An admirer of Mani Rao said: “The poems are not games but seem to draw from offstage direct, lived experience, a close attention to the momentary, and an acute awareness of both self and reader. This is no rudderless, fashionable disjunction.” It is as though he felt impelled to ward off a general feeling of artificiality and vulnerability that a preliminary reading of her work generates. Rao is algebraic, and certainly Zukofskyesque in parts. She’ll not care for an easy reader. Consider this poem: Soon! When? Soon… When? Soon- When? Soon. WHEN? Soon. Soon. (When?)
Objectivism apart, one is left admiring her control over lines surfeit with fierce sexual imagery: Thepenis grows to the same length in desire of all degrees (‘A Geological Thing to Happen’); Nipples get hot as craters (‘War is a Place’); She makes you eat spit and he who gives you shelter is already a refugee. She is a carrier for screams fortified with use and he has lost his fuck (The Demon and the Dog).
Once the reader gets ahead, her successful poems erupt like hot lava. Blood smells of blood, recognize it. The fumes bring in dogs off the/street, begging for a kiss. My heart is smeared all over her lips./Transparent as a ruby, bright enough to wear, painted in your blood, I’m/your new baby (For Lipstick). ‘Home country’ becomes ‘Cuntree’ on account of political corruption. Her dominion over her talent holds. Bring me the words without meanings, words all meanings have abandoned, sentenced to meaninglessness (War is A…). Mani Rao is remarkably different.
In her debut collection, Fuse , Bina Sarkar Ellias shelters behind legends like Gulzar who are naturally benign to her and ropes in quite a few high-flying poets to talk about her work before letting us get to her poems. She seems to know that the problem is having too many poems and not knowing what to choose to make a collection decisive and impactful. The tangled words in the head/how does one stack them neatly so/ in visual splendour to be read? (‘Morning Mess’).
She has memorable poems like ‘Love’ ( Love is/watching you sleep/in the assurance of waking to hear/the kettle sing/our morning song ) and ‘Tranquil’ ( Tranquil the afternoon/tranquil the light/that bathes her in mellow yellow/her body turns/like a leaf in a book/each word/transparent as dew/clear as a mountain lake/her desire to be read ). The section ‘Quatra Drizzles’ has interesting lines like Autumn trees/hold leaves still green/like my mother/clutching her childhood (Autumn Leaves) and the day/bruised by a thousand voices/collapses into night (The Day). Languor rises with lines like Sorrow sits heavy on my lids/like a great eagle with spread wings/sorrow bleeds into my skin/like a blue river-/like an eclipse it swallows/ the sun in my room ’ (Sorrow) that offer no mood or sense of anticipation. Her poem ‘Mountain’ is excellent. The mountain in its wisdom/ does not teach./Its ancient skin conceals/four elements/ earth, air, water, and time, the fifth./The mountain does not teach/its parable is learnt . She is indeed a poet to look forward to.
Menka Shivdasani’s book Safe House records the aftermath of tribulations of women. It is time to break the kitchen/takes your fires elsewhere/watch time and space curl up/waft through the windows (‘Home maker’). I knew I had somehow lost my way/in the brightness outside/ after all those years/in a dingy room (‘Bird Woman’). Even a piece of cloth is a teacher of life lessons: Faded though you may be/you have felt the scissors/been shaped/through stitches in your side/I abuse you/hang you in the dark corners/run the hot iron in your seams/you take it all in silence/keep me warm ( Warp or Weft ). Look at the allegory in this line: She’ll taste good when the time is right (‘The Clinging Vine’).
‘Tigress’ is impressive with its formidable closure: And deep in the forest/the ageing tigress/Preys on her own flaccid skin . Life for most part is about surviving, ‘like the fat slug that sits between buried stones’, though Nature has not been kind. Home and everyday objects begin to bear the coloured fruits of her suave poetic philosophy. Her preoccupation with the Partition and the pains that the women suffered offer an interesting insight. Here, a fierce Kali- like Menka emerges a contra to the gentle Menka seeking safety in the shelter of her home. Her authoritative lines fill with admirable power. These veils have begun to bleed on me/they bite into my flesh…/You cannot hide behind veils any longer…/they will not survive the grenade in your hand (‘Veils’). She who can ‘ curl her smells around her/feel the rush of rivers in the distance ’ draws back the curtains of ‘Safe House’ to offer us a rewarding experience.
New & Selected Poems; Mani Rao,Poetrywala, Rs.250.
Fuse; Bina Sarkar Ellias,Poetry Primero, Rs.300.
Safe House; Menka Shivdasani,Poetrywala, Rs.200
