basic human nature that when one gets something after hard-work, one feels greater sense of joy and satisfaction than what one gets when everything comes easily.
In this manner, I think, symbols give more delight and the bliss that results from it and play a vital role in fulfilling one major objective of giving pleasure. I personally do not relish a direct or flat poetry.
So far as calling symbols a "pseudo statement" is concerned, the very nature of language is "curved" or "pseudo". In all languages of the world, all words signify the things/emotions/associations for which they are used. For example "Maranda" or "Rae Bareilly" are the words [sound symbols] used to suggest these two places; these could easily be given or could have also been given to some other places. But the sounds, when spoken/heard, and their written forms have since long been associated with these places and such sounds or written forms immediately bring to mind only these two places having, thus, become "conventional" or "public" symbols. "A symbol, in the broadest sense of the term, is anything which signifies something else; in this sense all words are symbols" (MH Abrams).
It is, positively, an artistic device to achieve "artistic excellence" as you have said. It is not the only artistic device but it is without doubt one of the other artistic devices used by artists to attain creative brilliance and quality in their art besides imparting pleasure to the artist at the time of creation and later to the reader/audience. Use of myths, allusions – literary or historical – similes, metaphors are some other devices used to realize this effect. Each artist/poet uses his own device with his own preference and liking. As no two individuals are alike, similarly the styles and devices that various artists use differentiate them from one another and impart individual character to their work. This is how I look at it.

NKA: How will you describe your Haiku poems? Are they close to your heart? Are they suitable for Indian readers? Please comment.
DCC: Haiku poems: yes, I do compose haiku poems but very rarely. There are poets, like Dr Ameeruddin, Dr. R. K. Singh, and Mrs. Urmila Kaul besides others, who compose haiku poems copiously. Haiku writing, basically a Japanese genre of poetry, is epigrammatic in manner and describes an instantaneous response of the poet. More and more Indian poets are following it. As an editor, I receive so many haiku poems from so many poets who divide any thought, at times, even a sentence into three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables and call it haiku. If one wants to write haiku, one has to imbibe the very spirit, besides technique, of the haiku. POETCRIT has published articles on haiku in its some past issues with an aim of apprising its readers with haiku.
So far as haiku composition is concerned, I am trying to learn how to write one. Sometimes, I, myself, feel that I have strayed away from the spirit of haiku and failed to furnish a perfect one.
Haiku is an imported, yet important, technique of composing poems. Certainly, it will take its time to get home in India among readers and writers. It is only the beginning. Maturity is to come with time and practice. Now, if we remember, it is after a practice of about 180 years that Indo-English writing has become Indian English writing. So haiku, too, I am sure, will attain native colour in India. Suitability does not matter much. When the readers will get excellent haiku poems, they will like them. By the way, who does not like something, good, something beautiful and something true? The spirit of satyam, shivam, sundram is always in demand.
I have always been optimistic in everything. Change is the law of nature. "Old order changeth yielding place to new …." otherwise even good things of this world would become stale and monotonous. It is the change that keeps interest alive not only in art but also in life.
NKA: As editor of the prestigious journal Poetcrit, what do you think are the major problems, faced by the creative poets and critics in India?
DCC: Creative poets and critics, I think, don't have any problem, so far as publication in magazines and journals is concerned. Editors only seek subscription to keep their journals alive. There is only one criterion that poems and critical writings should conform to the publication standards of such magazines and journals.
NKA: What will you say about the publisher-author relationship in India? Is it cordial? Or do you think that there exists a sort of troubled anxiety in that relationship? If there are some problems in that union, what are the factors responsible of the growth of them? Will you suggest some remedies?
DCC: Publisher-author relationship has never been cordial. Publishers demand money from the author, who is not so well off. Second, they do not accept matter for publication on its worth but on the popularity of the name of the author(s). One thing, these publishers should keep in mind, that all those renowned names were not born famous.
There are some problems, mainly on the part of the publishers: they should, in stead of flatly refusing the new authors or asking for huge sums of money from them, weigh and consider the worth of the matter submitted for publication. If there are certain flaws or short comings that should be pointed out to the author(s), then they (authors) will not feel affronted and try to improve their worth. In case the matter is worthy of publication, it should be published. Here, I can cite the example of Mulk Raj Anand's world famous story 'The Lost Child' was turned down by seven magazines but was later considered one of the best stories of the world. His first novel, Untouchable, whose publication was rejected by 19 publishers for more than four years and the 20th also accepted it only after E. M. Forster agreed to write Preface to it. After publication, they became classics of their own kind. It is universal problem and not confined to India only. As we, Indian writers, face this it in India, we think it is only Indian problem.
The problem with publishers is that they, first of all, say yes and demand huge amount from the author for the publication of the matter/book saying that this amount is only a part of the total expenditure worked out. With that amount the author himself can publish the book. Those writers who make payments after being lured of after-sale royalty, they either never get that or get only a fraction. The publisher enjoys the lion's share and deceives the author.
NKA: In the contemporary era, INTERNET has entered into every sphere of life. Can this wonder of Information Technology provide some avenues for the authors? An author can easily get his work published on some websites and blogs. What are your views about this e-publishing? Do people take it seriously? Please explicate.
DCC: Yes, it is now beyond doubt that the present times may well be termed as an era of Information Technology Or, precisely, an age of INTERNET. Well said, now an author can publish his works on websites and blogs. But, how many of us are able to do so? There are places where there is no access of this technology and where there is, it suffers because the service providers care only to charge their fee and bother little to provide quality service.
So far, I think, most of the authors are not well versed in this technique. If they ever try their hand at it, problems associated with computer hamper their work and dampen their spirit. However, the younger generation feels quite aflame about it. I personally feel, in the future e-publishing will completely take over this job.
Nonetheless, one feels that the joy one gets from books can never be got from e-publishing keeping in view the handicaps associated with it. One can pick up any book at one's leisure at any time which may not be possible with e-publishing. Times are moving ahead and who would like to lag behind?
NKA: What are your views about contemporary literary criticism in India? Is it quality one? Or, is it merely repetitive? If it has some originality, can you mention those points to the readers along with the names of some of creative critics?
DCC: Present literary criticism has dwindled down to be repetitive one. Yet, quality criticism is not completely obliterated. Those who believe in quality are silently doing their job. Those who want to earn name by publishing a large number of papers/books do not hesitate even to borrow ideas from other critics and, at times, even shamelessly copy pages from other critics. I know a large number of those belonging to both categories, but it would be wise not to divulge.
NKA: Are the syllabi of English Studies in India proper? Should not we include some regional authors in English translation at the U.G. and P.G. levels? Your views about the syllabi of English Studies in India.
DCC: I do agree with you that regional authors in translation be included in the syllabi at the U.G. and P.G. levels. English literature does not now necessarily mean the literature of Britain or America. Where ever, it is being written in English it deserves its due recognition. New authors of Indian English genres should also be included. There is no dearth of quality in Indian English literature. Indian English has come off age. It is as good as other Indian languages. I think that the syllabi at all levels be revised to include good Indian authors whether original in English or in translations. There should not be any discrimination between author of one language and the other. Author is author. He must be honoured by giving him his due place. Literature by Indians, irrespective of its language, is all Indian literature as one.

The interviewer Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal is Senior Lecturer in English at Feroze Gandhi College, Rae Bareli, (U.P.), India. His interviews with a number of contemporary literary figures, as well as his research papers, book reviews, articles and poems have appeared in publications, including The Vedic Path, Quest, Pegasus, IJOWLAC, The Journal, Promise, The Raven Chronicles, Yellow Bat Review, Carved in Sand, Turning the Tide, Blue Collar Review, Bridge-in-Making, Confluence, Poetcrit, Kafla Intercontinental, Hyphen and South Asian Review. His book on Stephen Gill is to be published shortly.

Unearthing of Indian Writing in English: Conversation with Christopher Rollason and Ludmila Volná

2008-09-02T17:47:00.000-07:00

Unearthing of Indian Writing in English: Conversation with Christopher Rollason and Ludmila Volná
Dr Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal

Dr Christopher Rollason is a British national living in France. He obtained his Ph.D. from York University (England), with a dissertation on Edgar Allan Poe. For eight years up to 1987 he was a member of the Department of Anglo-American Studies at the Faculty of Letters of Coimbra University (Portugal). Dr Rollason has worked in recent years in various contexts -- institutional contacts, conferences, publications, etc. with the following universities: Surrey and Manchester (England), Caen (France), Bologna (Italy), Vigo and Córdoba (Spain), San Marcos (Lima, Peru), and Kakatiya University (Warangal), CIEFL (Hyderabad) and IIT Kanpur, all in India. In March 2006 he was a Visiting Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi). He is a member of AEDEAN (the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies). He is also a founder member of the Spanish Association for Interdisciplinary Studies on India (AEEII).
Dr Christopher Rollason has published widely on Indian Writing in English, on authors such as Raja Rao, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy and Manju Kapur. He has edited and refereed for several Indian journals.
Dr Ludmila Volná has written her PhD thesis on the representations of India in Indian writing in English and teaches courses on IWE at Charles University in Prague. She conducts her research at IMAGER, a research group of the University of Paris XII and has published on Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Shashi Tharoor, Raja Rao, Anita Desai and others and extensively on R. K. Narayan. She has also presented her results as invited lectures and at international conferences in India, in the United States and in a considerable number of European countries.
Dr Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal talks to these two Western scholars of Indian literature in a scholarly way. The interview focuses mainly on the issues of translation, relevance of IWE, the changing phase of English Studies in India, and several other general topics related to literature.

NKA: Where does poetry / imaginative literature originate from? Poetry comes as naturally to a poet as leaves to the branches. This instinctive activity cannot be forced on anyone. In a way, creative literature is the outpouring / vomiting of personal emotions. Wordsworth had held the same view: 'poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.' Do you agree to this assumption? Or do you consider the role of intellect/ logic in the modification of the literary text more important? Or, should a poet adopt 'the middle path', choosing the best of both the worlds?
LV: Poetry certainly comes naturally to the poet as an outpouring of his/her emotions, it is a 'spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.' But this is not necessarily in contradiction with the workings of intellect. In my opinion the character of the creation has also much to do with the intellectual background of the creator. But this is not to say that in the process of creation the intellect of the author has to be put to work consciously. Rather, an imaginative piece of writing can simply reflect the internal make-up of its author (which includes emotions and intellect) in a less or more complex manner and can be entirely spontaneous.
CR: I suggest the middle path. As I see it, the lyric poem – images, emotions, sensations – emanates from the unconscious. Yet at the same time the poem is a piece of made work, a construction in language. Edgar Allan Poe highlighted this "madeness" of the poem his essay "The Philosophy of Composition", which explains in rational terms how he wrote went about writing "The Raven", a poem of desire and death steeped in unconscious material. The poet I see, then, as both seer and maker.

NKA: If creative literature is the release of the inner emotions, is not Indian Writing in English marred by creative and intellectual dishonesty? Poetry, an instinctive adventure, emerges at the level of highest emotional upsurge. The language of that instinctive pattern cannot be an alien one. I think the deepest emotions are represented in literature of one's native language. If something has touched an author really, he or she can express it only in his or her first language. A foreign or second language is concerned with our mental wellbeing; it is not something emotional. Suppose my hand is burnt, what will be the medium of my expression? Poetry can flourish in one's language of emotional make-up. So, if an Indian English writer is creating poetry in English, how can it be spontaneous? How can the author claim to be following the tradition of sage Valmiki, in whom poetry emerged without the slightest whiff of artificiality on seeing the killing of the Kraunch birds?
LV: First, let me say that I entirely agree with Raja Rao's statement that the English language is not alien to the Indians. It ceased to be alien as you, Indians, have appropriated it in the same way (and perhaps even more so) as anyone else who is not a native speaker of English and has come to work with/in English. I am persuaded that a second language can become a means of expressions for emotions, even very deep emotions, and I believe that it greatly depends on the individual poet's situation, attitudes and preferences. For example it may depend on to what kind of experience or feelings the given language is closely related for that person. Here I am speaking from my own experience. Being a Czech native speaker living in France and working in English, I feel as most natural for myself to speak Czech to the Czechs and even to my cats while when writing poetry (including that on my cats) I can only do it in English, or occasionally in French - when it comes to a phenomenon characteristically related to my life in France. Never in Czech. Apart from that, I would only very reluctantly accept to write a scholarly paper in Czech. I simply do not feel like it. That does not mean that I do not love my mother tongue, on the contrary, I feel most intimate towards it. Nevertheless, I cannot help writing, both creative writing and scholarly papers, almost exclusively in English.
CR: There are IWE writers who have had all of their education in English and who describe English as coming more naturally to them than their native language. Surely the point is to write in the language one masters best. Then there are also bilingual poets such as Jayanta Mahapatra, who has published in both English and Oriya.

NKA: Indian English literature is soaked in Indian myths and traditions. The authors use numberless mythological references. My question is: whom do the Indo-Anglians target as their readers? Due to the over-use of Indian references, sometimes they may become unintelligible to the western readers. How will a westerner understand the allusions from classical Indian mythology and native ethos? I am citing a few verses from Sarojini Naidu's poetry to explicate my point:
To Indra's golden-flowering groves
Where streams immortal flow,
Or to sad Yama's silent Courts
Engulfed in lampless woe,
Where'er thy subtle flute I hear
Beloved, I must go! (qtd. in Iyengar 218)

Even, Indians cannot be the readers of this type of literature, as most of the Indians are not well-read in the English language. In a way, the readership of Indo-Anglian literature is very limited. It has become a literature of the elite class. It is accessed only by those Indians who are fortunate enough to get an English-language education. So, is not this literature a mere plaything in the hands of the upper-class people, who use it as a thing of fashion or snobbery? Is it not far removed from the masses? Is it not read only by a society of drawing room idlers, casually?
LV: Let me start my answer with a question: do the Indian authors writing in English NEED to target some particular group of readers? If they use myths while writing in English it is perhaps because they cannot do otherwise, the myths are a part of their culture. Their works are spontaneous creations which come out of the innermost wells of their beings. That precisely makes the charm of their works, Indianness mediated through the English language! It is the task of the reader to try and understand as much as possible the work he or she is reading, not the task of the writer to make his or her work one hundred percent accessible at all costs. It is an acknowledged fact that the degree of 'intelligibility'/understandabilty of a literary work of art depends on the general culture and the education of the reader. And does a good work of fiction or poem not become a means of instruction itself, especially within Indian culture? So the Western reader gets not only entertainment but also information on India and the Indian reader receives perhaps a stimulus to learn English better. Let then the Western reader become acquainted with Indian culture and the Indian reader become literate in English. And why, after all, should the Indian literary works written in English not be translated into Hindi and Indian regional languages, especially if they are translated into other non-Indian languages?
CR: There can certainly be a problem of accessibility of IWE works to non-Indian readers who are not already immersed in Indian culture, Raja Rao's "The Serpent and the Rope" would not be immediately comprehensible to all and sundry non-Indians. Still, the reader can take a text's Indian cultural references as connoting a general "Indianness" without seeking to know each and every denoted meaning. Meanwhile some Indian classical texts – the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana – and hence some classical references - are much better known abroad than others. In the Sarojini Naidu poem you quote, I myself recognize the Indra and Yama allusions, but admit that not all non-Indian readers will. Regarding Indian readers of IWE texts in India, let us not forget that English is the only language used in India that is of national reach. A Hindi text risks being understood by few in Tamil Nadu or Kerala: this is less true of an IWE text, since English is more widely understood in those states than Hindi. Nor do I think the pan-Indian English-speaking community is that small: the university-educated are too wide a group to be airbrushed away as "the upper class". It is also the case that an IWE text can be made available to non-English-speaking Indian readers in, say, Marathi or Malayalam translation. Cases in point are - as regards IWE texts translated into various Indian languages - Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" and Vikram Chandra's "Sacred Games".

NKA: What should be the language of one's creativity—one's native language or a second/alien one?
LV: For a large number of writers this would of course be the mother tongue but in principle it can be any language expressing by the means of which one feels at ease, that which does not feel alien.
CR: In most cases it will of course be one's first language. However, some people are genuinely bilingual and therefore free to choose.

NKA: What should be done to promote the literature in native regional languages?
LV: The translation work cannot be overestimated here. To translate between Indian languages and into English and other, non-Indian languages. As far as I know it has been the Sahitya Akademi's prerogative for several years to promote the former.
CR: Translate, translate, translate! Into English, into Hindi, and between Bengali and Tamil and all the rest. And into non-Indian languages too.

NKA: Are there sufficient translations of regional literary works into English? What do you think are the essential qualities of a translated literary work? How will you distinguish transcreation from transliteration?
LV: In fact there have been perhaps a surprisingly large number of works in regional languages translated into non-Indian languages. Not only into English but we find an impressive number of works being translated into French from Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil and other languages. And one can find translations from Hindi, Urdu and Bengali also in Czech, for example, not speaking of translations of classical Sanskrit works. Whether the number is sufficient is hard to say, of course the more the better. A translation is always a kind of re-creation of the text, I believe. Not only should the translator try to be faithful to the original as much as he or she can, but also the work must be understood by the readers into whose language it is translated. So it is always a kind of compromise between the two. The scope for 'imaginative flight' for translators is given by their capacity to find the most suitable expression in the language into which they translate.
CR: It is obviously vital to translate works from Indian languages, including Hindi, into English: the more the better! I should add (I live in France) that on the French book market there exist a surprising number of translated works from Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam etc. Most of these are directly rendered, i.e. not going through English. You can find them in the bookshops. This fact is insufficiently well known. It is thus not only a question of translation into English. A translated literary text needs to strike a balance between fidelity to the original and culture and accessibility to the host culture. Transcreation – I believe the concept has been particularly explored by P. Lal – differs from translation proper because it is a much freer process. It is in line with a long Indian tradition, as with the many different language versions of the Ramayana, most famously the Tamil version, which are retellings and not translations of Valmiki's Sanskrit narrative. However, a transcreation should be billed as such and not presented as a translation in the strict sense.

NKA: Can a translator always be faithful to the original? Sometimes, he or she deviates from the original. Do you grant such deviations to a translator? There is a typical dichotomy involved in a work of translation. On the one hand, a translator cannot digress from the subject. The other side of the coin is that if translators do not deviate from the original and sticks to the text, where is the imaginative flight for them? A translator is chained by classical bondage of rules, customs and regulations. So, where is the scope for imaginative flights for a translator? Should a translator be subjective or objective?
LV: A transcreation is clearly not a translation and should be distinguished as such, it is what is in the Indian context also called 'a rendering.' A number of renderings of the classical Sanskrit texts into English have been done and quite often Indian writers have rendered their own works from their native language into English or vice versa, especially in the period of the beginnings of Indian writing in English.
CR: Transcreation and translation proper are not the same thing, and each has its advantages. The transcreator can be subjective: the translator proper needs to be objective.

NKA: What are the problems of Indian English criticism? What do you think are the major issues before Indian critics? Are these critics following the ancient Indian tradition of Rasa, Dhwani and Alamkara? Or are they playing 'the sedulous ape' to the western critical tools? Are there certain attempts to evolve an individual perspective, different from the ancient Indian aesthetics and western critical theory? There is an onslaught of theory from the West. Are the Indian critics able to maintain a separate identity? Who are the major contemporary Indian English critics who have evolved a new and innovative approach in their critical works?
LV: Indian critics should follow their own way - which does not mean an absolute rejection of Western criticism. I feel, nevertheless, that they should also try to set the critical approaches relevant for Indian writing on Western critical circles and be sceptical towards any post-colonial theory which is subject to simplifications or distortions with regard to the specific features of Indian culture and literature. Indian critics should certainly not allow any kind of theoretical colonization. Theories like dhwani-rasa have not yet found their way into broader critical circles. On the other hand, IWE has already its own well-established tradition of Indian critics, starting with Srinivasa Iyengar, Prema Nandakumar, or C.D. Narasimhaiah, and going on with names like Harish Trivedi, Vrinda Nabar, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Subhendu Mund, GJV Prasad, Nilufer Bharucha and many others, all of whose approach can be classified as a singular contribution to Indian English criticism.
CR: There are very significant names in Indian criticism – Harish Trivedi, GJV Prasad, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Gayatri Spivak – but, alas, how well are any of them known in the West outside the ambit of postcolonial studies, or perhaps tranalation studies? This said, surely Indian critics wishing to make their mark internationally would do best to master both Indian and Western points of view? Still missing is the Indian critic who will bring rasa theory to the outside world's attention as an alternative to Aristotelian perspectives.

NKA: What are your views about the English studies in India? English studies were introduced in India to colonize the minds of the Indians. About the determination of the British to introduce European literature in India, Governor Lord William Bentinck declared that "the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India, and all funds appropriated for the purpose of education would be best employed on English education alone." (qtd. Iyengar 27). In the light of the aforesaid facts, is it not proper to exclude certain colonial texts from the syllabi of English Studies in India? In their place, should we not introduce translations of certain classics of regional languages? It will be a sort of decolonization of English studies. I think the curriculum of English studies should consist of Literature in English language in place of Literature of England. Your views please.
LV: In my opinion the study of English in India should be given a place analogous to that which it occupies anywhere else. English studies are nothing more but nothing less either than English studies. If we study English then we should certainly include classical texts written in English and that is irrespective of the place where it is studied. It should include all literature written in the English language, certainly not just literature of England. Examples of what you call "certain colonial texts" should be, on the contrary, studied, I believe; not from a subordinate position but in the proper historical perspective, they should be studied by a 'decolonized mind.'
CR: It is usually said that Macaulay's "Minute on Indian Education" was aimed at imposing British perspectives on Indian minds. However, if you read that text closely you will find a subtext, namely that he does also advocate developing modern Indian languages – rather than Sanskrit or Arabic– with a view to those languages acquiring a scientific and technical vocabulary. The technology introduced by a colonial power can be reappropriated for national purposes post-independence. No-one in India suggests tearing up the railway lines simply because the British had them laid. Karl Marx predicted that teaching Indians western technology would ultimately lead to India reassuming its place as a great nation. Mulk Raj Anand in his novel "Untouchable" saw technology as liable to bring about social progress in India by liberating dalits from the most menial tasks. Meanwhile, the idea of "excluding" certain "colonial texts" from syllabi sounds risky. Shakespeare remains the most important writer in English and introduced more words into the language than anyone else. Kipling's "Kim" is still valuable as transmitting aspects of the colonists' idea of India. Edward Said found "Kim" redeemable. This said, there is anyway a growing tendency worldwide to teach "literatures in English" – British, US, postcolonial – rather than "English literature".

NKA: The MNCs are hiring a number of Indians. One requirement for entry into these organizations is fluency in English, but the problem is that the comprehension power of Indian students in the English language is very weak. Will it not be better to teach the students about the minutest intricacies of the language in place of lecturing on a number of irrelevant and colonial texts of England? What do you think?
LV: The only way to solve this problem is certainly to improve the quality of teaching of the English language as such. Learning English does not necessarily need to be a part of English studies, in other words, it is possible to learn good English without majoring in English studies. At the same time it is necessary to realize that the "minutest intricacies" of the language are conveyed precisely by the literary works of art.
CR: I think there are two separate issues here. It is not necessary for all professionals proficient in English to be English studies majors. One thing is service courses in English for those studying economics, technology, etc. Another is the content of degrees in English studies as such. Meanwhile, I do not accept the notion of literary studies as "irrelevant". Creative writing expands a language's boundaries and is a privileged means of access to, precisely, its "minutest intricacies".

NKA: What are your views about the publication process in India? Publishers do not easily come forward to publish a new and budding author. Most of the time, they ask for money from the poets / authors instead of giving them royalties. Similar is the case with certain journals. They also charge for subscription / membership. In this way, new and innovative approaches to literature may be kept hidden from the eyes of the world. Please comment.
LV: The reluctance to publish a new and unestablished author is nothing specific to India. It is, more or less, the case anywhere else too. New authors and innovators are not always appreciated, theirs is not an easy lot. This is a sad, nevertheless generally valid reality.
CR: I am not in favour of the practice of asking authors or contributors for financial input into books and journals. I find it counterproductive.

NKA: Can electronic publication be an alternative to print publication? I think negatively about it. Publication on internet cannot replace print publication. One can easily get one's material published on internet. But the real issue is – whether people take it seriously. Readers go through blogs cursorily. How many genuine readers do bother to indulge in the text on internet? It is not suitable for serious academic research. What do you think about all this?
LV: We are perhaps still more used to print publications. Nevertheless, while it is true that one can publish whatever one wants on his or her own blog, there are very serious internet journals published from prestigious universities where it is not so easy to get published. The advantage of these journals is of course that they are accessible to a large number of readers and thus academic research can benefit from them. Very often the readers and the authors can come into direct contact via e-mail. On the other hand there is a large number of print journals or other publications which are of poor quality. It is then necessary to have the criteria for serious academic research in mind and to act selectively both with regard to printed matter and to internet material.
CR: There is in fact a large amount of serious academic material online. Today, the bibliographies to articles reflect this. What worries me is that a lot of academic journals are paying sites. This I find contrary to the free circulation of knowledge, a principle vital to the Internet which also, I believe, corresponds to the Indian notion that knowledge exists to be shared.

Work Cited
Iyengar, K.R.S. Indian Writing in English. 5th ed. New Delhi: Sterling, 1985.

The interviewer Dr.Nilanshu Kumar is Senior Lecturer in English at Feroze Gandhi College, Rae Bareli.

The Poet As An Artist: An Email Interview with Ann Iverson

2008-09-02T17:46:00.000-07:00

The Poet As An Artist: An Email Interview with Ann Iverson
-Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal
She dreams
he returns from war
unscathed.
She dreams
they hug and kiss
so much
they all fall down
on the kitchen floor.
This lyrical effusion from the pen of Ann Iverson exhibits her high poetic sensibility. Senior Academic Director of Arts and Sciences at Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis, Ann Iverson has authored poetic collections like Come Now To The Window and Definite Space. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such prestigious journals like The Oklahoma Review, Margie: American Journal of Poetry, Poetry East, Water-Stone Review, Conte, Tarwolf Review, Kritya and others. Her poetry touches the innermost chords of the reader’s heart. This awe-inspiring poetry has been appreciated by several scholars. Lawrence Sutin, the author of All is Change: The Thousand Year Journey of Buddhism To The West, writes thus about her, “Her realm is the inner experience of grief and joy, war and love. Her lines are precise and deeply felt and so readily enter the reader’s heart.” She is also a visual artist, who enjoys experimenting in her artwork. This poetess of immense imaginative and creative sensibility talks to Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal about her poetic process, connection between poetry and painting, the contribution of Laurel Poetic Collective in creating her poetic voice, Diaspora and several other literary issues.

Agarwal: You are also a visual artist. Your artwork debuted at the Undercroft Gallery at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in St.Paul. How does you artwork inspire your poetic imagery? How can a poet establish the visceral connection between the poetic and visual image? Is this relationship between the poet and the artist spontaneous? Please illumine the prospective and new poets about the art of creating an intuitive and cyclical exchange between language and image.
Iverson: The inspirational exchange between my art and poetry is ongoing and cyclical. Sometimes when I see the world I want to paint it. Other times when I see the world, I want to write it. Painting allows me to create images that words cannot and vice versa depending on the subconscious content of my heart. After spending a long day of making art, words come very easily for me because of the energy spent making images. Artists and poets are both image makers, yet both see and respond to the world very differently. I am unable to distinguish the variances between how my poet self and my artist self interpret life. Every poem has a visual partner and every work of art has a poem waiting in the shadows. One good way to connect the two arts is to experiment in the art of EKPRASIS, a term used to denote poetry or poetic writing concerning itself with the visual arts, artistic objects, and/or highly visual scenes. When a poet uses a work of art as inspiration for a poem, he or she will be led down a new path of images, into a new world of understanding.

Agarwal:In this age of stark materialism, the young people seem to have lost interest in literature and fine arts. They seem to be only interested in the making of money and wild passionate pleasures of the senses. How can the interest of the youth be restored in literature and poetry? Please enlighten.
Iverson: One way to restore our youth’s interest in the arts is to guide them to their own artistic selves. Every human has a center point of creative energy that often remains untapped. If young people are provided with effective opportunities to invigorate their own source of creativity, their passion for the arts will flourish. Young people need to be led to the river where art flows. When they arrive at the base of this river, they will be taken by current.
Agarwal:Has your teaching career been an asset in your poetic activities? Please explicate.
Iverson:Yes, my teaching career has certainly been an asset in my poetic activities. In the classroom I was able to give students opportunities to read and write poetry. As I saw them inspired, it then inspired me. The act of teaching is much like writing poetry; every question is difficult and every answer not always accessible. The act of teaching is artistic; it takes creativity and energy and passion and emotion and patience and determination, just as poetry does. Teaching makes a person alive just like a good poem does.
Agarwal :What is the contribution of Laurel Poetry Collective in the making of your literary and artistic sensibility?
Iverson:The Laurel Poetry Collective has been an amazing source of artistic inspiration. Each talented member brought with them a variety of artistic and poetic skills and were very willing to act as mentors. Because of this gifted group of highly committed and encouraging artists, my first collection of poems was published and distributed into the world. Working with that many poetically minded people added great heights to my artistic sensibility.
Agarwal :In your collection, Definite Space, you present a pathetic picture of the war. This acute realistic description of the agonies associated with war is perhaps due to the fact that your own son left for a war in Iraq. These poems show you to be nostalgic about your son’s presence before your eyes. The poems like ‘Three A.M. First Call From Baghdad’ and ‘The Fourth of July, 2003’ touch the innermost chords of the reader’s heart through the emotional treatment of the psyche of the persons who wait for their dear and near ones to come safely from the war. In a way, war is not a dream of heroes; it rather brings with itself ‘fallen soldiers’ and ‘blood and roadside bombs.’ Is there a way to check this orgy of war? Should not we have a new world order, devoid of all tussles and violence? Your comments, please.
Iverson:When writing the poems in Definite Space I wanted to ensure that the emotions were transferred to the readers’ hearts with a certain immediacy, so I honored brevity for this purpose. When writing the poems in Definite Space I desired that they could be understood by a large audience, not just a poetic audience, so I honored a simple vocabulary. I believe the simplistic images help to clear away the confusion that innately hovers around any war. War is not a dream of any sort and war does, indeed, bring more sorrow than we can ever comprehend. Definite Space is one story out of billion war stories. It is important that we document war days, as these documents become part of human history. We all strive for peace: world peace, local peace, and inner peace. We must continue to strive for peace. We must commit ourselves to peace by starting inside our very single hearts.
Agarwal:T. S. Eliot in his essay on Yeats had held that a poet, ‘out of intense and personal experience, is able to express a general truth.’ Eliot means to say that the poet universalizes his personal experiences. What personal experiences, besides the movement of the son to the Middle East, have made your poetry possible?
Iverson:Ah, Eliot on Yeats, a wonderful quote. When a personal truth/experience is made universal, or when a universal event/experience is made personal is when the reader is made whole, is when the reader is enlightened Every human experience that I witness and/or experience informs my art. I also believe that the making of my art informs the way that I live my life with truth. Art instructs. The personal experiences that have influenced my poetry the most are the deaths of my parents, and, of course, my son’s deployments.
Agarwal : What is the significance of the animal imagery in Come Now To The Window?
Iverson: Animals play a significant role in my life because they teach the unequivocal lesson of unconditional love. I have always tried to honor the creatures in my life by including them in my work. If I did not do this, I would not be true to the natural flow of my surroundings. A good poet takes everything in and, in my case, the animals must have their place in my work for they symbolize an innocence and a truth that human beings are not capable of.
Agarwal: The cover artist of Definite Space, Shelly Leitheiser is currently exploiting how technology can enhance the creative process. Can Information Technology really substitute the human mind? I think computer can rarely match the creative process of the human mind. It can calculate, provide information, store data and do certain other mundane things. But, it can never create a poem. A poem is written, when there is the spontaneous overflow of emotion in the poet. Poetry is nothing but the overflow/exit/ drainage of the excessive emotions in the poet’s heart. And a computer is devoid of emotions. So, how can it be creative or stimulate the creative process? Could computer ever have created Mona Lisa? Can it create a new and imaginative play or a novel, despite all the repertoire of information it has. It is only the human mind which can create the monumental works like Hamlet, Paradise Lost, The Waste Land and Ulysses etc. Your views, please.
Iverson:I think you mean she is “exploring” how technology can enhance the creative process. Many artists do this, but I don’t think that any one of them is asking if technology can substitute the brilliant and intuitive nature of the human mind and heart. We all know what the answer is to that. A true artist will live his/her life in a constant search of new ways of expression. I think the key is that, perhaps, technology can enhance the creative process, not replace the creative process. Technology is emotionless but the user of technology is not. Emily Dickinson wrote with a quill and ink; at that point in time, that was her technology. Sometimes I process poems on a computer; sometimes I write with a pencil in a journal. I tend to like the latter best because I like the sound and feel of the pencil scratching on fine paper.
Agarwal:As the Senior Academic Director of Arts and Sciences at Dunwoody College of Technology, you must have met certain students, teachers and persons of Asian/ African origin. What are the psychological problems of these diasporic persons, living in alien lands? Are they nostalgic about their homelands? Do they feel alienated and dislocated in the American social order? Is there any racial antagonism between these foreigners and the natives of USA? Or is this racial conflict a global phenomenon? Please throw light.
Iverson:Yes, in my years of academia, I certainly became acquainted with a number of faculty and students who were from another part of the world. While some of them are challenged with the notion of acclimating to a new culture, many of them become quite settled in the American culture. Some students did write of their homesickness as well as their struggles in adapting to new customs, etc. As a writing instructor, I was often highly impressed with their deep and explorative thinking, as well as their search for a personal truth. The faculty members from other cultures add a wonderful dimension to the school. Their personal experiences help to enrich all of us. I consider them a valuable asset. I think racial conflict is a global phenomenon and will remain a challenge for every member of the human race.

Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal is Senior Lecturer in English at Feroze Gandhi College, Rae Bareli, (U.P.),India. His poems and articles have appeared in a number of prominent magazines and journals. Currently, he is editing a book on Stephen Gill, the Poet Laureate of Ansted University.

“Only ash knows the experience of burning”: An Interview with Dalit Writer

2008-09-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

“Only ash knows the experience of burning”: An Interview with Dalit Writer
Jai Prakash Kardam

Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal

Dr. Jai Prakash Kardam, a prolific Hindi Dalit writer, was born in a poor Dalit family in Ghaziabad, UP. India. He worked as an un-skilled labour in construction and factories. He worked in different capacities in State/central govt./ Bank, and in Central Secretariat official Language Service (Govt. of India) as Deputy Director. At present, he is the Second Secretary in the High Commission of India in Mauritius. He has been editing an annual magazine Dalit Sahitya (Varshiki) since 1999. As many as 15 research works for M.Phil / Ph.D. have so far been completed on him and some are going on in different Universities in India and abroad. This major Dalit writer talks to Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal about several issues of Dalit literature in a detailed and pedantic interview.
NKA: Dalit Literature unfolds the seething discontent of the Dalits towards their age-old exploitation by the upper caste people. In a way, this branch of literature is a volcano of protest against the highly irrelevant and insignificant evil custom of untouchability. The dragon of untouchability has entered the sub-conscious/ unconscious layers of Indian psyche. It can not be easily eliminated. Dalit Literature may, in the long run, help in eradicating this caste-bias from the Indian mind. To be very honest, this literature of the marginalized has carved a niche for itself in Indian Literature. Where does this literature stand right now? What is its future? What should be done to promote it more? Your suggestions, please.
JPK: Dalit literature has become the central point of the Indian literature now. It has created an important discourse, which has raised the burning questions related to the problems of theDalits and made the society awakened about it. In spite of the fact that there are so many writers, critics etc. who still do not accept or recognize Dalit literature, it has increasingly acquired the space in the world of literature. Today Dalit literature is included in the syllabi at under-graduate and post graduation level and a large number of research works have been done and are being done in different universities in India and abroad. In fact, Dalit literature has broken the silence and non-livingness of the literature and made it living and progressive. Considering the journey of Dalit literature by now, it can be said that the future of this literature is very bright.
NKA: As a literature of the oppressed sections of the society, do you think it to be similar to the Literature of Black People in USA? Or do you find some differences between the two?
JPK: Yes, it is quite similar to the literature of Blacks in USA or Nigros in Africa. But, it has some specific characteristics also, which are not found in black or Nigro literature. These are the opposition of caste-system and untouchability. Blacks and Nigros have faced racial discrimination; they were not untouchables like the Dalits in India. This is the reason that Dalit literature is more aggressive, powerful and sharp-edged than the literature of the Blacks and Nigros.
NKA: The literary text is used as a tool in the hands of the powerful to control the oppressed. The post-colonial critics are unearthing the colonial agenda in the text of the West. They believe that the Western literary text was a weapon in the hands of the empire to control the minds of the subjects. Similarly, the feminists are revealing the male bias in the major literary texts. Do you think that there is a need for Dalit Literary theory too, which may expose the prejudices towards the Dalits in Indian Literature? Are there some Dalit theorists, working on these lines?
JPK: It is the established truth now that so called (Indian) literature has always been used by the caste hindus to oppress, suppress and exploit the Dalits. Dalits have been given the opium of religion and exploited in the name of fate and God. They have been taught the philosophy of Gita to work selflessly, not to make any demand for their hard work. Whatever is given by the master should be accepted happily as the will of God.
NKA: Are there efforts to explore Dalit consciousness in other creative arts like painting, theatre and music etc.? Please elaborate.
JPK: Of course, there are Dalit Natya Munches in existence. There are a number of Dalit folk artists, singers, musicians and painters who are doing their best to express Dalit feelings and raising the voice against inequality and exploitation through their art forms.
NKA: What difference do you find between Dalit Literature by a Dalit and Literature about the Dalits by a non-Dalit?
JPK: I would like to quote here the words of Dr. Manager Pandey, a renowned Hindi critic, who wrote in the preface to a collection of Dalit short stories edited by Ramnika Gupta that “Only ash knows the experience of burning”. This indicates that Dalits know the experience of burning-- burning in the fire of sorrows, hatred, disrespect, injustice, inequality and untouchablity. Non-Dalits do not have this experience. Dalits have specific experiences of life, which non-dalits do not have. Only Dalit writers can express their experiences in an authentic manner but not others. Non- Dalit writers may be sympathetic to the Dalits, they may be their well-wishers but their experiences about Dalits are not their self-experiences. They are the observers of torture and exploitation of Dalits, they are not sufferers. This difference of experiences between Dalit and non-Dalits makes the difference between the writings of Dalit and non-Dalit writers. Hence, Dalit literature is the literature of Dalits based on their lives and experiences.
NKA: English Language has become a global language. The translation of regional languages Dalit Literature into English may definitely give a great boost to this innovative literature, because the authors may find a larger reading public in the other countries. One of your works has been translated into English by G.W.Briggs. You must have seen how English translation of a particular work increases its readership. What efforts are being made to translate the native Dalit Literature into English Language?
JPK: No doubt, if Dalit literature is translated into English, it can convey its message to a larger mass, not only in India but at the international level also. In the time of globalization Dalit issues should also be globalized. The main objective of Dalit literature is to sensitize the society to the basic problems of Dalits and in Hindi and other languages, Dalit literature is breaking the thousands years’ silence of literature and trying to sensitize the society. Responsible persons should take initiative to translate Dalit literature into English and other foreign languages, though some short stories, poems and pieces of text (novels and autobiographies) have been translated into English, French, German and other foreign languages. My own short story and poems have been translated into English. But efforts made or being made in this direction are not sufficient, much more is needed to do. Dalit literature is included in the syllabi in a number of universities world wide. During October 2006 when I visited Germany to participate in Frankfurt World Book Fair, I was surprised to see that Dalit literature was being taught in Bonn and Humburg Universities and some students were doing research also on Dalit literature. In fact, Dalit literature is attracting students and scholars from the whole world. Scholars from US, UK, Germany, Japan, Korea etc. are doing research on Dalit literature. I personally know Ms. Saraha Baith (UK), Ms Laura Brueck (USA), Dr. Heinz Werner Wessler (Germany) and Ms Toral (Canada) who have met me in connection of their research on Dalit literature. These scholars and such type of other scholars also are advocating and raising voice of Dalit literature at different forums at international level.
NKA: What measures are being taken to introduce Dalit Literature in the syllabi of Indian Literature? Are your works prescribed at some universities?
JPK: I think a writer’s job is to write only. It is others’ job to evaluate it in terms of changing environment of society and literature and to introduce in the syllabi. Dalits themselves are not in a position to introduce Dalit literature in syllabi, as they are not at key posts in the Universities. Even they are also not members of the syllabus committees. We have raised our voice at national level through participation in the seminars/ symposiums at universities in different parts of India. It is pleasant to learn that dalit literature is a part of syllabus now in a number of Indian universities. As far as my work is concerned, my novel ‘Chhapper’ is prescribed in syllabus at MA/ M.Phil. level at Hyderabad, Shivaji, Mumbai and Kochin universities. Some of my short stories and poems are also included in the syllabus at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and other universities at BA / MA level.
NKA: Some scholars have written doctoral dissertations on you. What aspects of your personality/ writings are explored in these theses?
JPK: About 15 scholars have done their research on my life and work. Most of the dissertations are focused on my novel ‘Chhapper’ as it is considered as the first novel in Hindi dalit literature. Other works are focused on my short stories and poetry etc.
NKA: As editor of Dalit Sahitya( annual magazine of Dalit Literature), what are the major areas of concern in the growth and development of Dalit Literature?
JPK: As editor of Dalit Sahitya Varshiki (Annual) my main concern has been to introduce the socio-economic and political, religious backwardness and exploitation of dalits to sensitize the society to make their attitude towards dalits positive. My main motto through this Annual magazine is to point out the root causes of the illiteracy, unemployment, poverty and social backwardness of dalits. My humble effort is to give voice to the voiceless and sense to the senseless and at the same time to warn the privileged classes to give their due rights to dalits and treat them as equal human beings. It is in the interest of development, progress and prosperity of the society. Freedom and human dignity of dalits must be valued.
NKA: Besides this all pervading Dalit consciousness, what are the other themes of your writings?
JPK: Besides Dalit consciousness, I have written on other issues also. But my main focus has always been on social problems.
NKA: You have authored certain books for children too. Are those books also having the same Dalit voice? Or is there anything else.
JPK: No, these books are based on general subjects such as science/ scientific approach. One book is based on saints, one is on great scientist C.V.Raman and the novel ‘Shamshaan ka Rahasya’ is based on kidnapping of children and smuggling blood and parts of their bodies by a group of sadhus. Some of the books are based on Buddhist tales etc.
NKA: You worked as an unskilled labourer. And now, you are the Second Secretary in the High Commission of India in Mauritius. Your career graph shows your extraordinary growth over the years. What factors (inner and external) were responsible for the exemplary rise in your career? JPK: I had nothing with me except my will power, determination and hard work. I had worked hard. There was a total darkness in my life when my father expired in 1976 and I was studying in 11th class only. Being an eldest among all my brothers and sisters, I was the only person to support my mother to run the house. So, instead of going to school I started going to work as unskilled labourer for five rupees a day. I utilized my time and energy, the only thing I had. My chacha Harpal Singh and his two friends Mukut Lal Tomar and Hukam Singh always encouraged and inspired me. Not only moral and emotional support, he supported me financially also. Had he not supported me I would not have achieved any thing in my life. Dr.Devi Singh and Sh.Ram Sahai were other persons in my village who gave me moral support. They showed me the path and I translated their thoughts into action. I wanted to become an engineer, but due to our hardship I could not take admission in B.Sc. in 1977, after passing the Intermediate exam with Science subjects, as I could not manage Rs 140/- for admission fee. Next year, in 1978 I was able to take admission in B.A. with financial help of my chacha, but my admission was for name only. I was not able to go to college, as I did not have proper clothes, shoes etc. During this period, I worked in a steel factory for Rs 180/- per month and as a Munshi with a tax advocate for Rs 200/- per month. I taught tuitions also. Due to this drawback of my life, I could not get opportunity to study as a student like others. I got first Government job in 1980 as an Ameen in sale Tax Department. In 1981, I joined as a clerk in the same department. In 1984 I joined Vijaya Bank in Allahabad and in 1988 I joined Central Secretariat Official Language Service as a Translator and in 1989 I was selected as Assistant Director, through UPSC and joined Ministry of Commerce. In 1996, I was promoted as Deputy Director and joined Department of Culture. Later I worked in Ministry of Rural Development. In 2006 I was promoted to the post of Joint Director, but in the mean time I was selected on deputation to the post of Second Secretary (Language and Culture) in the High Commission of India. With service, I continued my study and did MA in Philosophy, Hindi and History respectively and Ph.D. in Hindi. In 1978 I was selected in Indian Air Force for the post of Airman (Technical), but I did not join as my younger brothers were not doing well in their studies and my presence was needed in the family. I passed PCS (UP) also, first time I could not succeed, Second time I was selected for subordinate service, which I refused to join.
NKA: Tell us something about your present assignment at Mauritius. How is it helpful in your career as a writer?
JPK: My portfolio in the High Commission is to deal with the work of education, promotion of Indian languages and culture. I have close interaction with educational as well as Socio-Cultural institutions and persons in Mauritius. I am in regular touch with writers also and this helps me in keeping me active in writing. Moreover, I have to attend so many socio-cultural functions where speeches are also required. Some times, I prepare speeches for High Commissioner also. Experience of Writing helps me a lot in preparing or delivering speeches. I consider this assignment as an opportunity to gain some different type of experiences, which, at later stage, may be translated into literary forms. Writing has always been helpful in my career. My writing experience has played an important role in my selection to the post of Assistant Director and to the present post also.

The interviewer Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal is Senior Lecturer in English at Feroze Gandhi College, Rae Bareli.

An Interview with Rabindra K Swain

2008-09-02T17:42:00.000-07:00

An Interview with Rabindra K Swain
Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal

Rabindra K Swain has authored poetry collections like Once Back Home, A Tapestry of Steps, Severed Cord and Susurrus in the Skull. He also has three books of translation from Oriya: Dear Jester and Other Stories, Bahubreehi and The Cemetery Flower and Other Stories. He has two books of criticism: The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: A Critical Study and Silent Tongues: Writings in Contemporary Indian Poetry. His poems have appeared in many journals, like Critical Quarterly, Contemporary Review, Times Literary Supplement, Wasafiri, Acumen, The Kenyon Review and Ariel. Presently, he is Managing Editor of Chandrabhaga, one of the foremost literary periodicals in India. This poet of immense talent talks to Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal in an email interview.

NKA: What, according to you, is the function of poetry? Some scholars believe that poetry instructs. It guides us. Another group of scholars believes that poetry is for providing aesthetic pleasure. Poetry is read and written not for any special purpose. It is read and created, as it provides a sort of unique aesthetic pleasure, which is similar to the pleasure, which we derive when we look at something beautiful. Poetry delights. One more view about poetry is that it is therapeutic or cathartic. It releases the inner tension of the mind, heart and soul. Out of the just-mentioned functions, which one is preferred by you? Or, do you appreciate the union of all these three functions? Or, do you find any other function of poetry close to your heart? Please illumine.
RKS: Reading a poem and writing a poem are two different experiences, although sometimes one affects the other. When you write a poem all that you had read might or might not contribute their bit. It is all so accidental. When you read a poem your response to it is conditioned by the type of poems you are capable of writing. If you like it you tend to be jealous. You wish you had written that piece, or almost the kind of that.
As for the function of poetry, it varies depending on who reads it. For example, if a poem is about a frog jumping to a pond it might irritate an activist but it will elevate someone who is in low spirit.
But what would you think of the function of A.K. Ramanujan’s volume Speaking of Siva which the Tamil poet Atmanam read before he attempted suicide? You can find this information from Ramanujan’s Uncollected Poems and Prose.
NKA: What are the symbolic/ metaphorical connotations of the titles of your poetry collections like Once Back Home, A Tapestry of Steps, Severed Cord and Susurrus in the Skull?
RKS: Titles emerge when you prepare a collection of poems. This happened with my first book, Once Back Home. At that time my connection with my village determined most of my poems. Once back home, things began to flow for me lucidly. The rest of my collections are named after particular poems included in them. As for the latest one, Susurrus in the Skull, it is a sort of dialogue with my self. It is a peeping into my living skull, into the intimate aspects of life I have lived so far. Here there are a lot of restraints in my expression, which should make this volume different from the earlier ones.
NKA: Tell something about the major themes of your poetry.
RKS: I write about those things with which I can identify myself, which pokes my conscience or stirs my inner being. Yet I cannot write about Kargil or Kosovo. For me there is something too distant about them. Yet it does not necessarily cancel the story of the body of a primitive man found on the Alps being the theme of one of my poems. It all depends on the receptivity of our antennas. I primarily write about them with whom I live.
NKA: In you poem “Betrayal of the Sea”, you have artistically painted the fury of the cyclone. The pathetic condition of the human beings in the poem is sure to touch the innermost chords of the reader’s heart. How emotionally you cry—“… a lone baby/ alive in a family of ten, / a refugee woman found/ unconscious and without water/ in the bamboo grove next dawn…” Why is nature so carnivorous for the humans? Why is God using such a devastating force to devour us? Does it not mean that He is against us? In a way, He is a great tormentor of the innocent citizens of the world. He is lashing and whipping us sadistically without any reason. Your views, please.
RKS: The Super Cyclone devastated our coastal Orissa in 1999. Only the one who was trapped in it knew its fury. As I have put in that poem, it was “unreal, too much real.” This version you read is the outcome of several revisions. My belief in it was further strengthened when I read Galway Kinnell’s narrative piece on WTC tower. One has to admit that poems need not always be short and sort of symbolic. As for man-god relationship and questions of suffering and reward, it takes me to the question as to why an innocent lamb be slaughtered on return of prodigal son. Terms like fate, coincidence and destiny are only consolations.
NKA: Some of your poems talk about contemporary horrid social order. In “August Fifteen, 2000”, the actions of the extremists are discussed thus—“But I wonder, other than killing/ and sometimes getting killed/ what do they get in return?” Similarly, in “Panchayat Elections”, you say, “Here the enemies are real.” To be very precise, human society is filled with eerie ennui on account of the spiritual drabness of the man. My question is—Can literature fill the moral vacuum in this spiritually degraded contemporary society? Can literature be a torch-bearer in this blighted age? Please make a statement.
RKS: However personal a poet may be there are moments when he cannot close his eyes to the injustice around him. The difference is that he may not be so pronounced in his protest but if you look deeper you will find that his personal poems are no less anguished than those of protest-poems. One cannot be a dead wood.
As regards to social commitment, we have to move subtly for we are not Pablo Neruda. The poetry of Pablo Neruda is the best example of a successful marriage between the personal and the universal.
NKA: Among your various poetry collections, which one is closest to you heart? Please make an emotional statement.
RKS: I am yet to move out of the world of my latest book, Susurrus in the Skull. It is fresh, just out of oven. Besides, each successive book is expected to exhibit the signs of an author’s progress, provided one is so lucky.
NKA: You are also a translator. What do you keep in mind, while translating a work of literature? Can a work of translation be also highly creative and imaginative? Your views, please.
RKS: I am forgetting who said it but it was a wonderful expression: a piece of work in order to be translated should first of all sing to you. One should love the work before one translates it. I have been translating an Oriya poet and an Oriya short story writer for the last 20 years or so but I have not been able to put them in book forms. Whereas my translation of our Jnanapith Award-winner Sachi Rout-Ray’s short stories The Cemetery Flower came out in 2006. It is because the work was assigned by Orissa Sahitya Akademi and the stories coming from a master story teller were challenging ones.
NKA: How has your literary relationship with Jayanta Mahapatra sharpened your creative urge? Please tell.
RKS: The first book of Jayanta Mohapatra I was to read was The False Start. It was in 1980 and I was doing my graduation. Ironically it is the toughest collection of Mahapatra. I must not have understood it (can I vouch to do so now?). But I like those poems. They stirred my imagination. What is poetry if it does not give you imaginative leaps? Towards the end of that year I came across his long poem, Relationship in our local book shop. It was priced at two dollars. I was proud that I possessed a foreign publication of an Oriya poet, someone I loved, although I did not know him personally till then. Later on, in 1990, when I began my PhD thesis on his poetry I had to cover all his work. And those were the years (I submitted my dissertation in 1995) when I not only knew many of his lines by heart but also had before my eyes the pages of his books. Those were the years of my apprenticeship.
NKA: You are an editor, poet and a translator. Out of these several literary roles, which one do you prefer? Or, do you find an interlinking among these diverse creative roles? Please tell.
RKS: Certainly writing poems is most close to my heart. But poems do not come often. That is when you take up translations to keep yourself nearly creative. Translation is no less creative. Rather, here is an added responsibility. You have to conform to the given form of the original work.
As for being an editor, I consider it to be a privilege to be associated with Chandrabhaga, which is perhaps the single most influential literary magazine in the country. I am thankful to Jayanta Mahapatra for his generosity in accepting me as the managing editor of his magazine Chandrabhaga in its second avatar. It gives me an access to the process of selection of materials that come our way. Chandrabhaga would sometimes place comparatively unknown or lesser known poets, not much familiar poets from Indian languages in its first pages. The Telegu poet Mandarapu Hymavathy is one such discovery for me. It is through the pages of Chandrabhaga that I was introduced to the Dalit poems, the subtlest ever I have read, of G.S. Shivarudrappa.
NKA: As the Managing Editor of Chandrabhaga, what, in your view, are the major problems faced by the creative writers? Please illumine.
RKS: The editors of the magazines walk a razor’s edge in selecting pieces. They have to consider both the quality of the submission as well as the reputation of the author. But the surprises lie in the unsolicited works. And each magazine has its unstated stand, which is governed by the editor’s personal likes and dislikes.
NKA: Tell something about the other important contemporary poetic voices (except you and Jayanta Mahapatra) from Orissa. Do the poets prefer English as a media of their poetic output? Or, do they like to write poetry in their native Oriya language? Please illuminate about the contemporary literary scene in Orissa.
RKS: Besides Jayanta Mahapatra, poets like Bibhu Padhi and Niranjan Mohanty from Orissa are familiar names in the field of Indian English poetry.
About present Oriya poetry I can say that it is of high standard. The senior poets like Sachi Rout-Ray and Ramakant Rath have shown the path. You might also be aware of the names like Sitakant Mohapatra and J. P. Das, who are also scholars. Not so much known outside Orissa but no less great Oriya poets are Rajendra Kishore Panda and Soubhagya Kumar Mishra who are emulated by the younger generation of Oriya poets. The young Oriya poets are more direct, more confident, but none of them have got the kind of popularity that their predecessors had when they were young.

The interviewer Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal is Senior Lecturer in English at Feroze Gandhi College, Rae Bareli, (U.P.), India.