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Jaydeep Sarangi reviews Touch by Meena Kandasamy

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Touch

By Meena Kandasamy
Peacock Books Mumbai
ISBN: 81-88811-87-4
Reviewed by JAYDEEP SARANGI

 

Dalit literatures in India are subversive, or structurally alternative to the models prescribed by traditional Hindu aesthetics precisely because they are literatures of sociological oppression and economical exploitation. Dalit literatures are essentially a shock to tradition and sense. They are an assault to the anthropomorphic practice of castism in Indian social convention. A sound piece of Dalit literature is militant in texture and aggressively blunt in meaning. It challenges codified language (because it has so far been used and manipulated only by the dominant, discriminating powers); it challenges assumptions; it challenges age-old, world-views. Its temporal and political designation does not give justice to the artist whose intentions may subsequently be ignored . It is an aesthetics of pain, and a prolonged longing; a powerful aesthetics of resistance. The poems in Touch  by Meena Kandasamy amplifies, illustrates, and carries on this struggle for power and autonomy by women poets. Apart from her expert use of language, she has a sincerity of feeling and an honesty of experience rarely encountered. For Meena Kandasamy, the young Tamil poetess, poetry is about empirical truth and experience and she writes and reflects from where she is:
 
We: their daughters,
We: the daughters of their soil.
 
We, mostly, write.”     (‘Their Daughters’)
 
Her poetry is at best of private sensibility. Her consciousness is firmly yoked to the world around her, a world characterised by ecstasy and pain, love and despair. Touch contains a  ‘Foreword’ by Kamala Das where the renowned poetess writes, ‘Older by nearly half a century, I acknowledge the superiority of her poetic vision’. Meena follows the psychological tradition of Sylvia Plath and Langston Hughes, a ‘fabric rare and strange’. Womens’ fixed role as caregivers was ideologically determined by their biological capacity to bear children and that was through a fixed set of codes represented by ‘categorizers’ as Kamala Das has expressed in her own poem, ‘An Introduction’. Meena Kandasamy regards her poetic corpus as a process of coming to terms with her identity and consciousness : her “womanness, Tamilness and low/ outcasteness”, labels that she wears with pride. Meena has honed her sociological awareness of what it means to be a woman in the caste-ridden, social groupism of Tamil Nadu (a Southern state in India).
Her poetic self gasps in darkness to search for her emotional root proclaiming it as her heritage. This becomes a source of vitality for the poet’s journey. Her confessional mode is not as radical as we find in Mamang Dai, Archana Sahani and Kamala Das. She explores a wide range of subjective possibilities and relates them to her own identity and sociological formulation. Her poetry arises not out of reading and knowledge, but out of active engagement. Touch is rich with varied dexterity that explore the states of mind and genuine feminine sentiments.
 
          Writing becomes a means of creating a place in the world; the use of the personal voice and self-revelation are means of self-assertion. Meena’s self-expressive poems permit forbidden or ignored emotions to be expressed in ways which reflect the true voice of feeling; she shows how an Indian woman poet can create a space for herself in the public world. Across time and space, the woman writer, especially the woman poet, is engaged in an on going dialectic with the dominant cultural hegemonies to negotiate a space for the creative woman, where authentic female experiences can be articulated freely. Meena’s poems record the age-old class hierarchy in Indian society. Her poem, ‘Becoming a Brahmin’ records the sad plight of the so-called lower class people of Indian society:
 
Step 1: Take a beautiful Sudra girl
Step 2: Make her marry a Brahmin
Step 3: Let her give birth to his female child
Step 4: Let this child marry a Brahmin
Step 5: Repeat steps 3-4 six times
Step 6: Display the end product. It is a Brahmin.
 
Here words are like quicksilver carrying with them the sparkle of sense. In the sheer magic of rhythm, music and in the beauty of coalescing visual and auditory sensations, these lines are rarely surpassed in modern Indian poetry in English.
 
 
Flaming green of a morning that awaits rain
And my lover speaks of rape through silences,
Swallowed words and the shadowed tones
Of voice. Quivering, I fill in his blanks.
Green turns to unsightly teal of hospital beds
And he is softer than feathers, but I fly away
To shield myself from the retch of the burns
Ward, the shrill sounds of dying declarations,
The floral pink-white sad skins of dowry deaths.
                                   
                        ( “My Lover Speaks of Rape”)
 
 
             Meena’s poetic mode ranges from the meditative to sensuous where the metaphysical subtlety of arrivals and departures are ambivalent. A feature that impresses and ultimately convinces the readers is the poet’s readiness to allow conflicting voices to be heard from all contending perspectives. Her poems pose a tension that reaches out to the reader, arousing in one a sense of need that will not be satisfied:
 
“What will you say of your feeling
Living with a sister who terrorizes
Even manic depressions out of your mind?
 
 (‘Sage in the Cubicle’)
 
There is always a haunting note of despondency marked in Meena’s poetic lines. We may refer to her poem, ‘Immanuel’:
 
Now, if there be any mourning
Let it be for our heroes
Yet to die, fighting…
 
Meena’s poetic lines seem to echo from life itself, from the pauses of loss and vacuity in her sociological repression in a class-stratified Tamil society. Meena deeply penetrates the inner pores of the feminine psyche and brings out the strength and power of life. Sanjukta Dasguta, a Bengali poetess, writes
 
I am sangam and shakti
Power of fire, water, air and earth(.)
 
 (‘Identity’, Sanjukta Dasgupta)
 
Like all confessional poets, Meena gives literary form a new sense of personality, attaching value to the image of man. She raises her confessional traits to the level of a specific universal appeal. Her quest for identity is not the spiritual Odyssey; it is a human journey, a sociological journey that dignifies the reader:
 
Caste, yet again authored a tragedy
He, disease wrecked , downtrodden.
( ‘Prayers’)
 
In the poem ‘Take This for an Answering’ Meena records her voice of protest ;
 
You press me into answering
When and why and where and how
I could start to dislike you.
 
             Debates over Dalit studies in India have intensified studies of anti-colonial resistance in general which have been augmented and contested by a broad range of studies. Through Meena’s conscious poetic lines Dalits are hitting back in coloniser’s tongue. The poems in Touch represent the indigenous lifestyle. They resist colonial acts of authority and oppression through their textual transmission.

 

 

Mario Licon Cabrera translates poems by Michael Brennan

Written by mascara on . Posted in Translations.

Mario Licón Cabrera (México, 1949) has lived in Sydney since 1992. His third collection of poetry, La Reverberación de la Ceniza was publshed by Mora & Cantúa Editores in 2005. His work features in an architecture and poetry installation, Metaphors of Space, at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival. He has translated the poetry of Dorothy Porter, Judith Beveridge, Peter Boyle, J.S. Harry, Robert Adamson, amongst other Australian poets, into Spanish. His collection, Yuxtas, a bilingual collection (Spanish/English), written with the assistance of a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts/Literature Board. These poems are selected translations from Michael Brennan’s latest collection, Unanimous Night, which is short-listed in the NSW Premier’s Literary Award.

 

Carta a casa /2
 
Llegó Noviembre.
Meses más cáldos en gestación,
bandejas con tuberculos a la vista, tulipanes,
azafrán, lirios, robustas y doradas ofrendas
limpias de la negra tierra del norte,
nombres tan brillantes y extraños como un rezo:
Azul Delft, Juana de Arco, Remembranza,
nombres, los misterios ordinaries,
La señora de John T. Scheepers, Groenlandia,
Perico negrot, El récord del portero,
cada quien a la espera de ásperas manos
para regresarlos a la tierra oscura,
para ser enterrados
en paciente incertidumbre,
y esperar
hasta el fin del invierno.
 Letter home

November already.
Warmer months finding form,
trays of bulbs laid out, tulips, crocus,
lilies, fat and golden offerings
brushed clean of black northern earth,
names bright and strange as prayer :
Delft Blue, Jeanne d’Arc, Remembrance,
names, the ordinary mysteries,
Mrs John T. Scheepers, Groenland,
Black Parrot, Doorman’s Record,
each waiting for weathered hands
to give them back to blind earth,
to bury them
in patient unknowing,
and wait
until winter’s end.

 

Carta a casa /3
 
Debo decirles, que no hay nada como el hogar.
Ninguno de ellos piensa que soy un forastero.
Me reciben en sus casas con manos
toscas y me brindan deliciosos manjares.
Después de cada comida, ellos frotan mis cejas
y mi barba, y secan las lágrimas
que por meses han corrido por mis mejillas
al viajar de pueblo en pueblo.
Me dicen que ellos son forasteros aquí,
y en la fresca atmósfera nocturna
cuelgan sus palabras por tal cosa,
entre la suava caricia de la barba
y los tiernos ojos del más viejo de ellos.
Me dicen que pronto me dejaran,
pro que en su ausencia debo seguir con los banquetes
que alguien vendrá y yo debo recibirlo,
no debo hablar de más, pero sí alimentar al invitado
y después secar sus lágrimas. Antes de irme debo decirle
que está en su casa, que él aquí no es un forastero.
Ellos dicen, ninguno de estos es forastero.
Ellos dicen, que esperaran por mí en el próximo pueblo
con sus manos gentiles y sus alegres ojos,
que el tren me llevará allá, y en el camino
podré escuchar el llanto del hombre viejo
y dejar a la tierna noche tocar mi rostro,
podré recordar los manjares caseros,
y esperar a que el silencio tenga lo suyo.
Dicen, cuando nos encontremos en el próximo pueblo,
ellos me lo explicaran todo. bare
 Letter home

I should tell you, it’s nothing like home.
Not one of them thinks of me as a stranger.
They welcome me to their houses with rough
hands and feed me delicious feasts.
After each meal, they stroke my eyebrows
and beard, and dry the tears
that have run down my cheeks over months
travelling from town to town.
They tell me they are stranger here,
hanging their word for such things
in the cool night air, between the beard-stroking
and the young eyes of the oldest among them.
They say soon they will leave me,
but I am to keep feasting in their absence,
that someone will come and I must invite him in,
I must not say too much, but feed him and afterwards
dry his tears. Before I leave, I must tell him
this is his home now, that he is no stranger here.
They say, none of this is strange.
They say, they will wait for me in the next town
with their gentle hands and playful eyes,
that the train will take me there, and on the way
I can listen to the old man’s crying
and let the lightness of night find my face,
I can remember the feasts from home,
and wait for silence to have its fill.
They tell me, when we meet in the next town,
they will explain it all.

 

Carta a casa /4
 
Estás cerca,
tu aliento agitándose
entre los cedres
de ochocientos años de edad,
piedras
erosionadas
por cosas invisibles,
particulas de arena
y rocas,
flotantes
en la brisa,
la insignificancia
definiéndolo todo,
aquí donde un poeta
observó
nada
más
que el paso
de una estación,
y el aire otoñal
entibiando
el aliento,
y así
continuamos
nuestro ascenso lento,
un millar y
cuatrocientos
cincuenta escalones 
tallados en piedra
de esta montaña,
erigiéndose,
nombrando el templo
donde nos sentamos.
La vista,
el valle
que emerge,
hojas castañs
dadas
a un frío filoso y quemante,
el verde profundo
de los árboles añejos
en total quietud,
la brisaa ancestral
ahora corriendo veloz,
invisible y suave
a través de las piedras
suave a través
de la superficie
de nuestros ojos,
partículas
invisibles
interminablemente
borrando
cada
cosa.

 

 Letter Home

You are close,
breath drawing
fast amongst
eight hundred
year old cedars,
stones
weathered bare
by invisible things,
specks of sand
and rock,
carried
on the breeze,
insignificance
shaping everything,
here where a poet
noted
nothing
more
than a season
passing
and autumn air
warmed
on breath
and so
we continue
our slow ascent
one thousand
four hundred
and fifty steps
of stone hewn
from this
mountain
rising
naming
the temple
where we sit
the view
the valley
appearing now
russet leaves
given
to a sharp cold fire
the deep green
of ancient trees
holding still,
the ancient breeze
running fast now
smooth and invisible
across stones,
smooth across
the surfaces
of our eyes,
invisible
flecks
endlessly
erasing
each
thing.

 

Carta a casa /6
 
La primavera empiiza su lento striptease.
La gente con menos ropa cada día.
 
Los pesados abriigos de lana dan paso al algodón,
a las líneas curvas de caderas, pechos y nalgas.
 
Escucho la música que me enseñaste,
esa que se ubica lentamente entre cada cosa.
 
Esas palabras extrañas –Gentileza, amistad,
afecto –todavía más extrañas al decirlas
 
en la lengua que se habla aquí.
Sentado percibo el oleaje de la gente,
 
a ratos saboreándolo con una sonrisa
o con el trunco lenguaje
 
que estoy aprendiendo, confíanza
y gentileza hablan por todas partes,
 
Atento escucho expresiones de mi país
transformándose en otro lenguaje
 
entre amigos conversando
amontonados, la percusión suave
 
de una pareja joven, protejiéndose
del crudo ambiente invernal.
 
Desplazo mis dedos a lo largo de palabras
como si cada palabra fuera una plegaria.
 Letter Home

Spring starts its slow striptease.
Each day people are wearing less,

thick woollen coats give way to cotton,
irmer lines of hips, buttocks and breasts.

I listen for the music you taught me,
one that settles slowly between each thing.

Those strange words — kindness, friendship,
care — stranger  still  spoken

in the language spoken here.
I sit sensing the tide of people,

sometimes testing it with a smile
or with the broken language

I’m learning, trust
kindness speaks anywhere.

I listen carefully to idioms of home
rising in another language

between friends huddled
in conversation, the gentle percussion

of a young couple sheltering
from late winter air.

I run my finger along words
as if each word was a prayer.

 

Ali Alizadeh translates a poem by Besmellah Rezaee

Written by mascara on . Posted in Translations.

Besmellah Rezaee (Hamta) was born in Afghanistan and is an Australian Afghan who currently studies a double degree in Law and International studies at the University of Adelaide. In addition, He works as a Publication officer for Karawaan Organization; he is the executive Director of “Sokhane-nau” magazine, and hosts a show in radio Adelaide called ‘Dialogue’ every Sunday. He is the founder and president of AATSA (Association of Australian Tertiary Students from Afghanistan) at the present and also works as an interpreter with Multilingua ltd. 

 

اینجا کابل است!

          اقیانوس درد

                      ساحل غم

قصر دارالمان، کوه آسمایی، پل آرتن، زیارت سخی1

 روزگاری مهد:

                حاکمیت، غرور، محبت و نیایش بود!

 سیاهی وهم آلود جهل

بر کوی و برزن

بر در و دیوار

 بر آدم های این سر زمین

                               سایه افکنده است

کبوتران “سخی”2 رنگ باخته اند

“افشار”3 هنوز بوی خون میدهد

“ده افغانان”4 سینمای حرص و هوس شده است:

اینجا یکی در پی لقمه نانی

روزش آغاز و شبش پایان ندارد

و دیگری در پی لحظه هوسی

شبش آغاز و روزش پایان ندارد

دریای کابل

               بی آب و ماهی و موج

                                        در سکوت ابدی محبوس شده است

 کودکان اینجا

               بعد از زمان خویش به دنیا آمده اند

                                                 آنها علم را در دست فروشی فرا میگریند

 “گودارد”5 هم مرده است

  تا اینبار نیوریالیزم را در کابل احیا میکرد.

اینجا کابل است !  کابل!!!

1 نام جاهای معروف در کابل

 2 سخی نام زیارتگاهی است در کارته سخی کابل

 3 افشار نام منطقه است در قسمت غرب کابل که در جریان جنگهای داخلی کشتار دسته جمعی و قتل عام مردم در آنجا صورت گرفت

 4 نام جایی در مرکز شهر کابل

 5 جین لوک گودارد نویسنده و فیلمساز معروف فرانسوی بود که در بنیان گذاری مکتب بنام آتیریزم و فرنچ نیو ویو سهم بارز داشت

This is Kabul!

The ocean of pain
the shore of sorrow
the Dar al-Man palace, the Asemani mountain, the Arten bridge, the Sakhi shrine (1)
a time of cradle:
there was sovereignty, pride, kindness and benediction!
Damn the war…
the fearful blackness of ignorance
has cast a shadow
on every quarter and on every district
on the door and the wall
on the people of this land
The pigeons of the Sakhi have lost their colour  (2)
Afshar still reeks of blood (3)
Dah Afghanan has become a cinema of restriction and caprice (4)
Here a person seeking a bite of bread
never starts the day nor ends the night
and another seeking a moment of caprice
never starts the night nor ends the day
The seas of Kabul
without water or fish or waves
are exiled in eternal silence
The children here
have been born after their time
and will be educted in the future through hawking
Godard is also dead (5)
to once again revive neorealism in Kabul.

This is Kabul! Kabul!!!

[author’s footnotes]
(1) names of famous places in Afghanistan
(2)Sakhi is a name of a shrine in Kabul
(3)Afshar is a name of a district in west of Kabul where massacres took place during the civil war
(4)the name of a place in central Kabul
(5) filmmaker

 

Ali Alizadeh

 

Ali Alizadeh is an Iranian-born Australian writer. His books include the novel The New Angel (Transit Lounge Publishing, 2008); with Ken Avery, translations of medieval Sufi poetry Fifty Poems of Attar (re.press, 2007); and the collection of poetry Eyes in Times of War (Salt Publishing, 2006). The main themes of his writing are history, spirituality and dissent. His current projects include a nonfiction novel about the life of his grandfather (to be published in 2009) and, with John Kinsella, an anthology of Persian poetry in translation.