YOU ARE HERE : Home » BOOK REVIEWS BOOK REVIEWS MODI’S METAPHYSICAL MUSINGS Sunday, 18 May 2014 | KK SRIVASTAVA 1 2 3 4 5 6 A Journey: Poems of Narendra Modi Author: Translated by Ravi Mantha Publisher: Rupa, Rs 295 KK SRIVASTAVA dissects poems written by Narendra Modi and concludes that the collection, evocative and poignant, once afloat on the surface will bring insightfulness in others’ hearts and awaken the minds to bloom, expand and glow As I said: Nobody can live real poetry. You have to survive it. —Veronica Valeanu-Romanian Poet Illustratively, Giambattista Vico and Jorge Luis Borges, when they talk of the art of poetry, they leave a vexing choice to their readers as to the true cause of poetry. Borges gracefully blames perpetual ‘perplexity’, while Vico lays his hands on ‘curiosity, the daughter of ignorance’ as the principal element poetry springs from. Essentially speaking, every poet finds one raison d’etre or another for penning his thoughts but ultimately poetic outpourings owe their birth to, as Narendra Modi rightly mentions in his book of poems, A Journey: A collection of 67 poems, what has been ‘witnessed, experienced and sometimes imagined.’ Originally written in Gujarati, the translator has produced a work of terrific quality in highly involved and concerned manner with a zest admirable. This is a book of poetry, replete with emotions and feelings and remarkable for the poet’s deft handling of realities and intangibilities inherent in the core of human existence and alterations in it: Coldness Bereft of love, crippled, melancholy, despondent Each moment a pearl of sadness, threaded by absence. Reminiscent of Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (frankness as never before/disillusions as never told in the old days,…Bewildered that a world/Shows no surprise....The discouraging doctrine of chances/And his desire for survival/Faint in the most strenuous moods….) or Hindi poet Muktibodh’s Andhere Mein (In The Dark): Wah rahasyamay vayakti aab tak na pai gai meri abhivakti hai sooni hai raah, azeeb hai failao sard andhera tilasmi khoh main dekha tha eak bar aakhri bar hi…jahan mil sake mujhe meri woh khoi hui param abhivakti anivar aatm sambhava (That mysterious man/my expression I have not found as yet/empty road, strange expansion/darkness cold...in that mysterious cave I saw him once/last time/...where I may find/my lost/final expression/unstoppable/self-born). Modi’sA Journey succinctly captures the disquieting and destabilising issues plaguing a thinking man’s consciousness that vies with itself to achieve an equilibrium between a single consciousness and divergent voices rampant on the scene and his poems address the concerns as to how to accumulate that one single energy needed to intuit and activate cycles of spiritual and intellectual growth of the individuals and society. Postmodern anxieties and aberrations seize the poet who not merely grapples with the echoes emanating from his longing for connections with what he calls, ‘All this is emptiness, A grand pillar, amidst ruins’, but also with the questions that meditate between stillness and arcane flux: Today We yearn to become immortal tomorrow, Clinging to the attachments of yesterday And the betrayals of today. Is there any meaning in a life like this? Normally poets don’t escape a blurring of vision when they deal with dreams and realities but Narendra Modi neither suppresses truth nor shrinks from telling reality. Seeds of Dreams I am a man of naked reality. I see the sky To be infatuated by the rainbow. But my home is built on stone Never on a rainbow. A Journey being a poetic attempt to delve into the introspective musings of the poet, (I explained this to myself/It was may awakening.) attains a wholeness of simplicity and intensity while retaining the passion for reality and commitment. The exterior of the poems explores the interior world of minds multitudinous and as the readers unravel intricate narrative thread of poems, they come face to face with the larger symbols that life lays bare before the brooding human consciousness lolling out before them. View So easy on the eye As evening falls Inside my mind’s eye, one tree opens fully In the darkness blossom starlike flowers Wearing butterfly’s wings I float in the wind. The poet’s loneliness is heroic and so are his struggles. He rejoices in his poem, Such People: ‘In the wind the tree swings without concern/Since time eternal, lies are alien to nature’. The poet derives unwavering fruitfulness in the face of life’s forbidding and blank walls. Sufferings become the journey in the end and the journey initiates a process of hope and dream. Journey And each face I see, unfolds a memory. My recall comes with ease Those sufferings They become the journey in the end. Or, Beyond the Picture I rest in the cloak of a heap of plans My voice a distant cry, now you see, Your own reflection in my eyes. ‘The journey in the end’ or seeing ‘Your own reflection in my eyes’ suggests the significance of spiritual quest or a journey that leads one towards the interior world: Shuffling of the cards to enter a new world. For poets time is a vibrating concept: A centre point with flashes that reflect on memory falling back on things luminous and things obscure but it stays alive albeit it’s blazing and fading tendencies. Reality of time has only one truth, that is, everything else occurs as its emanations. The mystical poet walks out of his meditation, the tyranny of time with new understandings of the individual, the society and cosmos: God and their relationships. Tomorrow’s Challenge And everywhere is darkness. There is a challenge, there is a call. Search for dreams in ruins For they give living meaning Forgetting yesterday Opening our hearts today, Taking support of each other Usher a bright new beginning. In this poem a discerning reader will spot the desire of ordinary men to live life ever seeking new instruments to replace hackneyed interpretations and to have faith in ultimate goodness of humanity though the path stays arduous. To paraphrase John Kenneth Galbraith from his celebrated book, The Age of Uncertainty, great poets (italics mine) are always willing “to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time.” With metaphysical connotations, fabulously peaked imagination and zenith of emotional intensity, the poet whom the translator describes as ‘a spiritual seeker’ allows seamless merging into his poems of themes like seize, nostalgia, love, beauty, loss of innocence, abyss between the known and the unknown, waning human values, and ultimately achieves through these poems a unique world full of honesty and courage that aims at tackling major anxieties of our times. The voice in many poems exudes confidence with flashes of generosity, large-heartedness and unique wisdom. Versification is smooth and readers sink into a quagmire of music of sweet sounds. Poems in this collection, evocative and poignant, once afloat on the surface will bring insightfulness in others’ heart
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 06:48:00 +0000
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