Darkness In Rhythm: Re-Reading Shankha Ghosh In Kashmir

However much social media is despised for its tendency to have dehumanised and alienated people from the real world, for letting instant gratification and customised projections creep into the human psyche, it has certainly connected people from all across the world coming from varied backgrounds, topologies, languages and socio-cultural sensibilities in a way which could have been never envisaged before.

The exchange is far more accelerated and the exposure to the “other” is ever-increasing and enmeshing.

This is how I met Nilanjan Hajra, on a social media platform through a random algorithm of fancy hashtags. This had been my first ever interaction with a Bengali and thus, my interface to Bengali literature and his to Kashmir’s literary landscape. We connected immediately. This is the beauty of art, that it has its own universal language which addresses the basic condition of us all — our humanness. 

During our multiple interactions, I would acclimatise Nilanjan with the genesis and genres of Kashmiri poetry and as he showed keen interest in taking it to the Bengali audience, we both thought of working on translating some important texts which would be our contributions to our respective languages and literature. 

It was during this course of time that Nilanjan introduced me to Shankha Ghosh and his Himalayan stature in Bengali poetry. Considering Nilanjan’s seasoned hand at Bengali and Urdu literature and his expertise in the field of translations, I had to take it seriously and delve into the world of Shankha Ghosh’s poetry. Since I couldn’t read Bengali, he sent me English translated version of his poems done by Dilip Kumar Chakraborty.

Robert Frost has said, “Poetry is what is lost in translations”. But then the very act of translations is a necessary evil. We cannot translate exactly, but we must translate adequately to introduce passionate readers to the multi-universe of the poet. And thus, I could acquaint myself with Shankha Ghosh’s poetry through translations only.

Being a poet and translator myself, that too from the land of Lal Ded and Habba Khatoon, I understand how much of a baggage and performance pressure one is under when you have had a lineage of great poets in your culture and literary history. Whether one sees it or not, agrees with it or not, there is an unfair comparison with what one has written in the present, with those great poets who have set precedence in the past. Shankha Ghosh, too, comes from the land of Rabindranath Tagore, and I was very curious to know how much of

Tagore is exuded in his diction and content. This was my early benchmark. As I lay my hands on the book, I realised that it was an unfair expectation and comparison.  

By the time I finished reading this book of selected fifty poems; Ghosh had revealed himself to be an independent, individual voice that appealed to Kashmiri sensibilities as much as it could to Keralite or Russian ones. And by this, I want to establish that he is a universal poet who appeals to the basic, common, pristine conditions of humanness irrespective of who gets to read him across borders, languages and cultures. 

Ghosh’s poems make us travel through the landscapes of every rational mind and sensitive heart which want to question the true nature of being, the dynamics of projecting images, our relations with higher power and the ultimate quest of all philosophies — death. 
In his poem “Crowd”, he continues the legacy of great poets like Allama Iqbal in Urdu and Rehman Rahi in Kashmiri when he addresses the higher power with the tone of assertiveness and fearless inquisitiveness, “How much more should I bend, God, ….….”. This gives us an idea of how Ghosh has moved beyond conventional ideas of divinity and sacrosanct while decently remaining inside the periphery of Gnosis. This reflects an intimate bond between the Seeker and the Sought and an ambience that nurses intellectual quest for the Sacred rather than compartmentalising Divine in the dormant chambers of superstition and dogma. 

Another very important and recurring theme of Ghosh’s poetry is his engagement with the idea of being.  Most of these poems are replete with inward-looking soliloquies, dissections on human consciousness and self-awareness, and then how this idea of being is falsely manifested outside by maladapting to societal norms. 

In his poem “Frog”, Ghosh initially tries to paint a vivid image of a perfect house with fish, birds, flowers and other things and by the end of the poem surprises the reader by taking an inward detour as, “…in the glass case in their hearts/actually an old frog dances”. 
Similarly, in the poem “Body”, it is so interesting to see how he puts the most important question of all times in such an innovative, easy-looking casual dialogue with the doctor, “Doctor, something is out of order in my body/I feel it….”. 
 
He again tries to take us to the same plain in his poem “No” when he begins as, “…This face or that face: all are the same……” and concludes the poem as, “….What next? /From feet to head, from head to feet/ What next?....” leaving the reader in a state of suspended awe.

As much as Ghosh is concerned with unveiling the nature of being, he is also conscious of the fact that a lot is being projected on the outside, which betrays an authentic expression of self and hence, our social transactions. He tries to stir the same in his poem “Foolish, not social” when he writes, “Do you feel like wearing a human body at last/ after taking off the demon’s dress?” In another poem with a very interesting title, “The Face is Hidden by Hoardings” Ghosh concludes the poem with these lines: “The talk about my face / Looms alone on the alley’s corner/ Only my tired mask keeps / Hanging on the hoarding,” alluding to the fake, incongruent personalities we all project onto the surroundings. 

Ghosh comes across as someone very observant and keen about the system and conventions in place. There are elements of rebellion and undercurrents of cynicism in his poems as well. A rebellion seeking freedom from complacency and conformity. In “Puppet Dance”, as he tries to depict someone who is being controlled by strings, he finally gives the subject his much-desired independence in these lines, “I moved on my own/ so none could ever buy me”….

In another poem “Radhachura”, I was personally awestruck by the kind of imagery that was employed by Ghosh to assert the nature of seeking freedom and growth and defying the clutches of overused tradition when he writes, “Even that seasonal flower-pot/ might burst suddenly/by the undercurrents of hesitancy,/the smaller heads spurting/ past the bigger ones,/ did the gardener say that?” 
There were two poems in the book, titled “Black & White” and “A Letter to Black Friend,” which may suggest that Ghosh has had a socialist, egalitarian view of society. But the number of such poems is too less in the anthology so as to qualify him as a socialist poet for now.
The most dominant theme, however, which spans most of the poems in this anthology, is “funeral pyre” — alluding to one’s transition to another world or death. To me, it is somehow the most representative element of Ghosh’s poetry which places him in the league of great existential Urdu poets such as Jaun Elia, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, et al. All across his poems, Ghosh wants to depict the struggles he has had with his constant companions like void, emptiness, blankness and how he carries the same to the funeral pyre. To him, the funeral pyre seems to be the culmination and beginning at the same time, of a new dance, newer dimensions, newer life. 
 
In “Funeral Pyre”, Ghosh writes, “Go, run away,/saying this my body bends/Funeral Pyre”, thus wishing to detach himself from what is left behind and embrace what is to come, with utmost curiosity.  Again in one of my favourite poems from him, “Dharma”, Ghosh depicts the image of him being in the cremation ground while the funeral pyre is being prepared. It is here he speaks about one of the favourite symbol of existentialism — a void, as “Tell them, let the void stand on my breast,/ spread her ankle-length hair,/ let the stars light up her crown. Let them run away/, communicating to us his inability to make sense of what is around and what is constantly within. 

Ghosh seems to be so aware and conscious about the impermanence of life and of the impossibility of escape from death, that he has glorified and visualised his own, in so many different ways. In “Smash my Banner” he writes, “I want to say: Go to hell! Damn you! May you die!/ But I can't say it because just before that/ You yourself/smash with you own hands my banner, my soul/”. How lucidly he embraces and embodies mortality of everything in his work. In another such poem “Trimeter”, he again emphasises on the same recurrent theme of inescapable death, “You have no creed except/to withstand axe on the breast/ You have no creed except / to fill in this blank/”. 
One can gauge how much multi-layered Ghosh’s verse is — marked by the usage of so many dense metaphors and allusions —  when he writes in “The Waves within Emptiness” Because the failing hair, silver ashes of the pyre,/ the speeding last tram… All longed for shelter…../ Do you know emptiness only? Don’t you know/ There are so many waves within emptiness?/” 

It has been a riveting experience for me to read Ghosh. Though I cannot comment on the language and aesthetics of the original, all I can make out from the translated version is that he is a poet of great foresight, fine sensibilities, deep emotions, unmistakable observation and refined thinking. He masters the art of poetry by being able to communicate maximum tales with minimum words. His interrogative style and then offering answers subsequently reminds me of Plato’s Republic and Persian poetry’s distinctive “Dialogue” genre, qualifying Ghosh as a remarkably learnt poet for me who has an eye on world literature.  
I am immensely grateful to Nilanjan Hajra for this enriching experience of introducing Shankha Ghosh to me.  

I conclude this piece in the words of Ghosh:

A few words overflow in human tongues for some time
And then die down, we only roam with their corpses, 
And that you adorn with tunes and passions — 
Did you ever know 
There is so much darkness in rhythm? 

(Rumuz is a multi-lingual poet and translator based in Kashmir. She can be reached at rumuz.e.bekhudi@gmail.com, Rumuz e Bekhudi on Facebook and @rumuzb on Instagram. Views expressed in this article are personal and may not necessarily reflect the views of Outlook Magazine)