Anindita Sengupta

Kuzhali Manickavel on a subject close to my heart:

It saddens me to say that I speak from experience when I say that sometimes I would see these “mistakes” and turn into the Benevolent EnglishSpeaking Despot. Benevolent EnglishSpeaking Despot royally points out the mistake even though nobody asked. This is often done with a very Jesus on the cross air, like ‘forgive them father, they know not that their English is all rong but don’t afraid babay, I fix everything because I am awesome’. The Benevolent EnglishSpeaking Despot then writes out in nice, big letters the right way (AFTER taking picture of the ohsoprecious English to post on blog or generally show everyone because it’s so lololo and also proof that we hast been among the great unwashed and its unwashed English).

I suspect a lot of people are not aware of what they’re doing when they’re doing this. I’ve been there too.

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City of Water has been reviewed in Asian Cha. I’m very pleased because Asian Cha is a nice place to be and because I’ve been very lazy about sending the book to people and this is one time I actually made the effort.

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Uncle Pai died. Amar Chitra Katha comics were really my first insight into so many things–apsaras, talking animals, the perfect body, Buddha, god in general. And love. Don’t forget love.

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Let me exclaim a little bit about some joyful things that have happened in town recently. First, there was Swar Thounaojam’s Fake Palindromes which premiered here. Swar is part of a writers critique group I belong to and it was such fun to see her writing come alive on stage — and in such surprising, unusual ways. Catch it when it happens next or if it comes to your town. The name comes from Andrew Bird’s song of the same name. Swar is a huge fan of Bird and has inspired me to start listening to him as well.

The Toto Annual Awards happened earlier this month and the English creative writing awards  went to Deepika Arwind and Ishita Basu Mallik. Both received the awards for their poetry so despite all the lamentations about poetry being dead, people continue to write it. Some damn good poetry too. Also, read Eunice D’Souza’s piece in Mumbai Mirror on an Audience of One.

Several centuries ago, the classical Sanskrit poet Bhavabhuti understood the concept of an audience of one.  He wrote, “If learned critics publicly deride/My verse, well, let them. Not for them I wrought/. One day a man shall live to share my thought:/For time is endless and the world is wide.”

I find all this moaning about the “decline of audiences for poetry” a little mystifying. I don’t believe it is true because there are so many people creating an interest in poetry: through workshops in schools, writing workshops, the internet, festivals, and so on.  I feel that those who do the moaning don’t see the contradictions in what they are doing. Instead of using endless words and newsprint to moan about decline, they could write about a poem or poet in a way that draws in readers.

And Kent Johnson in Almost Island on ’33 Rules of Poetry for poets under 23′:

5. Ask yourself constantly: What is the worth of poetry? When you answer, “It is nothing,” you have climbed the first step. Prepare, without presumption, to take the next one.

This year, they also introduced a Kannada creative writing award which I think is super. Full results here.

East Bangalore finally got its own full-fledged theatre with Jagriti opening its doors. I feel sentimental about this because I lived in east Bangalore for a decade and had to make a two-hour drive every time I wanted to watch a play. So even though I was quite meh about the opening play — Anita Nair’s adaptation of her own novel, Mistress (yes, good grief) — I am happy that Jagriti is there and that my mother and other people who live that side will be able to watch plays easily. It’s funny living in a growing city. Every now and then, something happens that makes you jump and squeal. A theatre in the eastern suburbs is definitely one of those moments.

I went for an evening around the Kabir Project at the Suchitra Film and Drama Academy. Writer Linda Hess talked about her book Singing Emptiness: Kumar Gandharva Performs the Poetry of Kabir (Calcutta, Seagull Books, 2009). I’ll try to write more about the book later but what was striking about the event was the importance of the music — there was a lot of lovely singing — and how easily Kabir’s work gives itself to music. How much of today’s poetry would, I wonder. I’m not talking about concrete poetry and other types of poetry that are clearly not written to be musical. But even lyric poetry.

Hess talked about the concept of singing from a place of formlessness, ‘shunya’ or emptiness. More about this later, if I understand it a little better, and if newfound blog-zeal doesn’t disappear. UR Ananthamurthy, who was in conversation with Hess, read a poem he wrote after meeting Kumar Gandharva for the first time. The poem was about the singer eating a hearty meal right after singing. Watching him, the poet  realises that he needs to do this to ‘come down’ to normal state. This implies that he is in a transcendent state while singing. There are references to divinity as well in the poem. URA talks about God having become a ‘tenant’ in KG for that time. Some people have a problem with this general idea of creativity being attached to God or being divine in some way. What do you think about it?

Okay, and the Attakalari Biennial 2011 is here. Full schedule here.

There is a village called Heggodu in central Karnataka, and a miraculous place called Ninasam there. I don’t want to get into why it’s miraculous but if you read the news story I’ve linked to, you’ll understand. Anyway, that’s where I was in the first part of this month.

Ninasam’s annual shibeera (camp) brings together academics, activists, actors, dancers, directors, enthusiasts, journalists, performers, photographers, poets, readers, singers, smokers, writers and watchers for a week of cultural adda. This time, there were two plays by the Ninasam repertory group — Kuvempu’s Shudra Tapaswi and Shakespeare’s Othello. There was Carnatic music by TM Krishna (sublime!). There were lectures by Sundar Sarrukai, Rajni Bakshi, Shiv Vishwanathan and N. Manu Chakravarthy. There were poetry, fiction and play readings in Kannada, Marathi and English. There was other stuff but I don’t want to bore you with lists. What I’m saying is there was lots of gorgeousity.

I did a reading of my work. I was more nervous about this than I am about most readings. Firstly, it was the post-lunch session. Yes, bring on the sympathy. Secondly, there were many Bhasha writers/readers at this gathering. I was expecting questions about mother tongue, cultural roots, the whole continuum of belonging and unbelonging about which I feel tormented sometimes and terribly bored at other times.

It was wonderful. Yes, there were some expected questions. But there were also some unexpected ones, especially later, and some wonderful responses from people I respect a great deal. But most interesting was this encounter with a Kannada poet —-

Our first meeting was after dinner the night before my reading. We were standing outside the canteen, near the washbasins. It was cold and rainy. Water dripping into my ears, muddy feet, poetry talk.

‘People who write in English can’t be authentic because they don’t think in English,’ he said.

‘I think in English.’

‘Yes, but you can’t feel in English.’ He drawled out the feel, like feeel. He looked at me compassionately because I am handicapped in this way.

‘Erm, yeah, I need a smoke.’

It took me a day before I could pass him without wanting to make faces. (Reader, I did not actually make faces. It might have seemed immature.)

After my reading, he waylaid me on two separate occasions, told me what he found problematic about my work–and some of it was exactly what has been appreciated in other places. It’s always freeing, even if unsettling, to encounter totally different poetics. It forces you to pick and choose elements from different cultures, to continually think about what would work best for a particular poem instead of following the easy formulae of rules. For example, I’ve been thinking about the whole ‘show, don’t tell’ principle quite a bit and his aesthetic preferences for exploratory statements as opposed to ‘photography’ made me think about this some more.

With all the intense communicating and socialising and sharing, I started feeling breathless every once in a while.  There is a small tailoring workshop on the grounds, a room with some women on sewing machines, a bench outside and in front, a grove stretching out. I sometimes went and sat there, under the trees, to think or write.  I exchanged smiles with the women but somehow, felt reluctant to break the silent companionship in which we sat — them inside, me outside — working at something. It seemed important to let that place be just for ‘doing’, and not for talking.

Here are some lovely pictures of the festival by Prateek Mukund. Oh, and anyone can attend the annual shibeera. You just need to write to Ninasam around the time it happens.

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After the intensity of Ninasam, there was the intensity of illness. I was sick for about three weeks. The upside is that antibiotics affect the poetry well, mostly because I get so drugged that I can’t see straight. This, I find, is an useful state for poetry. As are hangovers.

It makes me think of this interview with Iain McGilchrist, a writer and psychologist who has written a “a fascinating analysis of, and a clear warning about, our increasingly divided brains (Poetryfoundation.org).” From the interview:

The right hemisphere is not just better at understanding metaphor in the strictest sense, but at making unusual connections, and therefore at any non-literal use of language. I don’t think we need to get hung up on that: metonymy is also going to be a right-hemisphere function—indeed my thesis is that poetry is nothing if not a recruitment of the right hemisphere.

I’m interested in this because I feel like I get through life as two different people (left-person and right-person) — one who is obsessed with process, systems, lists and order and the other who shirks all of these alarmingly. The first fills in excel sheets with plans, routines, menus worked out for the entire month. The other refuses to even look at the excel sheet on certain days. It’s not hard to predict which would be better at poetry. The trick is getting the right one to come out at the right time. It’s not nice when I’m at a social event and find myself drifting blankly while someone speaks to me, or open my mouth to say something and realise I’m speaking strange.  And on that note, read what George Szirtes says on conversation.

Also interesting is what McGilchrist says about the logic, order and patterning required in poetry. Rhyme, rhythm, metre.

And I could not agree less that having a clear metrical pattern and rhyme scheme is limiting, or tends to suggest the left hemisphere’s attitude to language. They are the condition of all music and dance, the right hemisphere’s domain, and when we decide to dispense with them, we take a knowing risk.

Hmm.

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I’ve been making a(nother) attempt to learn Kannada. I decided I had gone about it all wrong in the past — all those conversational classes which told me how to buy vegetables at the market just bored me to death. I realised the only way I can get interested in a language is through its writing. So I’ve learned the script. I can now read signage of all sorts and spend a lot of time reading out shop signs to A.

More ambitiously, I’m also trying to read Girish Karnad’s ‘Yayati’. Since I can spend a total of one hour a week or something on this, I’ll probably be done with it by next year. But hey, remember the tortoise?

In the spirit of slow but sure, I love this site called Padakali which gives you one new word every day.

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Tomorrow’s reading at Goobe’s Book Republic has been postponed to some time next week. Will publish details soon. Sorry about this.

I will be reading from City of Water at Goobe’s Book Republic on Church Street. This is also called Church Street Inn and is in the same line of shops as KC Das. The reading will be on the terrace.

Place: Goobe’s Book Republic, Church Street

Date: Saturday, July 10.

Time: 5 pm

Do come!

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Also, three poems of mine, ‘Dolls’, ‘The Mouth’ and ‘The Vivid Stream’ were published in Asia Writes. Read them here.

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And Deepa Ganesh’s interview of me in The Hindu

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ps: What dreadful, short posts. What laziness. I’m going to do better soon.