The Hindu Business Line : Of passports and poets for redemption

“Tried to be a trifle different, a little less boring,” one told my friend Nagu when he asked why one did not apply for a passport. “You don’t become different and you are still boring. Why don’t you get a passport and visit foreign lands. Boss, it is an experience, like spraying a new deodorant on one’s self and you will know how differently India smells,” said Nagu as we walked the LIC Colony late evening.

“Every country smells,” one responded and Nagu fell silent. The next day Nagu handed one a passport form which looked like a Penguin paperback and one tried to return it. At the Borivili post office on Linking Road one sees daily, early in the morning, long queues of youngsters with filled up passport forms (with inquiries like the date of one’s great-great-great grandmother and if the lady kept a pet) at the passport counter. They are trying to run away from India and invariably are computer specialists.

“You don’t have to do anything. Go to an agent. He will fill the form and get you a passport in about three months. Our IAS officers have designed the form to bring business for agents,” Nagu said and one readily believed. He went further: “If you don’t want to stay with your relatives in the US, I will give you a few addresses where you can park in comfort. But go to the US and the UK once. It is a must at 63.”

One daily eyes the two passport forms (the second for my wife) and the mobile number of the agent lying on the table. Parts of my near family have become US citizens; some of them read Gandhi and Nehru in their spare time, while a few bend and stretch to strike yogic postures and sell it to their friends for a few dollars. US Indians are first and last dollar men (if one’s a feminist, dollar women).

“We do keep in touch with India,” they claim in their e-mails. Mostly, one never replies as one cannot be in India and the US at the same time with the possible exception of the poet A.K. Ramanujan. He could translate Tamil poems in the US and make the poetry his own like in Poems of Love and War (Translated by A.K. Ramanujan).

Converting a Tamil poem by Kapilar into English, Ramanujan comes up with: “Only the thief was there, no one else/ And he should lie, what can I do?/ There was only /a thin-legged heron standing/on legs yellow as millet stems/and looking/for lampreys/in the running water/when he took me.”

Around this time one came across the review of a book — Nissim Ezekiel Remembered – edited by Havovi Anklesaria with assistance from Santan Rodrigues. Perhaps, my US relatives will not read Nissim’s lines: “I have made my commitments now./This is one: to stay where I am,/As others choose to give themselves/in some remote and backward place./My backward place is where I am.”

One got my nephew Ravi Krishnan to buy the book from Sahitya Academy in New Delhi. He passed on the book as a gift and its near 600 pages offer good reading. Some of the poems come from Ezekiel’s papers and the important point is their direct style, put down after much thought. Ezekiel does not walk all over the place and says what he wants to in poetry easy to grasp for ordinary humans.

The reader does not have to make any particular effort or shut the book for a long walk to work out any despair. The critical pieces dwell on Ezekiel’s Indian-ness though he was born in a Marathi Jew household in Bombay and by his own admission was unsure in Marathi. That can be said of a large section of the new breed of Indians (including this writer), brought up in English schools unaware of Indian languages.

Long time ago, my friend Vidyadhar Date was unhappy over the new generation passing over Indian languages. He did not like his children reading English books while setting aside Marathi writers. Yet, as Nagu comments, English is never taught at schools, the kids read only guides to be misguided for ever. In Six Short Prayers, Ezekiel notes: “When I laugh at myself, teach me to be/happier than when I laugh at others./ I spoke ill today of a friend who has/never done me any harm. Do not forgive me./ Make me suffer for my sin./……I’m still far from making work what/it should be, a form of real worship. My work/remains largely ego-worship.”

A stint in journalism and advertising, helped Ezekiel to be his best editor. Like flowers at the florists in Matunga, the poems hang well to turn the mind of the reader. After being an atheist, he did think of Jewish prayers. Prashant K. Sinha and Shirish Chindhale in their essay pointedly refer to the lines: “The going forth/Prepared with prayer/The timed return/Redeemed with prayer…” Yet, Nissim’s world is his own. He dredges his thoughts and peoples it sparsely. He is like the pilgrim offering prayers, waiting for cheers, unsure of Gods who are dear.

Possibly that makes Nissim say In A New Poem: “If I could teach myself/what I claim to teach others,/I may arrive/ on a different road /of dreams and realities…….Stop praising me, my friends./ Let me learn/to live without teaching,/until I find my soul --/ or even lost it/on that different road.”

Arun Kolatkar crowds his poems with humans and emotions drench the reader. Only Kolatkar can write: “I like to trace my descent – no proof of course,/ …..On my father’s side/ the line goes back to the dog that followed/Yudhishthira/ on his last journey,/and stayed with him till the very end;/….Yudhishthira, that noble prince, refused/to get on board unless dogs were allowed./ And my ancestor became the only dog/to have made it to heaven/in recorded history.

Kolatkar has the poet and journalist in him to live and learn on Bombay’s streets. The two poets are far away from existentialism and the theory of Maya. For Sartre and Camus living made no sense; for the Upanishads and Buddha living is Maya, a nothing. None offers any rebates.

Life is a burning summer with 24 hour power cuts. It is a punishment. Nissim, Arun and Ramanujan have put in circulation freshly minted currency for Indians to purchase pleasure with a few laughs and little guilt. An Indian of the 21st century is quite likely to refer to these poets for redemption. One dropped the idea of going abroad. There is an option.

P. Devarajan

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