Life and Poetry of Shiv K Kumar

Aju Mukhopadhyay

Aju Mukhopadhyay

Abstract 

A poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, translator and critic, Shiv K. Kumar has published ten volumes of poetry in English and two volumes of poetry in Urdu besides a volume of poetry in Urdu (MS) and Voice of Buddha (a transcreation). He translated Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry and Dhammapada by Gotama the Buddha. Born in 1921 in Lahore in Undivided India he died in Hyderabad in 2017. 

     Educated in Lahore, New Delhi and Cambridge, he became a brilliant Professor of English; visiting professors in different Institutions in continents. He finally retired as Vice Chancellor of Hyderabad central University. He was awarded by Sahitya Akademi and awarded Padma Bhushan by the Indian Government besides other honours conferred on him by the US. 

     This paper is a discourse on Shiv K Kumar’s Poetry. In most of his books the central theme of his poetry is erotic; prurience abounds in almost all the book of poems in English. The fondness for metaphor, similes and wit all go together in his poetry. Futility and frustration are more conspicuous than optimism. He constantly speaks in irony with some cutting humour. He often creates images which are, as he defines, symbols. His love poetry is associated with pain and suffering. He wrote masterly using American slangs, using words from the Christian world and drew attention immediately. A scholar and master of English language, his creations sometimes sparkled. But beauty was not so overflowing in them. His poetry was autobiographical and he maintained confessional style like Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and John Berryman. 

     Besides writing poetry of lust and desire he wrote some poems on Nature and some were sympathetic to the poor. In advanced age he was quite concerned about death and wrote poems on the subject. 

     Shiv K Kumar was an English language poet more by circumstances. He wrote in English reinforced by his education in the Western world; English speaking countries. He wrote only in foreign magazines. In an interview on the subject of his poetry he spoke and mentioned by way of reference foreign poets only. His thought process was rational and materialistic in tune with the Western culture. In advanced age he travelled to Indian destinations and felt concerned about environmental degradation. He has not shown respect for Indian culture and religion to any remarkable extent.

Introduction 

Originally from Aror, Sind, people of Hindu Arora Caste, Kshatriyas, settled centuries back in South Punjab. Poet Shiv Krishna Kumar belonged to this community whose ancestors moved eastward and settled in Uttar Pradesh. His grandfather was a teacher and father was a Headmaster. For three generations they were a family of teachers; of them Shiv K Kumar climbed the highest rung of the ladder in the field of education. 

     He received his school education at Lahore, at Dayanand Anglo-Vedic High School and college education at Forman Christian College, New Delhi, Govt. College at Lahore and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He obtained his doctorate in English Literature from the University of Cambridge. While at Cambridge, he was mentored by the renowned British critic F. R. Leavis. His doctoral thesis was on the Impact of Henri Bergson on the Stream of Consciousness. 

     He was a National English Lecturer at the UGC from 1972-74, the first Dean of Humanities at the University of Hyderabad, and the head of the English department. He became a Professor of English at Osmania University and retired as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad in 1980. He was also Visiting Professor of English in various British, American, European, and Australian Universities; a Visiting Professor at Drake University, Hofstra University, Marshall University, Oklahoma University, and Northern Iowa and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at those institutions. In 1978 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (London) during his stay in England as Commonwealth Visiting Professor of English at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He was also a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at Yale University. In 1981, he was nominated as a jury member for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in the USA. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1987 for his collection of poems Trapfalls in the Sky. He was awarded Padma Bhushan by the Government of India for his contribution to literature. Besides his high expertise in English language and literature he was an adept in Urdu due to his birth and education in Lahore. 

     A poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, translator and critic, Shiv K. Kumar has ten volumes of poetry in English and two volumes of poetry in Urdu published besides a volume of poetry in Urdu (MS) and Voice of Buddha (a transcreation). He published five novels, two collections of short stories, a play, and a book of translation of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry into English. His scholarly books including criticism were, Bergson and the Stream of Consciousness Novel, Critical Approaches to Fiction (edited in collaboration with Keith F. McKean), The Mahabharata and Conversations with Celebrities (MS)

The Poet

From a family of teachers, he established himself as a professional educationist. He was basically a scholar and later joined the company of Indian English poets. It is said that after he was deserted by his wife depriving him of conjugal life thus far in 1966, his personal experience with woman partners, mixed with imaginations, more in body than in mind; erotic love gave birth to his poetic impulse from his first book of poems, Articulate Silences in 1970 to almost the last anthology of poems in English, Thus Spake the Buddha in 2001. Other subjects too were included here and there in later volumes.

     His poems were published in New York Times, Poetry Review (London), Ariel, Southern Review, Hemisphere Meanjin, Western Humanities Review, Trafika (Prague). Hardly any Indian magazine published his poems except perhaps the In-house magazine of the Indian University he headed as the Vice Chancellor.

Libido the Living Force

The fondness for metaphor, similes and wit all go together in his poetry. Futility and frustration are more conspicuous than optimism. He constantly speaks in irony with some cutting humour. He often creates images.   

     In some of the poems of Subterfuges such as Broken Columns, A Letter from New York, and Walking Down the Avenue of the Americas, Kumar’s exploration is more direct and deliberate. 

     Broken columns, Shiv K Kumar’s autobiographical poem, is in seven sections; five more sections were added to it. The first version of the poem is included in Subterfuges. It shows conflict and tension between an individual and the subterfuges of the society and tension in the poet as he crosses puberty. By subterfuges of the society, it seems the betrayal by his friends, which he referred to in his interview. The force of Eros was quite strong in him from the beginning of puberty.

     He had no reverential feeling for his father but sort of closeness with his mother. A son, the poet records the sexual virility of his father in, “I was Old Before My Birth”. The poem describes the mood of his father during the day and night. It states that after drinking at nightfall, “and at night, he summoned all the angels/ to witness his ecstasy/ as mother cooed under him, in bed’ (6) And, “I could also count up to seven- the entire gamut of his sins” (6)

     At the advent of puberty the boy gets disturbed both at school and in the evening prayer at home:  

At ten I play hide and seek 

down the school-lane in a shop

stacked with teak and deodar

and suddenly Sheila’s chequered

skirt blows into life.” (Broken Columns.32-36.Section-3) 

    In the evening when all the members of the family begin their prayer with chants from the Gita, the adolescent boy visualizes a girl, 

A puff of deodar rustles

through a girl’s skirt

and two tender legs

gyrate the air into fuzzy yearnings”. (Broken Columns. 52-57. Section-4)

    At 20, “At twenty I see a girl’s bodice/ shimmer in the water’s eye./ I am the Adam who has just founded a new city/ named all its streets.” (Broken Columns. Section-4) The Biblical reference becomes compatible to his growing passion. The physical passion reigns supreme in the first love making which underlines “no commitment to the stars, she knew/ only a beetle’s mating drone”. (Broken Columns. 94-95. Section-6) 

     The father sniffing danger sends the son to the temple priest for advice. The irony is evident when he writes: “In the meditation-room of the shiva temple the high priest communes with Brahma wrapped in saffron loin- cloth/ he lets his long, grey hair cascade down to life’s quiddity.” (Broken Columns) “As he becons me into the dark chamber I pull myself out of the earth’s orbit into blank space. But as I emerge from the netherworld an aroma of deodar wells up and a cluster of mynas hurls defiance at the truth.” (Broken Columns) It is pooh-poohing the idea of his father, adding sarcastic commentary on the priest.   

      The theme of sexual desire is a recurring feature in his poetry. Subterfuges, held as a master piece, contains a number of love poems and poems showing woman as an object of passion; not an object of beauty but of carnal desire. Had he seen her as symbol of ugliness, dirt and disease associated with life, he would have felt apathy towards them, raised himself out of the sphere of desire. His poetry runs counter to the romantic glorification of woman. The portrait of a “Cabaret Dancer” brings home not only the beauty of the woman but also the ugliness hidden underneath as the dancer kisses even the lepers “on their flushed cheeks”. The Cabaret Dancer causes the arousal of sexual desire while performing on the stage. Poet’s image of it is, “cockroach/ creeping up the bedpost.” 

     In “The Aftermath” (S44) after the act of so called love making the bodies, “into a semblance of orgasm/ . . . sank deflated” and while the wife is again exited in sexual union, as “she stirs again”, the husband “see cockroach/ creeping up the bedpost”. This image repeats in such situations, meaning something repulsive and dirty; loathsome. The male ignores the female in both the situations; firstly as the Cabaret Dancer is a harlot, secondly, after his orgasm he disliked the female body temporarily, even without paying any hid to his wife’s urge as she didn’t reach the same stage. Repulsion may be the way the poet uses such imagery for cockroach otherwise symbolise infestation, resilience and energy among other things. These poems speak of the male sexual experience with the females without waiting for a reciprocal touch by his counterpart, without any value attached to female desires, ignoring the woman’s entity as human beings at times. It is not that all males act that way in all such societies. Similarly in “Cerebral Love” and “A Dark Mood” the poet ignores the nude partner by his side in a pathetic and ridiculous position. Cockroach is also a favorite image the poet used elsewhere.

     The lines here invite the reader to a romantic scene, “As your footfalls fade away/ Down the stairs of uncertain future, / I am afraid the invidious song/ May cripple into my inchoate buds.” (Articulate Silences 12) Or “This is the face that launches/ a thousand paper-boats/ down my blood stream”. (Articulate Silences 14) But no, they don’t let one drift into the romantic arena of life. 

     The critic comments, “One finds that women lack a voice in Kumar’s poetry . . . what we know about them is through male thoughts, feelings and expressions, which presents them, doubtlessly, as quarrelsome, frail, faithless, and beautiful beings.” (Contour. Chandel 58-59) Objects of male love for sexual desire. 

     Adoring the sculptures in the famous temple, which depicts many stories based on Puranas and other anecdotes, as in Buddha Jatakas, the poet writes: “These stones have wings and darkness here flaps into phosphorescence. Washed by the semen of primeval gods playing under candid moonlight they froze into sculpture as the Sun broke in.” (The Sun Temple, Konark) What an elucidation! Usually Sun melts. Washed by semen! An utterance by an urban poet! 

     Sudhir K Arora writes, “Under the influence of D.H. Lawrence, he raises sex to the level of religion. He associates sex with religion through the instances of the ‘Sun Temple, Konark and Khajuraho’ which highlight the religiosity of sex. He gives wings to the holy sex and takes the reader to Khajuraho where various gods and goddesses are seen in different sexual postures which give a feel of creation and divine energy. Man is alive because of love and sex. Man exists because sex exists. Sex is the holy flame which continues to illumine the way that finally elevates him to the divine within. What Khajuraho has become today is the result of sculptor’s intuitive hands. Reason makes distance while intuition lessens it. Stones at Khajuraho cannot tolerate any control” 

they remain free and so seem to be engaged in

love-making.

Since any distance

between leaf and bud, bone and flesh

hand and breast, only whets appetite

these stones brook no restraint.

They flow into a confluence of navels,

Legs and thighs, leaving blemishes

Even on a lotus palm. (Woolgathering 24)” 1 (“In Remembering Shiv K. Kumar as a Poet”; IJES, Volume LV, 2018: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3653629) 

     As an example of erotic creation, a poetic emancipation, is lustfulness that supports the lusty enthusiasts. But “Sex is the holy flame which continues to illumine the way that finally elevates him to the divine within”, cannot be accepted as really divine. All attempts have failed, those who won the heaven got their sex energies transformed or sealed to reach the divine though this is true about D. H. Lawrence as Lady Chatterley’s Lover only raised the flame of his fame as it has done for the poet Shiv K Kumar. It was perhaps the best way for him to go and he established himself in his destined heaven. 

     In “A Mango Vender” a young youthful woman sells mangoes while attracting customers (including old men) by her feminine charm. “She squats on the dust-broomed pavement behind a pyramid of mangoes washed with her youth’s milk tinctured with the pink rose in her hair. Through the slits of her patched blouse one bare shoulder two white moons pull all horses off the track’. (A Mango Vender) 

     The scene is more an imagination of carnal passion than an oft repeated bazaar scene. The sensual imagery recreates the characters in their own situation. To the poet women are reduced to elemental sexuality abolishing the need for reciprocity in human relationships.

     His love poetry is associated with pain and suffering. In “Wife at Prayer” he has pointed the bewilderment of a husband who fails to understand why ‘musk roses’ do not intoxicate the senses of his wife who prefers a stone god to her living husband. He believes that the ‘hieroglyphics’ of his clamorous libido are inexplicable to her stone God. When his wife’s hand weaves ‘halos’ with ‘joss sticks’, his passion gets activated and he feels aroused to break the ‘truce’ reached between them. 

     It is found in poems after poems that he has neither faith nor cares for the gods and priests with idiosyncratic hate for the priest and ridicule for the god. In “My Grandfather’s Love Letters” he has denounced the lascivious attitude of the modern day lovers who “go whoring/ down the narrow lanes of Calvary/ asking for the arse’s wound/ to be pricked again and again”. Arse is an American slang. It’s an irony that he has that attitude towards lovers; love is sexual adoration in Western sense, usual for him.    

     In Thus Spake the Buddha many such love poems are scattered like “Stress”, “Call-girl” and others. In “Honeymooner’s Lane, Kodaikanal” a graphic description of love making came out from the poet’s fingers,

As it’s time for the sun

to retreat behind the veil,

shadows appear down a lane

that curves like a scimitar, flanked

by wild flowers. Each shadow saunters,

arm in arm with another,

emancipated from time and space. (Thus Spake the Buddha 29) 

    “He was . . . driven to poetry to seek sublimation of his emotion of love after he was deserted by his wife in 1966. Then he was in the prime of his life, realising and relishing . . . on the ladder of professional success . . . . When he needed emotional satiety at home, but there came a sudden stroke of fate in the form of the divorce of his wife. He felt completely shattered and turned to poetry for emotional outlet . . . . ” 

     “What we come across, here, in the book under study, began with his first anthology of poems: Articulate Silences (1970) wherein his predilection for this kind of imagery and theme can be seen . . . such as ‘nipples smeared with gold-dust powder’ and ‘weaving endless cycles of/ desire and pain’ (20), and ‘The other hunger forages/ for silken thighs’ (21). There is no end to such emotional vent for Eros. All other anthologies of his poems are replete with such imagery and references. Such mentions do not, in any way debase his poetry, but raise it to higher altitudes of poetic perfection.” Wrote D.C. Chambial, a critic. 2 (“The sounds of Starved Eros: A Study of Shiv K Kumar’s Thus Spake the Buddha in Discourses on Five Indian Poets in English. Ed. K. V. Dominic. New Delhi: Authorspress. 2011. Hardbound) 

     From the above statement it is proved that from the beginning of his first book of poem (1970) to the seventh (Thus Spake the Buddha) in 2001 and up to the last book of poems in English, published in 2008, he was obsessed with lust. Its cause has been the divorce and desertion by his wife in 1966 but the poems are live with direct experiences and recurring thoughts, dreams and imaginations of the poet whose poetry was autobiographical in nature as accepted by the poet. In 1970 he was aged around 49 and in 2001 he was 80. In an interview; let’s refer it as Interview, in 1991 (SHIV K. KUMAR: AN INTERVIEW) the poet said that his writing literature  including poetry began due to and after the death of his mother to whom he was extremely attached as her last child and dependent, in his late 40s. She remained the main inspiration of his writings.  

     It is very pertinent to mention what the poet said about his writing on sex in his interview. 

     “Sex is a very vital part of our lives and must be included in writing . . . . When I introduce a woman in my writings, it is to show that sex need not be treated as something unclean. It is a very valid segment of human experience. But I think I am often misunderstood, as being preoccupied with sex. People do not realise that often I am debunking sex.

     In reply to a question, “‘Would it be right to say that, in your writings, you are attempting to sculpt woman into the friezes of rhyme rather than portray her as a mere object of sex?’ the poet replied, ‘Absolutely’” (SHIV K. KUMAR: AN INTERVIEW 232) in self-defensive posture.

Sympathetic to the poor and suffering humanity

“Rickshaw-Wallah”, a realistic satirical poetry, shows the poverty stricken society of daily wage earners and their famished children. The Rickshaw-Wallah pulls passengers, “On the cushioned seat behind” (4) beyond the “municipal precincts” (7) where “the mother hen is gagging her chicks ‘full-throated cries for a few grains of rice their last supper”.  “Last supper” is again reminiscent of the Bible; here it’s not apt. 

      “A Woman Labourer Breast-Feeding her Child during Lunch-Break” is a nice short poem painting poverty, motherhood and the beauty of sequence. It instantly evokes interest and sympathy. Here too he symbolised woman’s breast as moons. And he called her as the Madonna in his Interview.

Each week day the body's two seasons

intersect at noon, the grey winter

of drudge that tempers

cement with sweat

and the green interlude of the sun-

burst when toothless gums

strike milk out of rock. (1-7)

. . . . 

Under her head-veil, now dropped

to cover two moons, wee hands

and feet flutter like a culver. (10-12)

     The poet talks of the poor fellows in “Street children”, who do not have any identity because “Identity is for those who lullabied / in cradles, and fed on / honey and dreams” (Losing My Way 41).  These street children are denied name, honey and dreams. They are simply “leftovers in the dustbin, discarded even by a rag picker” (Losing My Way 41). 

I see them in front of churches

and temples, their hands stretched

out for boons. But who cares? Not even

the deities, each resting

smugly in his sanctorum (Losing My Way 8-12)

     In a poem “Refugee” Kumar noticed a miserable condition of the refugees in the lines:

Blinkered like yoked bulls

Burdened with ancestral memories,

They trudge on, counting the milestones

Which look like maimed tombstones

While the time’s womb holds out

Only a still-born (5-10)

Nature and Environment, Religion and Faith

Here we hear of a different experience, a different freedom from the man-woman relationship in bed. We read,

Beyond the street’s fringe, the valley

is spilling over with mist. Is it someone

out there brewing a concoction

for the gods? (Midwinter Sunday Morning, Shimla LMW 1)

     “Midwinter Sunday Morning, Shimla” shows how the poet became nostalgic observing something in nature in the morning which were diminished in form as yet to be robust with the approaching noon when things are more distinct and vibrating with life just as things of his youth has now dimmed with his advancing age, a typical look back using Nature.

Far away the pines, pillars of self-assurance during the day, now look

dwarfed 

Like icons of incertitude (LMW 1) 

     Painting some scenes as viewed by the poet of a landscape with heightened thought reconciling the contraries, the poet writes, “It‟s daybreak-the moment of embrace between rose and briar, dream and reality faith and negation . . . The symphony of birds, still drunk on some dreams of luscious orchards.” (Dal Lake: Srinagar) 

     In his poem “Banaras: Winter Morning‟, he describes the city Banaras in a beautiful way, “If I were to die this is the moment and this is the place.” (Woolgathering) Elsewhere he paints a picture; perhaps million poets have painted so far, in “Watching the Clouds”:

What do I see up there

in the skies? Massive bales

of Scottish wool, or a potter’s clay

scattered all over the floor.

 

The mind can forge them

into any shape—a herd of elephants

or a giant whale

…………………..

A riddle loses its potency

when you pull off its feathers. 

     “Felling a Tree‟ shows his awareness of nature and environment. He says that the loss of man’s dignity is not less than his death and his struggle and failure are the consequences in this journey. He says, “How can wood stand up against steel, water against oil, statement against its counter? Humiliation is lethal when the victim has no weapons for defense, when you have to carry your own cross and you are your own flame and ashes.” (Felling a Tree) 

     Many of the poems cited from Trapfalls in the Sky (1986) were on environmental subjects. On this book he was awarded Sahitya Akademi award in 1987. 

     poems on environment tells about the poet’s awareness and concern about degradation and pollution of nature and environment due to human actions and non-actions; though the poet was not a conservationist or environmental activist but nothing in praise of a religion, expressing deep faith in anything. 

     The most important poem referred to is “Cleansing Ganges”. 

     Ganga at its birth is tumultuous with huge water gushing forth from Gangotri glacier, the main source of its flow. It is great to see Gangotri, Gomukh and all adjacent sites. How can they be compared to by simile, metaphor or image the breast milk, downy chick, little calf or undiapered babe! (Trapfalls in the Sky 1-7)

     In “Cleansing Ganga” his awareness of environmental degradation by ignorant and negligent citizens is viewed with pinching sarcasm: 

It’s only when they are carried down the river of time

That iron sinks into their souls.

The waters then get sullied by ritual and dogma—

ashes and bones,

wilted floral offerings to the dead,

and the noontime sweat oozing from the saffron

stripped foreheads of the crocodiles

Whose yawning jaws chant mantras in some obsolete

tongue. (8-15)

And yet the mindless process of ‘immersion’ goes on:

May be if someone could dismantle all scaffoldings

Along the mother river’s waistline

And ask the dead to seek immersion

In other confluences,

The little fish will then bleach these waters

For the sun’s lasers to probe her limpid groin. (16-21-Trapfalls in the Sky) 

     The whole metaphor is an oblique reference to the funeral rites by a priest who chants in obsolete tongue. Why obsolete! It is still vibrant in some tongues, in all Indian mantras, in Doordarshan News and at many sacred places. Obsolete because the poet has no familiarity with Sanskrit which his father loved well and lived with. It shows poet’s hate for the priest and Indian religious rites. 

     The poet thought all pollution of the river was dues to dead bodies floated in it at times and some rites performed in the river. But the real causes are bigger issues which have never been solved, little hope remains under the present structure of the governments and people’s low, selfish culture. The real cause of pollution and danger to the greatest river of India is melting of the glacier, climate change, indiscriminate construction of dams and buildings, dwarfing the hill sides on the banks of Ganga, etc. In the face of such great pollution it is childish to expect that fishes would clean the river; they existed before and exist still. 

     In such mental setup when he writes,

They wouldn’t believe it here

That Ganges water can work miracles:

In spite of the cartloads

Of dead men’s ashes and bones-

Daily offerings to the river (Trapfalls in the Sky 18) 

     In such mental setup when he writes,

They wouldn’t believe it here

That Ganges water can work miracles:

In spite of the cartloads

Of dead men’s ashes and bones-

Daily offerings to the river (Trapfalls in the Sky 18) 

     It seems he speaks to the other about some other’s faith, not his own belief. 

     When questioned, “Your poem ‘Crematorium in Adikmet, Hyderabad11’ ends with 

the line ‘The priest chants louder for a generous tip.’ Do you think that the combination of the serious and the comic elements generates a new intensity in this poem?”

     The poet answered, “It does. You have to be ruthlessly honest even in the most agonizing moments. This is actually what happened when I lost my mother, and she became ashes. My eye could not excuse anything, not even the priest.”   (SHIV K. KUMAR: AN INTERVIEW 234) 

     “I debunk the priest in ‘Broken Columns,’ because he is something of a homosexual.  The priest is a symbol.” The poet said (SHIV K. KUMAR: AN INTERVIEW 232).  

     “At the Ghats of Banaras” clearly captures, with a tinge of irony, the rituals performed at the Ghats,  

A Priest’s chant

Tender but preemptory

Churns the viscid waters

Into submission. (7-10)

     To confirm the superstition one has to be firmly rooted in knowledge. To satirise hypocrisy one has to be rooted in sincerity.

     Shiv K Kumar’s idea of present Delhi in ‘Oh Delhi’:

A whore also has some in-built censors,

but you never practiced vasectomy that you 

preached to others.

I prophecy that you too will fall

like Nineveh and Babylon

and no new Indraprastha will rise

from your barren ashes. 

     Forced vasectomy and tubectomy was in vogue during the ‘Emergency’ in India; sometimes imposed by someone of the ruling family who had no official status. Though Delhi was the central point it spread to other cities. The poet could refer to that if straightforwardness has any poetic quality. The curse has allusions to myth and history.

     In “The Taj” the poet feels pity for the ruined beauty of such a monument as this is one of the places which specifies India among other nations in terms of architecture and monuments. He says here: 

Fissures in its rectum-

now a renovator’s nightmare,

How long can it withstand 

the riverbed’s lethal teeth?” (The Taj 11-14)      

     It seems difficult to understand the imagery and anatomy of the mausoleum, Taj Mahal; it seems another impetuous expression. Going a bit into history one may find that Yamuna river was strategically chosen for Taj Mahal to be built on its bank. And researches have established that it was already a structure of Hindu temple or a palace though dispute rings around it.

     He feels happy and grateful as welcomed in Kashmir and Ajmer but why, “Welcome indoors a fugitive from another land.” (Trapfalls in the Sky 8) The places visited are parts of India. So welcome is a usual phenomenon. Why should the poet feel himself a fugitive from another land? Does his living long abroad like USA torments him? 

     In the poem, “Bishmpitamah to Yudhister Dharamraj (sic)” Yudhisthira asks Bhishma, who was on his death-bed pierced by arrows shot by Arjuna, “I am to hear your version of truth./ isn’t the voice of experience more authentic/ than even divinity’s which often sounds/ like a matrons?” (Losing My Way 31). 

     Disbelief in God is apparent here. Bhishma said that Truth was hidden in mystery; he didn’t confirm Yudhisthira’s assertion. However, it is proof that Kumar in advanced age wrote poems based on Indian Epic like Mahabharata in his own way. Many poets have so far written poems on some stories and anecdotes from such vast Epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana. Their poems weren’t proof of their spirituality always. Shiva K Kumar wrote more on Hindu religious ideas and places of pilgrimage, like “Triveni Sangam” but they didn’t prove that he was a devout adherer of Hindu Religion though by birth he was a Hindu.

     Poet’s love for music is expressed in “Whisperings of Immortality” in praise of Jazz music. He loved Indian Raga music too.

Poems on Death 

Where have the Dead Gone? contains many death news and relevant poems. 

“My Mother’s Death Anniversary” is reminiscent of the poet’s attachment to his mother. After the death of his father who he could not see at the time of his death, with whom he hadn’t a good chemistry in childhood and after, feels remorse and gets emotional while performing funeral rites in which he didn’t have faith. After the death the alchemy of his relationship with his father gets changed, at least temporarily,

. . . as I scrape up your bones,

flowers as the Hindus call them,

I hear a chant fluting through them-

Om!

A perfect blend (as you always said)

of sound and meaning

of beginning and end. (The Death of my Father. 31-37) 

     Passage of time as expressed in Christopher Marlow’s Faustus who expects the arrival of Lucifer, is repeated in Kumar’s “Wall clock”, a critic has observed, due to Kumar’s obsession with death, diagnosed usually as Thanatophobia.  

There is a door that opens only to clench its teeth shut

Behind you as you walk past it 

Now you descend into a dark labyrinth 

With spirits wailing and sighing all around (Where have the Dead Gone? 13)

     And,

Where have they gone, I wonder.

Midnight. Outside, the owl’s hoot is summoning

all the ghosts to take over from the living.

I hear the dead whispering 

like a brood of snakes hissing, or like the drone

of muffled drums beating the retreat. (Where have the Dead Gone? 13)

     While the first quote refers to a scene from purgatory as in the Christian Catholic doctrine, the second one is typical description of an ill omen where owl’s hoot was said to presage death, as in Rome and elsewhere in some societies. 

     The images and allusions refer to Christianity and faiths in other countries. These are examples of familiarities due to his long stay in Western countries. He hasn’t described having seen any ghost directly. True that one suffers from anxiety and worries as the time of departure from earth hastens, when things beyond seems uncertain, when faith about and exact idea of rebirth is missing in spite of a general belief in it by Hindus. True that more death of near and dear ones happen as one gets more aged making him more worried about his own future. Perhaps every creature with elements of mind in it is worried. Poets have innumerably expressed themselves in such situations. True that one has deep feeling of loss and grieves the death of friends, relatives and pets. Poet Shiv K Kumar expressed his genuine feeling through his style of poetic expression.  

     It may be mentioned that poet Tagore was an example of a man who suffered the most losing most of his closest near and dear ones one after the other in his long life and wrote poems remembering each; he ever remembered his first love, lost in his early youth. Yet he kept his calm and remained cheerful and creative throughout his life. Even in his deathbed he felt rejuvenated hearing the chirping of birds in the morning and never felt despair thinking about the losses. He was a man of great wisdom, steeped as he was in faith and resilience. Upanishadic thoughts and ideas filled his heart.

Referring to Buddha Deva

In route to perdition

I sometimes stop at Grand Central to piss.

Where else one can ease one’s nerves to feel the Buddha’s peace

When the bladder fills up

Like a child’s balloon? (A Letter from New York)

     Piss, ease and peace rhymes and satirically, with irreverence to Buddha. Piss is slang and perdition is a biblical word though it is used in other works. 

body’s appetite like a crocodile’s belly

can hold rock, metal and virgin’s thighs (Thus Spake the Buddha. 5)

     Repeating his infatuation for virgin’s or woman’s thigh he writes the next lines, theoretically,

The way to satiate a yearning

is to sublimate it.  (Thus Spake the Buddha. 5)

    It is easier saying than doing. Great Yogis and Rishis who realised the God knew what a lifetime Sadhana was required to go beyond the impulse and pull of desires, specially carnal desire which is insatiable fire. It is like Ghee; more it is poured in desire higher the flame of desire goes up. Not only doing but remembering, discussing and writing, seeing in mind’s eye, even whispering is doing the same thing as pouring ghee in the fire of lust. Lord Buddha cut it short to come out of all desires, giving a good bye to all that keeps a human tied to composite form and usual life. 

Knowing the escape from the pleasures of the senses,

And transcending material shapes,

Reaching quietude as to all that is composite,

Ardent in all ways-

He is indeed a monk who rightly sees,

When he is thus released,

Master of super-knowledges, calmed,

He is indeed a sage who has passed all bonds. 3 (Gotama the Buddha. London: Cassel and Co. Ltd. 1948. 211) 

     All the great Yogis, Tantriks, Saints and such persons who realised the Divine weren’t connected to sexual practices in any way due to their sealing the path to lower nature and transformation of nature; they were above it. 

     The poet in his matured age as a scholar translated Buddha’s “Dhammapada” as some others have done. Voice of Buddha: A Poetic Transcreation of The Dhammapada was published in 2008 whereas his seventh book of poems, Thus Spake Buddha, was published in 2001. Such activities seem to be academic exercise by a scholar and a poet’s whim in titling his book of poems but far removed from the doctrine and teachings of Lord Buddha.

 

Two Poems by the poet, often focused by the critics is discussed below:

“Kali” a poem by Siva K Kumar (Subterfuges 34) 

“Kali” is a fierce, may be poisonous depiction of the Mother Goddess by the poet, an out-and-out materialist. The poem contains superfluous imagery, redundant words and inapplicable references. Let me quote first seven lines and later two more lines from the poem out of the total 18 lines. 

Stone eyes of a mangled street dog 

glare at my self’s patina. 

The rufous tongue of a cobra 

Sticks out each time 

I circle round your ebony torso 

jabbed in the privates 

by your devotees. 

. . . . 

but your nectar is the blood 

that jets from fresh arteries.

     All the first seven lines reflect the poet’s impression of the Goddess seen in a temple reflects the image of the poet’s mind. The severity of hatred and anger of the poet viewing the Mother Kali’s image as he beheld the clay (made of ebony!) image of the Goddess in a temple is carried in the lines quoted; eyes of the Kali glaring at him is compared to a mangled street dog’s stone eyes, her tongue is compared to a cobra’s hissing tongue and the Mother’s thirst for blood coming out of the arteries of the sacrificial beast waiting to be chopped is mentioned as her favourite nectar in the next two lines quoted. To mention only the torso of the image is a misnomer for Kali as she always stands tall on her feet over the body of reclining Shiva, covered by garland of severed human skulls. To mention torso instead of the simple word body, meaning the whole body, is not an example of synecdoche as a friendly critic has suggested. I feel that torso has been used to hide the insinuation of the next two lines, “jabbed in the privates / by your devotees”. Telling to a female goddess “Jabbed in the privates” suggests his vulgar sensuality to which the poet is prone; elsewhere in his other poems he has plainly used sexual imagery. A critic titled him as the poet of the body instead of the soul. Such poets become famous for such utterances getting awards. 

     Sister Nivedita (Margaret Elizabeth Noble) described Kali’s figure with the following words, 

“Siva-ideal of Manhood, embodiment of Godhead.” 

“As the Purusha, or soul, He is Consort and Spouse of Maya, Nature, the fleeting diversity of sense. It is in this relation that we find Him beneath the feet of Kali. His recumbent posture signifies inertness, the Soul untouched and indifferent to the external. Kali has been executing a wild dance of carnage. On all sides She has left evidences of Her reign of terror. The garland of skulls is round her neck; still in Her hands. She holds the bloody weapon and a freshly-severed head. Suddenly She has stepped unwittingly on the body of her Husband. Her foot is on His breast. He has looked up, awakened by that touch, and they are gazing into each other’s eyes. Her right hands are raised in involuntary blessing, and Her tongue makes an exaggerated gesture of shyness and surprise, once common to Indian women of the villages.” 4 (Sister Nivedita. Kali the Mother. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama. 1995. 34-35)

     Telling that Robert Burns and Walt Whitman have points of kinship with Ram Prasad, the Sister added two lines from the American poet Walt Whitman. Ram Prasad Sen (his songs translated in international languages) and Sri Ramakrishna were the great devotees of the Mother Kali who had many forms as Adi-Shakti; worshipped by the Tantrik Buddhists from ancient time in China, Tibet and India. Swami Vivekananda wrote poem on her among others. She is one of the deities worshipped from time immemorial.

     A sacrificial animal is waiting for being killed at the altar, as in the poem. Animal sacrifice to the God and effort of recovery from illness by sacrificing animal to God aren’t accepted by any rational man. Those were olden beliefs, prejudices and practices rejected by all wise men including sadhaks and devotees like Sri Ramakrishna and a rational poet like Tagore. 

If the way to create 

is the way to kill, 

I have hoarded enough blood 

in my throat 

for all the hyenas to suck from. 

(Kali Subterfuges 34) 

     The poet needs not to offer his throat to hyenas which do not usually kill to drink blood rather 

than taking advantage of other’s kill for eating meat. The lines are neither relevant nor a matter of fact to signify good poetry. More lines in the poem betray the poet’s naïve comparison. The sacrificial animal brought to Kali is usually a black goat. The bleating innocent Lamb of William Blake does not fit here. Usually Hindus chop the head of such animals by one single stroke; no knife cuts its throat allowing it to bleat. Kali holds a curved sword like falchion, not a dagger as suggested. 5   Immortal Mahakali and Her Mortal Critics by Aju Mukhopadhyay (International Journal Online of Humanities. Volume 8, Issue 5, October 2022.  https://ijohmn.com/index.php/ijohmn/issue/view/52)

     Another poem of the poet was referred by me showing how the poet lacks the exact idea about the Indian Women in the following way.

     “Indian Women” is a fine poem though women in remote villages of water scare state like Rajasthan only do not represent the whole of Indian women, not even in poet’s time in recent past. 

Patiently they sit

like empty pitchers

on the mouth of the village well

pleating hope in each braid of their Mississippi-long hair

looking deep into the water’s mirror

for the moisture in their eyes.

With zodiac doodlings on the sands

they guard their tattooed thighs

Waiting for their men’s return (Subterfuges)

     His examples of Mississippi long hair and tattooed thighs tell us about the poet’s American experience; otherwise there are beautiful Indian rivers and other ways to express woman’s faithfulness. Indian village women, any respectable Indian women usually do not get tattoos inscribed in any part of their body, specially in the lower part. Such a thigh was the outcome of the poet’s obsession. But these are the poet’s choices which are surely his prerogatives, as it is throughout the books.

Conclusion

Apart from variations the main idea and major portion of poetic creations by Shiv K Kumar are erotic; reaction against unsatisfied lustfulness and frustration, women satirised and dominated allowing the cloud of grievance to accumulate around them. But it is not noticed where such sex ideas were debunked. 

     Shringara or erotic love is the first and one of the nine Rasas or emotions according Indian aesthetic theory of which Abhinava Gupta was the pioneer. Indian literature has some examples of such literature as in Kalidasa and Jaydeva and some others but they were mostly beauteous creations, specially the adored ones. While discussing Shiv K Kumar’s poetry critics have referred to Vatsayana’s Kama Sutra and erotic literature as in Sanskrit. But Vatsayana gave a formula and prescribed a standard which our great litterateurs like the celebrated Kalidasa always followed. His Meghaduta or Meghadutam (Cloud Messenger) and Ritusamhara or Ritusamharam (Gathering of Seasons) has erotic sense and sensuality based on Nature as involved in the movement of nature. In it the amorous gestures and behaviour of Nature often brings out the hidden meaning with a neat play on words. The coquettish charms of the lyrics perfectly mix the imagery with the words, commented a critic. Rivers represent women and cloud is the messenger of Yaksha the lover in Meghaduta. Eroticism without the literary quality or poetic charm is pornography that arouses the sex desire in the readers. Some critics have written and the poet has claimed that sex life must be a part of poetry and that it elevates poetic creations but neither the critics when they are poets, nor the average poets describe day-to-day sex life in their poems. Had they done it, it would become hackneyed and bizarre. 

     Man is animal in the lower nature like sex which is an inevitable force for created world to continue. Neither Nirvana nor Sannyasa would allow the world to remain in its place as it is. But there are variations. Man with mind is the highest creation in Nature and few who shunning the ordinary life go to realise the Divine live in their higher nature. 

     His poems flashed with imagery which he emphasised as symbols. He was famous for his creation of multiple images but by analysis it would seem that many times they were more impetuous than apt. He wrote masterly using American slangs, using words from the Christian world and drew attention immediately. As a scholar and master of English language his creations sometimes sparkled. But beauty was not so overflowing in them. It has been observed that his poetry was autobiographical and he maintained confessional style like Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and John Berryman. He might have been influenced by the harsh and bitter poetry of Plath and Eliot at times but their creations occupied much broader area than the subjective monologues of Kumar’s poetry. Kumar wrote mostly short poems. Though not written for the love of nature portions of some of his poems on nature landscape were brilliant.  

     A Punjabi, his mother’s language was Hindi and his father might have control over more than one language. Shiv Kumar was an English language poet more by circumstances. He wrote in English reinforced by his education in the Western world; English speaking countries. He wrote only in foreign magazines except may be in some house magazines of the institution where he taught. When he answered and discussed poems as an interviewee he referred to all foreign poets and writers; not a single Indian poet or writer. He was an Indian English poet by birth. Otherwise wrote as if an English poet, specially American. He travelled extensively between West and East and was more international than native of any country. He said that when he was in India he looked at his culture from a western point of view, because he travelled. And when he was in the West he felt that he was an Indian. He described himself as a brown Indian; such Indians come back to India after long stay without leaving a single real American friend. His thought and faith pattern was like a western materialist. Though in later years he travelled in some Indian destinations and wrote on or translated Indian works he didn’t assimilate Indian culture and Hindu religion much though he was a born Hindu. He referred to native religion as ‘Hindus say or do.’ He stayed in many places to professionally settle finally in Hyderabad with his second wife, Madhu. They had two children. He was a man without a fixed home.

     He debunked urbanised mode of perception, hypocrisy, orthodoxy, judiciary and pretentious intellectualism. He didn’t imbibe Indian culture or religion. His favourite was a simple person, who does his work right; to him he was a little god; an uncomplicated human being. But such a person was not found in his poems cited.

     Finally, I have made the study and research to find out the life and poetry of Shiv K Kumar based on criticisms on his poetry and some additional materials as available in the internet and elsewhere. I could get some of his poems in full from some sources. I discussed two of his poems earlier and commented on them in magazines.      

Notes and References

1. “In Remembering Shiv K. Kumar as a Poet”; IJES, Volume LV, 2018:       

( https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3653629)

2. “The sounds of Starved Eros: A Study of Shiv K Kumar’s Thus Spake the Buddha” in Discourses on Five Indian Poets in English. Ed. K. V. Dominic. New Delhi: Authorspress. 2011. Hardbound

3. Gotama the Buddha. London: Cassel and Co. Ltd. 1948. 211

4. Sister Nivedita. Kali the Mother. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama. 1995. 34-35

5. “Immortal Mahakali and Her Mortal Critics” by Aju Mukhopadhyay (International Journal Online of Humanities. Volume 8, Issue 5, October 2022 https://ijohmn.com/index.php/ijohmn/issue/view/52)

Works Cited

1. Contours of Shiv K Kumar’s Poetry: Relocation and Rediscovery. Ed: P V Laxmiprasad and Sr. Candy D’Cunha. New Delhi: Author’s Press. 2019. Hardbound. Price- Rs.800 ($40). pp.135

2. SHIV K. KUMAR: AN INTERVIEW

Journal of South Asian Literature , Vol. XXV-No.2

Indian Literary Review, Vol. VII, October 1991

(https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=SHIV+K.+KUMAR%3A+AN+INTERVIEW&so=rel)

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Setu, April 2025