The Poet’s
Work in India: An Interview with Anita Nair
1. Getting Started as a Poet
BW: When did you begin writing poetry?
AN: I think I wrote my first poem when I was about seven or eight years
old. And I think it came about because of the poet Sarojini Naidu (1).
I had to study something of hers in school, in my school textbook. I
read a poem, and I said, “Wow, so this is poetry!” This
is exactly how I think in my head, so why don’t I write it down? And
I wrote a poem -which is probably the most surrealistic poem anybody could
have written because it was all about daffodils by the side of the Nile --
and things like that which are completely contradictory, and I was very pleased
with it, and I showed it to my family, and they said wow, but can you just
write another one and show it to us, so that we know that you really wrote
it. That actually killed
poetry in me for a while because I started feeling that my works were suspect,
you know. And then it took me at least about eight or nine years to
recover from that. I started writing poetry again when I was fourteen.
BW: Is there a support network for poets here in Bangalore?
AN: There are some poetry associations; there is a poetry journal
that has come out here from SCILET (Study Center for Indian Literature in English
Translation), at the American College at Madurai, and there are a couple of
other poetry journals too, but overall, in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Calcutta
there is perhaps a more active poets’ gathering, than, say, in Bangalore.
BW: So there are some poetry magazines, professional organizations,
poetry prizes, things like that?
AN: I don’t think there are poetry prizes. You see, the problem
in India is that all of these things, prizes, journals, poet’s organizations,
exist all in regional languages. The problem arises when you are writing
in English.
BW: Yes, we’ll get to that, because I know it’s a thorny
issue. Where did you begin publishing poetry?
AN: Typically, it was in school magazines. But seriously, probably
a wider audience was a page in a newspaper in Chennai.
BW: What was the name of the newspaper?
AN: The newspaper was called Indian Express. So I started
off by sending my poems there. And they started publishing them. And
then the first time I was included in an anthology was when the British Council
had a kind of contest; and they chose one hundred best poems. I
didn’t win the prize, but it was part of that anthology.
BW: How long did it take you to write Malabar Mind?
AN: It’s taken me about ten years.
2. The Poet’s Work
BW: How do you conceive of the work of a poet? Is it craft? Is
it concentrating on publications? Is it making connections with publishers? Doing
poetry readings?
AN: Well, for me poetry is something extremely intense and personal. Actually,
all my writing is, but poetry even more so. One thing is, of course, that
there are really no avenues for it to be published. Perhaps now I can persuade
my fiction publishers to publish a book of my poetry, but usually when I write
a poem, it’s because something has moved me so deeply that it affects me; either
it could be in a nice way or in a terrible way. And I need to put it down
to get past that feeling. So for me it’s an intensely personal thing.
BW: Quite literally, could you describe the process of how you work on
your poems? Do you write your poems out by hand or do you type them directly
on the computer?
AN: Well, I write by hand because I never know when a poem is going to
strike me. It sounds terribly cliched, but I’ve written poems on cocktail
napkins; I’ve written poems on the back of bus tickets or train tickets,
and stuff like that. But then what I do is try and put it down into a journal
when I get back, so that it’s all there in place. And then later,
only much much later, do I consider keying it in because that is usually when
someone asks for a poem, and I say, okay, now it’s time to transcribe it
into a legitimate version.
BW: How long does a poem take to complete? Do you revise it as you
go along?
AN: No, usually the poem is written in one short burst. And then,
perhaps, when I go back to it maybe months later or weeks later, whatever, then
there is a bit of crafting done. Because I think when I first try and write
the poem, it’s to capture that emotion – the intensity of that moment – and
so I just don’t revise it al all; I just write.
BW: Since you write in many genres, can you explain, when this burst of
emotion hits you, how you figure out whether you’re writing poetry or prose
fiction?
AN: Well, certainly for poetry I know because it just kind of happens in
my head, and I know that I have to write it as a poem. There is no other
way that I can conceive of it as anything else. Because for me when I write
prose fiction, usually I think about it for at least a year before I start work. So
it is a kind of very slow gradual process. It stays in my head and builds
itself. But with poetry, it’s instantaneous.
BW: Do you keep a daily journal?
AN: No, no, very seldom.
BW: What do you enjoy reading?
AN: Fiction. Biographies. Poetry on and off. It’s
not as if I can read poetry back to back. I suddenly feel like reading
some poetry, and then I read poetry. I’m a very liberal reader; I
read just about anything.
BW: Have your literary “tastes” in terms of subject and genres
changed over time, or do you find yourself reading the same kinds of things now
as in the past?
AN: Yes, they’ve changed to a certain extent. I read more biographies
now, and to contradict that totally, I never used to read thrillers, but now
I read thrillers too. So, I don’t know.
BW: Tell me about the new book of poems that you’re working on now.
AN: There are actually two pieces of work in progress. One is where
I am writing poetry, and I am putting them down when they occur to me so that
eventually they will all become a collection. There is no theme to it right
now, I don’t know, eventually when it’s all written, maybe I might
find that there is a thread connecting them. The other thing that I’ve
been commissioned to write is a set of poems about the islands within us. It’s
going to be done in collaboration with an Italian artist, and so we talked about
it, and we said perhaps this would be a nice way to explore the islands
within us -- for him in a figurative way or an abstract way and for me with words. And
I’ve broken this into seven islands which include childhood, marriage,
work, and death and such preoccupations. When you’re on that island,
that is what preoccupies you.
3. Poetry in India
BW: How do you conceive of the poet’s role in India today?
AN: There isn’t a role at all.
BW: As a poet, do you feel like an insider or an outsider in India?
AN: I feel like an outsider.
BW: Are poets respected in India?
AN: Poets are respected, but seldom read.
BW: Is there a Bangalore poetry scene? Are there any regular poetry
readings? Do you participate?
AN: I’m really not so sure about that. I think there is some
sort of organization, but I don’t have anything to do with it.
BW: You don’t go to readings?
AN: No, I don’t.
BW: When you were in America, did you go to poetry readings?
AN: No, I didn’t.
BW: Who are your favorite Indian poets either ancient or modern?
AN: Okay, ancient, of course, I love Kalidasa (2). And I also like
the work of Kabir (3). Because I studied Kabir and studied a bit of Tulsidas
(4), but I don’t like him too much because there are too many religious
overtones in his poetry. I do like the cantos of the Bhagavadgita, that
whole section of the Mahabharata (5). And there are a couple of Tamil poets; one
called Tiruvalluvar (6) whose work I like very much, and there is a more
contemporary poet from the nineteenth century called Subramaniya Bharathi (7)
who I thought was a very gifted poet who died very young and was mostly doped
out of his head during his life, I think, but he wrote really marvelous poetry.
He’s very interesting; he was trampled to death by an elephant, and
they said that he was on dope all the time, so he probably didn’t realize
what was happening. Nevertheless, he’s always seen as a freedom fighter
poet, someone who voiced his protest about British imperialism.
BW: How about contemporary Indian poets?
AN: In contemporary poets, there is Kamala Das (8) whose work I love. There
is a poet named Jeet Thayil (9) whose work I like very much, also. There
is another poet named Vijay Nambisan (10) whose work is very interesting. There
is another poet whose work I love in the original language; I don’t
like the English versions of it. He translates it himself into English,
and I’m not so sure I like the English version. But he writes in
Malayalam; his name is Rajeevan Thachampoyil (11). When he writes in Malayalam,
I think it’s marvelous.
BW: But his work doesn’t translate well?
AN: In English, somehow, the resonance is not the same.
BW: Who are your favorite poets from outside of India?
AN: Langston Hughes, Robert Creeley, Pablo Neruda, I love Pablo Neruda. And
Stevie Smith. Actually, the thing is I like poems more than poets. Sometimes,
it’s really more poems than poets.
BW: Are there any poems offhand, that you really love?
AN: For me, one poem that I really love is “A Dream Deferred.” I
love that poem.
BW: Do you feel a “weight of tradition” when you’re writing
as an Indian poet? Let me tell you where this question comes from; here,
in Malabar Mind there is a poem entitled “The Cosmopolitan Crow;” in
section two of that poem, one persona says the following: “She didn’t
understand/ How can she? Of what it is/ to be anchored by a
thousand year old tradition.” Do you feel this weight when you write
like an “anchor of tradition?”
AN: No, I don’t. It’s just the persona speaking. That
person speaking is the Mother Crow, and she feels that way.
BW: Are you a materialist? This question is derived from the same
poem as above where is says: “How can they live like this?/ Content
to be thought of/ as transmigrated souls of human ancestors.” Is
that a persona speaking or are you commenting on Indian tradition?
AN: No, that’s partially me speaking. One thing that I constantly
find myself having to fight against is this Indian cultural tradition which allows
karma to rule. It’s a very fatalistic attitude. And I’ve
always tried very hard to go against that. You can’t dictate to destiny,
but perhaps you can persuade it to slow a bit.
BW: So how do you conceive of the self then if you don’t believe
in atman, karma, or dharma?
AN: No, I believe in all of that, but I also believe in the human spirit. And,
I think, for me the the balance is to find that point where both merge harmoniously
rather then letting one preside over the other.
BW: So you believe that individuals determine their own freedom?
AN: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I believe in freedom to such an extent
that in all my works of fiction that theme keeps resonating again and again. If
there is a choice between society and the individual, it is always the individual.
BW: Again, from the same section of the same poem mentioned above, the
persona uses the first person and says the following: “Our roots
are laid down here./ But right now, Nutcracker,/ I’d like to
be where I could find myself -- the US of A.” Is that you speaking
through a persona or merely the persona?
AN: That’s the persona in the poem speaking.
BW: I find that line so ironic because so many Americans have travelled
to India to “find themselves,” and in your poem you show the reverse
process of Indians looking to America to “find themselves.”
AN: Well, I did make a trip to the United States myself when I was about
twenty-four years old because I thought that if I went there I was going to find
answers to certain things that were bothering me here. Which is precisely
what a lot of people do when they come to India.
BW: That’s exactly what I did when I came here to India, for example.
AN: I guess you just need to exchange your environment for another environment
to be able to place yourself within your environment.
BW: I think travel helps us do that because it highlights the differences
and makes us learn about ourselves by seeing another culture and opening ourselves
to the differences.
4. Language and Audience
BW: How many languages do you speak?
AN: Five. I speak Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and English.
BW: Which language do you consider your “mother tongue”? By
that I mean which language did you speak with your family when you were growing
up?
AN: My family was bilingual. I speak English and Malayalam about
the same.
BW: Did your parents have a language that they used when they didn’t
want you to know what they were talking about?
AN: No. It’s funny, though, my mother and her family, she and
her siblings, have a secret language. They concocted a language of their
own, and it’s amazing to listen to it because they go on, and it’s
like that African language which is constructed out of clicks.
BW: What do you think of Hinglish (Hindi+English) or Inglish (Indian+English)?
AN: Well, one thing, of course, is that Indians do speak an English
that’s definitely ours. We’ve taken a lot of different things
and twisted them around to make it ours. I’m all for that, and I
think you have to let the language be alive and not let it be dictated to by
old traditions. But I’m not so sure about mixing two languages which
is like mixing English and Hindi or English and Tamil or whatever. In that
case, you end up with a bastard language because it’s neither here nor
there. It’s basically a form of self indulgence on the part of the
speaker or by the ones who speak it. And it’s not as if everybody
does. It’s a few people who take it around because what you would
find is Inglish, Indian English. That is a living language. The other
one, Hinglish, is more like a gimmick.
BW: But, inevitably there are going to be words from the different languages
coming into Inglish just the way Spanish words are entering American English
which we call Spanglish; it’s just inevitable, isn’t it?
AN: Yeah, right. So much so even the Oxford English Dictionary is
accepting more and more Indian words as part of the lexicon; that’s
fine. The problem is where you have half a word in English and half a word
in Hindi. You need a footnote to understand what it means, and that defeats
the whole purpose of language which is to communicate.
BW: I noticed that you didn’t employ any Inglish or Hinglish in Malabar
Mind.
AN: I do it in my fiction because it’s in the dialogue, but not when
I’m writing in third person.
BW: Why have you chosen to write in English?
AN: Primarily, because that was the language that I grew up with, the language
I studied, the language that I heard. Secondly, I love the language; I
mean I just love English.
BW: What percentage of the Indian population read English for pleasure?
AN: A really small percentage. I mean I could be horribly wrong,
but say maybe ten percent.
BW: Are you considered “unauthentic” or “un-Indian” because
you’ve chosen to write in English?
AN: Now this is a question I would need to elaborate on. What causes
this aspect of being “un-Indian?” The thing is, in India, you
do have an image of what an Indian ought to be like, or an Indian poet, or an
Indian writer. And it could be just physical traits; it could be
the way you look, the way you are, and so forth. And the moment you break
away from that, immediately you are suspect. So because of that, I am suspect
to a certain extent. Now to the question of “unauthentic;” I
think, initially, when my books first arrived, there was that question. I
mean, “What does she know about India?” I didn’t have
to say too much because my books spoke for themselves. And the literary
establishment could see that. I write about rural India; I write
about suburban India. Whereas, most Indians writing in English write about
urban India. So, it can’t get more authentic. The acid test,
of course, has been that my books are usually published in India first. So the
critics here and the readers here will not allow anything that is remotely unauthentic
to get past them. So in that sense, that test has taken care of the question
of authenticity; that’s no problem. But I did have that problem
when I began writing.
BW: Have your works been translated from English into any of the other
Indian languages?
AN: Yes, my works have been translated into two or three other Indian languages: Malayalam,
Marathi, and Hindi. Mostly the novels, not poetry. Some poetry has
been translated into Malayalam.
BW: The question of language turns up in the poem that I’ve quoted
from before, “The Cosmopolitan Crow,” which is the last poem in Malabar
Mind. In it, there are crows or Indians and ravens or Americanized
Indians. The poem makes these two statements about the difference between
these two antithetical states of mind: “I don’t understand
the crow-turned-ravens yet./ Their caw has an American twang.” and “Young
crow-ravens brought up on Aunt Jemima’s waffles,/ Microwaved key lime pie
and broccoli, / don’t worry their heads/ on the soul and its antics.” Are
you afraid of this Americanization? Do you consider the “American twang,” “Aunt
Jemima’s waffles,” and “microwaved” food as a movement
towards monoculture?
AN: I’m not afraid of Americanization; that’s merely
an observation. You see the second generation Indians particularly blend
in more easily with the mainstream American culture than the first generation
ones who cling to their Indianness. So much so, that even though we have
moved on here in India, when they come back, they were horrified that we have
moved on.
BW: Is that the main thesis of “The Cosmopolitan Crow”?
AN: Yes, it’s about someone who goes away and comes back and expects
to find an unchanged India. And India has changed. And you see that
all the time.
BW: Can you elaborate a little bit about how India has changed?
AN: In the last ten years, I think the change that has taken place in the
country has been amazing. Everything has changed, you know, the way people
live, the kind of access we have to various things. The food patterns,
the consumption patterns, everything has changed. For instance, I’ve
had family living in the United States ever since the mid 50’s. So
when they came back, they came back with gifts for us, and these were things
that you could never for a moment imagine that you could buy in India. They
brought back bottles of whiskey and bourbon, and they brought chewing gum, and
they brought toys, and they brought polyester stuff, and things like that. And
in India, we still didn’t have any of that or it was not available unless
you paid a lot of money for it. But now when they come back, they discover
that what they bring could be bought here for half the price. Right. So
that’s just talking of the material changes. But, also, there are
changes in the minds. Because one thing that we have is cable television
and it is really cheap in India. I mean for a hundred and fifty rupees,
which is the equivalent of three dollars, you get one hundred or one hundred
and twenty channels into your house. And most homes have television, or
at least there is a community television. So you see how the rest of the
world lives. You might not adapt it into your life or even adopt some practices. So
it’s not as if we are the people who listened to someone who came back
from the West and who first told us about ATMs, and told us about a hole in the
wall into which you put your card, and you got money out of it. That was
like a miracle. Not any more. Because we have ATMs here, all these things
are here now. Things have changed so much, and particularly in the past
ten years because the government has adopted a very liberal policy about import,
and things are sold here. People are going abroad and studying. Earlier
perhaps about ten or fifteen years ago you never heard about people traveling
abroad on work or for pleasure. Now if you go to the airport, everybody
is zipping into the United States, zipping into Europe, into Australia.
BW: That’s one thing I’ve noticed this time in India; almost
every Indian I’ve spoken to knows some one in America; he or she might
have an uncle in New York, or something like that. And so there’s
this connection between India and America that I’m finding more and more.
AN: Absolutely, you find that all the time. Like for instance, if
you were to take a flight out of Bangalore, the flights are packed; you
have to book months in advance. Everyone is traveling to either the U.S.
or the U.K. or they’re going into Europe. It’s so difficult
to enter a plane and find an empty flight. And these are daily flights.
BW: This is true for the upper class and middle class Indians. But,
of course, most of the vast majority of poor people are never going to have the
opportunity to travel.
AN: No. You see the thing is this whole distinction between the life
in the urban areas is so different from life in the rural areas. But in
some sense, this poem particularly, has to do with a very urban setting. It
doesn’t have to do with rural India. In rural India, what you do
see is the migration has been to Middle Eastern countries where they go to work.
BW: Are there any forms of scholarships that will send poorer Indian students
to study in America?
AN: I think the norm is to get the scholarship directly from the universities.
BW: So if they are academically gifted, they can get into an American University
and that’s their ticket to success?
AN: Yes, and banks will give the students partial loans, and then they
supplement that with work study or a job on the side.
5. Gender Issues
BW: Are there any obstacles to being published related to gender today?
AN: No.
BW: Are there any obstacles to being published related to caste today?
AN: No.
BW: Is globalization making life easier for women in India?
AN: I’m not so sure if it’s making it easier because what happens
is that with globalization you know what the available avenues are; you
know what the things are that you can do, you know what are the things that women
all over the world are doing. And it does take a little bit out of the person
living here when you realize that in some ways society in India still expects
a woman to fulfill all her traditional roles, which means that she has to put
some of her desires on the back burner.
BW: Could you explain a little more about an Indian woman’s traditional
role?
AN: Well, we do have the religious texts and the oral traditions which
are probably more powerful than any sermon or any kind of religious dictate written
now. Because from the time a woman is born, the women in her family go
on about how you have to do this, otherwise when you grow up your husband’s
not going to approve, and your in laws are not going to be happy. So somewhere
in you, you’re very slowly and meticulously being brainwashed about the
kind of roles that you have to fulfill as an adult woman. And these roles
have to do with being a good wife, being a good mother, a good daughter-in-law,
a good daughter, a good aunt, and all the family roles that you are expected
to play. Nowhere is there any kind of space allocated for being a good
woman. A woman per se. A woman is always perceived from a paternal
or masculine viewpoint. So, in that sense, a woman has desires of her own; she
has dreams of her own. Usually, she’s told that either she can try
and marry her desires for the common good around her, or if it’s not possible
to marry her desires, then she puts them on the back burner. I constantly
hear women saying, oh, I was waiting for my children to grow up in order to start
doing this, or I was waiting for my family to settle down, so that I could do
this. So there is a kind of censorship that is self inflicted rather than
inflicted by the society.
BW: The society gives you a certain role, and it’s difficult to find
a way out of it?
AN: One of the things is that the society in India has a very crucial role
to play. The society and family. One thing is that we don’t
have is a social service scheme. The family actually works like a social
service scheme in the sense that if you are in trouble, it’s the family
that comes in to support you. If there is trouble in the marriage, the
family becomes the mediators. All kinds of things are covered this way. If
there is a death in the family, they provide a home for you. So there are
very few people who would stand up against the family because that would mean
being ostracized. Not many people have that kind of courage to say, okay,
I don’t care; I’ll just live my life the way I want.
BW: How did you go about finding a space for your creativity? I mean,
how did you establish a zone and the time required to do your creative work?
AN: Well, one thing, of course, is that I am fortunate in having a family
that is not so didactic and nor do they impose themselves on me. But, also,
it involved a great deal of compartmentalization where I had to carve out bits
of the day for myself and keep them sacrosanct; so that they were completely
inviolable in that sense. It isn’t easy, it wasn’t easy, it still
isn’t easy.
BW: Do you work? Do you have a job?
AN: Not any more.
BW: Let me ask you a question concerning relationships prompted by a passage
in your poem entitled “Lullaby.” The passage
reads, “Neglect is a habit you need to learn young; Or, like me,
in the downy confines of your bed/ You’ll have to let yourself be
held, caressed and even subjugated; A kind of whore, I trade my body/ So
that at night, I don’t have to dream alone.” What does this
passage say about Indian relationships?
AN: Well, you see mostly these are arranged marriages. In some sense,
these are marriages where you trade one set of things for another. For
instance, you give your time, your body, and pretty much your energies into running
a man’s home, keeping him happy, and stuff like that. And, in turn,
you know that you are going to be taken care of for the rest of your life because
usually marriage in India is forever. Divorce is really not common. So
it’s very much like barter, and it resembles very much a business relationship. In
that sense, there is no room for feelings. I mean that is a very cynical
way of looking at it perhaps. I must have been in a very cynical frame
of mind when I wrote it. So it is about saying don’t expect more
than you’re going to get anyway; because if you do, then you’re going
to be unhappy. But you learn this as a woman in India. Concerning
children, for example, females are always neglected when compared to the males. It’s
something you have to learn; otherwise, you’re constantly going to
be saying, why am I being treated like this? Then you end up feeling like a victim
or a martyr.
BW: May I ask, related to the quotation above, whether your marriage was
a love marriage or an arranged marriage?
AN: It was a love marriage.
6. Questions about Malabar Mind
BW: Again, from your poem “The Cosmopolitan Crow” I have
a question about the following passage, “Love doesn’t last, there
is competition/ from the mailorder houses./ From Jerry Springer and
cyberporn.” How do you feel about pornography, violence, and cyberporn?
AN: I have absolutely no problem with pornography as long as it is not
child pornography. I don’t have any problems with cyberporn. But
I do have a problem with violence. When I was growing up, we had a subject
that was taught to us called Civics. One of the ideas that was taught to
us all the time in that class was that the definition of freedom is that freedom
ends at the tip of your nose; the moment you cross beyond that it becomes
another person’s territory. So given that for me, anything that intrudes
into that space or a person extruding into the other’s face is violence. Which
is why it bothers me when I see violence of any sort. Again, it’s
very contradictory because I like violent movies and so on. But that perhaps
is just the pacifist in me letting out steam. But while I do have
very definite views on violence and child pornography, beyond that, if it works
for you, it works for you. Nobody has the moral authority to sit down and
to judge another person.
BW: There’s another line from “The Cosmopolitan Crow” in
which the persona focuses on travel, “I want to see the world, Nutcracker,/ I
have a mind to see the US of A./ Where crows are not crows but ravens.” Have
you been to America?
AN: Yes, twice.
BW: And what did you find there?
AN: The first time I went when I was about twenty-four. India was
a quieter, more repressed, a kind of straight-jacketed place then. And
then to go into New York which, on the other hand, was a time before I think
Manhattan was even cleaned up; it was really Manhattan the way you saw
it in books and movies. So for me, it was a wonderful experience; you know,
there were so many things that made me widen my eyes and say, is this how they
really do it? And things like that. The next time round when I went,
I was about thirty-two or thirty-three years old. As a person, I had grown. And
the country that I was living in India had also changed so much. When I
returned to New York, it didn’t seem so really extraordinary. And
strangely enough I felt I would use again as a reference point New York, Manhattan. I
found that New York had become like a middle aged man. Before it was a young
man steaming with life, being kind of anti-establishment, being very zany and
so on. Now, this was Giuliani’s Manhattan, which was a cleaned out, sedate,
sober Manhattan. And it wasn’t so wildly exciting as it was the first
time.
BW: “The Cosmopolitan Crow” ends with these lines, “The
crow arched its neck./ The crow sought to look beyond/ It was easier
than to look within./ Remembering is another way of sinning/ Where
the crow had chosen to live.” Could you elaborate on the Indian
qualities of the crow and the Americanized qualities of the raven in this poem? Do
you identify with either of these two personas?
AN: The first point, of course, is that this poem is written like a story; it’s
a ballad in that sense. So there isn’t too much of me in there. Definitely,
the main character in that is the crow; he flirts for a brief while with
this notion of being a raven. But somewhere in him the crow prevails. He
realizes that he is never going to be happy in the land of the ravens, so he
comes back.
BW: The last line of the prologue to “The Cosmopolitan Crow” reads, “And
yet, look no farther than within.” Are you suggesting any dichotomy
between the West, which is very materialistic and outward looking, and the East,
which is more meditative and inwardly oriented?
AN: I think probably even in Western philosophy the point where people
stop at or where they pause really despite maybe looking outward or looking beyond
is when you start looking within. And the moment you realize that, you
start learning to let go. So, in some sense, this poem is about letting
go, which is why I worked on a prologue which sets the tone for what the poem
is going to be about.
BW: The title poem of the book “Malabar Mind” establishes the
tone of the book. It has as its setting the spice laden, rain soaked,
emerald green shores of Kerala in southern India. How would you describe
this poem?
AN: That’s actually like a historical document of Malabar because
it brings in various bits of history as well as contemporary life there.
BW: There’s a brief footnote to the poem; could you speak a
little bit about what you mean by “Malabar Mind” and the historical
context of what was once known as the Malabar coast or district?
AN: You see, Malabar actually referred to a section of the western coast
of India. And when the British came, they had what they called the principality
of Madras which included Malabar. So Malabar was a geographical place; it
was a geographical destination. It had a map; it had boundaries. But
after Independence, they divided the country into states on a linguistic basis,
and so Malabar was assimilated into what is Kerala now. With that assimilation,
Malabar as a place ceased to exist. So now it’s really something
that’s alive only in the oral tradition. People say, oh, you’re
from Malabar, aren’t you, because that’s the way you speak. Also,
what it means is that Malabar was a place that was traditionally open to the
sea but closed by land. So it had a lot of influences from the rest of
the world, but no influences from the rest of the country of India. Which
is why Kerala is a kind of very strange place for most people who come from outside
of India. People ask why is this place so different from the rest of the
country? And it’s simply because it was inaccessible by land till
about a hundred and fifty years ago. And the other thing, of course, is
that in Malabar probably because of the weather and because of the abundance
of natural wealth, there is a certain attitude that people have. It’s
a very laid-back attitude in which you live and let live. They’re
not a very proactive sort of people. Whereas, in comparison the people of the
southern part of Kerala were very different. That was a land where people had
to work to cultivate; they had to persevere and fight with the land to make it
yield. So they tend to be hard working; they tend to be aggressive; they
tend to be go-getters. Whereas, traditionally Malabar is a kind of laid-back
principality more than anything else. And that mind set exists to this
day in people from there. You tend to be a little easy; you tend to allow
people to come and make themselves at home. So it’s a kind of mind
set which allots things inwards and doesn’t expect too much, you know,
in terms of giving in return. Which is what I wanted to play upon in Malabar
Mind because in some sense many of these poems are about invasions and acceptance. And
it’s about letting things go. For instance, even in a poem like “You
Said, I Agreed” or if you take a poem like “The Face Mask,” there
are so many examples where it’s not a question of someone who stands up
and fights; it’s about someone who allows things to happen.
BW: The title poem “Malabar Mind” also juxtaposes a lush sensuality
in lines like “She licks his eyes and wills him/ To take her in rhythmic
ecstasy...” with a lurking undercurrent of madness in lines like “In
his eyes, the lunatic gleam.”; “Look at this girl, the lunatic
stares...”; “Madness threatens to erupt at any time.”; and “Courage
and the soft breeze/ Will cure madness, they say.” Is that the feeling
that you are trying to convey; that people are always on the brink?
AN: I think so, all the time. And these are some factual details: Kerala
has the highest number of suicides, and its madhouses are absolutely overflowing. You
have the highest literacy in Kerala, but you have the highest unemployment rate
as well. It probably has to do with the high level of awareness, which
is what I’ve said. How can you be content once you know your rights? The
moment you know your rights, then you are demanding that they be met.
BW: Now I know a little about bit your background from having read the
travel book you edited entitled Where the Rain Is Born: Writings About
Kerala. You own a house in Kerala?
AN: Yes, I have a little cottage of my own in Kerala.
BW: So what was it like growing up in that environment?
AN: I didn’t grow up there. I grew up outside Kerala. I
just have this yearly pattern of going there for all my vacations.
BW: Do you have relatives there?
AN: Oh, yes, family. My grandparents were originally from there.
BW: So where did you grow up?
AN: In Chennai.
BW: So Kerala became your escape, your vacation destination?
AN: The thing is, you see, that unlike other countries where people move
from place to place, it’s probably more like the Spanish who maintain a
strong sense of being Basque or being Catalan. So similarly, in India people
maintain an identity because of the language they speak. We are now divided into
states on a linguistic basis. Though you might be Indian, you feel that
your roots are in the state where you were originally born. So Kerala is
home for me; everywhere else is just a place where I live.
BW: When I hear Malabar Mind, the thing that stands out is its
association with the spice trade and a certain amount of inevitable orientalism. Does Malabar suggest to you a particularly aromatic, fragrant, and lush landscape?
AN: I love everything about Kerala. So much so, that I compiled a
cycle of poems entitled “Calendar: Moods of Kerala.” Each month
of the Malayalam calendar is represented by a poem. So for me when I go
there each month, each time of the year smells different, what I see visually
is different, atmospherically it’s different.
BW: In the introduction to Where the Rain Is Born, you describe
Kerala in this way, “Nowhere else in the world have I seen so many hues
of green. The velvety green of the moss on the wall. The deep green
of the hibiscus bush. The dappled green of the jackfruit. The jade
green of the paddy... Leaves. Parakeet’s wings. Tree frogs. The
opaque green of silence.” You make it sound like paradise.
AN: Oh, for me it is. I mean, my parents can’t understand this
obsession I have with Kerala because they are very disenchanted with it. To
live there is be disenchanted because it is a beautiful place with a lot of ugly
things. So as people who live there, they are able to separate reality
from the myth. Whereas, for someone who lives outside Kerala, it’s
different. I mean I know about the ugly things, but I can afford to turn
a blind eye to them because I don’t live there.
7. Some Sociological Inquiries
BW: How have the I.T.’s, Information Technologies, or the B.P.O.’s,
Business Processing Outsourcing, changed Bangalore?
AN: Well, Bangalore has become a very dynamic city now; it used to
be a very quiet, laid-back city. That was why I moved here because I like
quiet places. But now with it becoming the Information City, the Biotechnology
City, the Silicon Capital; whatever, there are many names for it. There
are a lot of people who have been coming here, a lot of immigrants from other
parts of the country. And also, you find a lot of foreign population here. So
it’s become, in some sense, a city without a character of its own. It’s
a very sterile, cosmopolitan city. I was telling someone that when I travel
to some other parts of India, the moment you enter Madurai, for instance, you
can smell coriander powder, you can smell coffee, you can smell flowers, or jasmine
garlands. The smells are so different. But in Bangalore, somehow
it’s all become monoculture.
BW: Bangalore used to be know as the Garden City; you don’t
think it’s the Garden City anymore?
AN: Well, it used to be where people had beautiful gardens. But now
everyone’s pulling down homes to build apartments. So there are going
to be fewer and fewer gardens in the future.
BW: So the urbanization of the landscape has become a problem? I
was here last in 1993, and from what I’ve seen, Bangalore’s a much
larger city with a denser population, a little bit more polluted, a little bit
closer or less open than I remember it. Is that your impression?
AN: Absolutely. Actually, I moved to Bangalore in 1989, and
I lived very close to where I worked. I used to walk to work, and it used to
be a very pleasant walk. Now I can’t even conceive of doing that. One,
there are too many vehicles on the road, and secondly, it’s too polluted. So
the walk is just not pleasant any more.
BW: Do you think the people are benefiting from the kinds of jobs being
created by the influx of the multinational cooperations?
AN: Well, I think typically what happens in countries like this is that
the rich get richer and the poor get poorer because the distinctions between
rich and poor are becoming so much wider. What is happening is that the
upper middle class, for instance, have a lot more money to spend. They
have the money to indulge in fineries and luxuries, but these are things that
are not so easily affordable. The poor find it impossible to reach those
levels. So the distinctions between rich and poor are growing.
BW: Do you have any faith in the ability of the state to ameliorate the
conditions of the poor?
AN: I think that will happen when we have politicians who are not into
politics to make money for themselves. What I’ve been noticing,
not so often, but I see stray cases here and there, is that people with very
sound educational backgrounds from good monied families—t’s not the
rags to riches story—are entering politics. They bring with them
the wealth of their education and their experience. And perhaps what they
don’t
bring is greed. In which case, there is a chance that the state will be
able to formulate policies which will help the poor rather than formulating policies
that benefit themselves and their cronies.
BW: The influx of people into urban centers is overwhelming the infrastructure
and services available. Is there a solution to the problem of unchecked
urbanization and overpopulation that you find here in India?
AN: There isn’t really a solution. To be very honest, our cities
are a mess. At least some of the countryside is still pleasant. Are
you saying let’s move everything from the city into the countryside and
ruin that as well? I don’t know; I just think it requires better
urban planning.
BW: Do you think education is going to play a role in the transformation
of India?
AN: Yes, definitely. Because of the way we have our governments formed. Most of the people who are in key positions are people who have absolutely no clue
about how to go about these things. And they also tend to be so whimsical and
egotistical that the ones who can help them are not allowed to help them in things
like urban planning, etc.
BW: Has globalization changed your life?
AN: Not really. I don’t see a marked difference in my
life except for the fact that I don’t have to buy so many things when I
go abroad. I can buy them here.
BW: What about the influence of cable television?
AN: No, you see, because I’ve had family living abroad as far back
as the 50’s, I’ve had this constant influx of ideas. It’s
not as if cable television has suddenly revealed a dimension that I didn’t
know existed.
Notes
(1). Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) is a late romantic Indian poet who writes
in traditional meter in English. Her style and intensity are reminiscent
of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Eunice de Souza has said the following about her, “To
many people, Sarojini Naidu is virtually synonymous with poetry in India.” The
following is a characteristic example of her poetry:
The
Silence of Love*
Since
thus I have endowed you with the whole
Joy
of my flesh and treasure of my soul,
And
your life debt to me looms so supreme,
Shall
my love wax ungenerous as to seem
By
sign or supplication to demand
An
answering gift from your reluctant hand.
Give
what you will . . . if aught be yours to give!
But
tho’ you are the breath by which I live
And
all my days are a consuming pyre
Of
unaccomplished longing and desire,
How
shall my love beseech you or beset
Your
heart with sad remembrance and regret?
Quenched
are the fervent words I yearn to speak
And
tho’ I die, how shall I claim or seek
From
your full rivers one reviving shower,
From
your resplendent years one single hour?
Still
for Love’s sake I am foredoomed to bear
A
load of passionate silence and despair.
*de Souza, Eunice, Ed. Early Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology 1829-1947. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2005.
(2). Kalidasa, whose name means “slave or servant of Kali,” is the greatest of the Sanskrit writers who lived sometime between the fourth and fifth centuries CE. A poet and a playwright, his fame rests on seven works which are extant: three plays, two makakavas (great ornate poems), a lyrical poem, and a descriptive poem about the seasons. The Srngaratilakam, for example, is a love poem in thirty-one stanzas. Here are stanzas twenty-one and twenty-two from that poem translated by C. R. Devadhar into prose:
“Lucky
is the man who obtains bliss granted by god whose bow is made of flowers – bliss
which arises form the curves of breasts pressed during light embraces,
bliss which arises form the nibbling of lips, bliss manifested by the by the
utterance of hissing sounds and frowning eye-brows, bliss shown by the dancing
of hands and murmuring of sweet words of endearment, bliss
manifested
by striking and cries, bliss whose strength is the untiring thought of courtezans.
(21)
Lucky the
man who wearied by exertion caused by love-sports rests within the confines
of his beloved’s arms having placed his chest on her breasts which are as
large as the swellings of a rutting elephant and which are wet with saffron
and who
snatching moments of sleep passes there the night.” (22)*
*Devadhar, C. R. Ed. Works of Kalidasa. 2 Volumes. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991.
(3). Kabir is a mystic poet born in Varanasi sometime in the beginning of the fifteenth century CE. He probably was born into a family of weavers, studied meditation with a Hindu guru, and became a poet whose work was primarily oral and preserved by disciples and admirers alike. The iconoclastic quality of his bhakti (devotional) poetry has become well known in the West due to the translations of Robert Bly:
“There
is nothing but water in the holy pools.
I know,
I have been swimming in them.
All the
gods sculpted of wood or ivory can’t say a word.
I know,
I have been crying out to them.
The sacred
books of the East are nothing but words.
I looked
through their covers one day sideways.
What Kabir
talks of is only what he has lived through.
If you have
not lived through something, it is not true.”*
Bly, Robert. The Kabir Book. Boston: Beacon Press, 1977.
(4). Tulsidas is a poet saint also born in Varanasi, but in the latter
half of the sixteenth century CE. His bhakti poetry employes more traditional
religious references than Kabir. A characteristic selection is the following:
. . . Like
a dog so hungry that he lunges for a bone
grown
ancient and marrowless; and bitten so tight,
The bone
scrapes his mouth and draws blood –
his
own blood – yet he tastes it with delight.
I too am
trapped in jaws. The grip that clamps
is
that of a merciless snake, this life,
And I yearn
for relief, a frightened frog, but have spurned
the
one chance I had: the bird that Hari rides.
Here and
there other water creatures float;
we
are snared together in a tightening net:
Watch them,
how greedily they feed on one another,
and
never sense that next may be their turn. . .
Yet Tulsidas
places his trust in the One
who
rescues the destitute, and in trusting hopes to live.*
*Hawley, John Stratton, and Mark Juergensmeyer. Songs of the Saints of India. New York: Oxford, UP, 1988.
(5). The Mahabharata, is the longest of India’s epics written by Vyasa sometime between the second century BCE and the second century CE. It tells the story of the cataclysmic war between two sets of cousins: the five Pandavas and the hundred Kauravas. In the middle of the epic, Krishna offers a dharma teaching to Arjuna, one of the Pandavas, who has qualms about killing his relatives and teachers in the battle. This section of the epic is called the Bhagavadgita or “the song of the Lord.”
(6). Tiruvalluvar was a poet who wrote some time between the second century BCE and the eighth century CE. His most famous work The Kural is one of the masterpieces of Tamil literature. It is comprised of 1,330 aphoristic couplets such as: “The avenger’s joy is for the day,/ The forgiver’s fame lasts like the earth’s.” or “The only gift is giving to the poor/ All else is exchange.”*
* Tiruvalluvar. The Kural. Trans. P.S. Sundaram. New York: Penguin
Books, 1991.
(7). Subramaniya Bharathi is the most prominent modern Tamil poet; frequently
his unique place in Tamil letters is signified by the honorific title “Mahakavi” meaning “Great
poet” which appears before his name. He was born in 1882 in Ettiyapuram
in the state of Tamil Nadu, and he died at the age of thirty-nine in 1921. When
he was eleven years old, he was recognized for his poetic talent and accorded
the title “Bharathi” which is another name for Saraswati, the goddess
of knowledge, education, and literature. He worked as a school teacher
and editor of several journals. Born a Hindu, he became a tireless campaigner
against the caste system, as the following lines show:
We
shall not look at caste or religion,
All
human beings in this land –
whether
they be those who preach the Vedas
or
those belonging to other castes – are one.*
He was an active participant in India’s struggle for freedom. He participated in the All India Congress of 1906 in Calcutta and supported the militant wing of the Indian National Congress. Due to his political beliefs, he was forced to escape British arrest by fleeing to French ruled Pondicherry. After World War 1, he reentered British India and was promptly arrested. After his release, he met with Mahatma Gandhi several times in the years before his death. His most characteristic themes in his poetry are individual freedom and equality, especially for the poor, untouchables, and women. Here is a section of a characteristic poem:
In
our land
we
can no longer be slaves
asleep.
We
are no longer afraid.
On
this earth
injustice
multiplies with
impunity
. . .
Is
it a sin to love freedom
until
death?
Is
it a crime to end our suffering?
Is
there hatred in that?
We
have learned
the
only way is unity.
That
we
have learned well . . .
When
my corpse is burnt
my
heart will not melt,
for
there is locked
unsatisfied
my
life’s desire
Freedom.*
*Subramaniya Bharathi - Biography <http://www.tamilnation.org/literature/bharathy/index.htm>.
(8). Kamala Das is one of the most influential contemporary poets. She was born in Punnayoorkulam, Kerala, in 1934. Kamala Das has published the following works in English: a novel entitled Alphabet of Lust (1977); a collection of short stories entitled Padmavadi the Harlot and Other Stories (1992); an autobiography entitled My Story (1976); and five books of poetry includingSummer in Calcuttta (1965), The Descendants (1967), The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973), The Anamalai Poems (1985), and Only the Soul Knows How to Sing (1996). In addition, she has written other works in Malayalam under the pseudonym of Madhavikutty. Her works caused quite a stir because of her startling depictions of erotic desires in her writing. Later in 1999, she again caused a sensation when she converted to Islam. She currently writes a syndicated column for several Indian newspapers. Her poetry is extremely intense and somewhat confessional. Here is an example of her lyricism from a poem entitled “Forest Fire:”
“...In
me shall walk the lovers hand
In hand,
and in me, where else, the old shall sit
And feel
the touch of sun. In me, the street-lamps
Shall glimmer,
the cabaret girls cavort, the
Wedding
drums resound, the eunuchs swirl coloured
Skirts and
sing sad songs of love, the wounded moan,
And in me
the dying mother with hopeful
Eyes shall
gaze around, seeking her child, now grown
And gone
away to other towns, other arms.”*
*Das, Kamala. The Old Playhouse and Other Poems. Mumbai: Orient Longman, 2004.
(9). Jeet Thayil is a contemporary Indian poet, journalist, and short story writer. He was born in Kerala and educated in Hong Kong, New York, and Mumbai (Bombay). In 1998, he returned to New York where he received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. He is married and currently living in New York City where he works as an editor and writer. He writes in English, and he has published three books of poetry: Gemini 2 (1992), Apocalypso (1997), and English (2003). His poetry is complex, intense, and innovative as this following example shows,
The Man Who Married Water
lived
with his love, together
they
churned or quiet lay.
His
wife and he, solitaries,
rode
the river to the sea.
Every
tributary
led
to her,
to
water.
Though
his wife be jealousy,
she
was water, she
watched
with eyes of rain
as
the whales’ ancient terrain
cracked,
the old routes now led
elsewhere,
to a great head
stunned
by land, bound
by
sand. He found himself drowned.
The
man who married fire
married
everything.
He
married desire,
filled
the room
with
his striving.
(He was consumed.)
The
man
who
married
air,
saw
himself
fall
into
a spiral,
his
hands
gripped
tight
on
the wheel
of
a plane
hurtling
down,
a
plane
that
was
not
there.
Only
he who married
earth
was unsurprised.*
*Thayil, Jeet. English. New Delhi: Penguin, 2003.
(10). Vijay Nambisan is a poet, literary critic and journalist. He was born in Neyveli in the state of Tamil Nadu. Later, he studied engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. As a journalist, he worked on a number of newspapers and magazines in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Bihar, and Kerala. A selection of his poetry was published in Gemini I (1992) along with some poetry of Jeet Thayil. His Bihar Is in the Eye of the Beholder (2000) is a description of a sixteen month stay in that province. He has written a defense of writing in English entitled Language As Ethic which was published by Penguin. His poetry is energetic and imaginative:
Grandfather’s Beard
They
call it grandfather’s beard,
This
wind-blown seed with white filaments:
I
never saw such a beard on my grandfather,
But
this feathery manifestation of air,
This
oak heart holding the world to itself
And
sending the winds to be so diffused,
It
has something of the look in my grandfather’s eye–
There
were people, he said, unaffected by him,
And
there were those by whom he was not affected–
So
also this secret (that I cannot associate
With
any green plant clutching earth it its roots
But
seems to me rather the tangible form of a kiss,
Such
a kiss as I would want to touch with my lips)
Floats
on the light wind, and if you see it
It
is there, and if you don’t happen to
You’re
just as well off.
I
would like my poem to be
Like
my grandfather’s beard, to be airy
In
the lean wind, to look up at the clouds
And
laugh. There are people unaffected
By
poetry, and there are those whom poetry
Disregards–I
would like to write a poem
Like
grandfather’s beard.*
*Hoskoté, Ranjit. Ed. Reasons for Belonging: Fourteen Contemporary Indian Poets. New Delhi: Viking, 2002.
(11). Rajeevan Thachampoyil (whose name may also appear in the following inverted form characteristic of names in Malayalam – Thachom Poyil Rajeevan) was born in Paleri, a rural village in the Kozhilode district of Kerala. He writes poetry, fiction, and essays in Malayalam and English. He has published two books of poetry and a collection of essays in Malayalam and a chapbook Kannaki and a book entitled He Who Was Gone Thus in English. His poetry has been translated into Italian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, and Marathi. He currently works in the public relations office of Calicut University. Here is a sample of his enigmatic poetry:
The Tree
buried
in the soil
as
seed
it
was me
burst
as
a sprout
you
withered
and fell
as
a leaf
me
laughed
merrily
as
a flower
you
probed
in the dark
as
roots
me
flushed
ripe
as
fruit
you
drenched
in
the rain
me
sang
to oblivion
in
the sun
you
swayed
and suffered
in
the wind
me
dreamt
in
moonlight
you
the
body
nailed
on the cross
me
resurrected
as
the image
you.*
*Rajeevan, Thachom Poyil. He Who Was Gone Thus. Calicut:Yeti Books, 2003.