Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 1. May 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
‘Vanishing Words: Poems’ by
Sukrita Paul Kumar
 |
| Vanishing Words: Poems | Sukrita Paul Kumar
| Hawakal Publishers (2022) | ISBN- 978-93-91431-39-6 | Pp 79 | HB | ₹ 450 |
“If
our times have not been kind to poetry, they have been even more unkind to what
is its source, and the source of life and language – the living earth from
which we have separated ourselves, but of which we are a part and in which we
cannot help participating.”
This
extract from Judith Wright’s foreword for her book Because I was Invited
(1975) still holds weight as the situation remains the same or maybe has taken
a turn for the worse. Ecocriticism as a field of study and when looked at through
literary texts, tries to provide an understanding of the relationship that
humans have with their natural environment. Human identity is shaped not only by
the social/cultural environment that one grows up in and which invariably
becomes a part of one’s identity with or without the social identifiers but
also by the nonhuman spaces and beings which scholars have since a long time
taken into account.
Beneath
me
was
that lush green grassland
Cushioned
and calm
I
floated amidst
Whiffs
of cool breeze
When
the creature with fangs
Dug
its path out of the dark
centre
of the earth
I
watched that scorpion
soundless
and sturdy…
As
Susan Clayton in her essay titled Environmental Identities observes that
psychologists have tended to “overlook the impact of non-social (or at least
nonhuman) objects in defining identity… there are clearly many people for whom
an important aspect of their identity lies in ties to the natural world:
connections to specific natural objects such as pets, trees, mountain
formations, or particular geographic locations.”
Cackling
goats and jostling sheep
Wiggle
through woolly tracks
Reaching
the edges of their skin
Rolling
like pebbles down the Himalayan slopes
In
herds
Keeping
this discussion in mind, Sukrita Paul Kumar’s new book of poems titled Vanishing
Words turns to poetry to establish a relationship of words, one’s individuality
and one’s identity with nature and its elements. The book documents not just a
journey of an individual on a philosophical level but the environmental
inclinations that jump out of its pages which one cannot overlook. There is a
celebration of one’s own retreat from an ever-demanding and an ever-challenging
world that one has created and become a part of. This retreat into the natural
world looks into a sense of belonging that comes up with one’s relationship
with the natural world. It is through these images of nature preserved in these
pages that one realizes how vulnerable life can be.
From
time immemorial
human
ashes are immersed
in
the holy waters of Ganga
as
phool, petals of divine flowers,
stripped
of bodily apparel
streaming
through unseen and
unknown
water paths
Dissolving
with the clay of the urn
Flowing
with no destination
Entering
the mythical and
Discarding
the ordinary
There
is an entire body of work that one can recollect which comes from the poetry of
the Sangam Age (the earliest writings in the Tamil language) in South Indian
history. S Murali in his essay on
environmental aesthetics explains in detail the five-fold categorization of the
environment into Kurinci Tinai (mountain tracts and where the valley
begins), Mullai (jungles and the rocky land bordering it), Marutam
(cultivated and fertile land), Neital (the seashore) and Palai (the
desert land), sourcing an earliest attempt by poets to integrate or seek a
correspondence with the human bhava in the natural vibhava.
Elephants
and Jarawas
Of
Nicobar
In
tune with the song of creation
Heard
the whispering earth
Felt
her rumbling belly
Smelt
death
And
escaped into the
Heart
of the forest
Away
from tsunami…
The
animal kingdom finds its presence in the pages of this book. It reminds one of
Derrida writings on animals – L’animal que donc je suis (The animal that
therefore I am) where he mentions how humans are drawn to animals due to our
mutual capacity to suffer and our vulnerabilities. Animals have their own
hierarchical system that does not adhere to the ones created by humans and
therefore lies outside our philosophical systems; which makes them also turn
into sort of a sanctuary.
The
big thud on the roof
that
cracked the rocky silence
of
sleep day after day
was
that of a flying fox
with
wings that do not
carry
its weight into the firmament
nor
combat the mountain fog…
And
as has been observed by scholars, nature provides an insight into our own
behaviours and the influence that we exert on the environment around us; nature
does not change very much as a response to a person’s changed behaviour.
Thereby opening up a discussion on the socially controlled environment and how
our behaviours are shaped according to the people we meet or live with. Our
behaviour is influenced by the responses that it would elicit by those around
us, but in a natural environment one gets a clear idea of to what extent can things
be controlled or cannot be.
Foot
prints and pug marks
signal
a present
That
has its feet dug
Into
the past
Tornadoes
come erasing
Foot
prints and pug marks
Forebodings
of
telling futures…
Therefore,
reaffirming that one’s identity cannot be categorized as fixed but is subject
to change spanning across place, time and one’s relations with the outside
world. Poetry holds the power to relegate the position animals have come to
occupy in an ever-increasing world of humans as that of a lower level; and what
poetry does is to overturn this perception and create a new narrative. One poem
that stands out in this collection titled Crows are our Ancestors is one
of the most interesting poems that I have come across in contemporary Indian
poetry. The ephemeral quality to this poem and the merging of the past and the
present; of dreams and the real world; of worlds not just stationed in a
particular country but across the globe to the memories that are tied up; to an
identification that arises with this bird have been merged together in a very
beautiful way.
I
am a crow,
With
the deep blue of skies in my eyes
The
night is
Envious
of
My
iridescent black
But
I seek that
Shimmer
of moonlight
That
lightens the density
Of
black nights…
In
this book, there is many a time when the animals turn into metaphors and
similes and thereby helps the reader and the poet in realigning their roles in
their own temporal worlds by moving their worlds into a space for contemplation
and with the questioning of where one actually stands; away from the political,
social and cultural environments. Through the use of metaphors, one can dabble
with two different thought processes, as I A Richards has helped us understand,
where a single word or phrase can have a meaning that resonates well through
the interaction. The book seeks to find that balance between the world of the
humans and that of the nonhumans. The world with which we once were so deeply
integrated but now have distanced ourselves from. I end with these powerful
lines from the opening page of the book where this play of words comes out
beautifully.
Why
would the tiger of silence not leave
any
pug marks behind in the forest of words?
My
poems emerge while searching for these
pug
marks amid the cacophony around…