Contrary to popular belief that creative prowess produces a narrative of tweenie dalliance, it is invested with the tremendous potentiality for altering our perception of unremarkable but widely used domestic articles. The artistic dexterity provides a sustained and sensitively dense exploration of the surreptitiously dualistic nature of one of the domestic goods, “door”. Do doors betray a strong sense of mystery and signify more than accessibility, prohibition, transition, communication and conjunction? This has been trenchantly put into words by a promising Hindi poet Rahul Rajesh. His ten astute poems on a single theme — doors — are carried by the widely read literary e-magazine of Hindi-Samalochan recently.
Rajesh, who also dabbles into translation, seeks to initiate an engaged and insightful exposition of the ordinary object of life that has been a recurring theme of innumerable fairy tales, folklore and stories including Ali Baba story. The poet tried to understand why people want to keep an individual space and keep the outsiders away. With his critical acuity and discerning sensibility, he astutely decodes the binary of door whether it is left ajar or closed or locked or unlocked from different stand points. For Arun Dev, celebrated poet and the editor of the Samalochan, the poet looks at door from all possible angles and poetically expands it with remarkable felicity. Poetry by its very nature seeks to fill in new meaning to the common place objects mixed in over familiarity that piques us relentlessly. It is what that makes the world affable and sustainable otherwise boredom and weariness induced violence will become a dreaded self-destructive streak.
In his brilliantly executed ten laconic poems, Rahul makes door a substitute for all five human senses with a view to highlighting its centrality to human life. In his poem “Doors have both outward and inward openings”, doors betray a desire for communication and introspection simultaneously. For the poet, doors represent options that enhance the anxiety as well, Rahul says:
“Doors open both inward and outward
As heart opens up and eyes wake up
In between external and eternal realities
Doors act as opening and barrier simultaneously.”
An open door stands for new opening and a closed or locked door indicates withering of opportunities or opportunities denied to someone deliberately.
The poet beguilingly anticipates what will happen if door is taken as an eye, ear, lip and arm. For him door is not all about doorways, thresholds, locks, keys, hinges, handles and bells it is what that creates a multi-sensory inner space and outer space and there exists no practice of keeping door closed all the time. Why did key come into existence? The poet discerningly replies:
“Key came into being for only one reason
As doors could lock themselves but they could not unlock themselves”
For that every look, no matter how robust it may be, gets broken and who breaks the sturdiest locks, the poet answers:
“People in love unlock all the locked doors”.
Channel of communication
Rahul Rajesh is exulted to see that pigeons still nest on the heavily fortified doors installed at forts built by the cruel rulers and they hardly feel threatened by the guardians such as lions, dragons, snakes, dogs and bulls whose images are inscribed on the imposing doors.
Noted psychologist Gustav Jung described door as feminine symbol and for Rahul door is a means for exploring anything that is unknown and unseen. Door motivates people in the face of adversity and it is the most effective channel of communication in a world where terror of stifling silence strikes in the hearts of all who do not side with the power that be.
Rahul deserves oodles of accolades for reviving the tradition of making an ordinary object for continuous creative probing and producing a multi-sensory narrative on it.
