PROFILE
In search of harmony
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PADMA NARAYANAN and PREMA SEETHARAM trace the evolution to maturity of the Tamil poet Meenakshi.
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MEENAKSHI'S poems on nature, love and friendship are as meaningful as her poems on the miseries of the downtrodden, changing values and anger at disharmony. Throughout her poetry, whether they are feminist poems or songs of personal relationships, runs an universality that makes her readers relate instantly to her. That a poet not yet 60, in 35 years of writing, should have contributed so much to Tamil poetry and that too so unobtrusively, is a matter of wonder.
Influence of Sangam poetry
Krushangini, a poet in her own right, remembers how Meenakshi traces her journey through poetry, passing through four stations. "Initially Meenakshi's poetry was modelled on that of the Sangam poets, cryptic and mostly descriptive of nature. Later, her interaction with people and places outside her familiar circle made her revolt against situations. Then came the poems on social issues, women, children, war." The next phase was when destiny took her to Auroville and later on to other countries in the West, widening her horizons. Meenakshi says, "Then, I dealt less with local issues." Soon she moved out of her position as an Auroville poet. "I don't claim anymore `it's my poem'. I just capture something in words that others receive in other ways. Now my poetry is `naked poetry'. It comes directly from something deep within."
Open and transparent
Both Krushangini and Dilip Kumar, the well-known author, feel that Meenakshi's poetry has always had an openness and transparency that make her work `naked'. She does away with frills and ornamentation. Whether she is talking about a flower or a brook, a bird or an animal, an artisan or a politician, natural or man-made destruction, there is only truth in her words. And almost always, they project her keen sensitivity, culminating in the yoga of her private inner self with the universePavannan, a writer, admires Meenakshi's empathy, compassion and encompassing love. Whether oppressed labourers or artists creating fabrics, the empathy Meenakshi feels for them is very real. "All we know are holed-rags/ which the sun pierces through/ unmatched footwear/ swinging scaffolds/ ladders with missing teeth./ We come swaying/ bathed in brick-sweat/ and the mason's propitiating chants." Raising the women construction workers to the status of goddesses being propitiated, sort of lightens the melancholy. Our hearts go out to the artistic weavers as we join in the poet's lament against insensitive consumers, "... the beauty of the thread on the handloom/ the one who created it/ who thinks of him?" As far as Meenakshi is concerned, "the tiller" is the "most beautiful".
Meenakshi's female voice points out the stark reality of women being first and foremost sex objects in our male-dominated society. "On all fours like a dog/ howling amidst moving wheels/ confused/ sympathy for the disabled from all over/ but why?/ Crawling, yet/ brimming with youth/ it's a she/ a woman, so naive." She, who once watched helplessly a girl being teased, has evolved into a poet with enough confidence to see the new age women equipped to face any predatory male. "Lady of Madurai/ Mother Meenakshi/ up the steps/ over the threshold/ around the tank/ admiring the parrot/ your daughter/ comes running to you/ your own son/ intercepts and teases her/ no security in temples too/ ... in your days/ great beauty that you were/ how did you stroll around?" gives place to, "here, too, a Ravanan sprouted.....she tied up her hair/ tucked in the sari-end/ when hands get trained to break bricks/ what'll become of molesters?....new goddess in her wild raging form/ on the road at night as well/ she walked alone".
A confirmed pacifist
Two other poems also guide us to look at her journey from an earlier mood of despair to a mature one of hope. In an early poem, she bemoans the fate of "Panneer" flowers falling down in the mire, flowers that could have flown up into the sky to become shooting stars; now she is able to see a shower of the same flowers as some benediction come down to lift her up, giving her an elevating experience. Do the earlier "Panneer Poo" and the later "Panneer Poo on another occasion", "coming down as a flower/ filling the heart/ dissolving your fragrance in the air/ you take us skywards", perhaps, spell out her own evolution, Meenakshi wonders.
Meenakshi, as one who has always believed in non-violence, becomes a confirmed pacifist as an Aurovilian . Her cry for peace is very clear. She wants harmony in nature as well as in the world of humans. An injured sparrow or a bird dressed for a dining table distresses her as much as war among nations and nuclear experiments do. What will be left of man she wonders, as she mourns, "I'm yet unmarried/ I've no friend to prop my shoulder/ no baby on my hip/ none to send to battlefield/ what shall I offer/ this sure death (seeking) a red-prey?" She sees the irony in the creation of atomic mushrooms whereas edible mushrooms could have fed humanity.
Many of her poems are like O.Henry short stories. "When the seed point breaks through/ does the earth-body feel pain?/ when with crimson spills the sun comes up/ does the horizon ache?" has this surprise ending "on my gum-mounds a wisdom tooth is sprouting/ (crooked ,of course)". Contradictions do not escape her. "the Kuyil's voice/ in the black darkness of a winter morning/ that sweetness of stored-honey / over repeated births/..... disgusting/ the milk-cart man's strident cry/ snapping the melody-umbilical cord/ bringing in harsh light." Evocative similes like, "the moon waned like a clipped nail" abound inher poems.
Though in some poems Meenakshi surprises her readers with realistic descriptions of scenes and events, as in "Toy Cat", she is surely an idealist at heart. She envisages a world of perfect human beings. She wants the country to have "a scholar barber/ to shave off the prickles/ pricking the face of life./ A fiery washerman/ to bleach the man in society / floating in a mire/ of swarming miseries./ A miracle scavenger this very day/ all aglow within/ to scoop and bury/ the dark clogged waste within and without."
Metaphysical leanings
Malathi Maitri and Vaigaiselvi are poets who have studied Meenakshi's poems with care. Malathi calls Meenakshi an ascetic who, while mocking at all that passes for love, can create sublime love poems too. "Blue waves/ shower of blue flowers/ blue expanse/ inside a blue boat/ you and I/ on the blue island/ we, the green palms" is as sublime as bhakti poems of yore. Vaigaiselvi is positive that after Avvai and Andal, there has been a long silence, broken only by the appearance of Meenakshi on the poetry scene. Anna Kannan of Amuda Surabhi sees Meenakshi's life itself as a poem. For Meenakshi, her life with people from all over the world is her spiritual journey. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, she says, have brought in a new dimension to her life. Her metaphysical leanings are very evident in poems like "Space Everywhere": "in an immense space/ the smaller space of my house/ in it my body/ within it more space / in space, ecstatic light's/ eternal dance."
Unique distinction
World Poetry, An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time, published in 1998, contains "works of only the highest intrinsic quality". Meenakshi has the unique distinction of being the only contemporary Tamil poet of 20th Century included in this collection with her poem "If hot flowers come to the street". This poem has also found place in other anthologies edited by Oxford University Press and Penguin. The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary Indian Women Poets also features two of Meenakshi's poems.
Publisher Shanmukhasundaram of Kavya has collected the earlier smaller editions of her poems and brought them out in a single volume called Meenakshi's Poems. Being a student, poet and teacher of poetry, he sees Meenakshi as a poet who keeps her windows open and remains both an observer and a participant and also retains traditional values while questioning irrelevant practices.
Meenakshi is very sure about what she wants her poems to do: "my fiery poems/ not to make songs for the skies/ but be salves for injured hearts".
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