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Vintage Verses on a Kaleidoscopic Canvas by  Kalyanee Rajan

A very apt epigraph to the volume is drawn from Mandukya Upanishad, and quite literally, the reader is introduced to a few of the central themes of the poems right away: the flowing river, dissolution of name and form, knowledge, and the seeker’s journey towards liberation. Interestingly, Kannan’s previous volume, Unquiet Waters, carried invocations from the Agni Purana and The Old Testament. Sixty-five poems are divided into five broad sections: “Braided Lives”, “Maitree”, “On the Trail”, “Flowing Waters” and, “Candle in the Wind”.

The first and the longest section presents a cross section of various interconnected aspects of life. It contains some of Kannan’s iconic poems such as “An Autopsy” and “Don’t Wash”. “Mahishasura Mardhini” is a powerful poem, unravelling the stark contrasts inherent in the persona of Durga who is envisioned as “the annual, untiring icon of/ what your daughters could be–/ daughters who intimidate the land/ with a primordial fortitude…” The poet urges the goddess to teach her much abused daughters “an effective way to vanquish the asuras”, as the goddess herself rises “…as an annual reminder of a power/ that can hit between the eyes”. This could either be a veiled reference to Durga as the fear-inspiring Kali equipped with the blazing third eye to annihilate the wrongdoers, or to the Goddess’ ability to unlock the seat of supreme knowledge placed between the eyes.

Many of Kannan’s poems revolve around an unnamed “She”, lending them a wider outreach to women across time and space as it were. In some poems, she is young, unmarried, in others, older, a mother and so on. For instance, in the poem titled “She”, the woman is well-to-do, but reduced to the role of a mere house keeper: the house is an epitome of “clean health”, and the floors are “swept clean/ as her empty heart”, and she stares outside at a blossoming “young mango tree…with a rash of new, glossy leaves…(evoking) the pain of memories”.

The She in “O, for shame” is a forty-five years old woman who is drenched in the rain: “the sky cooled waters fell on the parched cracks of her body…/ …quenching/ the enormous thirst of her being” and her subsequent natural delight makes her the centre of gossip and slander by the onlookers, “How could she?”. In “Tinctures”, she is a woman who travels from the impurity associated with the onset of menstruation to the faux purity achieved when she conceives a male infant, who would never know “the treacheries of the blood hounds/ baying for ‘purity’, more ‘purity’!”. In “A family Tree”, the unnamed She grapples with a sense of loss and sadness for the very Family tree which she had watered “everyday/ with the rain of her sweat/ till it stood tall and proud”, deprives her selectively to “not give her the cool shade/ she sought…/ after her work was done”. The sense of pain is all too palpable, as is the realization that a woman’s role as a nurturer and care-giver is almost always identified with a mandatory precondition of self-sacrifice, of never asking for anything in return despite giving her all. “Red Ants, Then as Now” carries the analogy further, of ancestral property passing on to the male heirs, and the narrator here is “I”, who is hopelessly attached to the house of her happy, carefree childhood. “Ruby Fire” explores the delicate matter of the inheritance a young woman receives from her ageing grandmother, a pair of earrings made of priceless rubies which have adorned the “beautifully preserved old lady/ as regal as the house she lived in”. As the granddaughter grows “in proportion/ to the shrinking of her (grandmother’s) frame”, the rubies now whisper to her the tragic fate that awaits her, “ a lot, a lot/ of neglect as you live on/ with people politely, decorously/ waiting for you to go”.

Kannan also tackles the perennial division between Aryans and Dravidians in India head on, in the poem titled “Burnt Brown by The Sun”. The poem carries her trademark wit, as she explains how the Dravidians were burnt brown by the Sun for turning their face towards the sun with “the complete trust of a sunflower”. She enumerates how the Dravidian “small brown children”, fed on

.

“…cooked rice

laced with the salt of folk-tales,

fed us on curds and Kamban

as we licked the tang of Tamil

we are now asked to thrust behind

to accomodate the sibilant bureaucrats

who are not burnt brown by the sun”?

The poem is unforgiving in its searing indictment of the self-professed, superior Aryans.

Several poems in the collection centre around the figure of the mother: in “Seasweep”, the mother has “a sea in her eyes” as she gradually rises above her mundane likes and favourites. In “Take Care”, the poet pens a poignant tribute to the mother who always adviced the daughter to take care of herself in matters big and small, and eventually departs from life itself, “ Mother left quietly, without a fuss/ taking care not to disturb anybody./ But her touch lingers/…on everything”; the poem titled “Remember Me?” is equally touching, it records the bewildered response of a daughter who witnesses her impeccable Mother gradually falling apart under the impact of dementia, now failing to remember her own beloved daughter.

In the second section titled “Maitree”, the poem titled “The Road Not Taken” (dedicated to M. A. Susila, a fellow writer in Tamil and a translator), reads like an exhilarating joyride of friendship between two contemporary women writers. The witty poem is replete with affectionate references from Tamil Literature: “Valluvar presided over our coffee./ Andal and Bharati made friendly appearances…/ and Ilango cast a long shadow/ on the roads of Delhi I drove through/ with her, quoting lines from the elegiac Silappadikaram”. The two friends discuss the choices of Manimekalai over a car ride, of her turn to Buddhism, and the poet discovers that she belonged there, “in the alleys and by-lanes/ of Poomouhar/ the submerged civilization of Tamil…”. The poem ends on a hilarious note when the poet misses turns after turns as she drives her car, only to realize that she has had to literally “lose” her way, in order to “find” the great authors of epics in Tamil.

The third and the middle section of the volume titled “On the trail” focuses on the poet’s interest in Buddhism. The poem titled “Mahaprajapati” lays bare the story of Gautami, foster mother of Gautama Buddha, who in order to join the Sangha, after being refused thrice by him, shaves off her hair and dons the attire of a renunciant, upon which she is not only admitted, but given the title of Mahaprajapati, meaning the leader of a large assembly. The poem ruminates upon the fact that “The Alpha woman…/ has to be less of a woman/ and more of a man/ to be taken as an equal/ as an ‘honorary’ man.” The poem offers a sharp critique of the patriarchal world order which refuses entry to women till they adhere to a specific code, become “more like a man”, in order to make strides into a more progressive future. This section also includes a rousing poem titled “Mukti through Mango” which describes in two parts, the story of deification of Punithavathi into Karaikkal Ammaiyar: Punithavathi is rejected by her husband on account of her spiritual prowess, he is shocked and stunned by the miracle manifested on account of her devotion to Lord Shiva. While he deserts her to remarry and relocates to another city, Punithavathi seeks liberation from the beautiful female form, and is promptly transformed into a ghoulish figure, inspiring fear and devotion from the society. The narrative in itself is comparable to several such female devotees who defied the society in the favour of spiritual devotion. In contrast, Silappadikaram’s virtuous Kannagi was deified after she burns down the city of Madurai through her righteous anger at her husband’s unjust murder by the king. Karaikkal Ammaiyar however falls in the league of women saints such as Andal, Mirabai, and Lal Ded. Kannan’s well-crafted poem brings the tale alive and subtly reveals the glaring patriarchal chinks in the narrative; concluding with the trite observation, “It all started with a mango”. Apart from another iconic poem, “Ask for the Moon” (which gives the volume its title), this section also includes two very different poems on the Lotus, a flower being of immense significance to the Buddhist thought.

The entire collection has seven poems with dedications to individuals, where three are dedicated to the poet’s own family members, while one is dedicated to A K Ramanujan posthumously. Included in the fourth section titled “Flowing Waters”, in the poem titled “A Wrong Time for Gleaning”, Kannan describes the glorious Tamil month of Aadi and addresses A K Ramanujan, “Were you claimed by Murugan/…about whom/ you sang in three languages?/ Did Murugan harvest you/ at a wrong time…” The poem succinctly captures an enduring sense of loss the poet feels on account of both, her personal admiration for the poet chiefly known for his translations from Classical Tamil, as well as the rich scholarship that he had yet to offer before being cruelly snatched away from the literary world (Ramanujan had died at the age of 64, as a result of adverse reaction to anaesthesia during preparation for a surgery in Chicago).

The fourth section titled “Flowing Waters” contains several poems based on various water bodies, chiefly the Ganga, the Kaveri and Gomti rivers. It also includes a successful experiment in form, a prose poem titled “Ponni Looks Back”, written in lyrical, almost musical prose, in the musing, ruminating voice of the golden river Ponni.

With the fifth and the final section titled “Candle in the wind”, the volume comes full circle, the reigning theme here being engagements with finality, death and closure. Each poem of this section overflows with the deepest of emotions with regard to the basic instinct governing all life forms: the constant struggle for survival.  “Grammar Time” is a short poem which dwells upon the billion-dollar question:

“We learnt

to speak of the past

with a glib reassurance,

speak of the future

as a guessing game.

And the present?

… (why) were so stupefied

while facing the present?”

While “Tree of Life” recalls the marble trees at the Medanta Hospital, “Bracelet Watch” notes the attachment of the owner towards her beautiful watch, at the same time, being acutely aware of the clock ticking away on her own life, and “Tenant” records the devotee’s complaint to God about the need for a new house (body) in exchange for the old one with “creaking joints and poor ventilation”. “Regret to Inform that Mother Died” is another elegant poem which reminds the reader in part of Nissim Ezekiel’s “Night of the Scorpion”. The final poem of the volume, “The Key Turns” pulls a clever joke on the unsuspecting reader, where a seemingly simple case of a key not opening a door turns on its head with crushing finality as the poem ends.

As is evident from this short sampling and analysis of her poems, Lakshmi Kannan’s poetry operates with an acute sense of observation blended finely with irony, wit and humor in equal measure, and all of them set through a tight economy of words and images. Her incisive poems tend to grow on the reader slowly, like carefully measured sips of vintage wine, firmly enclosing the reader in a world meticulously crafted by her, brick by brick, with the cement and building material of freely-flowing feelings, thinly veiled desires, striking a rare balance between tradition and modernity, nature and culture, life and death, and indeed, karma and liberation. Her felicity with multiple languages and cultural traditions adds another rich dimension to her poetic oeuvre. The literary world will certainly be enriched by this collection of poems and one looks forward to many more such volumes from Lakshmi Kannan in the times to come.

Indian Literature Vol LXIV, No. 4, July-August 2020, Number 318