21st August is Poet’s Day….
In one of the first lectures of the literature course that I have taken this year about poetry, my professor stood on the wooden stage in our classroom, bathed in the dull blue of a typical rainy afternoon and proclaimed that she never liked poetry but she fell in love with it. We learned about rhyme and metre and all the technicalities that follow when it comes to dissecting a poem but it always circled back to the purest of aching that blossomed through carefully chosen words strung together. I am reminded of that one quote from the movie ‘Dead Poets’ Society’:“We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.” The very essence of poetry lies in the humanness we possess. It is a marvel of the truest kind that we as a species have looked and pondered upon the immenseness of the weight of the world that we have created and managed to wrap it up in ink scrawled hurriedly onto paper.
I have loved poetry ever since I remember. This passion started with poems like ‘Daffodils’ ‘T he Road Not Taken’ and ‘Television’ which were taught in school but was enhanced with the introduction of poems like ‘In the Bazaars of Hyderabad’ and ‘Bangle-Sellers’ by Sarojini Naidu into my school curriculum. The richness of my own culture and country being portrayed so beautifully through poetry enraptured me. The journey of indulging in more poetry by Indian authors has been an active hobby of mine since then.
Poetry is in the blood of Indians. India’s rich poetic legacy dates back more than 5,000 years in ancient languages such as Sanskrit, Prakrit and Pali, with renowned epics such as the Bhagavad Gita written in verse.1 Indian literature has been shaped further with influences from Urdu and English forms of poetry. From Santavanis and Dohas to translated works in English, Indian poetry thus offers a rich and diverse collection of poetry to indulge in.
History and literature are deeply interconnected and affect each other in more ways than one might realise. With the way that history has taken its course with India (colonialism, oppression, sexism, casteism, religious conflicts, riots, wars, celebrations, globalisation, migration, separation, love, loss- the works), there is an ache that comes with generations living through and living after moments in time that embed themself in our very biology and this ache shows itself in the poems that have been produced in our country through the years. Indian Poetry is a means to understand the lived experiences of the Indian person. Poems like ‘F ather Returning Home’ and ‘Felling of the Banyan Tree’ by Dilip Chitre makes us recognise the loneliness that remains unspoken in the urban rush that we journey with on a daily basis while poems like ‘5.46 Andheri Local’ by Arundhati Subramaniam speak to the the pains and vulnerabilities that come with femininity.
Whether is be poems like ‘The Priest’ by Arun Kolatkar (and the collection that it belongs to, Jejuri2) that contemplate faith and religion as we know it or poems like ‘Unending Love’ by Rabindranath Tagore that talk about the endlessness of love itself, all of these works are unique windows into the collective experiences that we share as people from the same culture and co-existing communities. With the staggering body of Indian Poetry available, spanning over different time periods, languages, geographical locations and forms, this literature is only just waiting for increased appreciation and exploration from an Indian audience. Such a diverse collection of poetry is a treasure that India has and I believe that the best way to honour it is by indulging in it and passing it on to generations ahead of us, by preserving the love that is compressed between lines and verses so that it can be discovered and rediscovered by wide-eyed enthusiasts for years to come.
1 Quote from: https://scroll.in/article/694635/five-reasons-indian-poetry-matters-more-than-ever
2 I was unable to find the link to the entire collection but here are some select poems)
Blog Post by Shivani Joshi – a reader and a learner