English-language poetry in India is still something of a personality cult, its evaluation often coloured by the poet’s achievements in other fields — as novelist, painter, academic, physician, a secret agent for the government, or even someone who once ran a liquor bar. The poetry is often seen as secondary, an interesting add-on to a writer’s other achievements. Given this, Arundhathi Subramaniam’s poems in her new collection speak incisively for themselves. Appropriately enough, the book begins with a tribute to the late Eunice de Souza, in which she ponders over the latter’s line, “best to meet in poems,” rather than encountering the usually vain and disgruntled poet in person. Subramaniam puts it succinctly: “Now I meet poets/ who exchange visiting cards,/ are best friends with the dentist,/ all darkness deodorized.”
Central to this collection is the sustained long poem in seven sections, ‘The Fine Art of Ageing,’ dedicated to Avvaiyar, the legendary Tamil poet. Among several memorable lines, here’s one: “Draupadi, the fruit everyone wants to peel.” No strident feminism here, just a striking statement. Here is more vivid metaphor: “all threads unspool/ into an exuberance/ of yarn” with a play on the word ‘yarn’. And in ‘Goddess II’: “In her burning rainforest/ silence is so alive/ you can hear/ listening.” This is silence at its most eloquent.
Although Subramaniam is essentially a lyric poet, her images have the added edge of palpability, like when she says that “a versified tantrum/ is a kind of prayer.” She is also a rigorous craftswoman and, as in the best of poetry, the rigour and hard work don’t show. In a reminiscence about her mother, she writes: “…keyholes always reveal more/ than doorways./… a chink in a wall/ is all you need/ to tumble/ into a parallel universe”.
Such pithy lines often punctuate the book, which is a judicious blend of the spiritual and the material. On a monk in the mountains, she writes: “I clean the shrine/ it cleans me”.
The poems are mostly tall and elegant, but she can also write the odd terse one. Here’s a quote from one aptly titled ‘In Short’ : “… all your life you’ve done nothing/ but make hectic designs on the glass./ And you’re still/ outside”.
The writer has published Full Disclosure: New and Collected Poems (1981-2017).
Love Without a Story; Arundhathi Subramaniam, Context/ Westland, ₹499
