Article
In conversation with Arundhathi Subramaniam
‘The faster I drive, the better I write.’
January 18, 2006
CS: For me poetry happened by accident. Or more accurately, it just happened. In my college days, a group of us often organised poetry readings by famous poets. It so happened that at one reading featuring four poets and fifty-five poems, an outstanding Gujarati poet, Prabodh Parikh (popularly known to us as PP Dada), was reciting his poem. I can still recall that line, “Taxis running back and forth on the horizon”. Wham! Something happened to me! I kept saying to myself, hey! I understand this language! That was the beginning. I started loving this strange world of poetry.
Don’t forget I was a commerce student. So I didn’t need to study language, or the art of poetics. The rhythm of life became my writing, and my writing became the rhythm of life. I love that line from Longfellow: “As to the pure mind all things are pure, so to the poetic mind all things are poetical.”
I think poetry happens to many young men like me quite by accident. (And then there’s the rapt attention of the girls to make it all worthwhile!) I’ve often felt poetry is like a beautiful girl who doesn’t really care about her appearance, while prose is like a well-dressed man in a tuxedo! It’s sheer pleasure thinking, talking, writing and indulging in poetry. It’s a kind of healing. The form of poetry nourishes our roots; it sustains us in elemental ways. We grow up with poetry, starting with lullabies, farming songs, songs hummed on the streets, nursery rhymes. Some people abandon poetry as they grow up while others carry it with them. I belong to the latter category, I guess.
AS: How do you locate yourself in the contemporary Gujarati scene? Who are the senior poets whose work has shaped your aesthetics? How would you describe your poetic voice?
CS: At the risk of sounding arrogant, I guess you could say I’ve arrived. I have a fan following and there are some who consider me the voice of new Gujarati Poetry. It starts from here. Now it is up to me to make what I want of myself, to shape my contribution to Gujarati literature the way I want to. I believe I’m unstoppable now. Frankly, I find Gujarati poetry scene offers me a limited playing field. I am not content any more with just being a Gujarati poet.
As for senior poets, I’m honestly not impressed by many of them. It may not sound very respectful, but I believe work alone is not enough to mould a significant legacy. The impact of the era on the work, the work ethic, lifestyle, the influence of the poetry on the cultural ethos and the literary climate of the time: all these combine to impress me. That can be deemed the sum total of a person’s contribution to literature.
One such poet is Narmad. He died in 1856 when he was 53. I ‘lived’ him quite literally by successfully performing his life and works in a 105-minute long one-man show. I performed him in Gujarati and in English. He was equally impressive in both languages. Now that’s what I call a genius. There are many great Gujarati poets; but with all due respect to them, most of their contributions did not outlive their generation.
My voice in Gujarati? Mine is a threatening voice, I think. I have yet to make a significant contribution to the Gujarati language. I’ve just started out. But I sure have disturbed the Generation Next of Gujarati poetry! Many scholars are working hard not to accept me. Some friends think my Blue Jeans poems are the work of genius. Others think it is too friendly, too informal. The infusion of English language words into Gujarati has angered some purists. It has been praised as a new direction in Gujarati poetry and has also been labelled the first pop album of Gujarati poetry.
Blue Jeans is a pleasant shocker to Gujarati listeners. I’ve seen poetry recitations get ‘wah wahs’ and kudos, but never before a standing ovation. Occasionally, my readings of Blue Jeans have elicited that response. And that’s gratifying.
George Jean Nathan writes: “A poet, any real poet, is simply an alchemist who transmutes his cynicism regarding human beings into an optimism regarding the moon, the stars, the heavens and the flowers, to say nothing of spring, love and dogs.” I’d add blue jeans to that list.
AS: How do you think your poetry has changed over the years? Have there been any changes in the way you define your poetics? Has your location as a diasporic writer played an active role in shaping your poetry?
CS: My poetry has surely evolved. I started out writing about sex in college to get attention. It moved on to girls, girls, girls and everything that goes with that – except sex. Then there was too much of it. So all of a sudden I found myself moving on to explore the spiritual dimension and how it infuses the world of objects and phenomena. That characterised my first book, Ane Thoda Sapna (And Some Dreams). This featured adolescent poems as well as more mature work. Much of it was influenced by the writing of the popular poets of the nineties. Thanks to my poet-playwright friend Naushil Mehta, I got the book published and out of my system, making room for the new work, Blue Jeans.
Blue Jeans is people’s poetry. It’s about human beings in the language of blue jeans. That makes it the poetry of contemporary people. Blue Jeans also entailed a fair amount of academic work, of research. I am slowly moving towards realistic poetry that is rooted in some historical base. I’m currently working on a collection of poems on the lost art of letter writing. So Chandu Shah’s poetics is still evolving.
My location in Boston, USA, has definitely influenced my writing. First of all, I am thankful to be away from the Gujarati poetry scene. I am sure I’d have been lost, like many of my contemporaries, in the currently mediocre state of Gujarati poetry. Constantly rubbing elbows with the stale poets have brainwashed some brilliant minds. I am happy writing under the influence of the moon, stars, flowers, spring, love, dogs – add three billion blue jeans to that!
If I didn’t live in the US, I suspect I’d never have written my long poem, ‘Rear View Mirror’, which is a comment on desi (local Indian) life in America. Many Gujarati critics shy away writing about my poems because they can’t understand where I am coming from.
My poetry emerges from long drives, speeding tickets, golf lessons, river rafting, gambling on football in Las Vegas and standing endlessly on the sidewalks of Manhattan. I write while driving. The faster I drive, the better I write. Most of the Blue Jeans collection was written at the steering wheel of my Honda Accord.
AS: How does your poetry feed into the other forms of creative writing that you practise? And how do they feed into your poetry?
CS: I write musicals and plays. Poetry inevitably becomes the primary force, the mainspring of my musicals. My very first play (a stage adaptation of Tom Stoppard’s radio play) was a long poem full of characters and conversations. Musicals give me another avenue: a kind of refresher for my practice of poetry. My plays have a certain lyricism and a rhythm of their own, both of which are probably shaped by my poetry. Writing plays and musicals also give me a very different perspective on poetry. I think I look at poetry quite differently from those poets who write only poetry. At some level, I suppose you could say that every poem is a play and every play a poem of a kind.
AS: What do you think of the contemporary Gujarati poetry scene? Who are the poets you particularly enjoy?
CS: The contemporary Gujarati poetry scene is dismal. Directionless. No milestone work has been written in recent times. The established poets have completely lost their responsibility of mentoring new generation of struggling poets. The established poets are merely struggling themselves to stay established. Labhshanker Thaker and Sitanshu Yashaschandra are two major contemporary Gujarati poets. Ramesh Parekh is a true poet, equally popular. I am also fascinated by simplicity of Mareez and the spirituality of Rajendra Shukla’s poetry.
For now, only thing that is vibrant in Gujarati is Navratri! Wallace Stevens says, “The poet is the priest of the invisible.” Right now in Gujarati poetry, the priest is invisible.
Note
Navratri: A Hindu festival that lasts nine days and nights in honour of the Divine Goddess, Shakti, and her many manifestations. The Gujarati community has traditionally observed this festival with the performance of dances like the Garba and Dandiya-raas. Commercial variants of these (termed Disco Dandiya, for instance) are now the rage in metropolitan and small town India – a phenomenon to which Chandrakant Shah alludes.
Chandrakant Shah on poetry and speeding tickets; on authoring “the first pop album of Gujarati poetry” and on the dismal world of Gujarati verse.
AS: Although you are also a playwright, you’ve often talked about the primacy of poetry in your life. Why? What does poetry mean to you as a form? CS: For me poetry happened by accident. Or more accurately, it just happened. In my college days, a group of us often organised poetry readings by famous poets. It so happened that at one reading featuring four poets and fifty-five poems, an outstanding Gujarati poet, Prabodh Parikh (popularly known to us as PP Dada), was reciting his poem. I can still recall that line, “Taxis running back and forth on the horizon”. Wham! Something happened to me! I kept saying to myself, hey! I understand this language! That was the beginning. I started loving this strange world of poetry.
Don’t forget I was a commerce student. So I didn’t need to study language, or the art of poetics. The rhythm of life became my writing, and my writing became the rhythm of life. I love that line from Longfellow: “As to the pure mind all things are pure, so to the poetic mind all things are poetical.”
I think poetry happens to many young men like me quite by accident. (And then there’s the rapt attention of the girls to make it all worthwhile!) I’ve often felt poetry is like a beautiful girl who doesn’t really care about her appearance, while prose is like a well-dressed man in a tuxedo! It’s sheer pleasure thinking, talking, writing and indulging in poetry. It’s a kind of healing. The form of poetry nourishes our roots; it sustains us in elemental ways. We grow up with poetry, starting with lullabies, farming songs, songs hummed on the streets, nursery rhymes. Some people abandon poetry as they grow up while others carry it with them. I belong to the latter category, I guess.
AS: How do you locate yourself in the contemporary Gujarati scene? Who are the senior poets whose work has shaped your aesthetics? How would you describe your poetic voice?
CS: At the risk of sounding arrogant, I guess you could say I’ve arrived. I have a fan following and there are some who consider me the voice of new Gujarati Poetry. It starts from here. Now it is up to me to make what I want of myself, to shape my contribution to Gujarati literature the way I want to. I believe I’m unstoppable now. Frankly, I find Gujarati poetry scene offers me a limited playing field. I am not content any more with just being a Gujarati poet.
As for senior poets, I’m honestly not impressed by many of them. It may not sound very respectful, but I believe work alone is not enough to mould a significant legacy. The impact of the era on the work, the work ethic, lifestyle, the influence of the poetry on the cultural ethos and the literary climate of the time: all these combine to impress me. That can be deemed the sum total of a person’s contribution to literature.
One such poet is Narmad. He died in 1856 when he was 53. I ‘lived’ him quite literally by successfully performing his life and works in a 105-minute long one-man show. I performed him in Gujarati and in English. He was equally impressive in both languages. Now that’s what I call a genius. There are many great Gujarati poets; but with all due respect to them, most of their contributions did not outlive their generation.
My voice in Gujarati? Mine is a threatening voice, I think. I have yet to make a significant contribution to the Gujarati language. I’ve just started out. But I sure have disturbed the Generation Next of Gujarati poetry! Many scholars are working hard not to accept me. Some friends think my Blue Jeans poems are the work of genius. Others think it is too friendly, too informal. The infusion of English language words into Gujarati has angered some purists. It has been praised as a new direction in Gujarati poetry and has also been labelled the first pop album of Gujarati poetry.
Blue Jeans is a pleasant shocker to Gujarati listeners. I’ve seen poetry recitations get ‘wah wahs’ and kudos, but never before a standing ovation. Occasionally, my readings of Blue Jeans have elicited that response. And that’s gratifying.
George Jean Nathan writes: “A poet, any real poet, is simply an alchemist who transmutes his cynicism regarding human beings into an optimism regarding the moon, the stars, the heavens and the flowers, to say nothing of spring, love and dogs.” I’d add blue jeans to that list.
AS: How do you think your poetry has changed over the years? Have there been any changes in the way you define your poetics? Has your location as a diasporic writer played an active role in shaping your poetry?
CS: My poetry has surely evolved. I started out writing about sex in college to get attention. It moved on to girls, girls, girls and everything that goes with that – except sex. Then there was too much of it. So all of a sudden I found myself moving on to explore the spiritual dimension and how it infuses the world of objects and phenomena. That characterised my first book, Ane Thoda Sapna (And Some Dreams). This featured adolescent poems as well as more mature work. Much of it was influenced by the writing of the popular poets of the nineties. Thanks to my poet-playwright friend Naushil Mehta, I got the book published and out of my system, making room for the new work, Blue Jeans.
Blue Jeans is people’s poetry. It’s about human beings in the language of blue jeans. That makes it the poetry of contemporary people. Blue Jeans also entailed a fair amount of academic work, of research. I am slowly moving towards realistic poetry that is rooted in some historical base. I’m currently working on a collection of poems on the lost art of letter writing. So Chandu Shah’s poetics is still evolving.
My location in Boston, USA, has definitely influenced my writing. First of all, I am thankful to be away from the Gujarati poetry scene. I am sure I’d have been lost, like many of my contemporaries, in the currently mediocre state of Gujarati poetry. Constantly rubbing elbows with the stale poets have brainwashed some brilliant minds. I am happy writing under the influence of the moon, stars, flowers, spring, love, dogs – add three billion blue jeans to that!
If I didn’t live in the US, I suspect I’d never have written my long poem, ‘Rear View Mirror’, which is a comment on desi (local Indian) life in America. Many Gujarati critics shy away writing about my poems because they can’t understand where I am coming from.
My poetry emerges from long drives, speeding tickets, golf lessons, river rafting, gambling on football in Las Vegas and standing endlessly on the sidewalks of Manhattan. I write while driving. The faster I drive, the better I write. Most of the Blue Jeans collection was written at the steering wheel of my Honda Accord.
AS: How does your poetry feed into the other forms of creative writing that you practise? And how do they feed into your poetry?
CS: I write musicals and plays. Poetry inevitably becomes the primary force, the mainspring of my musicals. My very first play (a stage adaptation of Tom Stoppard’s radio play) was a long poem full of characters and conversations. Musicals give me another avenue: a kind of refresher for my practice of poetry. My plays have a certain lyricism and a rhythm of their own, both of which are probably shaped by my poetry. Writing plays and musicals also give me a very different perspective on poetry. I think I look at poetry quite differently from those poets who write only poetry. At some level, I suppose you could say that every poem is a play and every play a poem of a kind.
AS: What do you think of the contemporary Gujarati poetry scene? Who are the poets you particularly enjoy?
CS: The contemporary Gujarati poetry scene is dismal. Directionless. No milestone work has been written in recent times. The established poets have completely lost their responsibility of mentoring new generation of struggling poets. The established poets are merely struggling themselves to stay established. Labhshanker Thaker and Sitanshu Yashaschandra are two major contemporary Gujarati poets. Ramesh Parekh is a true poet, equally popular. I am also fascinated by simplicity of Mareez and the spirituality of Rajendra Shukla’s poetry.
For now, only thing that is vibrant in Gujarati is Navratri! Wallace Stevens says, “The poet is the priest of the invisible.” Right now in Gujarati poetry, the priest is invisible.
Note
Navratri: A Hindu festival that lasts nine days and nights in honour of the Divine Goddess, Shakti, and her many manifestations. The Gujarati community has traditionally observed this festival with the performance of dances like the Garba and Dandiya-raas. Commercial variants of these (termed Disco Dandiya, for instance) are now the rage in metropolitan and small town India – a phenomenon to which Chandrakant Shah alludes.
© Arundhathi Subramaniam
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