If a people/ have no poets/ and no poetry of their own/ for a national anthology/ then treachery and barking/ will do the trick.

Ali Podrimja, Albanian poet

WHEN Croatian poet Lana Derkac said, after the five-day biennial Zagreb Poetry Festival last autumn, that poetry would survive as long as suffering and dreams of emancipation haunt human consciousness, I thought it was nothing more than a genuine poet's optimistic enthusiasm; more than ever, at a time when the notion that poetry has become marginal is being widely circulated. But, as Lana began reading from collections by poets from Eastern Europe and the USSR, I realised that her remark pointed to some basics about poetry, about its irreplaceable role in individual as well as social life.

Importantly, poetry has some sort of a generic affability and expressional felicity that tempt one to think that one can not only read it but write it too. And, apart from the aesthetic and ideological propositions, poetry has a mediational function that makes it primarily an expression of what is immediate and emergent in life at moments of emotional outbreak or during personal or social predicaments, for which there is no other substitute among literary forms.

Fundamental aspect

Though written in different languages, in diverse contexts and on varied experiences, the poems now being written in Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, or Ukraine vindicate this fundamental aspect of poetry that it is a medium that helps man regain his faith in himself and humanity and how it becomes the collective unconscious of a people.

Taken as a whole, what is common in contemporary Eastern European poetry is that it provides just the right models of poetry turning into an antithesis of power and authoritarianism. And, it doesn't demand mediation between the poet and the reader because words and images sprout from real life situations.

Irrespective of whether the poets are renowned or not, or their poetry fits into customary definitions of what poetry is, the ineffaceable remembrance of the past, concentration of suffering, spiritual indignation and moral disbelief prevalent in the poems make significant poets of them.

For the reason that the poems, besides being things of beauty, as Hilda Schiff says in the introduction to the anthology Holocaust Poetry, "allow us to understand historical events and experience better than the bare facts alone can do because they enable us to absorb them inwardly", we come as close as we can to entering psychologically into those unique events as they were actually felt by those individuals who experienced them."

Voice to emotional life

The Ukrainian poet Ihor Kalynets makes it unequivocal in his bio-note. He and his wife were arrested for the civil disobedience, which is expressed in his poetry. In 1972, they were sentenced to six years of strict-regime camps and three years of exile, which they served in the northern Urals and the trans-Baikal region, where he worked as a turner and stoker. "I suffered, but I did not repent and am pleased by that, for I feel that I have remained a human being. Poetry helped me to survive both the periods. I am not certain that this would please the readers," he says.

Oksana Zabuzko, another Ukrainian poet and novelist of international repute, expresses this sentiment more vehemently. Ukrainian poetry, she says, voices the sensibility and emotional life of a people condemned to party doctrine. But, from the time of Stalin until the dawn of glasnost, the minutest hint of Ukrainian cultural uniqueness was violently attacked as `bourgeois nationalism,' which, under Soviet law, was punishable — death under Stalin, and the notorious formula of `seven plus five' (seven years of prison camp and five years of exile) under Brezhnev.

Thus, everything that poetry did could be designated as `Nationalism'; be it using an archaic ornamental language, playing with Ukrainian mythological themes, or alluding to some figures and events in Ukrainian history — all tantamount to an overt political challenge.

Agonising history

The history of the Eastern European people has always been unbelievably agonising. Fighting with each other on ethic, religious, national, political and linguistic identities, they went on appearing and disappearing on the globe. The maps of their countries were many times drawn and redrawn. And, they were a people not allowed to love their country and languages for the most part of their historical existence.

So, it's quite natural that an immaculate sentiment for their nation, culture and language constitutes the ethos of their poetry, as the Bosnian poet Goran Samardzic writes: Whenever I leave Bosnia,/I feel I am guilty of something;/I feel time, not contentment,/And it's worse/Than the worst injection./I have several Bosnian friends/who fall ill when they leave the country./In Bosnia nothing disgusts me./ I could eat from the floor here in Bosnia.

Language issues

This doesn't mean that love for the country is just a `slogan of romantic nationalism'. But, as regards poetry, the language and culture one writes in is the most valuable thing on earth. An awareness without which writing is a play of apathetic spirit, a meaningless gesticulation that only pretends to possess significance. "How can you otherwise write in an endangered language? How can writing a poem be reconciled with the knowledge that in a few generations your message will become illegible?" Oksana asks.

Reading an Albanian or Bosnian poet is like travelling through a landscape tormented by blood and strife. An expression of the inmost and the intimate, of the incomprehensible and the unforeseeable. Poetry for them is: A blank sheet of paper— /this future./After me, words are left— /footprints in the white snow of the paper,/showing clearly/where I walked. ("Footprints" by Bulgarian poet Roman Kissiov, )

2 Silent and simple: New Malayalam poetry

In Malayalam, the new poetry is almost repulsively pre-modern, and, but for a few exceptions, it is nothing more than imitation of the past models’, said the Tamil-Malayalam writer, B Jayamohan a few years ago. Definitely, this was not an individual observation of Jayamohan, but one shared by many in Malayalam until recently. But, by chance it was his remark that flared up, provoking the new poets to join issue with him.

But, Jayamohan, the controversy over this statement had hardly died out, in a period of less than four years brought out two volumes of the new Malayalam poetry in Tamil translation incorporating the poets he had pulled down. And, two leading publishing houses came up with anthologies of exclusively new poems. Also, by then, almost all the new poets had published their first collections, which were sold out in a few months, perhaps, faster than the collections by the supposedly established poets of today. Some of these collections now have reached second and third editions, and some are prescribed for graduate and postgraduate level studies in the universities in the state. Furthermore, though awards are no indicators of the worth of a literary work, the State Sahithya Akademi award that went to P P Ramachandran’s debut collection Kane Kane (Seeing, seeing) last year was a public endorsement for the new poetry in the language.

All these said not to gainsay anybody’s viewpoint. Nor to prove that all is well and good in contemporary Malayalam poetry. But, to suggest that poetry, like life, at all times disproves predictions and that, despite big publishers’ snub, distributors’ cold-shoulder and the antipathy of the mainstream, the new poetry in Malayalam has made a way into cultural priorities.

Certainly, what is meant by ‘new poetry’ is the kind of poetry being written by a generation of poets whose initiation into poetry has been after the1980s, and, by ‘past models’, what it was in the preceding decades, the 1960s and 70s-the period of high modernism in Malayalam. In that case, what is it that makes it ‘new’ and distinguishes it from the ‘old’? Atoor Ravi Varma, poet and editor of one of the anthologies of new poetry, Puthumozhivazhikal (The ways of the new voices) identifies it in his forward as: “The new poets do not rely on the habitual values of individual, family, nation, and tradition. They have no simple answers. And, they don’t mix dreams, morals and ideologies in their poems. These are the poems of those who have lost their weapons and shields. Their way is rough with questions, arguments, negations and doubts. Now, maybe, this episode of disquiet is being written in all Indian languages.”

At the outset, it will be incorrect to bring the new poets, from Kalpetta Narayanan to Shayam Sudhakar, under one umbrella of a generation for their age ranges from late forties to mid-twenties. However, notwithstanding this divide, they are characterised by a sympathy for poetry that is peculiarly Kerala’s in sensibility, which in aesthetical sense is celebration of naturalness, as P Raman writes in the poem, Mullathara (The Jasmine mount): Where is the way? / Where is the way? / Little climbers are restless on the jasmine mount / I didn’t put up a pandal/ Nor did tame them to spread out/ But keep their restlessness intact.

This naturalness, though it may appear like denial of the knowledge-systems of modernist culture, is not retrogression to pre-modernism. It is a way of coming to terms with one’s immediate environs, doing away with the centered and schematized practices of modernism. Also an attempt at fine-tuning the language to reflect even delicate contours and shades of experience, which the poets of the 1960s and 70s either ignored or were incapable of doing because of their ideological preconditioning. Hence, manifestly, the thrust of the new poetry is on reclaiming the objectivity of words and, thus, the spontaneity of language. Now, for a poet, word is all that matters. His belief is: Man is in a fortress/ that has no doors other than words. /Only the poet knows it. / He comes in making anything a door. / He goes out making anything a door (Kavi, Kalpetta Narayanan).

In women’s poetry, the liberty of being uninhibited turns into a sort of deceptive naïveté. The entire range of experience is often resolved into parameters of body. But, when V. M. Girija, Anitha Thampi, Rajani Mannadiyar and N R Anitha write about body or about a daily routine like sweeping, serving food at home or taking a shower, the marginal becomes the central. Writing, in Malayalam, Ezhuthu, happens as a total experience of the body as in: As the water/ drains away /and the naked body/ chills over/The shivering wind/stretched his fingers in/through the windows/I felt cold/for a moment/And the loincloth of/wetness flew away./And wound in/crazy summer,/I forgot bashfulness./Like the big drops/from the treetops/only the strands of hair/Write on the body/from memory/Two or three lines/with water (Ezhuthu, Anitha Thampi ).

The replacement of ideology with experience enables the new poets to be plural and eclectic. Their attitudes concerning poetry and its function in life are different, sometimes even antagonistic to one another. While a poet like K R Tony or L. Thomas Kutty makes a reverse reading of social and cultural history through parodies and ironies, what one like Anwar Ali aims at is its rereading, eliciting the thus far unexpressed. Anwar’s poem Eakathathayude Ampathuvarshangal (The Fifty Years of Solitude), which was published in 1997, the year the country celebrated the Golden Jubilee of the Independence, narrates the story of a freedom-fighter who returns to his home in the village, dead beat, in the midnight of August 14, 1947, and falls into a sleep that continues for fifty years. The poem, structured in the form for a shooting report of a TV documentary and interposed with dialogues and real life situations, juxtaposes the concept and reality of freedom, for which many like Raghavan, the protagonist

Social, political, historical or just personal, clarity which always is mistaken for plainness is the most outstanding feature of the new poetry. The new poets have no big claims on what they write. They know that poetry is no substitute for anything. As one expects of the new generation, they have a feeling that by the time they turned up all the big shows were over. For them, it is as simple (lalitham) as: A Sweet chirp is enough/ to let it be known/ ‘I am here.’ / Just feather drop is enough/ to prove ‘I was here’. / Simply the warmth of hatching is enough/ to say/ ‘I will be here.’ / Birds! How could they articulate life/ much simpler! (Lalitham, P P Ramachandran). It’s this ease that the much younger poets like K Veerankutty and Shayam Sudhakar take to further lucidity, making poetry an experience of language.

Excerpts from novel

Poojari Chandamman alias Kuniyil Chandamman could not sleep that night. He paced restlessly in and out of the one-room mud-house on the filled-up land down the paddy field. One moment lying on the hay mat, spread at the edge of the veranda, but the next moment getting up and walking back and forth again. As if he had accidentally swallowed a piece of burning charcoal.

Chandamman had no one around to ask him what had happened. No one knew where he had come from, or whether he had a family. He was living alone on the five-cent land presented to him by Murikkumkunnath Moidu Haji, Ahamed Haji’s father, as a reward for protecting their cultivation from stray cattle and thieves.

His only companion was a dog that had no name. Chandamman got it, a few years ago, from a street in one of his trips to Palani, the temple city of the Lord Muruga, the god of war and wisdom. A sweet engaging puppy it was, he took it home and raised it, caring for it as if it were a human child. The dog had an extraordinary intimacy with Chandamman, most unlike what dogs usually have with their masters. It accompanied him wherever he went, except on his yearly Palani trip that lasted for more than a month.

During this period, in his absence, the neighbours took care of it. They called it Chandammante naya, which means the dog of Chandamman. Nobody teased it, stoned it, or shooed it away when it came near. And why should one do that? Chandamman’s dog normally did nothing to provoke anyone. It neither barked, nor bit. It did not try to enter houses through back doors like other dogs of the village. During the mating months, no one saw it tagging behind bitches, sniffing their rear. And being a strict vegetarian, it did not need to run after hens, pigs, goats and calves.

The dog too could not sleep that night. Stretching out its front legs, it lay on the front yard steps, close to the veranda.

Had the morning star risen? Had a cock doodled somewhere? Had the crows that flew westward last evening begun to return to the east? Sitting on a wooden floorboard, Chandamman looked around. The night was unusually slow. It remained where it was, even after crawling for hours, like a python that has swallowed a goat.

He went inside the house and came out with the colourful kavady, the conch and the small cloth bag in which was kept the bhasmam brought from Palani in his last visit, from the cane crosspieces. He began dusting them one by one, though they had been cleaned up many times. A regular habit when he was left with nothing else to do and uncertain about what to do. Each piece was fresh looking. The kavady bells chimed well, the peacock feathers hadn’t faded and the conch whistled with just one blow.

As if sensing something abnormal in his master’s behaviour, the dog drew near Chandamman, sniffing and wagging its tail. Rubbing against him it squeezed in between his legs, making a meek sound. A dog’s way of expressing concern. Keep quiet. Chandamman admonished it. The dog obeyed. A little worried, it went back to its earlier position and lay down looking at him sadly but anxiously.

Kuniyil Chandamman began his Palani pilgrimage thirty-six years ago when he was just sixteen. Since then, he visited the Muruga temple at Palani in Tamil Nadu every year. More than a pilgrimage, it was like the blooming of a tree in spring or shedding of its leaves in autumn. If it were the month of Meenam, Chandamman would unfailingly be at Palani, wearing a saffron cloth and a scarf of the same colour.

People called him Poojari, slang for a priest in the local dialect, because in the village, among other devotees of the Lord Muruga, he had the status of a priest. He knew all the details such as which bus went to Palakkad, and once in Palakkad, where one had to wait for the Palani-bound train, and, on reaching Palani, which was the safest lodge one can stay with family without the fear of being taken for a ride. Hence, people approached him for guiding them to Palani. And he did it with utmost care and commitment.

Every year, the month of Meenam dawned in Paleri with Chandamman’s chanting. Hara Haro Hara. He visited each house in the village, dancing with the kavady on the shoulder, tinkling the bells by quick tilts and blowing the conch to emit an ‘Om’- like sound. The dog was always behind him, as if it was his shadow on four legs.

From every house, people gave him whatever they could afford. A 50-paisa coin, a bowl of rice, a cucumber, an old piece of cloth, which on the whole was enough for him and his dog to get by for an entire year. His offering was a pinch of bhasmam from the small cotton bag hung round the neck of the dog. People accepted it, though with a little less veneration they showed when receiving offerings from Darmadatan Namboodiri, the high-Brahmin priest of the Erothe Vishnu Temple, the protector deity of Paleri.

Heralding the daybreak, the Munjora hilltops became a wee bit brighter. Chandamman closed the door and put a wooden latch across it. The door didn’t have a lock. A latch across it meant it was closed and Poojari was ‘out’. No one would go inside if it was so. Suppose somebody did break in, what he would get? A pot of bhasmam or a coin worth nothing more than a trifling, or an old shirt, perhaps given to him by an intruder of the previous year.

Chandamman poured some coconut oil into the nilavilakku, a circular bronze lamp kept permanently in front of Lord Muruga’s image he bought on his first trip to Palani, thirty-six years ago. The reason behind the lamp’s permanent newness, it was widely believed, was his unfaltering faith in Muruga.

Chandamman struck a matchstick and lit the lamp. It had five wicks made by rolling pieces of pure cotton. The incense of coconut oil burning with the cotton spread in and around. Inhaling it, he closed his eyes and sat praying in front of the image. No one knew what he prayed for actually. There wouldn’t be any utterance. Only the vibration of the lips. But, he would neither hear nor know even if an elephant roared nearby or it thundered in his ears.

A few minutes’ absolute silence. No movement except the dog’s occasional twists of its tail on being irked by bugs. Chandamman opened his eyes and rose up. Took a handful of bhasmam from the clay tray in which candlesticks and camphor were burning in front of Muruga’s image and smeared it first on his forehead, then round the neck, on the chest, abdomen, backside, on the hands and legs, and finally stripping, on the buttocks, the testicles that were hanging, in between his legs, and finally on the phallus. Hara Haro Hara! He cried.

Chandamman then turned to the dog. Familiar with what that habitual act meant, the dog moved closer to him and stood like a docile disciple. He took another pinch of bhasmam and smeared it all over the dog’s body. Chandamman once again looked at the Muruga image with suppliant hands. A mild shiver passed through his nerves. As if prompted by someone from a distance, he, all at once, picked up the cotton bhasmam-bag, tucked it under the saffron ribbon tied round his waist over the mundu and then picked the kavady and put it on the right shoulder. Finally, he took the conch, held it close to the mouth, circling it with his lips, blew it so loud that it was heard echoing in every nook and corner of the village. Hara Haro Hara! Hara Hara Haro Hara! Hara Haro Hara! He repeated. And set out on his thirty-seventh pilgrimage to Palani.

The paddy field was expansive and there was a stream flowing through its centre dividing it into two parts. One had to walk along the crisscrossing ridges that divided the field into many rectangles, all the way up to the wooden bridge, too narrow and slippery to walk on, to get to the other side. But for Chandamman’s feet, the way was as familiar as the hymns of Muruga. He didn’t need a light or a support to walk, even at night.

When Chandamman reached the bridge, a small crowd was already there. Though it was not morning yet, people and objects could be dimly seen. Rayarappan Kammal, Nanu Asari, Gopalan Kammal, Andi Velan, Kunhikanaran Kaniyan………….. They were from houses on either side of the field, awakened by the sound of his conch blowing. Apprehension of some untoward happening was visible on their faces.

It was in the month of Meenam that people usually went to Palani. It was only Makaram now, two months before Meenam. What might be the reason for the Poojari’s early pilgrimage this year? They wondered
Why early this year, Poojari? Rayarappan Nair asked.
Hara Haro Hara! Chandamman cried out loud.
Tell us, what’s the reason?
What are you up to?
Who will take others to Palani if you go early? They began asking one by one.

Chandamman didn’t answer anyone. But repeated: Hara Haro Hara! Hara Haro Hara! He placed the kavady on the rails of the bridge; looked at the dog that drew closer, knowing fully the meaning of each look. He squatted on the ground and held the dog by its face, embracing and kissing it. His eyes became wet. And the dog’s too. No one could make out what was happening. They were mere witnesses. He loosened his grasp. The dog took a step backward and waited, staring at its master.

Go, Palanimurugan will take care of you hereafter. He told it.
What are you doing Poojari? This time, it was Andi Velan who asked.

What has happened to you, why all these unusual things?

I have to get going, that’s all I know. Chandamman said, lifting the kavady from the rails onto his right shoulder. Without saying anything further or looking at anyone, he walked over the bridge to the other side of the stream, crossed the field. All this while people stood watching him until he turned to the left and disappeared into the still dark passage between the hills that separated the upper stretch of the field and the Kuttiady town. But his cry was still heard from afar. Hara Haro Hara! Hara Haro Hara! Hara Haro Hara! Gradually that mantra too became faded.

Where is the dog? Some one asked. It was not seen anywhere. It had already left. It was not morning yet.