Poems of idealism and anger
In an author's note, which is perhaps more effective than many of the poems, the debutant poet paints a bleak picture of a nation whose people "have lost all dignity, self-esteem and self-respect". Predictably, he blames the "vermin" who rule us, but also wishes us to take some responsibility for our plight. The poems are meant both as a protest against the present conditions and to rouse our collective conscience.
The journalist in Chikermane often gets the better of the poet. Statement overtakes suggestion. Passion and anger alone do not a good poem make. Control over language and emotion are sadly lacking. Indeed, the naivete of the poet is touching: he declares that the sale proceeds will be donated to Mother Teresa. As if poetry sells!
Jagannath Prasad Das, in contrast, is an established writer with a more realistic sense of what poetry can (or cannot) do. "No one reads poetry," he says, "neither fishmonger nor chief minister/neither publisher nor professor". Yet, "a poem happens/beyond figures of speech/beyond smile and metaphor"; ultimately, it "exists in its own sovereign land/itself its lord and master".
Such a notion of poetry results in some quiet, contemplative, but memorable lines: "Temple crests hidden under sand/-flowers fallen from [an] idol's hands/expeditions ordered in dreams." It is not that the poet doesn't care about the degradation of his surroundings. In Konark he laments about glories of the past which are "unguarded/strewn inside an empty bus". He complains "Art is packaged/for sale in postcards/Folklore hangs on strings/in roadside shops. Tradition is interred beneath picnic trash."
Das writes in Oriya. And while Durga Prasad Panda has done a competent job in translation, once in a while, a missing article or an unidiomatic phrase jars.
Seeme Qasim is a real find as far as Indian English poetry is concerned. Though this is her first collection, it has the unmistakable impress of a distinct, new voice. Qasim, too, has "a quiver full of passionate causes," as Keki N. Daruwalla puts it in his foreword, but this does not make her poems shrill or preachy. Instead, there is a biting irony, really a mask of compassion, which informs her angrier poems.
Most of the latter are about communal violence. She hits out at the stereotyping that an "Indian Muslim" is subjected to until, "I become that minority/you talk about in the end". Bombay Diary is a graphic and moving portrayal of troubled times: "The masjid's ashes/leave behind memories/of warm urine on stone/and a turning of the eyes".Throughout, the apathy and incompetence of the "authorities".
Yet, it is the less overtly political poems which are more effective. For example, the sharp description of what happens When Court is Held: "Lathis, guns, walkie-talkies/and stuffy rooms in dirty cream. Witness boxes which silently scream/and money passed in between."
The more personal, brooding poems such as Sea, Footsteps, and Despite Everything.... work well. So do poems of social satire such as Suburbia which only suffer from a certain syntactic laxity and obscurity. At the end, Qasim leaves us with a delightful poem, Saying Good-bye, about an old and battered suitcase.