Cranes in the Drought

January 18, 2006 EVR: You have said, “My house is between the Ganga and the Ghaghara”. Could you say a few more things about your childhood landscape both at the family and social levels?

KS: I was born in a village which is in eastern Uttar Pradesh bordering on Bihar. Two famous rivers – the Ganga and the Sarju – both of which have much to do with our cultural heritage pass through this area. The beauty of nature is very much there. Most of the people in my village are poor farmers. The only source of income of my family was a small piece of land my father cultivated. We are Kshatriyas. Most of the people in my village belong to this caste. It was a very homogeneous society with cordial relations among its various families, but lacking in education. I am the first person to get formal education in my family. My father studied up to the primary level. My father was not economically sound and they managed to support me through my education with great difficulty.

The only cultural tradition we had in the village was the oral one. I was brought up on folk tales, folk songs and long narratives sung by villagers. ‘Ramcharitmanas’ by Tulsidas was recited at home. This peculiar epic has merged with the local tradition to such an extent that there is no difference between the oral and the written traditions. I knew nothing of modern literature and modern poetry. I knew a few lines from ‘Ramcharitmanas’, Maithili Saran Gupta and Ram Naresh Tripathi, both belonging to an earlier generation. I liked the music of their poems.

In our area a dialect of Hindi called Bhojpuri is spoken. It is a down-to-earth language, but very musical. That linguistic mooring has something to do with my attitude towards literature, language, diction, metre and rhythm. Though I write in Hindi, I always bring out something from my dialect. My teacher, Acharya Hazariprasad Dwivedi, always used to say that Hindi should be flavoured with the spices of Bhojpuri, or any other dialect for that matter, to make it a living language. Hindi is a language with no locale, an artificial language. However, people from different areas enrich it by their dialects. My first lyric which attracted attention has got something to do with my Bhojpuri background, and not my Hindi.

EVR: Would you trace your early writing to any kind of crisis – adolescent or otherwise?

KS: Mine was a smooth-running childhood. There were economic strains that were taken care of by my father. I left my village at a very early age. I loved my village and found it very difficult to adjust myself with the city life in Varanasi. I was all alone, staying in a hostel. I often felt homesick. This has had a distinct bearing on my early poetry.

One thing more. I was married at a very early age, as was the custom in our village. After three or four months of marriage, my first wife died. This created a sort of psychological crisis in my mind. I could not answer questions such as why did I get married, why did my father force me to get married, why couldn’t I resist my father? At that time, I was only a high school student and as such was not in a position to take any independent decision. The experience has created a sense of guilt in me. Still it is there in me.

EVR: When you shifted to the city, you also confronted a new society, totally different from the homogenous one you were used to. Was it also your first confrontation with Khari-boli Hindi?*

KS: Yes, suddenly I switched over from my dialect to Khari-boli which was not my language. Later on, I came to know that the great saint poet Kabir wrote his padas in Bhojpuri and his dohas in an early form of Khari-boli. One day the poet Trilochan who is my Kavya Guru (mentor) came to me in Varanasi. He advised me to imitate a boy whose Khari-boli accent was very chaste. This way I learnt the music of the Khari-boli language which was very different from that of my dialect. I have never forgotten my linguistic roots. If you read my poems, several of their words, phrases and images come out from those roots.

EVR: How and when did you encounter the new poetry?

KS: When I was in the first year of my graduation, I got a chance to go to a literary gathering in Bihar, where the eminent Hindi poet, Agyeya, was also present. He liked the poem I recited and left a note saying that he would like to publish it in Prateek, the literary magazine that he edited. It was in 1953. From then onwards, I was in constant contact with Agyeya. I did not find his mysticism of later years to my taste and I wrote something against him which he did not like.

EVR: What kind of reading shaped your sensibility during this period?

KS: Although I had come across the names of Eliot and Pound mentioned in Hindi writings, I was not acquainted with Western poetry then. After reading the Tar Saptak* poets, I realised that the lyric form was inadequate. Among the Tar Saptak poets, I particularly liked the rural landscapes of Ram Vilas Sharma who is better known as a critic now. Agyeya’s lyricism was alien to my sensibility though I learnt something from his linguistic experiments.

I knew one had to go beyond that to create something new. But at that time I did not know how.

EVR: Did you experience any kind of conflict between the poetic modes of Muktibodh and Agyeya?

KS: This dichotomy of taste was a later development. Muktibodh is a phenomenon that emerged after the mid-sixties. In those days he was known as a Tar Saptak poet. A significant poet, but not well known. From 1950 to 1962, it was Agyeya who presided over Hindi poetry, with his statements, critical writings and poems as well. He created something new in his typical lyrical form. He is essentially a lyric poet. I like his nature poems and some of his love poems. But his later development as a mystical poet and the whole aesthetic he came to project makes this part of his contribution debatable. In the 50s and early 60s, Agyeya was a force to reckon with.

Muktibodh came on the scene after the mid-60s. His first book was published in 1964, when he was on his death-bed, by the young poets, Shrikant Verma and Ashok Vajpeyi: Chand Ka Muh Teda Hai (The Face of the Moon is Crooked). The very title is shocking, a slap on the face of romantic refinement. He is basically a narrative poet. The structure of his poems is epic in spirit. He is still known for his long poems. His ‘Brahma Rakshas’ still haunts me. His ‘Andhere Mein’ is like ‘The Waste Land’ of Hindi. Muktibodh was a great departure. In social awareness and political commitment he pioneered a new trend.

The whole decade after the 60s was dominated by poets with leftist leanings. It is strange but true that Muktibodh was the forerunner as well as the culmination of the whole movement. Agyeya was opposed to the leftist movement. When I came to Delhi I found that our relations had become strained. I always had high regard for him. On the whole, he was a great writer. But as a poet, he has his limitations. He played a historic role in the development of modern poetry in Hindi. But he lacks the depth of a great poet.

EVR: Would you agree if I say that his historical moment was in the 50s whereas Muktibodh’s historical moment came after the mid-60s after his death?

KS: That is true. Muktibodh could not see the impact his poetry had. Agyeya was lucky enough to live in the limelight while he led the poets.

EVR: Could you comment on your personal experiences during the 50s and the 60s? Was there a gap between experience and expression which you had to solve?

KS: In 1962 or 63, I left Benaras and went to a small town known as Pandrauna which is at the foot of the Himalayas. It is one of the poorest regions of the country. The sadness on the face of the place was very deep. People there could see but could not speak. They were deeply human as only poor people can be. This region was dominated by Buddhist culture in the olden days. And the Himalayas had a profound influence on me. The historical presence of Buddha and the natural presence of the Himalayas against the extreme poverty and humanity of the people made me think a lot.

I shall cite once incident from this period of my life. I was working as the Principal of the college, then. There was some communal tension in the nearby village which had a market. I was invited to mediate between the Muslims and the Hindus. It was decided that both communities would name a representative each to find a solution. When the Hindus named me as their representative, I was embarrassed. Then it was found that the Muslims had also suggested my name to represent them. It was a great moment in my life. The faith those people showed in me was the greatest honour I received in my life.

It was here that my second wife fell seriously ill. For 5 or 6 years I was a witness to her suffering. The sympathy I received from people alone sustained me. She died while we were there. My personal suffering and my acquaintance with the social reality shaped the new outlook you find in my later writing. The change came through contact with gross human reality. Had I not been in that small town with all this suffering, I would not have been able to get the new idiom that I shaped later. ‘Zameen’ (The Soil) and ‘Barish’ (The Rain) are the first two poems to come out in that early phase of my development. It was a peculiar situation where I felt a pessimism of heart and optimism of mind.

After the death of my second wife, I moved to New Delhi. The shift to the metropolis from a small town has enriched my sensibility. While being in Delhi, I have always been conscious of those people living there. I never miss a chance to visit them. My sense of rootedness has been sharpened in Delhi by the contrast of situations I have lived through.

EVR: In your Zameen Pak Rahi Hai, a new moral vision is projected. Your use of language has played a vital role in making this vision available to the reader. Could you comment on this further?

KS: You mention my moral vision. It is essential for all poetry. In my poems, I am never loud. I have just finished a poem on Kabir. It is about his last days. He died in a small place called Maghar. He left Benaras and came to this small place and died there. What were the pressures on him when he left Benaras and went to an unknown town? Did he go there to die? Why did he leave the Ganga and go that very small river known as the Ami? Why did he choose the Ami? I do not come to any definite answers in the poem. I am against conclusions in poetry. I leave the poem open. If there is any moral message, it should be suggested, not pronounced. I proceed from perception towards conceptualisation. It is a dialectical relationship. However, I avoid conceptualisation in a poem. I take a position which does not sound moralistic on the surface of it. The conflict is much deeper.

EVR: In the 1960s several modernist poets used classical Hindu myths in their poetry. You have avoided the use of such myths and have chosen to write poems like ‘The Old Woman Selling Tomatoes’. Was it a conscious rejection of the mythical method?

KS: I had serious reservations about the use of mythical allusions in the beginning. Now, of course, I hold a different view. I felt that a poet should express himself through contemporary tools, phrases, idioms and themes – taken from his surroundings (although many great masters had done otherwise). In my early days I used to think that myths and mythical allusions cannot be termed contemporary. Later I found that it need not be like that. Myth is a peculiar language. The Indian poet is fortunate in having such a rich heritage of mythologies. Much depends on how the poet uses that. Myths hold out many possibilities for poetry. I have used some mythical allusions and folk tales in my later poetry.

EVR: Your interest in people in people and their lives is evidenced in several poems. In ‘The Old Woman Selling Tomatoes’ (‘Tamatar Bechnevali Budhiya’), you refer to Gorky’s ‘Mother’.

KS: It was a chance resemblance that brought to mind Gorky’s mother while I was writing the poem. Under the vegetables she hid the pamphlets. I hint at some resemblance but I do not elaborate.

EVR: The bazaar and dhool (dust) are recurring images in your poetry.

KS: This has come from the kasba* background. I have a poem called ‘Kasbe ki dhool’ (The Dust of Kasba) where I say:

The dust is the most living
And lovely thing of my land
The most restless
The most active
The earth’s most nascent
And most ancient dust

Dust represents the whole Indian life itself. It is always active and flying in the atmosphere. The darkness and sadness are there in dust. The slowness of its movement represents the rhythm of semi-rural Indian life I am familiar with.

EVR: In your poem, ‘Benaras’, you refer to this slow rhythm. What I found most striking about ‘Benaras’ was that you resist the elitist Brahmin Benaras and that you relate yourself more to the human reality of the city.

KS: The success of the poem has something to do with the magic of Benaras. My poem is critical but at the same time, it accepts the grandeur and magic of Benaras. There is the mythical Benaras and the other one, which is real. Benaras is the conflict of the real and the unreal.

Commenting on the tools I use in the poem, there are images and motifs which refer to real life. One of the most rebellious traditions in Hindi poetry – the Kabir tradition – emerges from Benaras. This is neglected by the whole Benaras myth. There is a reference to Kabir in the very opening lines. Lahartara is the place where Kabir was found. It is the name of a pond. I place my poem in the Kabir tradition and not in the other (mythological) tradition. At the same time I do not reject the magic of Benaras. From the very beginning it was my endeavour to resist those mythical things in Benaras which are daily seen, faced and even detested.

Some of the lines in the poem have given me great satisfaction. In a whole poetic career, a few poems, in fact a few lines, stand out as satisfying. The major part of one’s creation disappoints.

EVR: In poems like ‘Objects’ (‘Vastuyen’) and ‘The Broken Truck’ (‘Toota Hua Truck’), you seem to be concerned with the world of objects. Perhaps in the modern environment we are suffocated by the world of objects. Even language has become a commodity to be marketed. What is the struggle you are depicting in such poems?

KS: When I was working in that small town I told you about, I happened to see an abandoned truck beside the road, sprouting all over (with leaves). A friend of mine commented that it had become a ‘natural’ phenomenon. Even after coming to Delhi that theme haunted me. The poem was written in Delhi but it is not a Delhi poem. The whole life it depicts is that of those people who are like broken trucks. A truck is a modern machine, but in a peculiar sense, it is a developed form of a bullock cart. I cannot dissociate the bullock cart from the truck, just as I can’t separate the wooden boat from the huge concrete bridge. So, for me, the broken abandoned sprouting truck was the whole of human life in those small towns. Life is there, as sprouting suggests, but there is also stagnation. The contrast is striking.

EVR: Between your first book and second book there was a long interval of 20 years. What was happening during this period?

KS: During this period the trend of protest poetry – best represented by Dhoomil – overtook Hindi poetry. My dilemma was how to write protest poetry without being loud or overtly rhetorical. I had in me this dissident or rebellious (pratipaksh) sensibility, but it took some time for me to articulate it.

During this phase I was influenced by Brecht and Neruda. Reading Brecht (in English of course) was an amazing experience. He raised short comments to the surcharged level of poetry. But I could not fashion myself after Brecht because of my lingering connections with the Nayi Kavita movement. Neruda was nearer to my sensibility. His grandeur and grip on language were not possible for me. He was politically committed as well as romantic. He has poems on nature and animals. It was during this period that I wrote several poems in Zameen Pak Rahi Hai (The Earth is Ripening) such as ‘The Old Woman Selling Tomatoes’. I was trying to find a locale to Indianise my influences and experiences. I went through a crisis of identity. I found my locale in my childhood past, in my village. I have been called a poet of the basti*. The basti is neither village nor city, but has some collective unity. That was the point where my feelings and experiences got localised for me. At the same time, I did not subscribe to the spirit of anchalik (regional) writings in Hindi. The locale I portray – my basti – is not limited to a region. It can be anywhere in India. When I write a poem on a bridge, as in ‘The Bridge at Majhi’ (‘Majhi Ka Pul’), it is not the poet as an individual confronting the bridge, but the whole basti as a community confronting it. What do they think about the bridge? What will happen if there is no bridge? The total destiny of the bridge is being portrayed in the poem. It did work to some extent.

You mentioned my long silence between the first and second volumes of poetry. Being away from the central places of Hindi publication, it was not easy for me to publish. The typical way of life I chose also has got something to do with my long period of silence. But all those years, I was writing constantly, though I rejected several of the poems I wrote.

EVR: Your search for a locale was also an effort to grow out of the abstractions of the Nayi Kavita (New Poetry) movement.

KS: This was not a problem peculiar to me. Many Indian poets went through a similar phase of search.

EVR: You have several poems where animal images recur, as in the title poem of Akal Mein Saras (Cranes in the Drought).

KS: As I said earlier, I was fascinated by Neruda’s animal poems. In my poems, I chose animals from my surroundings. I have a poem on the bullock which is part of Indian rural life. In a way, the bullock of the poem is the peasant himself. I say in the poem:

What kind of animal is this
That thinks of grass all day
And of God all night

The poem, ‘Janwar’ (Animal) is different. I have deliberately kept it nameless because it is about animal impressions and not about a particular animal. In writing Bagh (The Tiger), I was influenced or rather inspired by the Hungarian poet, Pelinsky. His animal poems came as a revelation. They reminded me of the ‘Hitopadesha’ and ‘Panchatantra’ stories. An animal is one that confronts life as a whole. The knowing process is not confined to man alone. Even the animal tries to know you. I got this insight through Pelinsky. Using the form of the fable was a critical point of departure that extended my horizon of animal sensibility.

In the sequence of poems entitled The Tiger (Bagh), I tried to reach the roots of the folk tales about the tiger. The tiger figures in our folk tales. It has a magnificent physical presence which fascinates me. The poem is partly about this sensuous (aindrik in Hindi) presence. I build up a story – a fable – in the Indian tradition. One thing I avoided was the symbolic significance of the tiger. My poem represents the tiger in its various shades, colours and contexts. When it is about to assume a symbolic significance, I break it into several physical presences.

EVR: You have written very few love poems. ‘I Know a Woman’ (‘Main Ek Stree Ko Janta Hun’) is a love poem but with a difference. It begins with the woman but branches out into several other themes.

KS: It is a poem about the pressure of loving a person and coming to realise the impossibility of forgetting her. The image of the woman grows and fills the poem. It is a poem against, not about, forgetting. It could have easily been a sentimental piece, but it goes beyond that. It grows out of the pains as well as the joys of love. I have written only a few personal poems like this. The concept of love has become complex in modern poetry because love has been replaced by complex feelings. Eliot’s ‘Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ was about this impossibility of writing a love poem. It is not enough to have the sentiment or emotion called love. So the poem is a composite whole made of contradictory experiences. Perhaps it is no more possible to write love poems as they were written earlier.

I find it very difficult to write love poems. The poem, ‘Reading a Love Poem’ (‘Ek Prem Kavita ko Padhkar’) uses a new style to speak of love. In a way, it is more about love poems than love. In Akal Mein Saras there is a simple lyric titled ‘Aana’ (Come you must), which ends with the lines:

Come you must
As Wednesday does after Tuesday.

I see things at two levels – one real and the other which is not real (not imaginary in the sense of being unreal). There is an inevitability of historical process in Wednesday following Tuesday. In another poem I refer to a woman before me who is all smiles. It is enough for me to see her laughing. The poem indicates an old relationship. She laughs against all odds of life.

EVR: You have used an imagistic language in most of your poems, but in Akal Mein Saras (Cranes in the Drought), you seem to avoid such language. Was it a conscious development?

KS: In my early phase my main concern was with image. In fact, my PhD dissertation was about imagery in Hindi poetry. Gradually, I realised that image pattern is only part of the tools at the disposal of poets. I made a creative-imaginative effort to resist imagery. We cannot do away with imagery. There is no other way to give shape to our emotions and observations. But it can be a hurdle as well, though useful in some ways, in asking the reader to stop, ponder and proceed. Only images can do this in poetry. If you are conscious about the image-making process, it doesn’t have a very healthy influence on language. In using image, language both gains and loses something. Its simplicity and basic structures are broken to give way to images. The peculiar struggle between language and image has to be kept in mind. Language is primary, image is held in language. If, in the interest of language, one has to sacrifice image, one must be prepared to do it. Addiction to imagistic language (bimb-moh in Hindi) is harmful. I have weaned myself away from this infatuation with images.

EVR: Could you tell me how Akal Mein Saras is different from your earlier volumes of poetry?

KS: Yes, Akal Mein Saras is a different kind of failure (in the sense that each poem is a raid on the inarticulate). Most of the poems in the volume were written with the aim of making poetry simple without being simplistic. (In Hindi I have explained it this way: Kavita ko saral banane ki koshish, lekin saralikaran se bachte huwe.) I want to make poetry more communicative, without simplifying it. This book got a wider readership.

There is an element of nostalgia in some of the poems, like ‘Chitthi’ (The Letter). When I came to Delhi, I became nostalgic about my life in the village. But this theme appears only in two or three poems. I see no reason to be ashamed of this nostalgia. Rilke is full of this nostalgia. The more important thing is what me make of it in a poem. The poem, ‘Chitthi’ ends with an ironic statement:

I remembered a letter
I had posted years before
In Delhi. It is
Yet to reach Chakiya.

The sharp contrast and the ironic relation between Chakiya and Delhi inform the poem. Without the last line, the whole poem would be meaningless.

EVR: In your struggle to relate yourself to the larger society, people and environment, there is also an undercurrent of frustration and pain. I think this is particularly true of the title poem, ‘Akal Mein Saras’.

KS: Cranes are migratory birds which come in search of water. The poem is a fantasy through which I communicate the feelings of famine. The cranes go back because there is no water. There is a woman who puts a bowl of water before them but they don’t see it.

EVR: You have said in an interview that it is fashionable to discuss craft and you are not interested in discussing it.

KS: My point was that one should avoid talking about the poetic process, but craft must be discussed. You have to analyse and bring out the whole grammar which constitutes the poetic structure. But the poetic process is something that demands a peep into the subconscious. Once the poem has taken shape, one can’t say with much confidence how it came about.

EVR: You have had several contacts with writers from other Indian languages. Do you see your writing as part of a larger body of Indian writing?

KS: There is an Indian dimension to my writing which is very genuine. As a writer, I belong to a larger Indian milieu. The Indian writers’ sense of Indian ethos has intensified in the last decade. It has become sharper and deeper. The earlier generation of writers were not self-conscious about their Indianness. Perhaps Western influence, which has paradoxically increased after Independence, has contributed to this heightened self-awareness. Indian writing in English is struggling to deal with this experience. The problems they (Indian English writers) face is genuine, but I feel they are fighting a losing battle. When you use English you are distanced from the Indian milieu. But the ethos is built into the Indian languages. Even within Hindi I trust only those words which have roots deep in the tradition. Perhaps a talented poet can create contexts where such words can make sense. I am a poet who believes in using full sentences (vakyavadi in Hindi). It is a sentence (vakya) which makes sense. Words are essential but not enough. My poetic mentor, Trilochan Shastri, never uses a broken sentence. I do not go to that extent. But I try to be true to syntactic patterns which I never break.

EVR: The title of your third book is Look From Here (Yahan Se Dekho). What does ‘here’ point to?

KS: By ‘here’, I do not mean a simple locale. It has something to do with the way of looking. There is a shift in the book which is part of an onward movement. My Marxist critics tell me that this book is very popular with the section of readers who are socially aware. There is an emphasis on the act of seeing and not on ideology. In all my writing there is a resistance towards ideological bias. The stress is not on locale, but one the way one apprehends reality. Seeing is being, as Tomlinson would say.

EVR: Every collection of yours ends with a poem addressed to the reader of a poem about writing. What does it signify?

KS: I become conscious of it only when you point it out now. I am always conscious of my reader. This is a communication-oriented consciousness. This aspect of poetry was neglected by Taar Saptak poets and the Nayi Kavita movement. It is also true that a large number of modern poems are about the poetic process because for the modern poet, the poetic process is not very different from the process of living. The living process is somehow transformed into the poetic process. Each poet has treated this theme differently. Wallace Stevens writes about it as an aesthete. Muktibodh says in a poem that he has no dearth of subjects but life is limited.

I would like to add that I recognise my reader, I know who he is and where he is. He is not a faceless, nameless entity. Actual contact with the reader is very much there and it has shaped my reader-consciousness.

Still I feel very shaky when I put my creation before the reader. Though I am always optimistic, I am also doubtful about the worth of things created in my isolation. When I wrote the poetic sequence The Tiger (Bagh), I was not sure it would find its readers. A section of readers was very receptive. I have never read the whole poem before an audience but I know there are several readers who liked it.

Notes:
Khari Boli: dialect native to Delhi and northern Uttar Pradesh
Tar Saptak: an influential literary journal, launched in 1943, associated with a spirit of experimentalism in Hindi poetry, which, in turn shaped the New Poetry or Nayi Kavita
kasba: small town
basti: settlement

First published in Indian Literature, issue 153.