Root poetry

In the helpful note that Sharmistha Mohanty adds at the end of this slim volume under review, she writes: “One of the inspirations for this book was the Rig Veda, which historians date from approximately 1200-900 BCE. …The Rig Veda is the oldest religious and spiritual text still in use and it forms the basis of what was later called Hinduism.” She adds: “At the time when the Rig Vedic hymns were composed there was a belief that new hymns must continually be made for use in rituals and worship.” On reading this, one might imagine this book to be a continuation of this tradition.

The structure of the book demands a few words. It is unlike most others you might have encountered. The contents page lists 58 poems, but the individual lyrics do not identify themselves with a title. While reading it, one might imagine they form a sort of continuum — and perhaps, that is the intended effect. In a lesser poet, this experimentation might have hazarded failure; Mohanty not only manages to pull it off but does so with great craft.

The poems themselves are not greatly accessible; there is no obvious structure and the linguistic callisthenics Mohanty chooses to perform make the lyrics as different from conversational speech as one can hope poetry to be. (I was constantly reminded of dialogue in Absurdist plays.) A reader can choose to go backward and forward, trying to make sense of it by looking at the endnotes the poet has provided. Or they might do what I chose to do: to surrender to the river of beats and sounds that this book of hymns succeeds in becoming.

Sound — especially of the human voice — was celebrated in classical literature and literary theory. Since one of the inspirations for Mohanty’s book is the Rig Veda, it is perhaps helpful to read out the poems, enunciating the words, allowing their rhythms to take shape on one’s tongue, in one’s throat. Isn’t the best poetry supposed to be oral anyway?

One of my favourite poems in the book begins with the lines: “Paddy fields / earth marked by ploughs / us, us.” The duo “us, us” keeps recurring in this short poem — no longer than a page — like a refrain. It is a sort of claim to consciousness, like a Cartesian declaration: “line of spiders moving / lines from then to now / crossing the ground / of time / us, us”. The move from the image of ground furrowed by a plough and of spider footprint is unusual and startling. To move boldly between these images — and then on to others such as scales of fish, flowers of dung, crescent moon, garland of leaves — displays the versatility of the poems.

This is also a reference, perhaps, to the function of poetry in creating memory and immortality. The furrows in the field, the flowers of dung, scales of fish are somewhat temporary in providing immortality, but poetry performs that duty. The hymns of this book — or of the Rig Veda — bear evidence to a society, a culture, of a people.

To publish a book that harks back to the roots of Hinduism is in itself a task not devoid of political choices — especially now, when the religion has been politicised and weaponised. One of the sources of the book that the poet cites is Wendy Doniger — in 2014, her book On Hinduism ran into trouble with Hindutva supporters and was pulped by its publisher. One of the lines that seemed to offend her detractors was: “The linga [Shiva’s phallus] in this physical sense is well known throughout India, a signifier that is understood across barriers of caste and language, a linga franca, if you will.”

Mohanty’s book brings us to darkness and end, but gently: “When the fires / can no longer / be seen / someone has walked / far enough.” If the previous poem I quoted was about claiming the self, the last lines are about self-effacement: “the paths into the forest / are charred / their length invented / by the feet that walk / to be away to / be awake to be / no one.” The desire to be no one is, in other words, a surrender to immortality.

The writer’s novel, Ritual, was published earlier this month