POSTSCRIPT FOOD | POETRY

so she eats street food or orders takeout if she can afford it. She shuns gyms, believing that they promote an unhealthy obsession with body image. If she has a deskbound job, she naturally puts on weight. Of course, fat is beautiful. But is fat, er, healthy? How does she not fall for the beauty myth and at the same time maintain a reasonably t physique? I suggest walking. No fossil fuels burnt. Think of it as ecofeminism.

Das marshalls her sensibilities effortlessly to evoke a region at the far extreme of the northeast a region often secluded owing to its stark altitudes and the proximity to the geopolitically sensitive border, where the map shows stringent lines. In the minds of the locals, however, the valleys and deep glacial lakes beckon like the Buddhas smile: Every morning I fold deeper into my esh, O Buddha Every morning the stones walk C K Meena (ckmeena@gmail.com) is a freelance journalist and author. by a fever, O Buddha Every morning my hunger edges toward you (from Thukje Chueling Nunnery, Tawang) In this terrain, esh and stone are food for a hunger that is born of a quest for the seamless, free of overriding spirituality or transcendental clutter. While taking up local issues when the navel of the north Locating the coordinates of the north and the east gazes up towards the east, Mona Zote from Mizoram wont in the poetry of northeastern India brings into ponder too much on the modalities of verse-making as a focus the compelling sociocultural moorings resolution to the realities of her life: of the region. What should poetry mean to a woman in the hills as she sits one long sloping summer evening Nabina Das in Patria, Aizawl, her head crammed with contrary winds, pistolling the clever stars that seem to say: rom Sharmila, the activist-poet from Manipur whos now Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. considered the poster child of all protest movements past (from What Poetry Means to Ernestina in Peril) and present from the northeast (NE) of India, envisages This poet opts for a lyrical mood while referring to the thus her deceased body once it is buried and parts are brutal environs of her troubled state. The head crammed allowed to rot or dry in succession: with contrary winds is aware of the issues at hand as well as Ill spread the fragrance of peace From Kanglei, my birthplace In NE poetry, nature poetrys demands, perils notwithstanding. In NE poetry, nature is not a refuge; rather, a In the ages to come is not a refuge; repository for histories and lores realised with a It will spread all over the world. rather, a repository Blakean zeal sans the opacity of images. Thus Its not morbidity thats the intent here, but the for histories and Mamang Dai, a poet from Arunachal Pradesh, very geo-political concept of the north and the lores realised with says in a simple prophetic tone: east that is perceived under a refracted lens. a Blakean zeal In the cool bamboo, When mainstream India reads NE poetry, most sans the opacity restored in sunlight, often the topic of interest is conict poetry, proof images life matters, like this. test poetry, and that benign, unsullied beast In small towns by the river called nature poetry. These categorisations may have been we all want to walk with the gods. valid for the poetry written a couple of decades ago, but NE (from Small Towns and the River) poets are no longer obliged to carry the same billboard toAlmost everywhere, in small towns by the river, there is a day. True, NE poetry derives its strength from the unique sacred wish that is desirous of life and peace. The north and terrain of that part of the country, its history, and its stirring the east in the poetry of this nook of India is only an imfolklore realism. Readers are, therefore, pleasantly surposed axis. The coordinates tell us little unless one sees. prised, when Nitoo Das says: Kynpham S Nongkynrih shows us the inevitable: Close your eyes, owl woman. This land is old, too old You dont need to see and withered for life to be easy. to break night, starlight Poverty eats into the hills and squeezes into birds. a living from stones and caterpillars (from Creation of the Birds) gathered for out-of-town drunks The owl woman is the everywoman in the poets imagieach market day. nation, yet a special entity born of the ordinary northeasterners (from The Ancient Rocks of Cherra) weltanschauung.

The Body Is the Sum of Its Parts

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january 25, 2014

vol xlix no 4

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Economic & Political Weekly

POSTSCRIPT POETRY

The out-of-town drunks see only the market as the conuence. This land is indeed too old for just that. The directions NE poetry take are, therefore, those of a shaman in search of the elemental. Mamang Dai says: Into the deep, into the sea green navigating on a heartbeat, the lilies are shooting up like sword sh and the woman is laughing, laughing. (from Floating Island) The objects in this world are in an everlasting kinesis. There is something that wants to tear out of the placid, to alter the pasted scenario. Humour is a tool the NE poet uses like a double-edged kotari (a country knife) to smirk at the quirks of her own people, as well as to demolish perceived meanings. Uddipana Goswami writes: Roll over, roll back. Did you hear the story of these two Assamese bums? Their house was on re. They were too lazy to get out of bed and run. (from Dhodar Ali or The End of Ennui) In the poets mind, the northeast epithet evokes a terse anti-sentimentality. Robin Ngangom turns the compass that divides regions to literally become a viewnder: My homeland has no boundaries. At cockcrow one day it found itself inside a country to its west, (on rainy days it dreams looking East when its seditionists ght to liberate it from truth.) (from My Invented Land) Within this dynamic, Nabanita Kanungo from Meghalaya voices displacement in stark, visceral terms: Somewhere, in the meshes of horror, a seed was spilt. I was born. I was inscribed in the maps that went to the North East Frontier Agency with my grandfather, stashed in his brief-case-skull, its being of a clerk, its honest earnings at the time of the Naga uprising; I was the semi-conscious ash of his stolen hearth. (from I Was Born) The poets foothold is the history that the erstwhile North East Frontier Agency holds for generations of people who have settled in that strip currently identied as the northeast. But Kanungos anguish is deep-rooted. While within the northeast can be found an Assamese or Naga or Khasi identity among several prominent ones the essence that her poetry displays harks back to the exodus of Partition, mass migration for economic reasons, and further displacement within an already fragmented sociocultural milieu. The resulting bitterness is nothing but a truth of the moment: I do not even raise my head so much as to stitch the holes in my tent. I apologise for these stars.
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They are fake like my citizenship. (from Citizenship) To look for a north or an east in Kanungos poetry would be futile and redundant. Zotes ringing sarcasm conrms it thus: A boy & his gun: thats an image will do to sum up our times to dene the red lakes and razor blade hills of our mind. Out here this place never changes, never will we will keep choosing grey salt, bad roads, some thin yellow owers to grieve, alcohol over friendship. . . cash for peace, Gods grin of despair. If you think Im starting to regret sticking around and kicking at the tombstones (if not pulling out the AK47) remember the water lilies will bind you back. (from REZ) Irom Sharmilas appeal to place her dead body on the soil of Father Koubru and dismember it is an exhortation to mainland India to heed the voice of the northeast one that would defy all stereotypes, one that would reinvent itself, and one that would denitely continue to nd its exclusive rhythm and music. Ngangoms lines, therefore, are succinct: But the body is the sum of its parts, Sever an organ but the tongue takes over, Remove a hand and the foot starts painting, Deny eyes and ngers are already on the keys. (from Body)
Nabina Das (nabinamail@yahoo.com), a poet and writer, is based in Hyderabad.

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january 25, 2014

vol xlix no 4

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