Transformation, Like Salt: The Artistry of Mahesh Verma
Mahesh Verma __________________ A consummate artist is a rare creature. And if such a sense of art is able to amalgamate fever and vehemence with restraint and formal experimentation, then one must take notice. Here are some art-works and poetry of Mahesh Verma. Translating these powerful poems has been a challenge and it will be impossible to do complete justice to the nuances of articulation and tone in such a transformed form. So, the original Hindi versions have been reproduced for those readers who can appreciate the tongue. Mahesh Verma writes from Ambikapur, Chhattisgarh. Contentment Contentment, after dried tear-drops And infinite sorrows, arrived Knocked about woman, abasement she’s suffered If that petty job was not forthcoming Suicide was the only option for the co-star In Part II the star shall narrate his tale First came suspicion Then sorrow, then inmost grief Till then, holding breath In the brambles Was hiding contentment Blessed it is with the last bullet, Coincidence and God’s sanctions So, finally in this manner did arrive contentment As if lying low for felicity: an infiltrator From the Rear End To enter words from the rear end Through the back-door From astern The murderer has been nabbed The suicide, over The marriage mantras the priest has begun chanting Moments before couples disjoin from each other for the last time A car, blazing, plummets down the gorge Conspiracy and tear-laden whispers: on pages within The young man has left his home, fugitive The reason for the ringing bullets in the last instance Shall be this table-cloth The maid hides her love-letter, the old man his sins His doping-habits the young man hides The rich hides his sobs The parched platform, the garden-gate The telephone kiosk or any other place Concurrence shall bark him back and in Time’s gossamer a subtle knot tie From here, time’s lurkings plentiful Bright morning, bleary dusk, all other time Words must have spawned there. Desire-Deceit You sport with despondency And I, turn dim Within countless supernova You play with sound And wrenching, the sky flings me away The way you sport with directions With dimensions One evening you murmured in voice-triplet Harmonize I could not with that strain Rolled into the restlessness of the santoor-player My voice told me: adieu With three strains of stammer I have made alliances Until one night, when you kept lobbing kisses over my door of quiet And to my cell-phone, you said: “Desire-deceit.” Transformation Salt, in your body and Grittiness, rubbing my face I was downing fire Slow and even, to transform And turn into a new thing I have seen from close quarters The turning into each other Of a domestic animal An enemy And a galled hand-saw When the fire had guzzled me down And the blazes, once again turning as is At peace and in moderate amber In the sedate sea, salt gets transformed Body’s sweat has made a gentle lover enraptured Within its dank, acidic odour Granular spaces did not become soil Nor did shrubs turn into walls Bundling up liquid and humming Desires within, for a long time They remained as they were Orifice Through this orifice does time enter into my room At night through this walkway descends darkness If ever the moon craves to see its own visage On the floor, on her own In the spherical mirror can she witness it Once, lying down, sliding slow I’d taken her straight into my heart Now I don’t recall clearly Was it moonshine, sunbeam, what was it? Believe you me sir I had altered the meaning of things The Messenger That time when message unfabricated You would deliver verbatim Now, all ten of the messengers As merchants of untruth disclosed Such myriad webs These bastards have weaved between us That only a real sword can now cleave them How gripping it would be to mark his face When, by revealing the sword that had taken The lives of nine messengers The tenth will be asked to acquiesce One more time shall he cook an untruth And for a few more moments Shall salvage his life. God of the Trees Roused by your enormous wings Wander in the empyrean heart At dusk, come back To wail, standing in the dark To noise/be impassive/tarry Water In the chilliest of kisses Water you have petrified! On the sprouting thorns Within your larynx Play that jal-tarang Even if spring Sing the badal raag *** सुखान्त सुखान्त सूखे हुए आंसुओं और अनगिन दुःख के बाद आया ठोकरें खाती रही स्त्री, उसने अपमान सहे यह छोटी नौकरी न लग जाती तो आत्महत्या करने ही वाला था सहनायक नायक भाग दो में अपनी कथा कहेगा. पहले संदेह आया फिर दुःख फिर गहरा शोक आया तब तक दम साधे झाड़ियों में छुपा रहा सुखान्त उसे अंतिम गोली, संयोग और ईश्वर की मदद हासिल है तो अंत में ऐसे आया सुखान्त आने की ताक में था जैसे : घुसपैठिया अंत की ओर से कथा में पीछे से प्रवेश करना. पिछले दरवाजे से. अंत की ओर से. हत्यारा पकड़ा जा चुका. हो चुकी आत्महत्या. पुरोहित शुरू कर चुके विवाह के मन्त्र. प्रेमीगण के अंतिम रूप से बिछुड़ने से ठीक पहले एक कार जलती गिर रही है खाई में षड्यंत्रों और आंसुओं में भीगी फुसफुसाहटें : भीतर के पृष्ठों पर. घर छोड़कर निकल गया है नौजवान, अंत में चलने वाली गोली का कारण यही मेजपोश बनेगा नौकरानी अपना प्रेमपत्र छुपाती है, बूढ़ा अपने पाप. नौजवान नशे की आदतें छुपाते हैं धनी आदमी अपने आँसू छुपाता है. नीरस प्लेटफॉर्म, बगीचे के द्वार, टेलीफोन की दूकान या कहीं भी संयोग उन्हें हांककर लायेगा और समय के धागे पर एक गाँठ लगा देगा. यहाँ से ढेर सारी समय संभावनाएं दिखाई देती हैं उजली सुबह,
I Believe In The Good Fairy Of Your Native Land: Correspondences between Gabriela Mistral and Victoria Ocampo
__________________________ There developed a curious and lasting friendship between two supremely talented people: Gabriela Mistral/ Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (1889-1957) of Chile and Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979) of Argentina. It would be difficult to imagine two writers more dissimilar in background and upbringing, appearance and habit, not to mention literary careers. Yet because of their accomplishments, they shared an anomalous status as celebrities in their own countries and internationally. Despite their differences, they had more than a little in common. Both Mistral and Ocampo lived their adult lives as single women. While their public worlds were principally male, they lived in predominantly female households. They both claimed pride in their Basque heritage, and they took an unorthodox approach to religion. Both were physically imposing women in societies that prized petiteness. In their letters and visits, they shared their love of the open countryside and seashore. Because they led unconventional lives, they were controversial figures, subject to false rumors and mythologies that plagued them all their lives. And to their mutual surprise and delight, they had the same birthday, April seventh, one year apart. This became a touchstone in their letters; no matter where they were living, they sent affectionate messages to one another on that date. Stubborn and nonconforming, both women described themselves as having “violent” dispositions, which Ocampo would express in explosive bursts of temper and Mistral by reciting accusations of real and imagined wrongs. Both women, above all, felt passionately about distinct aspects of their American condition, which they perceived from a transnational, Latin American perspective. They both cared deeply about fostering spiritual unity and moral purpose among fellow Americans in the context of the continent’s truncated modernity. Yet their priorities did not always mesh: Mistral’s emotional defense of indigenous America seemed excessive to Ocampo, and Ocampo’s predilection for European culture struck Mistral as misguided. They also shared a penchant for letter writing.Each cultivated hundreds of correspondents, writing up to a dozen letters a day. Within weeks of their first meeting, Mistral and Ocampo discovered one another as women charged with writing, exploring, and defining the American (read Latin American) condition.That absorption in and engagement with America,expressed throughout their correspondence, arises from the unsettling political, social, and literary events of their era. The letters reveal two women who contributed in many ways to Latin America’s emergence onto the world stage. Here is a very short selection from the final and mature phase of their friendship and mutual affection: ____________________ February 21. 1954 My very dear Gabriela: I’ll draw up the list of books for you right away. But I warn you that the majority of the books that are published in B.A. are translations. Please tell me if they interest you as well. For the time being I’ll send you my translation of The Living Room by Graham Greene. I still don’t have any news about my passport. The worst part is that my petition has gotten no response. I’ve heard that they gave Borges his passport and certificate of good conduct. He hadn’t received them until now. I don’t know by what means he obtained them (he didn’t want to visit the minister of the interior either). But Borges wasn’t in prison for twenty-seven days, as I was. And the twenty-seven days of unjust punishment appear to be a powerful reason for not excusing the evil that one has suffered. I don’t know if I told you in my last letter that I gave up my trip to Turin, where Stravinsky had invited me to do the recitation of “Persé- phone,”as I had done before under his direction in B.A., Rio, and Florence. This sacrifice wasn’t easy. But now it doesn’t matter to me. I won’t say I’m happy, but I do have a clear conscience and the assurance of having done the only thing that my sense of dignity allowed. Many people think that I’m an idiot and no more. Well it seems that few people think twice about going to the minister to ask for a passport if they can’t get it through the police department (which is the usual place). But since I don’t consider myself a criminal or a political conspirator, but rather a person who has kept her freedom of thought, I don’t choose to act (under pressure from the dictatorship) as if I really were a criminal political conspirator. If you want to, or if you can make inquiries as to why they aren’t giving me my passport and certificate of good conduct to travel, it would be good, even if only out of curiosity: just to see what they’re going to invent to justify an attitude that is totally arbitrary, unjust, and infuriating. I see in the newspapers that my old friend, now the French ambassador to Washington and influential ex-minister from the Coopération Intellectuelle (do you remember those days?), is lunching with our ambassador to Washington, the representative of a government that physically and morally tortures innocent people . . . Ainsi va le monde. I no longer believe in the good faith of any politician, any diplomat, or any person tied to monetary interests. Amen! I’m living quite alone. I don’t see María Rosa as I did before (although I’ve invited her to come here, to bathe in the sea, because I know that otherwise she’d have no summer vacation). This is because her blind Communism (disguised as pacifism) gets on my nerves. Since I don’t want to broach political subjects in her presence, and since politics is truly her passion these days, we are inhibited in our conversation. I understand that her mission (pacifism) will be taking her to Europe again soon. The government doesn’t seem to have an eye on her as it does on me. I think that her Communist faith fills her life, which is fortunate in her case. It’s a pity, for those of us who don’t think like her, that that is her faith. I regret that I don’t have a sufficient amount
Expenditure, Insolvency and Recovery in Manmohan’s ‘The Morsels of Ignominy” ( ज़िल्लत की रोटी)
_____________________ Prasanta Chakravarty The poems that make the collection ज़िल्लत की रोटी—The Morsels of Ignominy (Rajkamal Prakashan: 2006) must count as one of the finest that has come from the subcontinent in the past few decades. The collection itself is rather late in the career of its poet: Manmohan, who has been writing poetry since the 1970s. Much of that remains unpublished. There is a kind of near mythic status that is often ascribed to the poet—for his rather oxymoronic existence—as a recluse and as a rooted social and organic intellectual at the same time. It does not fall in my ambit, nor is it my intention, to speculate on his influence on the Hindi poetic and thinking world. My interest lies elsewhere—with one particular aspect of his poetics, namely, a form of general economy that he deploys in his poetic language. By the singular use of a particular form of expenditure is he able to effect an ascetic starkness which is the seal and sign of this particular collection. There are a hundred odd poems in this collection. But I shall concentrate on a few representative ones. The opening poem of the collection, that sets the stage, reads like this: इन शब्दों में __________ इन शब्दों में वह समय है जिसमें मैं रहता हूँ ग़ौर करने पर उस समय का संकेत भी यहीं मिल जाता है जो न हो लेकिन मेरा अपना है यहाँ कुछ जगहें दिखाई देंगी जो हाल ही में ख़ाली हो गई हैं और वे भी जो कब से ख़ाली पड़ा हैं यही मेरा यक़ीन हैं जो बाकि बचा रहा यानी जो ख़र्च हो गया वह भी यहीं पाया जाएगा इन शब्दों में मेरी बची खुची याददाश्त हैं और जो भूल गया है वह भी इन्हीं में है In These Words ___________ In these words The time In which I live If one can discern, The signs of that time could also be traced here Which absent Still are mine One can see some spaces here That have been vacated of late And those too Which are long left vacated That is my belief The leftover which is left That is to say, those spent and expended Will also be found here. In these words The vestiges of my memory And whatever has been forgotten Stay here too. This is a meta-commentary about the poetry that is to come in the following pages, about the self of the poet and also about his times. The modernist minimalism works deftly. At the most outward level one can see how the self is scattered—across three vectors—the lyrical I, the historical I and the crafted words themselves. In the very first three lines these three coordinates are mapped: these words catch my time, which in turn is what makes me, declares the poet. A triangulation happens: Words. My time. And my self. This is my time—the contemporary. You may not see that time in a pronounced manner always in these pages but you can glimpse the vignettes, if you are a careful enough reader. But my time has not been smooth. It has been jagged and fractious. All solidarities, every promise, every friendship may not have been fulfilled. Hence, there are vacated spaces—both recently emptied and also other festering gashes. I walk in poetry therefore. And therefore the necessity of the distancing the lyrical I from the historically constructed I. Hence also, the necessity of poetry in the first place so that you, the reader, can have a sense of both history and my detached condition, filtered through the sieve of time in these poetic pronouncements. It is immediately clear that the poet reserves a tremendous confidence in the permanence of the art-form—in words and language that can capture and husband time. It is only the enunciated words which are able to store memory as well as etch that which is gone. This is a singular claim: that the words will be able to capture that which is not there anymore: the ever-receding I and my receding times. How can poetry capture an economy of such bankruptcy? Make sense of an endurance that is provided by the spaces that are left vacated? How does someone craft the poetics of this triangular exchange? The Poetics of Inverted Equivalence To have a sense of that process we must go back to the particular stanza in this poem which says: यही मेरा यक़ीन हैं/जो बाकि बचा रहा यानी जो ख़र्च हो गया/वह भी यहीं पाया जाएगा That is my belief/The leftover which is left That is to say, those spent and expended/Will also be found here. In many of the poems in this collection, Manmohan works through a specific form of inversion and equivalency. Inversional symmetry is used in musical set practice. It relies on the concept that intervals and other sets of pitches are identical when inverted. The sets that are inverted can have remote connections to one another, but if the axis of symmetry is rightly measured and twisted, then one can draw equivalence in and through diametrically opposite modes or ideas. Inversional equivalence can work if two conditions are fulfilled: one, an oblique or contrary motion should predominate. And two, the counterpoint must begin and end in a perfect consonance. In this case both the conditions are eminently fulfilled. And this is but one instance among numerous. The poet’s beliefs are often placed in and through a series of counterpoints in this collection. In this case the remarkable inversion happens between what is leftover and what is spent. The inversional equivalence is drawn between what is gone and expended with whatever has been shored. This is a truly momentous claim—that which is salvaged is perfectly equitable to what has been depleted. There is no loss. No gain. The key metaphor of expenditure is something to be marked. If we carefully look again at the poem now we shall see that this particular stanza about the belief
Free Me From The Poet’s Prison
This is the translated version of an exchange between poet Rana Roychowdhury and Surajit Sen, published in Desher Agamikaal magazine in March, 2016. Rana Roychowdhury is one of the most understated, elemental and rebellious of contemporary poets from Bengal. HUG has published a short selection of his translated poems in January 2014: ——————————— Surajit Sen:Why did you begin to write poetry? And why still continue? Rana Roychowdhury: At one point I used to recite poetry at my home, on my own. At around thirteen or fourteen years of age. Actually, this habit, or ill-habit shall we say, I had been nurturing since my school days. All alone at home, I used to recite Nazrul Islam’s poetry aloud. At that time we used have a rural existence. Our village house was large and empty and when I used to recite, the sound would echo. That used to give me a kick. No one would hear me recite, of course. Then there was this obsession to take part in local recitation competitions. Often I would forget poems midway. And every time I would return rich with the consoling words of the judges! So, I realized that such a skill was not my cup of tea. But as I would recite, there gradually began to blossom a love for poetry itself. But I could not compose poetry. Sometimes I would read Shakti Chattopadhyaya’s poetry and would try to emulate him. Complete failure, that venture. I realized one cannot write with some definitive role model in mind. Whatever one feels, one has to pen that down. At one point some lines looked to be taking the shape of a poem. So I began sending them to magazines here and there. My first poem was published in a magazine from Agarpara. Alongside write-ups on Uttamkumar and interviews with Aparna Sen, my poems also got published. That is how it all started. Now it has turned into a kind of a habit—this writing. Not exactly a habit—actually I get a lot of happiness and satisfaction by writing poetry. S: What kind of reactions do you receive from the reader? R:Some utter kind words. Others abuse. Someone said: “Reading your poems, it feels you are sick. The amount of crap you write it makes me nauseated.” Others remain silent (such silence is like mourning). These days though, many seek poetry. Earlier no one used to ask. Only two magazines would publish my poetry-Dahopatro and Natmandir. I was at peace with myself. These days more of my poems get published, and I am not exactly satisfied with such compositions. S:Teaching in a school and writing poetry in Bangla—how did you end up aligning your life to such a classical lattice and frame? One that comes down to us right from the time of that arche teacher—Kobishekhar Kalidas Roy. R:Never thought that I will become a school teacher. All I used to do was join and partake in adda sessions in the local community club with friends. I got involved in some social work. Helping arrange medicine banks for the needy or procuring and distributing clothes during the Durga puja from Harisha Market or organizing blood donation camps or local festivities—these were the things I would spend my time in. Life was sheer vagabondage. Only hope was Ma’s hotel, since my father passed away long ago. Ma used to teach in a school. Never ever in my worst nightmare did I then envisage myself as a school-teacher. There is no relation between this teaching and my poetry. Both are independent streams. I am two different individuals in each of these vocations. But I teach kids. So, when I do engage with them I do not feel like a teacher. I feel that I am the father and guardian of these little ones—a strange love for these souls envelop me. It is difficult to describe this phenomenon—but even as I teach them, I discover poetry, glean it. That kind of poetry is timeless. S:But how did you become one, I mean: a poet? R: Yes, I am coming to that. But first: let me tell you what I used to do before I was a teacher. I was lucky to land a job. Someone helped me procure a job in a private firm. In that concern, I have worked for twelve years in two installments. For that I still receive a pension of Rs. 844/-. It became very difficult for me to work there. My immediate boss used to be very rude with me. I used to work in the accounts section and then he used to give very tough assignments which I could not do. My wicked boss used to misbehave and humiliate me since I could not do those chores. One day he said: “Tut tut, can a goat ever till the land?” I protested at that. Anyway, I had to periodically pay visits to the bank for office work. One had to wait there for long stretches of time. One day, waiting at Canara Bank on Camac Street, I started scribbling lines on the bank withdrawal slip, which had eventually become the poem “Jadavpur Mor”. I soon joined as a proof-reader in Aajkal newspaper. I did my job with diligence and so others, burdening me with extra work, would often step out for adda and smoking sessions. Ekram Ali da would sometimes indulge me by asking me write for that newspaper. For such sprees, I even got scolded once by Sandipan Chattopadhaya. He said: “See here is a letter against you. You have abused sundry people in your writing. Now you manage.” So, I had to compose a letter as a reply which made Sandipan immensely happy. Ekram da said—“You have a flair for prose” and so on. Thereafter I used to write there often. Had received some odd praise too. During that period I used to engage myself in both poetry and prose. And then I lost my mother—it was 1997. Since