A Life in Poetry (1/n)

It was December and I was in Delhi. I am always happy to see these two Ds together. Winter, blankets, too much coziness for my privileged ass. It was a different thing that as I got comfortable in bed one night, my cousin, who was in class 9, asked, Why do poems get complicated as we get older? How can there be poems without rhymes? To my complete and utter disbelief, I began talking about different types of poems, sonnets, odes, lyrics, elegies, etc. Not just type, but metre and what forms a metre. He kept asking, I kept answering, till we mutually decided it’s too much information that isn’t needed for his test the next day.

I slept with pride that night. If I had been asked those questions a year ago in 2018, I might have cursed the poets and whoever gets to decide the syllabi. It is a little known fact about me that I absolutely disliked poetry for the five years that I studied literature. I could not understand what stressed and unstressed syllables were and even when I did, all I could think of is: It’s entirely upto the person how s/he/they chooses to pronounce a word, how do we base a metre on that? Basically, as much as I liked the meaning and interpretations of a poem, I could never understand its structure. That became the bitterness (aka I don't care attitude) I carried all years in college.

I could have asked my teachers about it. Sure. Just that they would never stop praising the poet and all the students kept nodding along, somehow recognising a heroic couplet, while I sat there wondering, ‘so what’s heroic about the couplet!!!’ Needless to say, I kept myself as far away from poetry as possible because it seemed like a closed group, where everyone was allowed in and I was at the door not knowing how to knock. Even if the door opened, I just couldn’t step forward. As if there was a maze between me and the world of poetry. Everyone could enjoy it, I couldn’t. 

Till I heard Shabana Azmi recite Kaifi Azmi’s Aurat at Hyderabad Literary Festival 2019. I still don’t know what transpired. I had known people who wrote Hindi poetry. I wrote Hindi poems when I was in school. Over the years, I let whatever Hindi I knew slip away. I enjoyed reading my friends’ poems a lot. I listened to Faiz’s Bol and Mujhse Pehli Si Mohabbat on loop at times. Yet, there was something about that particular recitation put together with whatever I was going through in life, something happened, and I returned home to read poems on Rekhta, almost religiously.

I read a lot. I read multiple times. Right now, I have some serious trust issues with people who understand poems in one go. I am way past the ‘feel the vibe and let it go’ phase. I want to know what the words mean, and what they mean contextually. It often takes me many reads to completely grasp a poem or a ghazal or even a sher. And just when I do, there’s something more that I discover.  I now believe, poetry isn’t merely in the words that form the metre or the meaning, but also the vibe they leave – the unsaid words, the silence within. As I write this, I feel overwhelmed, as I often do when I like a piece of work (it takes me about three months to entirely process a work and know what exactly I feel about it - not always but yes).

Strangely enough, it was the Hindustani poetry that led me to English poems. They just did. I need to reread English poems too. (It’s a different thing that all I want to do is compile all the poems on death and loneliness.) And given, I skipped it for five years, I finally did the work to understand the structure of poems and I cannot even express the thrill of it. For example, you have 14 lines, the last two are couplets, and you have a fixed rhyme scheme – all of it is given to you. You have your vocabulary, experiences, and imagination. Go! Write a Shakespearean sonnet now! Wow! My competitive spirit that had been asleep for ages is up now. Not that I tried to write anything. Not yet, but the idea is delish!

All these years I assumed free verse is the best, write with the flow. Write as the thought occurs to you, and maybe, edit later. Rules tie down creativity and reek of elitism. I wonder if I am the elite I hated a year and a half ago. Now, rules are challenging. It’s like you know how to draw a scenery, but you’re given different sizes of sheets, it’s upto you how you take that scenery and fit it in different canvases. One scenery doesn’t have to fit all. I guess, I am coming to the point where I must confess that my advocacy for free verse was mostly based on my feeling left out in the poetry club.

It’s sad but look, now I know free verse and heroic couplets belong to the same club and hesitantly enough, I am a part of it. Not in one language but two because now I know elements of ghazals too. It’s a dialectical relationship people! I am learning here. I am dreaming of ghazal translations in English with all the elements of ghazal intact. I mean, how can one remove takhallus!? Nope. Not on my watch! But then, I also dream of bilingual novels, or novels with poems (like The Binding Vine, maybe). I dream a lot about words and silences, the sheer beauty and power they possess. 

The other day I was telling a friend that I don’t think I am aware of the gravity of things I am getting involved in. Poetry is a whole new world, it’s exciting,  I am not bored yet. But, it’s beyond poetry. It’s the love for languages. The relationship they share with each other, that we are somehow missing out when we are focused on one. Or worse, when we are comparing them for supremacy (I know, the power politics cannot be avoided). We are missing out the magic right in front of us. I’ll go to the extent of saying that there’s poetry simply in the attempts to translate.

I have mad respect for translators, more so for the ones who translate poems, trying to keep it as close to initial form as possible, giving off similar vibes, and taking forward the essence. I am going to question them, anyway. It’s not in my DNA to consider anything as absolute.

All I am saying is life in poetry is pretty exciting, it is new. I never thought I’d be this person, and here I am, with absolutely no clue what rabbit hole I have tumbled into. My Hindi Literature to-be-read is piling up. Oh, in case, you’ve read Kitne Pakistan by Kamaleswar, dm me! I am reading it in Hindi, and I am tripping on it, way too much.  I am rather slow at reading and I keep it aside when it feels like too much work, but I haven't given up on it - the only thing that matters to me. 

I hate it that I get interested in everything, dig deep, and then do nothing about it, as if there’s no better satisfaction than knowing things. Yet, it’s never satisfying. I hear Mephistopheles laughing somewhere far. I am coming for you, M!

A few poems that have stayed in my head in last few months:

Ahmad Faraz's Ab ke Hum Bichde (for its translation on Rekhta which is strangely unavailable on the site now)
Amrita Pritam's Mera Pata (I read it in a book I got from Jashn-e-rekhta, can't find the same translation online)
Vikram Seth's Dubious (give me a better poem on bisexuality, I'll wait)
Alexander Pope's Ode On Solitude (he wrote it at the age of 11, talk about sunshine-y childhood now!)
Gauhar Raza's Mujhe Yakeen Hai (I mean, just read it already!)
Vinod Kumar Shukla's Hatasha Se Ek Wyakti Baith Gaya tha (Anunaya Chaubey's illustration and recitation)
Jerry Pinto's Lockdown Lyric (on Apalam Chapalam Instagram page)

I now realise the list is never ending, so I'll stop. Yes, sometimes I do know when to stop!