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Literary Review
POETRY
No false notes
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`She hones her words to communicate their magic, that's all she has, and uses them as a mirror in which she looks at herself and the world.'
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THIS collection of well-crafted and impassioned poems carries the well-known Rukmini Bhaya Nair characteristics... cut, thrust, parry, smile. There is a sense of the dualism of the self and the cunning duels that one must fight in order to survive. "Do poets have a right to companionate love and happiness?" seems to be the central question. How well the poet uses malice, a subtlety and wit which certainly means a place in the shallow winter sun, and thus her tirades against the hybrid hibiscus are indeed seemingly self-directed. She hones her words to communicate their magic, that's all she has, and uses them as a mirror in which she looks at herself and the world, which agrees to fit into that frame... but there is a lot that will slip out. It's that which interests us...
Shadow reflections
Why is the cockroach courtly? Why must every intellectual have a mysterious friend? There is an interesting intellectualist play with names and works and ideas which converge in a dazzling arena of her choosing — of memorable words, images and forms. She says she is not like Lawrence, but we know the craft of writing has always been enmeshed in apprenticeship. And in her work one sees shadow reflections of other poets one loves: Plath, Shakespeare of the Sonnets, Auden, Whitman and Emily Dickinson.
Yet, the interlacing of memory and facts, of phrases and longings are what the poet makes her own. There may be a language of poetry, of craft, of metre or blankness, but the text survives because it is not private, but builds bridges. Why then must Ariachne be killed in a spatter of offspring and immortality? The intimacy is only a cloak, where the craft continues to pound her head, and allows her to live amongst the everyday battles of survival as a Professor of English to IIT students. It is that battle which produces such intense, fine, and puzzling language. For Rukmini, the Ardhanarishwara thus, oddly, cerebrally, (against the character of it's own myth) must remain chaste, because for her, as a woman, the fine line of reason and identity must always be maintained.
Can we psychoanalyse poetry? It's a loss of time and essence, for the poet must have her scribblings and her freedom.
Hermaphrodite Longings
The centuries have changed. In these three thousand years
Even Andromeda, lying so still in her starry bed
Has altered her position a little, but this has not
Changed....Every man has memories of being a woman
And women know that they have been gods
At one time or another...Ardhanarishwara
Half woman god...You knew him...
Sappho in Indica, crossing boundaries
You were him.... Ardhanarishwara, enticingly chaste,
Lover of lovers, you were that divided god....
Peerless hermaphrodite, soft as woman's silk
Rough as the knuckles af a man...And you are
This lewd woman who bars my way...
You snatched my purse this afternoon
Admit it. You robbed me of my possessions
For which favours I owe you, Sappho...
Yellow Hibiscus: New and Selected Poems, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Penguin India, 2004, p.225, paperback, Rs. 250.
SUSAN VISVANATHAN
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