Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 1, Number 1. May 2018. ISSN: 2581-7094
Fall,
Identity and Rising: A journey of life
Four Gardens and other Poems : Malasawmi Jacob with foreword by Jaydeep
Sarangi Authors Press, New Delhi, Rs. 295/$ 15
Paperback – 123 pages, ISBN: 978 9352075898
Malswami
Jacob strikes the chord of her intent with the invocation of the muse who she
hopes will give her the power to see things in and out:
Let no icon cloud your face
Nor cast shadows on your shape;
Gems and images we gaze on
Are for delight, nor adoration;
They’re but sparks of your blazing
beauty –
Timeless, changeless, ever rising
In sight of those who perceive.
(To the Muse, Four Gardens, Malsawmi Jacob, p. 15)
After
such an invocation, it is expected that she would express herself through her
poems without fear and inhibitions. Truth then is her quest: it is this that also
allows Malsawmi’s poetic self and voice to arrive finally to optimism and hope:
Wherever it may be found –
Sea-bed earth’s bowel
Beyond twinkling stars -
The treasure I must pursue.
(Quest, p. 25)
This
note of hope is striking as she hails from a land that was once ‘ram buai’
(disturbance of the land). Malsawmi is also the author of a novel Zorami which has been set in the peak of
the Mizo National Front (MNF) that blazed the state from 1960s to 80s. Violence
is crippling and even regressive but Malsawmi rises from the claustrophobic
ambience like the proverbial phoenix. In the poem Identity, she equivocates on the ‘identity’ thrust on her tribe:
My
tribe you dub “subaltern” –
We
call ourselves highlanders –
Live
on sharp rugged hills
Our
voice buried many years
Is
now beginning to rise
(p. 39)
And
finally arrives at a moment of epiphany:
Nevertheless,
we are part of
Universal
brotherhood;
the
sky and earth are ours
as
well as yours. (Identity,
p.39)
This
exactly is the beauty and power of the poems of Malsawmi: she speaks of
problems of life, war, differences, dislocation but does not overlook the roses
by the roadside. She does not carry the pungency that comes when subjected to
violence or identity crisis:
But
truth will stand, it won’t die out
For
all your false prophesying;
The
story travels heart to heart
In
love’s kingdom through ages.
(The
Story Teller to the False Prophet, p. 62)
Malsawmi
puts her own living experiences down too in her poems. The present volume has
her poems divided into 6 sub-titles, one of them is City. In a brief introduction to this section, Padmaja Iyengar
captures the essence of the poems of the said section: ‘Her keen eyes have
captured the cityscape in detail as her gentle soul laments the diminishing
emotional bonding and writes about all this and more in simple yet impactful
poetic expressions’ (p.65). A typical example would be her poem At Andheri :
Masses masses
No faces
Yeh
hai mumbai
meri jaan
! (p.69)
Using
a line from a popular movie song, she invokes the city’s character – this is a
land where one is lonely in a crowd but everyone flows with it, a land that is
trickery yet the weaver of dreams! She is not like Eliot who when writing of
the isolation of the modern man takes the perspective of a camera man.
Malsawmi’s narrative does not rip us apart rather one feels a sense of flowing
with the tide. The poet tells us that the city of Mumbai is thus and unlikely
to change, a slight mellow feeling transpires between the author and the reader
leading to the development of a connect:
We get down together
cross the subway
then she turns right
and I turn left
never acknowledging
each other’s existence. (Co-commuter, p.72)
Four Gardens and other poems
: What gardens are these that Malsawmi creates?
Pi Hmukai speaks of the first
Mizo poet who was supposedly buried alive for composing songs. The poem ends
thus:
Your
gong still rings under the earth
Bong!
Bong!
A
disturbance in tyrant’s ears.
Somewhere
the narrative voice of the poet becomes the torch bearer for Pi Hmukai and like
the latter she too seems unstoppable! In
another poem Zorami she speaks of those dead and the living- dead
making the raw wound visible. She weaves in the Mizo myth in the poem as she
talks of ‘thim zing’ (a time of total darkness in Mizo myth where drastic
transformations, such as a corpse becoming a constellation in the sky took
place). On the other hand, Malsawmi uses the objectivity and power of the Mizo
myth to aspire for a time beyond darkness:
In
the bay the dolphins play
Somersaulting
in the air
Over
green water,
Seagulls
wait on the shore
For
our coming home (Here
and There, p.99)
Malsawmi
Jacob today lives in Bangaluru. From Shillong to Mumbai to Bangaluru, the poet
had lived in many places and her experiences are many. She is also the first
Mizo writer to have written a novel in English novel, Zoram which vividly describes the culture and ethos prevalent in
Mizoram. The poet had spent a few years of her
childhood in the state during which she imbibed an undying love for Mizo
language, literature and local legends and this is palpable in poems like Rimenhawihi, Pi Hmuaki, Chhinlung etc.
The
poet has also been documenting the socio-political developments happening in
her home state as well as the larger north-east region. The sections titled Mirror and Angst stand testimony to this aspect. The not so pleasant
situations flow from her pen, they are as much an expression of pain as they
are of anger and protest:
Time plods on.
Freedom is lost in the searching
On these violated hills. (These Hills, p.85)
And
again:
Louder still
Cries of the orphans and
Ravaged women.
What price, ‘liberation’! (Republic Day 2004,p.86)
Yet
again:
They come from
jungles
Loot shoot
Commit carnage…. (Drowned, p.87)
Malsawmi
is not blind to the lacks of her own people: she criticizes the deeply
patriarchal Mizo society. She notes that though women are highly visible in
work sphere, they are deliberately kept out of social and political decision
making; being a woman still remains a crime:
And
your crime, baby,
your death deserving
crime –
just your gender. (Death Sentence, p.90)
The
section titled Hope ‘trace the
transition from despair to hope in a convincing manner’ though Charanjeet Kaur
rightly sees ‘a kind of restlessness behind the calming surface’ (p.96):
But the silver
strands in hand
pretty pattern yet may weave
hide the scars of
locust eaten years. (
Locust Years, p.101)
Trauma finally begins to recede and the sun of
peace promises to rise again:
Hunter and
soldier will leave their guns
Stalker will not be allowed
to enter
Hatred and anger will be
banished
Quarrel and fight will be
shoved out.
No hurting no killing in
this country
The place only for lovers
of peace. ( Peace Land, p.106)
The
volume ends with a section titled Four
Gardens. Man had trespassed and then
there was the fall but the path to the Garden of Eden is not irretraceable -
the poet voices her belief: redemption is possible –
Forgive
us our trespasses
forgive
us
forgive us. (Gethsemane, p.118)
Life
has been a learning experience like many for Malsawmi Jacob. She has known
bitter and agonizing times, she has known pain and joy too, she has been
shattered but she has risen and therefore she could end the volume that
contains poems written between 2004 and 2016 with a prayer and a feeling of
spirituality:
Blow over the garden, wind of
the spring
lovely flowers, dance with
delight
birds, sing happy songs
trees, hills,earth and sky
rejoice!
The Lord is alive
alive to save all! (Tomb, p.123)
The
volume weaves the story of life where one encounters a search for ‘roots’, a
‘mirror’ that shows the crooked and the real; from ‘angst’ begins a journey
towards ‘hope’ and finally a garden of belief and trust stands as a promise
before us. The volume is a saga of humanity: it speaks of the loss of humanity,
the trauma of man and betrayal but all
these does not make the poetic voice brittle and broken rather the journey makes her a philosopher
and a true prophet who can empower the mind towards truth and hope:
He has defeated death
he is alive!
Shout in joy! Sing and dance!
Celebrate, Celebrate! (Tomb, p.123)