POETRY CHAIR.

 

 

When God Is A Traveller.

Arundhathi Subramaniam

Harper Collins  Publishers (India)

Rs 399.

                                                                                                                                           

The book of poems has two parts,’ Deeper   in Transit’, and   ‘When God Is a Traveller’.  One of    Arundhathi’s early qualities, that she has well honed, lies  in   her knack to  exude sensually  to her  reader and subdue him in her poetic spin.  Her poetic endeavours fall as wet thirsty lips on longing flesh.  A  preponderance of images of  wetness and moistness suggestive  of  labia is  characteristic  in her better poems as in ‘ And This is About Pain Too’  “A deep churning of juices in the clay innards of a sealed vessel.”   Her nostalgic  observations peak  as in  ‘ Breath that’s warm, like the sigh of Palmyra trees in Tirunelveli plantations’ (Demand).

 

Her book may be savoured, one poem at a time. Love has the body moist  ‘ Where she has never come unstuck without turning into a moist tangle’ that she tries to tame  with the ‘miraculous algae of language’  (Leapfrog).  Arundhathi  butts  us  in ‘ Black Oestrus’ ‘I could swallow you, feel the slurry of you, against palate-and throat, ravish you with the rip, snarl and grind of canine and molar, taste the grape that mothered you’. In ‘Rutting’   about growing up as a girl, ‘ an eleven year old girl’s hunger for wet perfection’  ends up   in the mystery of lust ‘which is an undoing, an unmaking,  a monsoonal ferocity of need’ Her sex poems are embedded petals in a single flower.  They are accomplishments.   Her success as poet lies here.  

 

Arundhathi is less successful when she gropes elsewhere. Her powers almost  fail her  in a poem like ‘ Sharecropping’. However her notes on nostalgia always impress.  ‘  And there is a language of aftermath, a language of ocean and fluttering sail, of  fishing villages malabared by palm, and dreams laced with arrack and moonlight’ (Epigrams for life after forty). Her poems that tackle issues on modernity, appear stilted.  Then, the time comes ‘ to iron out a face time to shrug off the harlotry, and admit there’s nothing hygienic about this darkness(Confession).

 

After her successful sex poems, Arundhathi   moves to   hindu mythology,  perhaps influenced by her own  upbringing. The travelling God is Murugan,  her namesake much  favoured by Tamil poets. Even here, Arundhathi is best  only when she is herself.  ‘Textile’  is one such.   However  her Hindu God poems, do not impress.   The poems such as ‘ The Way you arrive’, or  My Friends, can be easily tossed by.    ‘ Eight poems for Shakuntala’  Is about  a modern  girl’s  alter ego, where Shakuntala turns out to be a ‘ mixed up  kid, clueless like the rest of us’, abandoned, left in the lurch after sex.  The poet tells her that the trick to survive ‘ is not to see it as betrayal.’  The poem isn’t one of her successes.  It   has too much collage, and strays, like a facebook tag.  

 

The nostalgic   ‘ I speak For Those with Orange Lunch Boxes’ makes  you want  to read it again. Her  better poems are  those that let her  disappear like Alice into her memory’s wonderland .  A poem  such as  ‘ Here’s Middle Age Again’  faintly re-echoes a tired   Kamala Das  with   oft heard refrain        ‘ the need to consume, belong, be loved’.    ‘ I Knew A Cat’ is a prize poem.  It is worth quoting in full.  ‘I knew a cat with a face like a star…..I waited for her to die so my heart would hurt a little less. Now the nights are darker, my life a little easier. And I have returned to the tribe from which I came, our granaries lush, with words and lovelessness.’ The poem  ‘ Living With Earthquakes’ is also a strong  marker. The lines    ‘ This carnival of unmooring, this catamaran love’ is exquisite.  If Arundathi follows  such poetic  piquancy with greater zeal  she’ll  truly achieve the heights  that   Keki Daruwalla has already so profusely bequeathed her with.