Eastern Muse: Poems from
the East and North East India
Edited by Malsawmi Jacob
and Jaydeep Sarangi
Price: ₹ 395.00
Pgs: 267
ISBN: 978-93-89110-21-0
Publisher: Authorspress,
New Delhi, 2019
Eastern Muse - A Song of Multiple Voices
 |
| Dr. Nabanita Sengupta |
An anthology is one of the best ways to celebrate plurality of voices. They are important because they introduce the readers to a number of poets and whet up their appetite for more. Also it is the editor’s selection, omission, and arrangement of poems that sustain readers’ interest in the work. So editors’ choice plays an important role in shaping ay anthology. By bringing together contemporary poets from various parts of East and North East India, the two editors, Dr. Jaydeep Sarangi and Malsawmi Jacob have tried to present to their readers the best that this region has to offer; an immensely difficult task considering that this region has been extremely rich in terms of poetic tradition. But the editors, both of them also poets of repute, do a remarkable job here. Of course, there are some voices that could not find a place within this anthology, but that can be explained in terms of economy of space. It is always better to have an anthology that fits into your hands easily, or one that you can carry in your backpack to read while travelling than to collate a tome which would mostly find a place in bookshelves or for only an academic reading. Poets’ voices need to be heard and they should be accessible to maximum readers because as William Blake said, ‘Poetry fettered fetters the human race’. So it is imperative for poetry to be unfettered, to be accessible to as many readers as possible. The editors kept this in mind while putting together this remarkable anthology yet at the same time including most of the important and contemporary voices of the region.
 |
| Malsawmi Jacob |
 |
| Jaydeep Sarangi |
Similarly,
‘Poems from North East India’ consist of poets from Nagaland, Sikkim,
Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Manipur. The compositions
bring out the uniqueness of each of the poets. The poets focus on nature,
politics, love, ecology, death, gender and much more. While the themes are
universal, they speak in a voice that is their own, in a language that can bear
the nuances of their culture. English, the non-native language of India that
has always been at helm of various controversies, becomes a tool for them to
bring out the subtleties of their culture with perhaps the right amount of
dissociation. The poems that make their way into this volume are rich in terms
of meaning and enjoyable too. While some of them are for pleasure read, some
jolt us into an ignored reality; there are still others that force us to
contemplate or change perspectives. In many poems, local legends, old wives
tales and fables form a part of the text. For example, in a set of two poems by
the Sahitya Akademi award winning poet Mamang Dai, titled as ‘Man and Brother’,
a local legend which says men and tigers were originally brothers, intertwines
with an ecological consciousness of the poet. This juxtaposing of a local myth
to highlight a global concern, adds various levels of meanings to the poem.
Regional
identities play an important role in making India a country that celebrates
pluralities. Yet, it is the regional identities that have time and again come
under various scanners. North East India for example has been often associated
with political unrest, instability, violence and other negative connotations,
overshadowing the natural beauty of that region, its resilience in face of
adversity, its own pluralities as well as a rich ethnography that it
encompasses within itself. Eastern region too has its own share of political
turmoils, ecological crisis, gender issues and many other problems which can be
set against the beauty and richness of culture and tradition that it has been
carrying for centuries. By identifying the poets with their places of origin,
the editors beautifully celebrate the local which then merge with the bigger
entity called India. So while the poets featured in this anthology have strong
individual voices they also have a common cultural core that both distinguishes
them and bind them together to give this region its distinctive identity.
Spread across eleven states and twenty seven poets, this anthology truly
represents the eastern and north eastern region of India. Though grouped
together as Eastern and North Eastern states, each of them has a distinctive
character, both in terms of their linguistics and culture. But just as
geographical limitations never restrict a poet’s voice; these poems too speak
across borders and cultures merging the global and the local in terms of
culture, language as well as themes.
It is the title of the book that takes into account the regional identity of the poet, the poets themselves cannot be compartmentalised by that. Not just in terms of their poetic consciousness that oversteps the regional, but also in terms of their geographical stationing, many of these poets have multiple places with which they identify themselves. While Bashabi Fraser calls herself a poet ‘divided between two worlds’, bringing together Scotland and India, Lalnunsunga Ralte moves between Aizwal and Shillong. Poet and renowned academician Sanjukta Dasgupta and Shanta Acharya, though originally from Kolkata and Odisha respectively, their vast international experiences make their voices global in the true sense. In the poem ‘A Tale of a Sleeping Village’ by Sanjukta Dasgupta, the global and the local conflates – ‘Narcotized messenger boys and girls, men as pawns/ Mother Courage in a trance in a tropical village/ Brecht and Gorky’s mothers trapped by puppeteers’. Her ‘sleeping village’ that ‘suddenly disappeared’ can be found in every corner of a world turning increasingly insidious.
The
book celebrates the local too because it is in the interstices of local habits,
customs and lifestyle that cultural richness and diversity exist. While Robin S
Ngangom pays a beautiful tribute to the majestic hills of Ri Bhoi district
interweaving a popular Khasi story of star-crossed lovers in ‘Spring at Ri
Bhoi’, the poem ‘Elusive Monsoon’ by Saroj K Padhi underlines the importance of
monsoon in his own state. Interestingly, the image of ‘God-Gurus who outraged
million maidens’ juxtaposed with the deluding rains make this poem both topical
and universal.
Ecological
crisis, gender stereotyping, patriarchal hegemony and contemporary
socio-political situation are some of the other prominent issues that find
voice in this anthology. In the poem ‘Optional' Lalnunsanga Ralte attacks
patriarchal prioritisation of the father’s name for all official purposes even
though it is the mother who brings up the child. The poem closes with incisive
lines, ‘My dear government,/ Know that it has been my curse,/ It is always with
heart breaking guilt/ That I put his name before hers.’ In the poem ‘Waiting
for the Militants' the bold and sarcastic voice of Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih
talks of the ‘border villages’ where they have seen ‘a fish pond that has
formed/ on a road that is no road/ and villagers fishing for fishes that do not
exist’, expressing a sense helplessness and futility at the general apathy of
those in power.
The richness of themes and beauty of language
makes this anthology an engaging work of poetry. The editors themselves add to
the richness of the collection with their poems that range from the local to
global – tending from the microcosm towards the universal. Jaydeep Sarangi in
‘Another Day in Kolkata’ captures accurately the essence of Kolkata in a few
lucid lines. In a tribute to Manohar Mouli Biswas in the poem, ‘The Trusted
Army’, he reinstates the poets as ‘unacknowledged legislatures of the world’,
pinning his hope upon them for a better world, an important statement in a
world where liberal humanism is fast losing its space. Similarly Malsawmi Jacob
in ‘Beast’ contextualises ‘The Second Coming’ by W B Yeats in the present day
scenario which has corrupted even the personal core of being, ‘The beast
arises/ in you in me’.
One
of the distinctive features of this anthology that requires appreciation is an
almost equal representation of women’s voices. In spite of all the debates and
conversations on feminism, rising awareness of women’s issues and rights, women
poets remain under represented in world poetry map even today. In such a scenario, this anthology does a
remarkable job in representing women poets in almost equal number. The women
poets featured here are not token representations but have very powerful
voices. They write not just about women’s issues but also on ecology,
tradition, national and international politics and many others thus rising
above their gender identities. Yet their consciousness and experiences as women
colour the way they see the world. An interesting poem is ‘The written word’ by
Sharmila Ray where the activity of writing or creating is compared with the
domestic act of cooking till the virtual world banishes the act of writing
altogether and replaces it with typing.
Apart
from the few poets discussed above, this anthology consists of poems by almost
all the eminent poets from the East and North East India like Anjana Basu,
Bibhu Padhi, Jayanta Mahapatra, Tabish Khair, Easterine Kire, Meenakshi Goswami
and many others. The editors have done a remarkable job in trying to bring the
entire gamut of poets writing in English within the ambit of a single book.
Each poem in the anthology has been carefully selected and included. The poems
speak at various levels and demand multiple reading because of the layers of
meanings concealed within them. The book speaks of the time and brings to mind
Kennedy’s words that where power corrupts, poetry cleanses. As Bashabi Fraser,
the renowned poet and academician had said in an interview “Power of poetry
from multiple poets can pierce the stratosphere with the brilliance and
constancy of a constellation from which we cannot turn away without losing the
only magical light that might be left to us on our darkest of journeys”. An
anthology of poetry which consists of important and powerful poetic voices,
gives us that magical light to guide us in our difficult times. Poetry here
cleanses, and even fortifies us for the challenges of today’s world while at
the same time awakening us to the beauty of life. Such multi-voiced anthologies
are the need of the hour when at every moment we face the fear of losing our
own voices.
Reference
