12 History/Nation/Politics

Abdul Mubid Islam

Introducing the poet:

Adil Jussawalla was born in Mumbai in 1940 into a Parsi family. He went to England in 1957 to study architecture but studied English instead and stayed there till 1970 teaching English language in schools. He eventually returned to Mumbai and taught English at St. Xavier’s college. Apart from being a poet, Adil Jussawalla has made his mark as an influential critic. His published works include Land’s End (1962) written when he was just twenty-two and Missing Person (1976). His poetry is marked by a deep sense of irony and is consistent in exploring the reality of the modern life which is always fractured and fragmented. His poetry is very complex , fragmented and non-linear and is often ambiguous which is basically due to the resulting chaos of the modern techno-crazed world with which he has to come to terms with. Missing Person is a benchmark work in capturing the hollowness and absurdity of the modern world and Jussawalla exceptionally fabricates the ideological significance and difficulty of forging an identity. This anthology has been made more popular by Homi Bhabha who takes it up as a vantage point in his path breaking theoretical book Location of Culture to analyse and theorize the cultural conflict in quest for an identity. The idea of the self in the quest for an identity and the failure of the self to ascribe any significance while making meaning out of itself are captured in his poetry. He was also an Honorary Fellow at the International Writing Programme in Iowa in 1977. He has also edited the seminal anthology New Writing in India in 1974 and has also co-edited An Anthology of Indian Prose in 1977.

Sea Breeze, Bombay

Partition’s people stitched

Shrouds from a flag, gentlemen scissored Sind.

An opened people, fraying across the cut

country reknotted themselves on this island.

Surrogate city of banks,

Brokering and bays, refugees’ harbour and port,

Gatherer of ends whose brick beginnings work

Loose like a skin, spotting the coast.

Restore us to fire. New refugees,

Wearing blood-red wool in the worst heat,

come from Tibet, scanning the sea from the north,

Dazed, holes in their cracked feet.

Restore us to fire. Still,

Communities tear and re-form; and still, a breeze,

Cooling our garrulous evenings, investigates nothing,

Ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root,

And settles no one adrift of the mainland’s histories.

(Adil Jussawalla)

Critical Appreciation:

In this poem, Jussawalla tries to script down the history of the Partition of India in 1947 and to make explicit the gruesome picture that such a tragedy unleashed in the political history of the country. Bombay in this poem is the microcosm of the Indian subcontinent that has registered both the colonial violence as well as the Imperial policy of ‘divide and rule’. The poem also highlights the consequences of partition and the city’s indifference to the migrant problem. Jussawalla’s own version of Indian history is chiselled through the perspective of one who is often labelled as a refugee or clubbed under the umbrella of Indian diaspora. The poem therefore is both a statement as well as a documentation of the still flickering trace of the “colonial” problem that has emanated since the Partition.

The poem begins with a horrendous image of the death of an entire country which has paradoxically discovered itself anew with the partition that has engendered sectarianism in the country. The death is paradoxical because the speaker gives the idea of a country’s birth that has been characterised by the stitching of the shrouds from the Indian flag. The cynicism of the speaker gets even more bolstered in the act of the gentlemen who are chiefly responsible for the ‘scissoring’ of Sind. The expression “cut country” is a vindication of the fractured, fragmented and divided sense of nationalism which has seeped into the rubric of Indian politics. The reader would do good to familiarise himself with Benedict Anderson’s influential theoretical proposition of a nation as chiefly constitutive of imagined communities and this is what Jussawalla tries to explore in his poem. Bombay is referred to as the surrogate city which is a glaring testimony to the fractured post-independent Indian sense of nationalism. Bombay is projected as the new hub to all sections of people striving to eke out a living by building from the remains of a glorified nationhood. The expressions “surrogate city of banks”, “refugee’s harbour and port”, “spotting the coast” are instances that portrays the aftermath of the colonial rampage.

The speaker also presents the vulnerability of the Indian borderlines when he states that the country is vulnerable to foreign entrants coming from Tibet. This might be considered as an implicit reference to the Chinese aggression in the north-eastern border of India in the late 1960s. The image of “blood-red wool” is an affirmation to the latent intent of these insurgents. The speaker also reflects upon the fluctuating nature of formation of communities along sectarian lines that has become the hallmark of the Indian diaspora. But what strikes the speaker most is the indifference of the island city to all these political happenings. Bombay still, in spite of all the political upheaval and social unrest, investigates nothing. And it is this attitude of the city that makes her more endearing as Bombay neither uncovers the roots or origins of her inhabitants nor distances them from their original homeland. Bombay reserves the right of offering a semblance of an “abode” to all her people irrespective of their caste, class, sex, colour or nationality. Bombay’s turns out essentially to be a migrant’s city.

Approaching Santa Cruz Airport, Bombay

Loud benedictions of the silver popes,

A cross to themselves, above

A union of homes as live as a disease.

Still, though the earth be stunk and populous,

We’re told it’s not: our Papa’ll put his nose

Down on cleaner ground. Soon to receive

Its due, the circling heart, encircled, sees

The various ways of dying that are home.

‘Dying is all the country’s living for,’

A doctor says. ‘We’ve lost all hope, all pride.’

I peer below. The poor, invisible,

Show me my place; that, in the air,

With the scavenger birds, I ride.

Economists enclosed in History’s

Chinese boxes, citing Chairman Mao,

Know how a people nourished on decay

Disintegrate or crash in civil war.

Contrarily, the Indian diplomat,

Flying with me, is confident the poor

Will stay just as they are.

Birth

Pyramids the future with more birth.

Our only desert, space; to leave the green

Burgeoning to black, the human pall.

The free

Couples in their chains around the earth.

I take a second look. We turn,

Grazing the hills and catch a glimpse of sea.

We are now approaching Santa Cruz: all

Arguments are endless now and I

Feel the guts tighten and all my senses shake.

The heart, stirring to trouble in its clenched

Claw, shrivelled inside the casing of a cage

Forever steel and foreign, swoops to take

Freedom for what it is. The slums sweep

Up to our wheels and wings and nothing’s free

But singing while the benedictions pour

Out of a closing sky. And this is home,

Watched by a boy as still as a shut door,

Holding a mass of breadcrumbs like a stone.

(Adil Jussawalla)

Critical Appreciation:

Jussawalla’s exceptional view of formulating a diasporic Indian identity tends to get reflected in this poem. It must be noted that this poem appears in his much hyped anthology Missing Person which is a celebrated poetic endeavour in giving voice to an identity that has been fragmented and fractured with the politics of identity formation pitted in a post-colonial era. The twentieth century modernist angst coupled with the failure to “locate” oneself in a particular geographical territory and the dilemma of an “in-between” space are central issues that Jussawalla seem to engage in. The polemics verging on the politics of ascribing a “homeland” for the immigrant population, the tracing of “roots” of the Parsi-Indians and the idea of an “imaginary homeland” are powerful debates that shape the entire trajectory of Jussawalla’s poetic enterprise. He is not fascinated by the bountifulness of nature, nor is he a poet who talks about the aesthetics; he is more of a cultural and ideological fundamentalist who seeks newer ways of perceiving identity in the light of the modern condition. Such an attitude makes him a quintessential poet of the Indian diaspora basically because of his representing a multilayered identity—a Gujarati-born, Hindi-speaking, Indian-Parsi writing in English. Therefore, it becomes imperative on the part of the reader to assess his position as an individual first before trying to make any crude estimate of his poetry.

The poem begins with the speaker’s invoking the Christian theological belief of the gestural cross which is projected in a rather cynical manner because it shows the contentment of the people with their present lives irrespective of the fact that they reside in “homes as live as a disease”. The setting of the poem, as the title indicates, gives the indication of the landing of the aeroplane which is air-borne and is yet to land. It is interesting that Jussawalla often tries to strike the right chord by dabbling in ambiguity and thus the reader should always anticipate the ever elusive category of making “meaning” in his poetry. It tends to baffle the reader no doubt; but this is a ploy adopted by the poet to make himself more down to earth as human life itself is steeped in ambiguity. The expression “A union of homes as live as a disease” reflects the general standard of living of the people. Again, the aeroplane is compared to Papa which is again an indictment on the papal authority which guarantees peace and solidarity even in the midst of the most blatant and dismal times. The magnificence of the aeroplane’s landing is an image that is equated with the much broader picture of the Christian authorial pyramid represented by the Pope. This is evident in the expression “We’re told it’s not: our Papa’ll put his nose/Down on cleaner ground” where “we” stands for all the air-borne passengers, and “Papa” by all stretch of imagination is the aeroplane bolstered by the act of “putting his nose” in the ground which suggests landing.

The speaker’s sense of patriotism is reflected in his readiness to embrace his motherland in her stark nudity. The expression “the various ways of dying that are home” is an instance in point. Again, the paradoxical statement that “Dying is all the country’s living for” becomes significant in the speaker’ wish to return to this abysmal pit to die and thus become a part of his country. However, the wish is not for a total and quick annihilation but that of a desire to assert a sense of “oneness” and thereby to forge an identity that is composite of a nationality that has been wrecked by colonial bondage now striving hard to live up to the confounding demands of Western modernity. This sense of sharing the lot becomes evident when the speaker remarks “The poor, invisible,/show me my place;”. The speaker then comes down heavily upon the Indian political scenario that has copied the Communist agenda of Chairman Mao and asserts that the Indian diplomat who happened to be a co-passenger is completely oblivious and indifferent to the plight of the masses. The alarming rate of population explosion becomes the easy target of politicians in holding it chiefly responsible for the plight of the masses.

The idea of entrapment gains credence with the visualisation of the speaker of being caged not within any restricted spatial barrier but something that is within. Rousseau’s claim that man is free but everywhere is in chains also serves to have an affinity with this entrapment- syndrome of the speaker. Jussawalla’s diplomatic handling of the poetic diction is superb and in no place does he give the chance to the reader to censor him of party prejudice. The graphic image of the slums sweeping beneath the wheels of the aeroplane is undoubtedly heart rending and yet at the same time gives the impression of how politicised the category of “modernity” can be. This is Jussawalla’s modern idea of a “homeland” where all things are afflicted by some problem or the other and the most disturbing but obvious fact is—there is no escape from it. How can then one acclimatise to such a homeland? It is perhaps this question in seeking an answer that the speaker “re-discovers” himself as an inhabitant of a country that has long been denied the intrinsic merits of a nation. For Jussawalla, what is a nation devoid of its people and what good does it serve to proclaim freedom when one knows deep down that freedom is a foolish desire! The poem concludes with the familiar picture of the boy (perhaps an urchin) who vaguely watches the landing of the aeroplane. The mass of breadcrumbs in his hands calls attention for details.

Such an experimental mode in projecting the day-to-day life has never been adequately practised by any other Indian English poet. Jussawalla’s indebtedness to T.S. Eliot duly gets reflected in his self-acknowledgement on the amount of influence early modern poetry have had on him. The poem is quiet Eliotesque in manner and credit must go to Jussawalla’s exceptional fusing the Christian element with the drab, desolate and squalid picture of Indian life.

Introducing the poet:

Jayanta Mahapatra, born in Cuttack, Orissa in 1928 was originally a Professor of Physics at Ravenshaw College. He started writing poetry when he was about forty but this late advent into the creative world further enabled him to inscribe the stoic acceptance of pain and suffering of the Oriya life as part of the cosmic agenda. He has published many volumes of poetry and that too in a rapid rate of which mention may be made of Close the Sky, Ten by Ten (1971), Svayamvara and Other Poems (1971), A Father’s House and A Rain of Rites (both in 1976), Waiting (1979), The False Start and Relationship (both in 1980), Life Signs (1983), Dispossessed Nests (1986), Selected Poems (1987), Burden of Waves and Fruit (1988) The Temple (1987), A Whiteness of Bone (1992), Shadow Space (1997), Bare Face (2000) and Random Descent (2005). Apart from poetry he has also published a collection of short stories called The Green Gardener and Other Stories along with editing his Journal Chandrabhaga which ceased publication in 1985. Although much of his poetry can be claimed to bear close resemblances with the modernist poetry, yet Mahapatra himself never acknowledged any such influence of the great modernists like Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot. The early obscurity and ambiguity in his poems arise from the bold juxtaposition of abstract and concrete words and in the syntactic experiments, mostly disjunctions. Nevertheless, the reader finds a challenge in his poems for coherence which makes them more endearing. The surreal world that permeates his poetry along with the conceits and mind boggling imagery are representative of the qualitative merits of his poetic craft. He has earned the honour to be the first Indian English poet to receive the Sahitya Academy Award for Relationship (1981), an epic poem in twelve sections that meditates on Orissa’s mythology and monuments.

Dhauli

Afterwards when the wars of Kalinga were over,

the fallow fields of Dhauli

hid the blood-spilt butchered bodies. [originally ‘red-smeared voiceless bodies’]

As the earth

burrowed into their dead hunger

with its mercilesss worms, [was ‘tortured worms’]

guided the foxes to their limp genitals.

Years later, the evening wind,

trembling the glazed waters of the River Daya,

keens in the rock edicts the vain word,

like the voiceless cicadas of night: [was ‘shuttered silence, an air:’]

the measure of Ashoka’s suffering

does not appear enough.

The place of his pain peers lamentably

from among the pains of the dead.

(Jayanta Mahapatra)

Critical Appreciation:

In this short poem, Mahapatra seeks to uphold the nefarious consequences of war and the horror it unleashes on the minds of a people who take pride of an invincible past. The idea of invincibility is hold to scrutiny as Mahapatra seems to appear doubtful about the victory attained by the Great Indian King Ashoka in the Kalinga War. It is quite remarkable how Mahapatra challenges the ideological status of war— that war which has gone down the pages of history as the hallmark of Indian valour in battle and that war which cemented the bonds of unity for the very first time in Indian political history. In a sense, Mahapatra adopts a subaltern standpoint in spilling the truth associated with war mongering and the resultant violence that gives a chill to the bones even to posterity while re-configuring that horrid and gruesome picture. What is victory in the real sense? Is it just an act of spilling blood of the enemy or is it about adopting adequate strategies to break the enemy line of defence or is it more about conquering lands rather than hearts? These are some questions that Jussawalla try to raise in making an estimate of that glorious past of India. However, it is quite striking a stance adopted by Mahapatra in questioning the integrity of an Indian past as he employs the rhetorical mode in dealing with a subject which the Indians hold very dear and consider an essential feature of their sense of nationalism.

The poem begins with the explicit reference to the Kalinga war and the horror it unleashes in the form of the “blood-split butchered bodies” that has been lying hidden in the fallow fields of Dhauli. The image of the earth along with the “merciless worms” suggests the intensity of the violence even after death. Much in the manner of the English metaphysical poets like Donne and Marvel, Mahapatra brings up the association of the violation of the dead bodies by the worms that do not merit an invitation to make their way into the graves. Whereas the metaphysical poets were more keen in exposing the Rosicrucian doctrine (“gather the rose buds while ye may”), Mahapatra is bent on projecting the spoils of war. The hunger of the dead bodies is a metaphorical assumption of that unattained hunger for power by those whose bodies have now become the edification of the earth worms. The expression ‘limp genitals” is couched in the form of a sexual metaphor to heighten the futility of war as these organs are now lifeless and lay rotting in the graves awaiting the arrival of the foxes. The boastful assertion of manliness that normally tags along with the phallus has long deserted its pride and has become an object of prey for the nocturnal predators.

The speaker then comes to reflects on the present scenario and envisions the evening wind sweeping over the glazed waters of the River Daya as the harbinger of that old glamour, of that past which even the rocks that has withstood the onslaughts of time find difficult to whisper. The victory of Kalinga came at the cost of those lying in the fields of Dhauli, and the pangs of such a defeat was so abominable that it compelled Ashoka to vow for non- violence and made him lead the life of an ascetic towards the later course of his life. The speaker maintains that although it is impossible to gauge the level of Ashoka’s suffering at the sight of the spoils of the war, yet one can make an assumption from the fields of Dhauli that still voices out that pain and horror.

Freedom

At times, as I watch,

it seems as though my country’s body

floats down somewhere on the river.

Left alone, I grow into

ahalf-disembodied bamboo,

its lower part sunk

into itself on the bank.

Here, old widows and dying men

cherish their freedom,

bowing time after time in obstinate prayers.

While children scream

with this desire for freedom

to transform the world

without even laying hands on it.

In my blindness, at times I fear

I’d wander back to either of them.

In order for me not to lose face,

it is necessary for me to be alone.

Not to meet the woman and her child

in that remote village in the hills

who never had even a little rice

for their one daily meal these fifty years.

And not to see the uncaught, bloodied light

of sunsets cling to the tall white columns

of Parliament House.

In the new temple man has built nearby,

the priest is the one who knows freedom,

while God hides in the dark like an alien.

And each day I keep looking for the light

shadows find excuses to keep.

Trying to find the only freedom I know,

the freedom of the body when it’s alone.

The freedom of the silent shale, the moonless coal,

the beds of streams of the sleeping god.

I keep the ashes away,

try not to wear them on my forehead.

(Jayanta Mahapatra)

Critical Appreciation:

The idea of a nation fraught with unstable political contingencies gets etched in the fabric of this poem where Mahapatra raise issues of nationalism and freedom through the much hyped discourse of political history. The pervading sense of a catastrophic political future along with a subtle hint of the violated political climate becomes apparent in Mahapatra’s choice of the imagery that guarantees a more personal statement on the conceptual category of “nation” which gets defined through an historical estimate of India as a country with a colonial history. The poem highlights Mahapatra’s keen sense of observation as he becomes privy to the living standards of the people with the lived experience of a colonial rule. However, it is the much desired freedom that the poet is doubtful about because given the present political condition of India he is at a loss to make a retrospective assessment of the past and the present. In other words, the poet tries to configure what exactly freedom mean—is it just a state of mind or is it a political concept having an ideology that is ever elusive? The poem is crafted beautifully in voicing out such a dilemma and is set to envision a future where the real worth and true colour of “freedom” can be imagined and finally achieved.

The poem begins with the speaker’s deep sense of frustration on the assumption that the country drifts like a dead body on the placid water of the river. The association is phenomenal because the speaker envisions the country in terms of a body and immediately compares it to himself. That the speaker’s body is “a half-disembodied bamboo” is an instant reminder of the grotesqueness of the political climate that has endowed such an identity in the first place. The bamboo imagery is significant because it asserts the idea of growth. The growth metaphor is again heightened by the idea of forging an identity conceived along the lines of a nation’s historicity. These are powerful associations and the reader will do good to analyse the poem with some preconceived notions about the pitfalls of the imperial ideological project of colonialism that has undermined the collective consciousness of the Indians to think of themselves as really independent.

The old widows and dying men represent the past and are therefore representatives of a time of political unrest. Their act of “bowing” in obstinate prayers does not portray their religiosity or their superstitious bent of mind; on the contrary, it asserts their age old submissive nature. They cherish their early freedom and this intensifies the poignancy of their present affliction.

The children are portrayed as blabbering and screaming about their freedom which is equally painful to witness. The speaker does not want to join either of these groups as he is more content to be left alone because it will undoubtedly provide him with the necessary space to reflect upon the idea of freedom in an impersonal way.

The speaker then goes on to delineate the woeful picture of people who haven’t seen a little rice in their lifetime for fifty years. The past dolefully makes its presence felt in the present and it is this perpetual servitude of the Indian that intensifies the speaker’s frustration. Fifty years since independence and the Indians has yet to figure out what exactly is meant by freedom! The “tall white columns of Parliament House” is a fitting symbol of this agency of violence—the agency that has made it a point to carry on the colonial legacy of dominion and control.

Apart from the political factor, the unconditional belief in religion too does not prove beneficial to the Indians because religion has become a handiwork of a select few. Instead of providing succour and respite, people now see God lurking being close confines of the temples walls in fear of being annihilated completely by the prejudicial stance of the new- born priests who are more guided by materialistic concerns than divine bliss. “The priest is one who knows freedom” because it is he who can assert himself individualistically and can guarantee salvation to people who come for atonement.

The speaker finally makes his conclusive statement that it is only the freedom of the body that he can boast to possess. The poem is thus an indictment on the political atmosphere of the country that pays no heed of the masses and is often a dismal failure in creating a congenial atmosphere where freedom, liberty and equality can be realised. A sense of escapism runs throughout the poem which becomes evident in the speaker’s wish to not fall into any category that rues out any prospect of attaining freedom.

Introducing the poet:

Sarojini Naidu was born in February 13, 1978 in Hyderabad. She hailed from a family of academician and scientists, her father Dr. Aghornath Chattopadhyaya being a scientist himself and the founder of the Nizam College of Hyderabad while her mother was Mrs. Varasundari, an accomplished Bengali Poet. Her early play Maher Muneer impressed the Nizam of Hyderabad so much that he provided her with a scholarship to go abroad for further studies. She then got admitted in the King’s College where she met Govind Naidu whom she eventually married at the age of 19. Naidu’s vast readings and inspiration from her father made her well versed in Hindu mythology, Urdu and Persian folklore. In Cambridge while still a student, she published her first poem “The Song of a Dream” being highly influenced by the works of English Romantic poets like Byron and Keats. It was in England that she came under the enervating influence of her literary mentors like Arthur Symons and Edmund Gosse who made it a point to give her an identity which would be possible only if she devotes herself towards her own origin. Both Symons and Gosse advised her to be a poet of the East and to bring the charm of the Indian panorama in her poetry. And it is this piece of advice that Naidu tried to uphold in the later course of her creative life. The early streaks of English Romanticism gradually diminished and came to be substituted by more indigenous themes concerning Indian life. It was in fact Mahatma Gandhi whom she called “Mickey Mouse” of Indian politics along with the gruesome picture of Indian colonial situation that transformed her completely from a romantic singer of life’s beautiful peculiarities to a determined and impassioned fighter for her country’s liberation. Her published works include The Golden Threshold (1905) followed by the subsequent publications of The Bird of Time, The Broken Wings, The Magic Trees, The Wizard Mask and A Treasury of Poems. She plunged headlong into the vortex of the Indian political struggle immediately after the publication of The Broken Wing in 1917. Her oratory powers awakened and kindled the hearts of men who were in the enigmatic spell of colonial bondage; her poetic voice broke free all barriers and became the harbinger of a new era of freedom. On March 2, 1949, this ‘Nightingale of India’ breathed her last.

Ode to H.H. Nizam of Hyderabad

DEIGN, Prince, my tribute to receive,

This lyric offering to your name,

Who round your jewelled scepter bind

The lilies of a poet’s fame;

Beneath whose sway concordant dwell

The peoples whom your laws embrace,

In brotherhood of diverse creeds,

And harmony of diverse race:

The votaries of the Prophet’s faith,

Of whom you are the crown and chief

And they, who bear on Vedic brows

Their mystic symbols of belief;

And they, who worshipping the sun,

Fled o’er the old Iranian sea;

And they, who bow to Him who trod

The midnight waves of Galilee.

Sweet, sumptuous fables of Baghdad

The splendours of your court recall,

The torches of a Thousand Nights

Blaze through a single festival;

And Saki-singers down the streets,

Pour for us, in a stream divine,

From goblets of your love-ghazals

The rapture of your Sufi wine.

Prince, where your radiant cities smile,

Grim hills their sombre vigils keep,

Your ancient forests hoard and hold

The legends of their centuried sleep;

Your birds of peace white-pinioned float

O’er ruined fort and storied plain,

Your faithful stewards sleepless guard

The harvests of your gold and grain.

God give you joy, God give you grace

To shield the truth and smite the wrong,

To honour Virtue, Valour, Worth.

To cherish faith and foster song.

So may the lustre of your days

Outshine the deeds Firdusi sung,

Your name within a nation’s prayer,

Your music on a nation’s tongue.

(Sarojini Naidu)

Critical Appreciation:

This poem is drafted as an encomium to the Nizam of Hyderabad whose reign marked the opulence of a community of people belonging to diverse religious faith. Sarojini Naidu tries to bring back the cherished ideals of solidarity and mutual harmony in the form of a poem intended as a tribute to the royal parsonage that made it possible in the first place. The poem clearly states the theme as Naidu lavishes praise to the Nizam who unified India under his patronage.

The poem begins with the word “DEIGN” which is deliberately used by the speaker-poet as the speaker is quite doubtful whether her stature merit the privilege of paying homage to such a royal personality. It is quite striking to note that the speaker uses the symbol of the “jewelled sceptre” of the Nizam as the chief marker of an authoritative control over all his people and goes on to state the law-abiding nature of masses. This becomes evident in the use of the expression,

The peoples whom your laws embrace,

In brotherhood of diverse creeds’

And harmony of diverse race:

The brand of civic nationalism that the speaker tries to highlight becomes evident in the mutual harmony of the people belonging to diverse race and religion, unified under the rule of the Nizam. Muslims, Hindu Brahmins, Persi-Zorastrains, Christians—all cohabited in this country. People were not divided along communal lines or sectarianism. The court of the Nizam popularised trans-cultural interaction in the form of popularising tales and fables of Bagdad. It marked the rise of a new culture freed from the rigorous prescriptions of conservatism and religious fundamentalism. The glamorous and fascinating legends of The Arabian Nights mingled with the music of the Sufi love-ghazals which further strengthened and galvanised the strong bond of nationhood. In fact, nation and nationalism are concepts that received an altogether different colouring during the reign of the Nizam. Art and culture co-existed with politics and marked the birth of a new era of trans-nationalism.

The speaker then begins to praise the immaculate political measure adopted by the Nizam which gave the stewards the liberty to be unmindful of the borderlines. However, the speaker passes a tone of lament on being afflicted by the pitiful sight of the present condition of the radiant city. Grim hills and ancient wild forests are all that has been left of the Nizam as legacy. The speaker is pained to witness the flag post of the Nizam adorning the minarets of ruined fort and the storied plain. The speaker concludes her homage with the belief that the Nizam’s achievements might strike the right cord in the minds of the people thereby teaching them the necessity of living in mutual harmony as the only solid base to secure the rope of nationalism. That the lustre of the Nizam’s reign becomes worthy for emulation and that his deeds foster the true ideals of nationalism in the masses is all what the speaker yearns for. The speaker wishes that the name of the Nizam should become the guiding force in charting out a new political history of the country where all forms of dividing forces face complete annihilation.

Adil Jussawalla: Life and Works

Adil Jussawalla was born in Mumbai in 1940 into a Parsi family.
He went to England in 1957 to study architecture but studied English instead and stayed there till 1970 teaching English language in schools.
He was also an Honorary Fellow at the International Writing Programme in Iowa in 1977. •He has also edited the seminal anthology New Writing in India in 1974 and has also co- edited An Anthology of Indian Prose in 1977.
Apart from being a poet, Adil Jussawalla has made his mark as an influential critic. His published works include Land’s End (1962) written when he was just twenty-two and Missing Person (1976).
His poetry is marked by a deep sense of irony and is consistent in exploring the reality of the modern life which is always fractured and fragmented.
His poetry is very complex , fragmented and non-linear and is often ambiguous which is basically due to the resulting chaos of the modern techno-crazed world with which he has to come to terms with.
Themes and Issues explored in the Poems: Sea Breeze, Bombay
Jussawalla tries to script down the history of the Partition of India in 1947 and to make explicit the gruesome picture that such a tragedy unleashed in the political history of the country.
Bombay in this poem is the microcosm of the Indian subcontinent that has registered both the colonial violence as well as the Imperial policy of ‘divide and rule’.
Jussawalla’s own version of Indian history is chiselled through the perspective of one who is often labelled as a refugee or clubbed under the umbrella of Indian diaspora.
The poem begins with a horrendous image of the death of an entire country which has paradoxically discovered itself anew with the partition that has engendered sectarianism in the country.
The expression “cut country” is a vindication of the fractured, fragmented and divided sense of nationalism which has seeped into the rubric of Indian politics.
Bombay is referred to as the surrogate city which is a glaring testimony to the fractured post- independent Indian sense of nationalism. Bombay is projected as the new hub to all sections of people striving to eke out a living by building from the remains of a glorified nationhood.
The expressions “surrogate city of banks”, “refugee’s harbour and port”, “spotting the coast” are instances that portrays the aftermath of the colonial rampage.
The indifference of the island city to all these political happenings
Bombay reserves the right of offering a semblance of an “abode” to all her people irrespective of their caste, class, sex, colour or nationality.
Bombay’s turns out essentially to be a migrant’s city.

Approaching Santa Cruz Airport, Bombay

The twentieth century modernist angst coupled with the failure to “locate” oneself in a particular geographical territory and the dilemma of an “in-between” space are central issues that Jussawalla seem to engage in.
The polemics verging on the politics of ascribing a “homeland” for the immigrant population, the tracing of “roots” of the Parsi-Indians and the idea of an “imaginary homeland” are powerful debates that shape the entire trajectory of Jussawalla’s poetic enterprise.
A quintessential poet of the Indian diaspora basically because of his representing a multilayered identity—a Gujarati-born, Hindi-speaking, Indian-Parsi writing in English.
The poem begins with the speaker’s invoking the Christian theological belief of the gestural cross which is projected in a rather cynical manner because it shows the contentment of the people with their present lives irrespective of the fact that they reside in “homes as live as a disease”.
Forging an identity that is composite of a nationality that has been wrecked by colonial bondage now striving hard to live up to the confounding demands of Western modernity.
The idea of entrapment gains credence with the visualisation of the speaker of being caged not within any restricted spatial barrier but something that is within.
The speaker “re-discovers” himself as an inhabitant of a country that has long been denied the intrinsic merits of a nation.
The poem concludes with the familiar picture of the boy (perhaps an urchin) who vaguely watches the landing of the aeroplane. The mass of breadcrumbs in his hands calls attention for details.

Jayanta Mahapatra: Life and Works

Jayanta Mahapatra born in Cuttack, Orissa in 1928 was originally a Professor of Physics at Ravenshaw College. He started writing poetry when he was about forty.
He has published many volumes of poetry and that too in a rapid rate of which mention may be made of Close the Sky, Ten by Ten (1971), Svayamvara and Other Poems (1971), A Father’s House and A Rain of Rites (both in 1976), Waiting (1979), The False Start and Relationship (both in 1980), Life Signs (1983), Dispossessed Nests (1986), Selected Poems (1987), Burden of Waves and Fruit (1988) and The Temple (1987), A Whiteness of Bone (1992), Shadow Space (1997), Bare Face (2000) and Random Descent (2005).
Published a collection of short stories called The Green Gardener and Other Stories along with editing his Journal Chandrabhaga which ceased publication in 1985.
The surreal world that permeates his poetry along with the conceits and mind boggling imagery are representative of the qualitative merits of his poetic craft.
He has earned the honour to be the first Indian English poet to receive the Sahitya Academy Award for Relationship (1981), an epic poem in twelve sections that meditates on Orissa’s mythology and monuments.
Themes and Issues explored in the Poems: Dhauli
Mahapatra seeks to uphold the nefarious consequences of war and the horror it unleashes on the minds of a people who take pride of an invincible past.
The idea of invincibility is hold to scrutiny as Jusawalla seems to appear doubtful about the victory attained by the Great Indian King Ashoka in the Kalinga War.
Jussawalla adopts a subaltern standpoint in spilling the truth associated with war mongering and the resultant violence that gives a chill to the bones even to posterity while re-configuring that horrid and gruesome picture.
The poem begins with the explicit reference to the Kalinga war and the horror it unleashes in the form of the “blood-split butchered bodies” that has been lying hidden in the fallow fields of Dhauli.
The image of the earth along with the “merciless worms” suggests the intensity of the violence even after death.
The victory of Kalinga came at the cost of those lying in the fields of Dhauli, and the pangs of such a defeat was so abominable that it compelled Ashoka to vow for non-violence and made him lead the life of an ascetic towards the later course of his life.
The speaker maintains that although it is impossible to gauge the level of Ashoka’s suffering at the sight of the spoils of the war, yet one can make an assumption from the fields of Dhauli that still voices out that pain and horror.

Freedom

Mahapatra raises issues of nationalism and freedom through the much hyped discourse of political history.
The pervading sense of a catastrophic political future along with a subtle hint of the violated political climate becomes apparent in Mahapatra’s choice of the imagery that guarantees a more personal statement on the conceptual category of “nation” which gets defined through an historical estimate of India as a country with a colonial history.
The poet tries to configure what exactly freedom mean—is it just a state of mind or is it a political concept having an ideology that is ever elusive?
The poem begins with the speaker’s deep sense of frustration on the assumption that the country drifts like a dead body on the placid water of the river. The association is phenomenal because the speaker envisions the country in terms of a body and immediately compares it to himself.
The old widows and dying men represent the past and are therefore representatives of a time of political unrest.
Their act of “bowing” in obstinate prayers does not portray their religiosity or their superstitious bent of mind; on the contrary, it asserts their age old submissive nature.
The speaker then goes on to delineate the woeful picture of people who haven’t seen a little rice in their lifetime for fifty years.
Apart from the political factor, the unconditional belief in religion too does not prove beneficial to the Indians because religion has become a handiwork of a select few. Instead of providing succour and respite, people now see God lurking being close confines of the temples walls in fear of being annihilated completely by the prejudicial stance of the new- born priests who are more guided by materialistic concerns than divine bliss.
The poem is an indictment on the political atmosphere of the country that pays no heed of the masses and is often a dismal failure in creating a congenial atmosphere where freedom, liberty and equality can be realised.

Sarojini Naidu: Life and Works

Sarojini Naidu was born in February 13, 1978 in Hyderabad. She hailed from a family of academician and scientists, her father Dr. Aghornath Chattopadhyaya being a scientist himself and the founder of the Nizam College of Hyderabad while her mother was Mrs. Varasundari, an accomplished Bengali Poet.
Naidu’s vast readings and inspiration from her father made her well versed in Hindu mythology, Urdu and Persian folklore.
While still a student, she published her first poem “The Song of a Dream” being highly influenced by the works of English Romantic poets like Byron and Keats.
Came under the enervating influence of her literary mentors like Arthur Symons and Edmund Gosse who made it a point to give her an identity which would endear her towards her own origin.
It was in fact her correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi whom she called “Mickey Mouse” of Indian politics along with the gruesome picture of Indian colonial situation that transformed her completely from a romantic singer of life’s beautiful peculiarities to a determined and impassioned fighter for her country’s liberation.
Her published works include The Golden Threshold (1905) followed by the subsequent publications of The Bird of Time, The Broken Wings, The Magic Trees, The Wizard Mask and

A Treasury of Poems.

On March 2, 1949, this ‘Nightingale of India’ breathed her last.

Themes and Issues explored in the Poem: Ode to H.H.Nizam of Hyderabad

Drafted as an encomium to the Nizam of Hyderabad whose reign marked the opulence of a community of people belonging to diverse religious faiths.
Sarojini Naidu tries to bring back the cherished ideals of solidarity and mutual harmony in the form of a poem intended as a tribute to the royal parsonage that made it possible in the first place.
The poem begins with the word “DEIGN” which is deliberately used by the speaker-poet as the speaker is quite doubtful whether her stature merit the privilege of paying homage to such a royal personality.
The brand of civic nationalism that the speaker tries to highlight becomes evident in the mutual harmony of the people belonging to diverse race and religion, unified under the rule of the Nizam. Muslims, Hindu Brahmins, Persi-Zorastrains, Christians—all cohabited in this country.
It marked the rise of a new culture freed from the rigorous prescriptions of conservatism and religious fundamentalism.
The speaker then begins to praise the immaculate political measure adopted by the Nizam which gave the stewards the liberty to be unmindful of the borderlines.
The speaker is pained to witness the flag post of the Nizam adorning the minarets of ruined fort and the storied plain.
The speaker wishes that the name of the Nizam should become the guiding force in charting out a new political history of the country where all forms of dividing forces face complete annihilation.

Poetic Devices/Structure/Stylistic Features:

The death is paradoxical because the speaker gives the idea of a country’s birth that has been characterised by the stitching of the shrouds from the Indian flag.
The cynicism of the speaker gets even more bolstered in the act of the gentlemen who are chiefly responsible for the ‘scissoring’ of Sind.
The image of “blood-red wool” is an affirmation to the latent intent of these insurgents.
Jussawalla often tries to strike the right chord by dabbling in ambiguity and thus the reader should always anticipate the ever elusive category of making “meaning” in his poetry.
The aeroplane is compared to Papa which is again an indictment on the papal authority which guarantees peace and solidarity even in the midst of the most blatant and dismal times. The magnificence of the aeroplane’s landing is an image that is equated with the much broader picture of the Christian authorial pyramid represented by the Pope.
“Papa” by all stretch of imagination is the aeroplane bolstered by the act of “putting his nose” in the ground which suggests landing.
The paradoxical statement that “Dying is all the country’s living for” becomes significant in the speaker’ wish to return to this abysmal pit to die and thus become a part of his country.
Jussawalla’s diplomatic handling of the poetic diction is superb and in no place does he give the chance to the reader to censor him of party prejudice.
This is Jussawalla’s modern idea of a “homeland” where all things are afflicted by some problem or the other and the most disturbing but obvious fact is—there is no escape from it.
The poem is quiet Eliotesque in manner and credit must go to Jussawalla’s exceptional fusing the Christian element with the drab, desolate and squalid picture of Indian life.
Much in the manner of the English metaphysical poets like Donne and Marvel, Mahapatra in the poem Dhauli brings up the association of the violation of the dead bodies by the worms that do not merit an invitation to make their way into the graves. Whereas the metaphysical poets were more keen in exposing the Rosicrucian doctrine (“gather the rose buds while ye may”), Mahapatra is bent on projecting the spoils of war.
The hunger of the dead bodies is a metaphorical assumption of that unattained hunger for power by those whose bodies have now become the edification of the earth worms.
The expression ‘limp genitals” is couched in the form of a sexual metaphor to heighten the futility of war as these organs are now lifeless and lay rotting in the graves awaiting the arrival of the foxes.
The boastful assertion of manliness that normally tags along with the phallus has long deserted its pride and has become an object of prey for the nocturnal predators.
That the speaker’s body is “a half-disembodied bamboo” in Mahapatra’s Freedom is an instant reminder of the grotesqueness of the political climate that has endowed such an identity in the first place.
The bamboo imagery is significant because it asserts the idea of growth. The growth metaphor is again heightened by the idea of forging an identity conceived along the lines of a nation’s historicity.
The past dolefully makes its presence felt in the present and it is this perpetual servitude of the Indian that intensifies the speaker’s frustration.
The “tall white columns of Parliament House” is a fitting symbol of this agency of violence—the agency that has made it a point to carry on the colonial legacy of dominion and control.
A sense of escapism runs throughout the poem which becomes evident in the speaker’s wish to not fall into any category that rues out any prospect of attaining freedom.
The speaker in Ode to H.H.Nizam of Hyderabad uses the symbol of the “jewelled sceptre” of the Nizam as the chief marker of an authoritative control over all his people and goes on to state the law-abiding nature of masses.
The speaker passes a tone of lament on being afflicted by the pitiful sight of the present condition of the radiant city.

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Reference

King, Bruce. Modern Indian Poetry in English. Revised Edition. Oxford University Press: New Delhi, (1987) 2001rpt
_________. Three Indian Poets, Oxford University Press: New Delhi, 2005
Mahanta, Pona (et al.). Poems Old and New, Chennai:Macmillan India limited, 2001
Naik, M.K. The History of Indian English Literature, Sahitya Academy: New Delhi, (1982), 2004 rpt
Prasad, Madhusudan. (ed.) The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: A Critical Study. Sterling: New Delhi, 1986
www.literarism.blogspot.com/2011/12/jayanta–mahapatra.html
https://projectindianpoetry.wordpress.com/mip