 |
Poets Nabina Das and Smeetha Bhoumik |
On Sunday, November 6, 2022, under the
aegis of poetry forum Women Empowered (WE), Smeetha Bhoumik, founder of WE,
curated an evening of poetry and conversation. Over the years, WE has grown
into a vibrant community of eclectic voices exploring new forms in poetry and
expression. On this evening, poets Nabina Das and
Lina
Krishnan met
online and
talked of work, fun, dreams, personal and professional dilemmas and more in
their creative journeys. Some edited excerpts:
Nabina: Such a pleasure to be back on WE.
When it began, it was like a poetry carnival, a dialogue. But Smeetha, you have
sustained this. Drop by drop makes an ocean.
Smeetha: One needs a great start, and then you
keep rolling!
Lina: Every single meeting like this, to
put (it) together; it’s a lot of detail.
Nabina: The posters, (and) everything! It’s
not a joke. I would give an award. What WE has done, it deserves a lot more
recognition.
Lina: You know, Smeetha and I met at the
Hundred Thousand Poets event in Bombay (Mumbai), with Menka Shivdasani, (where) Smeetha was curating the segment: Language, WE Converge. I found it very interesting, because we were all reading
in different languages. Vinita reading in Urdu, Jayashree in Marathi and
German, I think I was reading Tagore in part Bangla, part English translation
(mine). The whole WE world is like a leheriya; so many different poets come into
it.. Poets come in with their own colours, their rhythms, their varied
backgrounds which in turn are informing their work. But somewhere, it’s all
happening, they’re converging and creating that rainbow existence.
Nabina: The colours! Jo rangrez karta hai. The symbol of Bhakti literature. Not
everybody has this (experience). We are lucky to have this!
Smeetha: What wonderful words: Rangrez
and Leheriya, to describe this! Thank you for reminding us of that
wonderful session, when so many poets came together.
On
being a woman and a writer with strong views
Nabina: As an individual and a woman in this
fraught democracy, how do you extricate yourself from all the negativity? I
went to watch a play after work. Everyone was with somebody, I was with nobody.
I felt that the attention was on me: Woman. Alone. Drinking tea. How long will
she stay here? (That is a difficult space but)… there are others who have it
worse. We have bullet trains but little girls are still scavenging garbage;
what is their childhood compared to boys? As a writer, I have to keep that
focus; I can only deal with it by writing. Writing is my tool, my implement, my
artist’s brush, my song.
Smeetha: And that’s the only way to put all
the things out there so that it’s not normalised. In your writing, in your
work. That’s the only way.
Nabina: You are driving WE to different
goals. It is that anxiety, that restlessness. Restless women are not
appreciated. They are called out. They’re seen as disruptive. So many women and
other marginalised people. So, we must write. Where I come from, writing is not
only leisure and pleasure. It’s a continuous movement to address issues.
Smeetha: I like what you’re saying, that
creative anxiety is actually a spur, and used well, it’s actually a motivating
force, to use if you want.
Lina: It’s also nice to have this
supportive poetry world where people are actually rooting for each other; I
feel happy, Smeetha, when I see the paintings you’ve made. I feel really kicked
that Nabina’s done this Bangladeshi book. And now Anima’s coming out, and it’s
always exciting (to read Nabina) because she’s got such a crazy mind. It’s
always nice to meet a fellow pagal and she’s totally pagal.
Nabina: Deewanapan! I think all women should be deewanis; just do what you have to do. And
Smeetha is one deewani
who’s followed her passion.
 |
Lina Krishnan |
On
Recent work
Anima Writes a Letter Home
I,
Anima, stand bewildered in the midst of a midnight’s jowl.
Why
is it that for many there’s no home? Although it is chaand raat, the night of
the moon? And a child’s tearful whisper: take me to
Eid tomorrow, Ma, take me to Eid. I, Anima, ask you to wait for me to find the
answer out when I carry the grasshopper home. I, Anima, stand bewildered in the
midst of a midnight’s jowl. What is it, why is it that for many there’s no
home? Although it is chaand raat, the night of the moon? And a child’s tearful
whisper: take me to Eid tomorrow, Ma, take me to Eid. I, Anima, ask you to wait
for me to find the answer out when I carry the grasshopper home.
[Excerpt from Nabina’s poem from her book Anima &
the Narrative Limits,
Yoda Press, Delhi, 2022]
Nabina: Anima has been in the making for the
last five years. And there’s a bit of my art here. It’s a germinating seedling,
that I was teaching my daughter about. It’s the woman’s perspective, looking at
the world.
Lina: This poem is a knockout; like a lot
of your work, Nabina, very disturbing.
Smeetha: Your recent essay in Himal Southasian on 1984. I read that and I wanted to ask you,
Lina, what guides your choice of subject
matter?
Lina: I was thinking about the roots of
communalism. People don’t hate each other, they’re made to hate each other.
These are disturbing thoughts that were on my mind. At the same time, there was
this happy space as a child. We were brought up in such a multi-cultural
atmosphere of ados-pados, all kinds of communities living
around you and we didn’t know who we were. I felt a need to write about that
time (as a Tamilian growing up in Delhi). I wrote the first paragraph a few
years ago and didn’t proceed. It’s only now, after years, that I’ve managed to
put it down and get it published, thanks to Himal!
Only
a diminutive granthi was present, fanning a very large book, covered with a
gorgeous bit of brocade, with a peacock feather. He did not seem put out to see
a bunch of tousled kids troop in, and merely smiled and said in a gentle voice
in English, “Bachhe
(children), cover your heads and come,” pointing to a boxful of scarves kept
near the entrance.
[An excerpt from Tamil
Sikh, A Fragment of Memory, From 1984, Lina Krishnan’s
memoir essay
in Himal Southasian, June 2022, https://www.himalmag.com/tamil-sikh-fragments-of-memory-2022 ]
Smeetha: It’s such a beautiful essay,
especially the childhood parts. There’s a lot of simplicity and the innocence
of that era coming through.
Nabina: I also loved that work. It just
shows, (what are) the cultural layers that shape the writer. Here you have written
it with so much empathy and love and a little bit of child-like tone.
Lina: I’m not being naive, I hope, but I’d
like to believe that the innocence is still there somewhere, not all gone.
Delhi is a city of extremely rich and entitled people, that Delhi does exist,
but at another level, Delhi is also a city of workers, all doing fundamentally
crucial jobs. They’re all migrants, but somehow, they’ve managed to create that
space where during the day, they’re doing their work, doing it very sincerely,
and you’ve got to appreciate that. They’re really the salt of the earth, even
the much maligned auto-wallahs!
Nabina: I think Lina should read a poem now.
I like that poem of hers; can’t remember the title…
Lina: Let me read an old favourite.
All
afternoon we read poems
Outside,
a bleak sky
Looks
as though
It would like
To come in, and
read a bit
All
afternoon, we read poems
And drink tea. After
a month
Steeped
in Shahid's heartbreaking verse
I
need the peace of Qabbani's rose
Words
flow between us
Like swirls from a
thousand continents
Saturdays
should be like this.
[Excerpt from Lina Krishnan’s All Afternoon We Read Poems, from Love Is So Short, an anthology of female love poetry,
Blank Rune Press, Melbourne, 2017]
On
the creative form in poetry
Smeetha: In 2017, in the Global Poetry Writing
Month, it was you, Nabina, who introduced us to the sestina. And I was captivated! I wrote a
sestina to the six words you had given, and that remains my favourite sestina.
In search of a
golden glow half imagined, is there a cess
on it? The forest
is all dark and thunder rolls, an old trick
to frighten even
the bold, the darkness is a blindfold really,
you walk on,
trembling, hanging on by a thought so dulcet
so dear, that maybe
you then shed your fear, and are mixing
visions of utopia
with whatever is at hand, before it can clot.
[Excerpt from Glow, Smeetha Bhoumik's verse (a
sestina with the six words - cess, trick, really, dulcet, mixing, clot), in Witness,
The Red River Book of Poetry of Dissent, Red River, Delhi, 2021]
Smeetha: You started us off, showing us the
importance of voice and re-writing women’s stories. And since the conversation
is going from women being disruptive to women questioning, Nabina's sestina
says:
Just to assure I’m
no believer in idée
fixe, I again rallied my sentences home:
‘It’s
actually funny to hear I look like a Mexican or one of those folks who
regularly climb/over the fences…'
[Excerpt from Nabina Das’s
poem When
identity and Epistemology Hit One Hard from Anima & the Narrative Limits, Yoda Press, Delhi, 2022]
On
the Writing Life:
Nabina: The writing life is full of
rejections, but I won’t call them downs, it’s a journey. At times, one feels, “Am
I writing enough, or being heard enough?” ; that anxiety is also creative and
that should be there. But as a writer and poet, I’ve only looked for that
happiness, that ecstasy…a little self-centred need to be recognised.
Smeetha: It’s a huge accomplishment to do the
50 Bangladeshi poets. Not only the appreciation, but it’s work done. You have
to actually sit and translate it.
Nabina: I should mention that it needs some
rigour, and I am a person given to sudden flights of “Oh let’s just do
something else”. I’m not very disciplined, but I did it in a fortnight. That
gave me happiness. Not just that I achieved a book. The 50 Bangladeshi poets;
such a range of diverse voices. We don’t see them as Bangladeshi; the stories
from my parents and older people of the Partition era, you know, that’s what
kept playing in my head. It was possible because of the way the poets drew me
in, and how they’ve resolved their issues. Perhaps we should also have a
version of that.
Smeetha: Lina, what inspires you most, poetry
or prose? Or is it realism or fantasy?
Lina: Prose and poetry, I feel totally at home with both. It’s
really about what I’m interested in at that moment and what comes into my head.
Poetry is not very planned, it just appears and I don’t feel any ownership of
that. I feel happy when it happens; I wrote a poem yesterday. Every time I
write, I’m surprised that I’m still writing. The last few years have been quite
tough. But despite all that, the minute one is writing, you have a world, you
create your own silence. Poetry takes you away, art even more. Art is much more peace-giving; poetry forces
me to confront certain issues because it’s words and thoughts. In art, yes, the
same thoughts and complexities are there, but art is more healing.
(Lina reads her poem Sangat from the
book Witness, edited by Nabina Das. An excerpt:)
I recall my mother’s favourite
Kanjeevaram in mango. A green
border
As vivid as her occasional smile
And then there was Ghalib, afraid
Its succulent season would pass
While he remained in debtor’s
prison
Imbibing tea with a contemplative
friend
Silences more than speech would be
The mellow cups as companions
Beauty in a strand
Kashmiri crocus, saffron
That most precious spice
The Buddha’s embrace
Of the bhagwa of renunciation
Enabled the Sangha to grow
The lotus outside , reluctant at
daybreak
Its petals half asleep. The still
pond, waiting
For the miracle of opening
Nabina: And then, the everyday pleasures, I
was telling my kid, look at the sunset. Take pleasure in the pink and orange.
The other source of encouragement is friends like you who are always up to
something. The pandemic years were really tough, but most of us kept in touch
and stayed with poetry. And when someone reads us, then it is like the laya
of dhrupad; you go through rigour to ecstasy. At
the end of all the hard work, one feels a sense of celebration. Like this
evening, it’s also a celebration!
Bio Notes:
Nabina
Das is a poet and writer from Assam, now based in Hyderabad. Her new poetry
collection Anima
and the Narrative Limits
is just out from Yoda
Press. Her other
collections are Sanskarnama,
Into the Migrant City, and Blue Vessel. Her debut book was Footprints in the Bajra, a novel; and her short
fiction volume is titled The
House of Twining Roses:
Stories of the Mapped and
the Unmapped.
Her first book of translations Arise
out of the Lock: 50 Bangladeshi Women Poets in English appeared in early 2022 from
Balestier Press, UK.
Smeetha
Bhoumik is a poet, artist, editor. Founder of the WE Literary Community, she is
also the editor of
the Yugen Quest Review and author of two poetry
collections. She has been instrumental in establishing poetry awards like the WE Kamala Das Poetry Award and WE Eunice de Souza Poetry Award among others.
Lina
Krishnan is a poet,
writer and abstract artist. Small
Places, Open Spaces,
her chapbook of nature verse, was published by the Blank Rune Press, Melbourne
in 2018. Her paintings, poems, and
non-fiction writing have found a place in literary journals and arts magazines
such as the Shot
Glass Journal,
Husk,RIC
Journal,YAWP and
in twelve published/forthcoming anthologies of poetry.