Vijay Nambisan died last year, but rises like a phoenix every time his words light up our world, setting fire to anything profane. I didn’t know Vijay and I regret not getting a chance to meet him. The closest I came to knowing him was through novelist Kavery Nambisan, his wife, who helped by sending me his poems for an anthology I was putting together some years ago.
It was a collection of poems written in or translated into English by poets from Kerala. I knew I had to include him because I’d always been a bit puzzled at how his works were not as much in the mainstream as they deserved to be. The collection was for an online journal, and in my head, this was my way of saluting his poetry. But honestly, that didn’t even come close to the recognition that was Vijay Nambisan’s due.
Hold me tight
Last year, when he died, leaving an entire community of fellow poets in mourning, I was overcome with a sense of loss and it didn’t matter that I hadn’t known him. What was it about his often-romanticised life, personality and the immaculate and indefatigable poetry he wrote that left me so forlorn, I wonder.
“The truth was that Vijay was dysfunctional. The only place he could be himself and find a transcendental value was in the world of words,” wrote C.P. Surendran in a fine tribute. A few more essays appeared. Poets spoke about the Vijay they knew from literary gatherings. And then there was silence. But this is a poet who needs to be read, spoken about, studied and celebrated. This is a poet for all times.
So I was delighted when this book, These Were My Homes, Collected Poems, by Vijay Nambisan came out a few months ago. The collection brings together his finest poems from his earlier books, Gemini 1 and First Infinities, and some of his new work.
There is fierceness and fury in all three sections. As we read him, we drown in their intensity.
Hold me tight, my skin, I fear you may burst
Before your time with ripeness, and show the world
My red heart of anger. Hold me tight, I pray,
That I may not be compelled to face the worst
With worser still. What, will this blood be shed
From mere longing, saying what cannot be said? (‘Integument’; ‘The Evidence of My Senses’, New Poems)
Like grandfather’s beard
Even when he is dissatisfied, even when the words fail, the poet writes. There is hope in the futile act of writing, as seen in ‘When Suddenly the Poems Die’ (from First Infinities ). When suddenly the poems die/ Away, when the pen lies bereft/ Of striving hand, what use the day’s/ Long words, of pretence what is left?...the dull days without you/ Are full of something new to come — The poems that I will make true/ Were born in this interregnum.
Every now and then, Vijay’s poetry takes on biblical tones. This is perhaps most apparent in poems like ‘Christ Stopped Here’, ‘Lent’ or ‘Good Friday’. He travels through circles of time and myth, as he prophetically touches upon themes of life, death and faith.
However, it is the travels of his seemingly weary mind that I’m drawn to the most. We are all perhaps lost travellers in a sense, I realise, as I read ‘Madras Central’ ( Gemini I ).
… Terrifying
To think we have such power to alter our states,
Order comings and goings: know where we’re not wanted
And carry our unwantedness somewhere else.
For me, a poem that powerfully but quietly alters the being of poetry itself is ‘Grandfather’s Beard’. 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.
Vijay’s poems are anything but airy and light. We cannot disregard them either. He will inhabit a universe of complex, traumatised yet inspired minds.
These Were My Homes: Collected Poems; Vijay Nambisan, ,
The writer’s book of poems, Nine, was published in 2015.
