From hazy memory: I recently read a story that went like this. A Brahmin priest in India throws his son out of the house for marrying a "lower caste" woman. The thrown out son and his wife go to USA, change their names to American ones and have a son. On dying, the couple want burial and not cremation. (note: they have not become Christians or anything, only thoroughly Westernized as a reaction to the injustice meted out to them.) The grand/son is given an urn with earth and not ashes in it, after both his parents are killed off in an accident simultaneously, and he carries out their last wishes. He (the grandson) is living in with an American woman. The grandson ponders a lot and finally informs the parents of his father of his father's and mother's untimely demise. It's obvious why they think of the father's parents to inform - because of the quarrel - but not why they do not think of the mother's parents. THE MOTHER'S PARENTS DO NOT COUNT, OF COURSE. This is also connected to their fleeing not to her house but to USA on being turned out. The father's parents come over (to the USA) to do the last rites. After grudgingly letting the 'white' woman attend the rite the priest, shocked by the urn with earth in it, while ready at last to do the rite for the daughter in law too, finally becomes the one who has the last word. If only he (my son) had obeyed me, he (the priest) laments and we are supposed to feel deeply for him and ponder on the supposed depths of profundity in the story which is ambiguous, with multiple points of view (3 generations, and Oedipal), secular, liberal, democratic etc., except for 'non Brahmins' like me who could not care less who the hell marries whom. This is because its text is seemingly tolerant but the subtext is be a Brahmin, and you are the cat's whiskers and if not you are some stray dead rat the cat brought in on a rainy day, put across very subtly or ignorantly by the author, the Catch-22 of a situation the story cannot tide over, making it of no significance to me in comparison with stories by writers/masters like Chekhov in Lady with a Dog for instance who are actually humanist and not biased, and only limited in their art by everyone's inescapable circumstances of having been born into a particular time and space, in their story-telling. The story fails in the choice of point of view which is subjective, and not objective. I am not being facetious or reductionist or essentialist here.Titled 'Burial' (of the old way of life?), or something like that- if I remember rightly, as my memory - I repeat - is hazy, and written in typical American creative writing courses manner, (I may have the details in the story also wrong, by the way) the story is penned in copy book style/fashion by Mahendra Rathod but is ideologically pretty lame and taught me only one thing. India, USA, UK and Israel will always talk of equality and equity but never have or grant it to the untouchables in their societies, as it profits the ones who are in power to not let them have it. This is, of course, also the sentiment behind the do away with reservation campaign. So too, with brown babus and their colonial cringe over people who go to USA and UK and make it, and then stay there or come back. Lesser choices are making it in Canada, Australia or NZ or Europe.They also look down on sensibly used 'Indian' varieties of English. These are the ones Fanon referred to as people having black skin, but wearing white masks, sarcastically. The sarcasm being that one cannot change the colour of one's skin, after all, however much one looks down on others with the same colour of skin or on other human beings. It is, or seems to be, unfortunately/contradictorily much worse in many other countries!
Where the story lacks is in that while the theme may be very touching to the writer, it is not as powerful as it would have been if written from the point of view of the mother of the narrator as inter-caste marriage and its repercussions might have mattered as a shocking issue once upon a time but today if it is to really make a difference it has to go deeper, much deeper, to make sense to a Western audience or be liked by an Indian audience and not as here into the minor intricacies of this situation that actually reveals even in the 'positive' characters in the story gender bias and purblindness to the harsh reality of casteism, pointing out only its superficial wound and a band aid of a salve, finally.
There is hope only in the ordinary people.
PS: I like being inexact.
The World Literature Blog
Friday, August 01, 2014
Thursday, July 31, 2014
WAKE UP, INDIA! ESSAYS FOR OUR TIMES
201 likes on our book and release details event page already.
THE BOOK THAT SIGNALS OUR SEVENTH SOJOURN - A kind of fb photo album to commemorate the seventh book of two writers who both already have six each - excerpts to follow as a teaser soon. Thanks toMahip Chadha of YsBooks Intl YS BOOKS International The album is about covers we discarded along the way. A link to a review by Michele Baron is also there along with the link to the book and event/book release page.
"https://www.facebook.com/avkoshybinabiswas"
http://newsloop.in/reviews/754-two-voices-across-time-a-book-report
201 likes on our book and release details event page already.
THE BOOK THAT SIGNALS OUR SEVENTH SOJOURN - A kind of fb photo album to commemorate the seventh book of two writers who both already have six each - excerpts to follow as a teaser soon. Thanks toMahip Chadha of YsBooks Intl YS BOOKS International The album is about covers we discarded along the way. A link to a review by Michele Baron is also there along with the link to the book and event/book release page.
"https://www.facebook.com/avkoshybinabiswas"
http://newsloop.in/reviews/754-two-voices-across-time-a-book-report
WAKE UP, INDIA! ESSAYS FOR OUR TIMES IS FINALLY READY!
WAKE UP, INDIA! IS FINALLY READY!
Wake Up, India! Essays for Our Times by Dr Koshy A.V. and Dr Bina Biswas
Book Release will be at Cafe Coffee Day
Tivoli Talkies, Tivoli Gardens & Cinema, Rani Gunj, Bolaram Road
NCC Ground, Gunrock Enclave
Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh 500003
AT SIX PM AUGUST NINTH, 2014.
ALL ARE CORDIALLY INVITED
with Mahip Chadha of YS Books International, Dr Bina Biswas and Dr Koshy A.V. also attending. Signed copies are available for buying. Cost: 400 Rs
Wake Up, India Essays for Our Times by Dr A.V. Koshy & Dr Bina Biswas Please click like on this book page for further exciting updates
"https://www.facebook.com/
WATCH THIS SPACE - THIS BOOK IS COMING OUT SOON FROM HOMESHOP18.COM AND BOOKADDA.COM AND OTHER OUTLETS. PRE - ORDER FROM HEMANT KALRA ON THIS PAGE GIVE BELOW
"http://
Wake Up, India! Essays for Our Times by Dr Koshy A.V. and Dr Bina Biswas
Book Release will be at Cafe Coffee Day
Tivoli Talkies, Tivoli Gardens & Cinema, Rani Gunj, Bolaram Road
NCC Ground, Gunrock Enclave
Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh 500003
AT SIX PM AUGUST NINTH, 2014.
ALL ARE CORDIALLY INVITED
with Mahip Chadha of YS Books International, Dr Bina Biswas and Dr Koshy A.V. also attending. Signed copies are available for buying. Cost: 400 Rs
Wake Up, India Essays for Our Times by Dr A.V. Koshy & Dr Bina Biswas Please click like on this book page for further exciting updates
"https://www.facebook.com/
WATCH THIS SPACE - THIS BOOK IS COMING OUT SOON FROM HOMESHOP18.COM AND BOOKADDA.COM AND OTHER OUTLETS. PRE - ORDER FROM HEMANT KALRA ON THIS PAGE GIVE BELOW
"http://
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Book Review (work in progress) of Poem Continuous: Reincarnated Expressions
Book Review (work in progress) of Poem Continuous: Reincarnated Expressions
I have read four books that can be ascribed as being primarily the work of Kiriti Sengupta. They are "My Glass of Wine" which is a genreless mix of his poetry, thoughts on translation, autobiography, spirituality and criticism, the "Unheard I," "My Dazzling Bards" and "Poem Continuous: Reincarnated Expressions." I liked the first one best as its structure resembled what some of my books also offer, apt for the times, one that can be read in fragments or as a whole, in a linear or discontinuous way, or maybe I liked it most because it was the first one of his that I had read. The others books stick to the same structure and hence appealed to me slightly less.
Don Martin often collaborates with Kiriti by editing and writing forewords etc. I enjoy reading Don Martin as he writes in a clear manner and makes a lot of sense. However, in the book under review, I take exception to his talking at length on the Bengali language in his introduction, a language of which I suspect he knows as little as I do. My own approach to this work would thus be that of one who is looking at it not to find out if it is a successful translation or a happy "transition" from one language to the other which is what Kiriti calls it in his translator's note but simply from a text centred and reader/critic centred point of view, of one who does not know anything about the original language but uses literary criticism and theory as tools to look at the book or work, after reading it carefully.
Having read the book certain adjectives came to my mind like 'simple', 'enjoyable' at times and in parts, 'readable' ( being brief), 'affordable' etc. The meat of the book consists of thirty poems by Bhibas Roy Chowdhury. The brief bio at the back of the book tells me he is a distinguished poet of the 90s and an established poet by now in contemporary Bengali literature. I would like to say that the collection gripped me and made me echo these sentiments of his being distinguished and eminent as a winner of many awards, but the truth is I found the whole collection curiously dissatisfying, unable to trigger off in me the desire to read the poet again and again or to find more of his work and read it. Several things impeded me. The main thing was the use of English that, while trying to be different, ended up only being inexact, or so it seemed to me.
I explain by looking at the first two quotes.
"I swam across the river while
my mortal floated away in the water..."
Why the elision which attempts to be metonymic is made, by dropping a word after mortal in the second line, is something I am unable to figure out, try as I may. I see no corresponding gain in poetic intensity created by such a gap.
"I'm nowhere
the life-less frame is but the 'poet', they refer...
The second sentence is again so odd as to puzzle me exceedingly.
The whole book goes on like this, as a series of hits and misses; on this curiously unsatisfactory note...
I go to the first poem.
It is titled "The People." It makes for a good choice as the first poem in the collection. Starting from the article I would omit in the title to line seven where again the odd elision occurs, we come to the inexact use of the word 'some' in line 9 and two closing lines that bewilder me completely. The poem personifies the word "sorry" and probably deals with the poet's irritation with people who hurt you and then keep saying sorry but the last four lines read -
"How can I depart?
His words fail to cease!"
("His words" here means the words of the man or people who is/are summed up by the word/personification "Sorry.")
"Better I keep some wound
beside the coming tune..." -
and sound so inconclusive that one feels totally let down.
Poetry is supposed to be music, figures of speech, intention, effect, language, style, imagery and meaning (themes), not to mention structure and form. Reading a collection should give me a good idea of the poet's ability in all this. Collections of translations I have read recently seem to settle nowadays primarily for a poet or translation slightly better than those around - or so it seems - but cannot really compare with translations done by masters in the past like Walter Lippmann's of Rilke (Duino Elegies), Constance Garnett's of Dostoevsky, Beckett's of Beckett etc. I say this for a reason. The mark of a good translation for me is either my wanting to read it again or wanting to read more of the same poet or translator. An exceptional translation would even make one want to study the original tongue to read it in the original. In this context Bina Biswas's and Sayantan Gupta's translations and Ravi Shankar's are better in their choice of poets from Bengali or Urdu or Hindi or Malayalam respectively, or so it seems to me, albeit in a qualified way, meaning that their works impressed me more than Kiriti's but this does not mean that it can automatically be deduced that therefore the poets they choose or the poems they chose can be placed on the same level as the ones I mentioned like the Rilke and Rimbaud (sonnets) translations by Lippmann or Beckett translating himself from French to English, in the case of poetry. As for Bengali poetry, the only Bengali poet I have read recently who has really held my interest is Atindriyo Chakraborty, in his English poems. If I know anything about poetry and I do know a considerable lot, his poems and Michael Madhusudan Dutt's Meghnad Badh Kavya epic in its recent avatar/translation by Bina and Sayantan will last considerably longer than the Naseer Ahmed Nasir translations that are of poems by a poet who is unfortunately still writing Romantic poetry that would have been considered wonderful or great or world class/classic 175 years ago (- despite what Gulzar says about it, Gulzar himself being as hopelessly and quaintly outdated in his lyricism in his poetry as NAN, as opposed to his (Gulzar's) song lyrics that are apt and praiseworthy for/in their scenic, cinematic contexts - ) and only those who are caught in the miasma of wanting to be in a nostalgic, sentimental, weepy, soppy, imaginary, feudalistic monarchy of a pre- Independence world, one of what it was supposed to have been like in the past, in the glories of the heyday of Urdu and Hindi poetry, would still want to read and enjoy them. I can understand liking them and translating them but to think they are important enough as poems or translations to rival poets like Eliot or Yeats who won the Nobel is stretching it a bit too far.I listened to a play recently by Jawaid Danish and the hard-hitting cutting contemporary political edge in it which held me glued to listening to it despite my being deficient in the language is unfortunately missing in the poetry of these two elderly respectable and highly respected folk. You can note the same 'edge' in a poet like Serkan Engin , from Turkey, though he seems to suffer from collaborating with horrible translators. The real problem seems to be that some of these ye oulde writers or translators seem to have no awareness that post - Poundian Modernism that includes poets like Geoffrey Hill has happened.
To sum up: I am not sure whether the poet in question, namely Bibhas Roy Choudhury, is worth reading again but being kindly disposed to both the dynamic Kiriti who is enterprising, a poet, talented, a best selling writer and now a publisher to boot and to poets in general I would like to say that I will give them the benefit of the doubt, as I - remember? - know next to nothing of the Bengali language.
This review is negative because we live in a world where translations can actually be transcreations that are as good as and/or even better than the original nowadays, being set free by theory to not having to be tied down to the text of the original, and that is what one feels the lack of here; but on the positive side I want to thank Kiriti for making me aware of such a poet and his works and of a bustling scene of new Bengali poetry. I wish more such collections come out till new masterpieces emerge.
This is not to say that there are no riveting lines or images or even stanzas in these poems or that there are no good poems in the collection. There are but one feels their magic, even to the extent that it is there in them, has not yet been fully brought out.
(c) Dr A.V.Koshy, July 2014
I have read four books that can be ascribed as being primarily the work of Kiriti Sengupta. They are "My Glass of Wine" which is a genreless mix of his poetry, thoughts on translation, autobiography, spirituality and criticism, the "Unheard I," "My Dazzling Bards" and "Poem Continuous: Reincarnated Expressions." I liked the first one best as its structure resembled what some of my books also offer, apt for the times, one that can be read in fragments or as a whole, in a linear or discontinuous way, or maybe I liked it most because it was the first one of his that I had read. The others books stick to the same structure and hence appealed to me slightly less.
Don Martin often collaborates with Kiriti by editing and writing forewords etc. I enjoy reading Don Martin as he writes in a clear manner and makes a lot of sense. However, in the book under review, I take exception to his talking at length on the Bengali language in his introduction, a language of which I suspect he knows as little as I do. My own approach to this work would thus be that of one who is looking at it not to find out if it is a successful translation or a happy "transition" from one language to the other which is what Kiriti calls it in his translator's note but simply from a text centred and reader/critic centred point of view, of one who does not know anything about the original language but uses literary criticism and theory as tools to look at the book or work, after reading it carefully.
Having read the book certain adjectives came to my mind like 'simple', 'enjoyable' at times and in parts, 'readable' ( being brief), 'affordable' etc. The meat of the book consists of thirty poems by Bhibas Roy Chowdhury. The brief bio at the back of the book tells me he is a distinguished poet of the 90s and an established poet by now in contemporary Bengali literature. I would like to say that the collection gripped me and made me echo these sentiments of his being distinguished and eminent as a winner of many awards, but the truth is I found the whole collection curiously dissatisfying, unable to trigger off in me the desire to read the poet again and again or to find more of his work and read it. Several things impeded me. The main thing was the use of English that, while trying to be different, ended up only being inexact, or so it seemed to me.
I explain by looking at the first two quotes.
"I swam across the river while
my mortal floated away in the water..."
Why the elision which attempts to be metonymic is made, by dropping a word after mortal in the second line, is something I am unable to figure out, try as I may. I see no corresponding gain in poetic intensity created by such a gap.
"I'm nowhere
the life-less frame is but the 'poet', they refer...
The second sentence is again so odd as to puzzle me exceedingly.
The whole book goes on like this, as a series of hits and misses; on this curiously unsatisfactory note...
I go to the first poem.
It is titled "The People." It makes for a good choice as the first poem in the collection. Starting from the article I would omit in the title to line seven where again the odd elision occurs, we come to the inexact use of the word 'some' in line 9 and two closing lines that bewilder me completely. The poem personifies the word "sorry" and probably deals with the poet's irritation with people who hurt you and then keep saying sorry but the last four lines read -
"How can I depart?
His words fail to cease!"
("His words" here means the words of the man or people who is/are summed up by the word/personification "Sorry.")
"Better I keep some wound
beside the coming tune..." -
and sound so inconclusive that one feels totally let down.
Poetry is supposed to be music, figures of speech, intention, effect, language, style, imagery and meaning (themes), not to mention structure and form. Reading a collection should give me a good idea of the poet's ability in all this. Collections of translations I have read recently seem to settle nowadays primarily for a poet or translation slightly better than those around - or so it seems - but cannot really compare with translations done by masters in the past like Walter Lippmann's of Rilke (Duino Elegies), Constance Garnett's of Dostoevsky, Beckett's of Beckett etc. I say this for a reason. The mark of a good translation for me is either my wanting to read it again or wanting to read more of the same poet or translator. An exceptional translation would even make one want to study the original tongue to read it in the original. In this context Bina Biswas's and Sayantan Gupta's translations and Ravi Shankar's are better in their choice of poets from Bengali or Urdu or Hindi or Malayalam respectively, or so it seems to me, albeit in a qualified way, meaning that their works impressed me more than Kiriti's but this does not mean that it can automatically be deduced that therefore the poets they choose or the poems they chose can be placed on the same level as the ones I mentioned like the Rilke and Rimbaud (sonnets) translations by Lippmann or Beckett translating himself from French to English, in the case of poetry. As for Bengali poetry, the only Bengali poet I have read recently who has really held my interest is Atindriyo Chakraborty, in his English poems. If I know anything about poetry and I do know a considerable lot, his poems and Michael Madhusudan Dutt's Meghnad Badh Kavya epic in its recent avatar/translation by Bina and Sayantan will last considerably longer than the Naseer Ahmed Nasir translations that are of poems by a poet who is unfortunately still writing Romantic poetry that would have been considered wonderful or great or world class/classic 175 years ago (- despite what Gulzar says about it, Gulzar himself being as hopelessly and quaintly outdated in his lyricism in his poetry as NAN, as opposed to his (Gulzar's) song lyrics that are apt and praiseworthy for/in their scenic, cinematic contexts - ) and only those who are caught in the miasma of wanting to be in a nostalgic, sentimental, weepy, soppy, imaginary, feudalistic monarchy of a pre- Independence world, one of what it was supposed to have been like in the past, in the glories of the heyday of Urdu and Hindi poetry, would still want to read and enjoy them. I can understand liking them and translating them but to think they are important enough as poems or translations to rival poets like Eliot or Yeats who won the Nobel is stretching it a bit too far.I listened to a play recently by Jawaid Danish and the hard-hitting cutting contemporary political edge in it which held me glued to listening to it despite my being deficient in the language is unfortunately missing in the poetry of these two elderly respectable and highly respected folk. You can note the same 'edge' in a poet like Serkan Engin , from Turkey, though he seems to suffer from collaborating with horrible translators. The real problem seems to be that some of these ye oulde writers or translators seem to have no awareness that post - Poundian Modernism that includes poets like Geoffrey Hill has happened.
To sum up: I am not sure whether the poet in question, namely Bibhas Roy Choudhury, is worth reading again but being kindly disposed to both the dynamic Kiriti who is enterprising, a poet, talented, a best selling writer and now a publisher to boot and to poets in general I would like to say that I will give them the benefit of the doubt, as I - remember? - know next to nothing of the Bengali language.
This review is negative because we live in a world where translations can actually be transcreations that are as good as and/or even better than the original nowadays, being set free by theory to not having to be tied down to the text of the original, and that is what one feels the lack of here; but on the positive side I want to thank Kiriti for making me aware of such a poet and his works and of a bustling scene of new Bengali poetry. I wish more such collections come out till new masterpieces emerge.
This is not to say that there are no riveting lines or images or even stanzas in these poems or that there are no good poems in the collection. There are but one feels their magic, even to the extent that it is there in them, has not yet been fully brought out.
(c) Dr A.V.Koshy, July 2014
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Monday, May 12, 2014
Monday, April 28, 2014
Wake Up, India! Essays for Our Times by Dr A.V. Koshy and Dr Bina Biswas NEWS
Wake Up, India! Essays for Our Times by Dr A.V. Koshy and Dr Bina Biswas Bina Biswas , published by Mahip Chadha and YS BOOKS International YsBooks Intl has gone to the printers! 110 copies already ordered of first print order.
Pre orders can be made with Hemant Kalra at http://
Order if you need it, please. The book will soon come out from bookadda.com and other online outlets and book stores, starting from Delhi, later.
Pre orders can be made with Hemant Kalra at http://
Order if you need it, please. The book will soon come out from bookadda.com and other online outlets and book stores, starting from Delhi, later.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Friday, April 18, 2014
HOW TO PRE ORDER Wake Up, India! Essays for Our Times by Drs A.V. Koshy and Bina Biswas
Dear Friends, preorders for Wake Up, India! Essays for Our Times by Drs A.V. Koshy and Bina Biswas can be made with Hemant at the link given below
Any number of copies can be ordered - as this book is going to make a big splash!
http://www.ysbooksinternational.com/servlet/General?Pagehead=ContactUs
Any number of copies can be ordered - as this book is going to make a big splash!
http://www.ysbooksinternational.com/servlet/General?Pagehead=ContactUs
Monday, April 14, 2014
WAKE UP, INDIA! ESSAYS FOR OUR TIMES by Drs Koshy A.V. and Bina Biswas
WAKE UP, INDIA! ESSAYS FOR OUR TIMES by Drs Koshy A.V. and Bina Biswas
When a Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry with six or seven books to his credit and a writer whose translations of an Urdu poet have been nominated for a Nobel who also has six or seven books to her credit get together and bring out a compilation of their essays on India in a post modern minimalist aporia ridden effor what will the result be? A delectable potpourri, a Cortazarian hopscotch, collage, montage, bricolage, an assemblage of fragments 'shored against ruins' that is poetic in pieces, literary at times, critcial, theoretical and surface centred at others and sketchy at places, definitely. Will this book be banned, burned, be controversial or silenced and marginalized for questioning concepts like nation and caste and religions, questioning Gandhi, criticizing Indian governance, politics, politicians and polity, exposing fault lines and espousing indirectly a non Marxist revolution without stating if it should be violent or not, looking at the past and leaders and Pak-Indian relations etc.; in a totally original way, while mixing high and low culture? One thing is certain, this book is dynamic and challenges the reader to let go of his safe assumptions and begin thinking for himself or herself and enter areas of thought that he or she may find highly disturbing so that he or she may even turn against the book but will be forced to acknowledge its ability to work as a pulley and lever to bring movement and activism towards the process of nation building. Hate it or love it, curse it or praise it, criticize it for its glaring flaws, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, weaknesses and mistakes or laud it and give it awards and accolades for its equally amazing strengths- this book is going to make waves. All we its authors can say of it is : Watch out for it, get hold of a copy when it comes out soon, read it, discuss it angrily and loudly and vehemently and then go out and do something, anything, about the issues it raises in a very brief and tantalizing manner.
with Mahip Chadha YsBooks Intl Bina Biswas
When a Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry with six or seven books to his credit and a writer whose translations of an Urdu poet have been nominated for a Nobel who also has six or seven books to her credit get together and bring out a compilation of their essays on India in a post modern minimalist aporia ridden effor what will the result be? A delectable potpourri, a Cortazarian hopscotch, collage, montage, bricolage, an assemblage of fragments 'shored against ruins' that is poetic in pieces, literary at times, critcial, theoretical and surface centred at others and sketchy at places, definitely. Will this book be banned, burned, be controversial or silenced and marginalized for questioning concepts like nation and caste and religions, questioning Gandhi, criticizing Indian governance, politics, politicians and polity, exposing fault lines and espousing indirectly a non Marxist revolution without stating if it should be violent or not, looking at the past and leaders and Pak-Indian relations etc.; in a totally original way, while mixing high and low culture? One thing is certain, this book is dynamic and challenges the reader to let go of his safe assumptions and begin thinking for himself or herself and enter areas of thought that he or she may find highly disturbing so that he or she may even turn against the book but will be forced to acknowledge its ability to work as a pulley and lever to bring movement and activism towards the process of nation building. Hate it or love it, curse it or praise it, criticize it for its glaring flaws, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, weaknesses and mistakes or laud it and give it awards and accolades for its equally amazing strengths- this book is going to make waves. All we its authors can say of it is : Watch out for it, get hold of a copy when it comes out soon, read it, discuss it angrily and loudly and vehemently and then go out and do something, anything, about the issues it raises in a very brief and tantalizing manner.
with Mahip Chadha YsBooks Intl Bina Biswas
Sunday, April 13, 2014
About our new upcoming book Wake Up, India! Essays for our Times by Dr Koshy A.V and Dr Bina Biswas
- HAMARA INDIA MAHAAN
Our upcoming book Wake Up, India! Essays for Our Times by me and Dr Bina Biswas wrestles with the idea of what India really is. While all of us respect India's past as Bharath do we have to accept the Hindutva version of it as the only true one? Don't many of us find that we belong more in the India that came into being on August 1947, 12 p.m.? And are we not looking forward to an India that is not just politically able to choose its own government, where one is physically (seemingly) free, but to greater freedoms fulfilling all that is promised in the constitution and potentially ours but not ours yet. The book is a pointer and a signboard to awaken your thoughts on the participatory process of nation building where all of us can have our own dreams and visions and bring them into being as a billion and more torch bearers, to make India truly 'mahaan' in the 21st century as others too, like Kalam, have envisioned. This incomplete in the best sense of the word book - as all such books must be - going to be brought out by Mahip Chadha of YsBooks Intl will be a must read for all who are genuinely interested in joining in the ongoing process of nation building and thoughts on the same as well as discussion and action on it. We and our people are great and in these days when the whole world is going to become one we have to move beyond what our petty leaders have had to offer to us so far to a larger bigger wider group vision and this book will act as the lynch-pin for such a discussion, going beyond even the beginnings set by stalwarts like Kejriwal, in its concise seed-like brevity. It sows ideas as seeds. It is a book for the people, of the people and written by two of India's people. When we sow good ideas of equality, justice and progress or make people aware of them it is not always necessary that the ones who introduce the ideas need be the ones who carry them out; sometimes they need not even be thanked if the fruit is of use to many people. We hope this book alters many perceptions and starts off movements that makes things better for our nation in leaps and bounds in the coming century.Mahip Chadha, our publisher, says about our new soon to come out book Wake Up, India: Personally, I realise its worth and was keen that it should be published before the elections so that the readers get an insight into Indian politics and the lethargy which grips our populace! Nevertheless there is no harm in trying- after all we know that = if wishes were horses,beggars would ride-consider me a beggar !You guys and gals are going to love this piece of artistry woven by two literate doctors! 
Saturday, April 05, 2014
Wake Up, India - Essays for our Times by Drs A.V. Koshy and Bina Biswas - the contents list!
One of the most interesting and controversial books on India going to come out in the near future, partly a compilation, written in two minimalist and aporia ridden enjoyably populist styles, will be the one by me and Dr Bina Biswas called Wake Up, India: Essays for our Times that is soon going to be published by YsBooks Intl /Mahip Chadha
The contents list below will give you an idea why!
Contents
Auuthor’s Preface by Koshy A.V.
Acknowledgements
PART ONE
The Road to Shangri La
by Koshy A.V.
The Road to Shangri La
by Koshy A.V.
Chapter 1: A Few Thoughts on Reservation.
Chapter 2: Ideology -1
Chapter 3: Ideology -2
Chapter 4: Ideology -3
Chapter 5: Poverty and Class - 1
Chapter 6: Poverty and Class - 2
Chapter 7: Population and Land - 1
Chapter 8: Population and Land - 2
Chapter 9: A Bridge Piece
Chapter 10: Politics and the Populace -1
Chapter 11: Politics and the Populace -2
Chapter 12: Was Gandhi a Mahatma? The heads side of the coin.
Chapter 13: Was Gandhi a Mahatma? The tails side of the coin.
Chapter 14: Corruption, Common Sense and the Common Man – 1
Chapter 15: Corruption, Common Sense and the Common Man - 2
Chapter 16: Debt, the Common Man, Black Money and White Money.
Chapter 17: More Horrors and Grand Narratives.
Chapter 18: Return to Analysis.
Chapter 19: Inflation.
Chapter 20: The Specially Gifted and Shangri La.
Chapter 21: Shangri La – The Dream of the First Autism Village in India.
Chapter 22: A BRIDGE TO PART TWO: LIVING MODERNITY
Chapter 2: Ideology -1
Chapter 3: Ideology -2
Chapter 4: Ideology -3
Chapter 5: Poverty and Class - 1
Chapter 6: Poverty and Class - 2
Chapter 7: Population and Land - 1
Chapter 8: Population and Land - 2
Chapter 9: A Bridge Piece
Chapter 10: Politics and the Populace -1
Chapter 11: Politics and the Populace -2
Chapter 12: Was Gandhi a Mahatma? The heads side of the coin.
Chapter 13: Was Gandhi a Mahatma? The tails side of the coin.
Chapter 14: Corruption, Common Sense and the Common Man – 1
Chapter 15: Corruption, Common Sense and the Common Man - 2
Chapter 16: Debt, the Common Man, Black Money and White Money.
Chapter 17: More Horrors and Grand Narratives.
Chapter 18: Return to Analysis.
Chapter 19: Inflation.
Chapter 20: The Specially Gifted and Shangri La.
Chapter 21: Shangri La – The Dream of the First Autism Village in India.
Chapter 22: A BRIDGE TO PART TWO: LIVING MODERNITY
PART TWO
Corrective Seeds
by Bina Biswas/Koshy A.V.
Corrective Seeds
by Bina Biswas/Koshy A.V.
Chapter 23 : The Irom Lady
Chapter 24: ‘Freedom from fear’ Aung San Suu Kyi’s story
Chapter 25 The Maker of India – Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
Chapter 26 Is Arvind Kejriwal an Aam Aadmi?
Chapter 29 FDI
Chapter 28 The First War of Indian Independence 1857 – The Lesson To Be Learnt
Chapter 29 Bio –diversity : A New Challenge For The Youth
Chapter 30 E-waste and the Question of Livelihood in the Third World
Chapter 31 “Look at the Darkness, giving birth to the Sun” - Gujarat.
Chapter 32 Is HONESTY a far cry in today’s world?
Chapter 33 Tagore – The Poet Educator
Chapter 34 The Desolate Indian Youth - A Story of Expunction
Chapter 35 The Youth of India and Their Future
Chapter 24: ‘Freedom from fear’ Aung San Suu Kyi’s story
Chapter 25 The Maker of India – Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
Chapter 26 Is Arvind Kejriwal an Aam Aadmi?
Chapter 29 FDI
Chapter 28 The First War of Indian Independence 1857 – The Lesson To Be Learnt
Chapter 29 Bio –diversity : A New Challenge For The Youth
Chapter 30 E-waste and the Question of Livelihood in the Third World
Chapter 31 “Look at the Darkness, giving birth to the Sun” - Gujarat.
Chapter 32 Is HONESTY a far cry in today’s world?
Chapter 33 Tagore – The Poet Educator
Chapter 34 The Desolate Indian Youth - A Story of Expunction
Chapter 35 The Youth of India and Their Future
Addendum:
Chapter 36. On post-colonialisms by a non- post colonial by Koshy A.V.
Chapter 36. On post-colonialisms by a non- post colonial by Koshy A.V.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
An interview with Pooja Sharma (writer and editor) on me
Me interviewed by Pooja Sharma (writer and editor)
Pooja Sharma:I am planning to write on you and your creative activities. Kindly tell us about yourself in general.
Koshy: In general? Smiles. I am short or of medium height, 5 feet and 6 or 7 inches to be precise, dark of complexion and have six fingers on my right hand. I am 49 years old. I was born in Kerala, as a Malayali Christian and share Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s birthday. My father belongs to the Church of South India (the Anglican persuasion, the one people like T S Eliot and C S Lewis came from ) and my mother to the Mar Thoma denomination that claims to be directly descended from St Thomas’ converts, so my upbringing was very much religious, South Indian, patriotic or nationalistic, politically Congress oriented and English education based, in fact a typical lower middle class and later middle middle class one in many ways, my father having worked his way up the government employee ladder, being ISRO personnel, and my mother having retired from the Railways to look after four children.
2 Would you tell us about your family and upbringing and particularly about the society in which you have been brought up?
My family was loving and closely knit, with my parents being very Indian Christian in beliefs and values, though my mother was quite futuristic in her vision and also ambitious for us, being herself a writer in English and Malayalam. She made us all write in English and constantly win prizes in writing in school, district, state, national and even international levels. I lived in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, my hometown and the most beautiful place in the world according to me. It was a sleepy little hamlet and everything was peaceful, beautiful and dreamy. My great love for Nature comes from the time I spent there, and for a quiet and serene indoors life, as too for its geography in terms of its roads and architecture and its lovely monsoon and temperate weather. Trivandrum had superb libraries and one or two small but quite nice theatres in those days. The Public library, the British Council library, now closed, and the Sree Kumar theatre and New Theatre gave me a lot of education and pleasure. My people, meaning all in Trivandrum, were and are mainly friendly but non-interfering, and a tad conservative.
3 You are a great academic personality. Tell us about your teaching and the Ideals which you believe in.
I don’t know if I am a ‘great’ academic personality but many of my students tell me I am the best teacher they ever came across. I have done some courses in Srishti with my brother A.V. Varghese, with whom I have also collaborated as a writer on one essay, and some courses by myself in creative writing that I rank with the best in the world. My ideals as a teacher were shaped by people like Jesus, Gandhi, the Catholics especially the Jesuits (sometimes negatively), Tagore, Ambedkar, Jiddu Krishnamurthy and most of all by Geetha Narayanan and they place the student at the centre of the learning experience and believe in making learning fun as well equipping the student for life by passing on not just knowledge but life skills and all other skills and constant adaptability and not by tortuous methods of learning. In fact my ideals run counter to most of what is practiced in India and abroad and can be summed up as expertise, simplification, love, passion for teaching and finally in the teacher making the student so self sufficient that the teacher is no longer important, only the process of life long learning and achieving and excellent output remains.
4. Could you please tell me why poetry is so important to you?
Poetry is the one thing that makes me feel alive, for some reason or the other I feel a love for it that goes beyond my love for anything else, and it started with a great writer who taught me called Nakulan and a poem by Keats called Ode to a Nightingale. Poetry makes life worth living as it enables me to understand every aspect of it and writing and reading it and teaching it remains my greatest pleasure to date.
5. What is your conception of poetic creativity?
From childhood I have been reading story books but when I try to write it is poetry that comes to me most easily so I think it is a gift and made up of an ear for music, an eye for images and a grasp of figures of speech and language at its best, as well as philosophy, psychology and the ability to touch the heart of the reader through the senses and through the ability to make the reader feel and emote powerfully, in empathy with the poem’s content. Thus I think my aesthetics on poetic creativity is unconsciously Indian as it asks for bhavas and rasas to correspond on both sides of the fence, on the writer’s side and the reader’s side. IF a poet can do this he is a poet and a master. I mean if a poet weeps while writing a poem on death and then reading it the reader weeps too the poet has succeeded as has the poem. The same with laughter
6. You have written so many poems, on different subjects. Which is your favorite topic? Do you feel poetry to be basically a medium for giving a message to the people?
My favourite topics are universal ones like life, family, love, sex, romance, violence, anger, hatred etc… They even transcend human topics. Poetry is and should be for the people but the message has to define itself. I aim at finding a balance between simple, complex, complicated and profound as I want any person who knows English or reads it in translation to read my poems and find something there that touches him or her, even if all of it is not understood.
7. Which writers and poets is your source of inspiration?
I can’t really answer this question properly as I would need to write a book on it but I am definitely influenced by books like the Bible, the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharatha, the works of Shakespeare and Dickens , the great Russian writers, Eliot, Pound, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and so many, many others, Pooja – in fact it is very classical and very much a kind of letting world literature’s best influence me.
8. What are those points which you keep in mind while penning your imagination? Do you feel that there should be a touch of reality as well?
Imagination is only reality remixed or mashed up or reconfigured so yes, but the points I keep in mind are always those of accessibility meaning will my reader love it, understand it and embrace it etcetera. I boldly borrow from anywhere and use things freely to achieve maximum effect.
9. You are working for autistic children too. How do you feel when you are around them?
I am more into supplying funds but whenever I work with autistic children I feel very happy and at ease as my son is autistic.
10. Would you like to share about your son with us?
He makes me the happiest and gives me a reason to exist, he is a blessing or gift from God and even in the midst of the most difficult times with him I understand he is there for a reason and purpose, that of showing us true love – a divine one – and thus want him and all such differently abled people on earth to be given as much and more than neurotypicals in return for us receiving unconditional love from them.
11. How do you manage to cope up with your poetic world and with your social work?
I am more a poet than a social worker and to be honest social work takes a backseat as something I do only when I can, so far.
12. Did you ever face any problems regarding ‘Autism for Help Village, ’?
Yes, the main problem being I juggle family, work, writing and that and so it is something that at present takes fourth place so for it to flourish it will have to wait for some more time, till I become more free.
13. Would you kindly tell us about your life as a teacher and how would you like to relate it to your life as a literary critic and as a poet? Is there any conflict between these roles?
No conflict, as I teach literature and thus am constantly engaged in literary criticism even in class and as for poetry I teach it and then come home and write it. It has always been so and still is in Jazan University, Saudi Arabia. The passion for teaching literature, being a critic and a poet or a short story writer, writing articles and dabbling in journalism are all interconnected… as is teaching and learning, they cannot really conflict…
14. ‘A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners’ and ‘The Art of Poetry: A Self Styled Verbal Weaving’ are well known books in our literary world. Which one is more close to your heart of both of them and why?
They are both the same book. When the Treatise was published it sold well in print and as ebook, kindle etcetera but Indians found it too costly as it was costing too much for shipping and handling. So now it has come out under a different name with Authorspress and Butterfly and the Bee…and Indian readers can easily get hold of it on flipkart or www.authorpress.com. Both books are well produced and close to my heart. The book got rave reviews spontaneously from authors as diverse and significant as Dr Bina Biswas, Vasudev Murthy, Sujata Parashar, Dr Prathap Kamath and Dr Madhumita Ghosh to name only a few.
15. This world is a stage, and on this stage you are playing many roles as an established author, poet, critic and artist. Which role do you enjoy playing the most? And why?
The role I enjoy playing the most is that of poet but people sometimes tell me my criticism is better than my poetry. I am now entering fiction and later want to go into all kinds of art more seriously. Regarding why I enjoy being a poet the most, the answer is simple, though purists and classicists sometimes look down on my poetry while reading it ordinary people have found so much of meaning, sorrow and happiness in it that it pays me back hundredfold what I gave to it which was nothing less than my whole heartedness.
16. You are the source of inspiration for the new generation, what is your message to the emerging poets of the present time and future?
My biggest message is against pride, the saddest thing I see is young people who want help in the beginning soon becoming proud and refusing to help others in their turn or they even consider themselves bigger than me or people like me and go away. Good poetry is of course not based on your character but a good life is and for me writers should enjoy each other’s writing and help each other as much as possible, not be so petty and clique ridden and selfish as is often the case in India. I hope the younger generation will be different.
17. Would you like to tell us about your future publication plans?
Yes, a book of my short stories will come out from Lifi and a couple of other books are there, one on Dattani with me as co-editor with Bina Biswas, and one on analyzing Indian issues as well, again with her, as well as many, many poetry collections, some of which are collaborations. I eventually hope to bring out a novel and a play too.
18. Kindly tell us about your Indian relations.
My wife and children are in India though I am an NRI and India is my first love as far as countries go. I hope the Aam Aadmi party is voted in to bring about any kind of a change and our country improves. I feel sad about many things in India and writing will also help to bring changes.
19. Would you like to add any more info about you to the questions I did?
Yes. I would like to add some specific info on my books and certificates. My first book was called Figs and was a self published collection of ten poems. Then came Wrighteings: In Media Res with A.V. Varghese – a collection of critical essays - published by LLAP from Germany and two collaborations of poetry, one published by Brian Wrixon Publications of Canada and the second by Destiny to Write UK, collections in which I collaborated with Gorakhnath Gangane and Angel Meredith respectively. They are available on Amazon, Blurb and Lulu respectively as PODs. Then A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners was brought out by Speak Up Publishing USA, which is available on Amazon as book and kindle, and on Smashwords in e book formats and on Createspace, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. Last but not least is my Beckett’s English Poetry: Transcending the Roots of Resistance in Language, published by Authorspress Global Network which is probably my best book in terms of literary criticism to date and the re-release of Treatise as Art of Poetry, - the new bottle and old wine - both these books just mentioned being available on flipkart and www.authorspress.com as of now. I have also written for or appeared in distinguished online portals like Plumtree Books UK, Bardo blogazine, Nothing No one Nowhere, Carcinogenic Poetry, Camel Saloon, Destiny Poets UK, Poetryz’own of Canada and in many Indian and Western (Canadian and Indo-Australian anthologies), and have co-edited Inklinks by Poets Corner. I have certificates from World Bank and USA for online courses in social innovation and pedagogy. I am also on the advisory committees of research journals and contribute to them. I have also won awards for writing as well as been nominated once for Pushcart Poetry Prize in 2012. I have won awards for teaching too.
20. Lastly, what are your ideas on Facebook creativity and also the future of online media that is gradually becoming more popular than the printed media.
Facebook is a hub or buzzing hive of creativity and the future belongs to such places as far as writing is concerned as writing needs readers more than anything else. In fact online media is what is going to thrive and flourish and not books and there is scope now mainly for the community of writers and not anymore for single, great writers as much as there used to be earlier. Defeating market constraints, self publishing and print on demand and ebooks and kindle will grow and be in demand and even big publications houses will go this way. My only warning is that writers should be careful they are not exploited in this new atmosphere by syndicates but get their due in terms of not only fame but money or they will be foolish to enter this arena, where love or passion for literature and an ability to do well at it is not rewarded and only market savviness is adulated. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to be interviewed, Pooja, and I wish you all the best.
Postscript: I would like to mention something interesting, that my poetry and writing hangs around places/spaces that are mental reconstructs, so memory plays a large part in my works in a fictional way. The places thus reconstructed are Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kerala, Bangalore, Delhi, Jeddah, Riyadh and Jazan in Saudi Arabia and Al Khums and Tripoli in Libya and Sri Lanka and Oslo in Norway. This will make my fictional world very different and rich in the future even as it already irrigates my poetry. Dr Zeenath Ibrahim has pointed this out in her research paper on me.
Pooja Sharma:I am planning to write on you and your creative activities. Kindly tell us about yourself in general.
Koshy: In general? Smiles. I am short or of medium height, 5 feet and 6 or 7 inches to be precise, dark of complexion and have six fingers on my right hand. I am 49 years old. I was born in Kerala, as a Malayali Christian and share Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s birthday. My father belongs to the Church of South India (the Anglican persuasion, the one people like T S Eliot and C S Lewis came from ) and my mother to the Mar Thoma denomination that claims to be directly descended from St Thomas’ converts, so my upbringing was very much religious, South Indian, patriotic or nationalistic, politically Congress oriented and English education based, in fact a typical lower middle class and later middle middle class one in many ways, my father having worked his way up the government employee ladder, being ISRO personnel, and my mother having retired from the Railways to look after four children.
2 Would you tell us about your family and upbringing and particularly about the society in which you have been brought up?
My family was loving and closely knit, with my parents being very Indian Christian in beliefs and values, though my mother was quite futuristic in her vision and also ambitious for us, being herself a writer in English and Malayalam. She made us all write in English and constantly win prizes in writing in school, district, state, national and even international levels. I lived in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, my hometown and the most beautiful place in the world according to me. It was a sleepy little hamlet and everything was peaceful, beautiful and dreamy. My great love for Nature comes from the time I spent there, and for a quiet and serene indoors life, as too for its geography in terms of its roads and architecture and its lovely monsoon and temperate weather. Trivandrum had superb libraries and one or two small but quite nice theatres in those days. The Public library, the British Council library, now closed, and the Sree Kumar theatre and New Theatre gave me a lot of education and pleasure. My people, meaning all in Trivandrum, were and are mainly friendly but non-interfering, and a tad conservative.
3 You are a great academic personality. Tell us about your teaching and the Ideals which you believe in.
I don’t know if I am a ‘great’ academic personality but many of my students tell me I am the best teacher they ever came across. I have done some courses in Srishti with my brother A.V. Varghese, with whom I have also collaborated as a writer on one essay, and some courses by myself in creative writing that I rank with the best in the world. My ideals as a teacher were shaped by people like Jesus, Gandhi, the Catholics especially the Jesuits (sometimes negatively), Tagore, Ambedkar, Jiddu Krishnamurthy and most of all by Geetha Narayanan and they place the student at the centre of the learning experience and believe in making learning fun as well equipping the student for life by passing on not just knowledge but life skills and all other skills and constant adaptability and not by tortuous methods of learning. In fact my ideals run counter to most of what is practiced in India and abroad and can be summed up as expertise, simplification, love, passion for teaching and finally in the teacher making the student so self sufficient that the teacher is no longer important, only the process of life long learning and achieving and excellent output remains.
4. Could you please tell me why poetry is so important to you?
Poetry is the one thing that makes me feel alive, for some reason or the other I feel a love for it that goes beyond my love for anything else, and it started with a great writer who taught me called Nakulan and a poem by Keats called Ode to a Nightingale. Poetry makes life worth living as it enables me to understand every aspect of it and writing and reading it and teaching it remains my greatest pleasure to date.
5. What is your conception of poetic creativity?
From childhood I have been reading story books but when I try to write it is poetry that comes to me most easily so I think it is a gift and made up of an ear for music, an eye for images and a grasp of figures of speech and language at its best, as well as philosophy, psychology and the ability to touch the heart of the reader through the senses and through the ability to make the reader feel and emote powerfully, in empathy with the poem’s content. Thus I think my aesthetics on poetic creativity is unconsciously Indian as it asks for bhavas and rasas to correspond on both sides of the fence, on the writer’s side and the reader’s side. IF a poet can do this he is a poet and a master. I mean if a poet weeps while writing a poem on death and then reading it the reader weeps too the poet has succeeded as has the poem. The same with laughter
6. You have written so many poems, on different subjects. Which is your favorite topic? Do you feel poetry to be basically a medium for giving a message to the people?
My favourite topics are universal ones like life, family, love, sex, romance, violence, anger, hatred etc… They even transcend human topics. Poetry is and should be for the people but the message has to define itself. I aim at finding a balance between simple, complex, complicated and profound as I want any person who knows English or reads it in translation to read my poems and find something there that touches him or her, even if all of it is not understood.
7. Which writers and poets is your source of inspiration?
I can’t really answer this question properly as I would need to write a book on it but I am definitely influenced by books like the Bible, the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharatha, the works of Shakespeare and Dickens , the great Russian writers, Eliot, Pound, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and so many, many others, Pooja – in fact it is very classical and very much a kind of letting world literature’s best influence me.
8. What are those points which you keep in mind while penning your imagination? Do you feel that there should be a touch of reality as well?
Imagination is only reality remixed or mashed up or reconfigured so yes, but the points I keep in mind are always those of accessibility meaning will my reader love it, understand it and embrace it etcetera. I boldly borrow from anywhere and use things freely to achieve maximum effect.
9. You are working for autistic children too. How do you feel when you are around them?
I am more into supplying funds but whenever I work with autistic children I feel very happy and at ease as my son is autistic.
10. Would you like to share about your son with us?
He makes me the happiest and gives me a reason to exist, he is a blessing or gift from God and even in the midst of the most difficult times with him I understand he is there for a reason and purpose, that of showing us true love – a divine one – and thus want him and all such differently abled people on earth to be given as much and more than neurotypicals in return for us receiving unconditional love from them.
11. How do you manage to cope up with your poetic world and with your social work?
I am more a poet than a social worker and to be honest social work takes a backseat as something I do only when I can, so far.
12. Did you ever face any problems regarding ‘Autism for Help Village, ’?
Yes, the main problem being I juggle family, work, writing and that and so it is something that at present takes fourth place so for it to flourish it will have to wait for some more time, till I become more free.
13. Would you kindly tell us about your life as a teacher and how would you like to relate it to your life as a literary critic and as a poet? Is there any conflict between these roles?
No conflict, as I teach literature and thus am constantly engaged in literary criticism even in class and as for poetry I teach it and then come home and write it. It has always been so and still is in Jazan University, Saudi Arabia. The passion for teaching literature, being a critic and a poet or a short story writer, writing articles and dabbling in journalism are all interconnected… as is teaching and learning, they cannot really conflict…
14. ‘A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners’ and ‘The Art of Poetry: A Self Styled Verbal Weaving’ are well known books in our literary world. Which one is more close to your heart of both of them and why?
They are both the same book. When the Treatise was published it sold well in print and as ebook, kindle etcetera but Indians found it too costly as it was costing too much for shipping and handling. So now it has come out under a different name with Authorspress and Butterfly and the Bee…and Indian readers can easily get hold of it on flipkart or www.authorpress.com. Both books are well produced and close to my heart. The book got rave reviews spontaneously from authors as diverse and significant as Dr Bina Biswas, Vasudev Murthy, Sujata Parashar, Dr Prathap Kamath and Dr Madhumita Ghosh to name only a few.
15. This world is a stage, and on this stage you are playing many roles as an established author, poet, critic and artist. Which role do you enjoy playing the most? And why?
The role I enjoy playing the most is that of poet but people sometimes tell me my criticism is better than my poetry. I am now entering fiction and later want to go into all kinds of art more seriously. Regarding why I enjoy being a poet the most, the answer is simple, though purists and classicists sometimes look down on my poetry while reading it ordinary people have found so much of meaning, sorrow and happiness in it that it pays me back hundredfold what I gave to it which was nothing less than my whole heartedness.
16. You are the source of inspiration for the new generation, what is your message to the emerging poets of the present time and future?
My biggest message is against pride, the saddest thing I see is young people who want help in the beginning soon becoming proud and refusing to help others in their turn or they even consider themselves bigger than me or people like me and go away. Good poetry is of course not based on your character but a good life is and for me writers should enjoy each other’s writing and help each other as much as possible, not be so petty and clique ridden and selfish as is often the case in India. I hope the younger generation will be different.
17. Would you like to tell us about your future publication plans?
Yes, a book of my short stories will come out from Lifi and a couple of other books are there, one on Dattani with me as co-editor with Bina Biswas, and one on analyzing Indian issues as well, again with her, as well as many, many poetry collections, some of which are collaborations. I eventually hope to bring out a novel and a play too.
18. Kindly tell us about your Indian relations.
My wife and children are in India though I am an NRI and India is my first love as far as countries go. I hope the Aam Aadmi party is voted in to bring about any kind of a change and our country improves. I feel sad about many things in India and writing will also help to bring changes.
19. Would you like to add any more info about you to the questions I did?
Yes. I would like to add some specific info on my books and certificates. My first book was called Figs and was a self published collection of ten poems. Then came Wrighteings: In Media Res with A.V. Varghese – a collection of critical essays - published by LLAP from Germany and two collaborations of poetry, one published by Brian Wrixon Publications of Canada and the second by Destiny to Write UK, collections in which I collaborated with Gorakhnath Gangane and Angel Meredith respectively. They are available on Amazon, Blurb and Lulu respectively as PODs. Then A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners was brought out by Speak Up Publishing USA, which is available on Amazon as book and kindle, and on Smashwords in e book formats and on Createspace, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. Last but not least is my Beckett’s English Poetry: Transcending the Roots of Resistance in Language, published by Authorspress Global Network which is probably my best book in terms of literary criticism to date and the re-release of Treatise as Art of Poetry, - the new bottle and old wine - both these books just mentioned being available on flipkart and www.authorspress.com as of now. I have also written for or appeared in distinguished online portals like Plumtree Books UK, Bardo blogazine, Nothing No one Nowhere, Carcinogenic Poetry, Camel Saloon, Destiny Poets UK, Poetryz’own of Canada and in many Indian and Western (Canadian and Indo-Australian anthologies), and have co-edited Inklinks by Poets Corner. I have certificates from World Bank and USA for online courses in social innovation and pedagogy. I am also on the advisory committees of research journals and contribute to them. I have also won awards for writing as well as been nominated once for Pushcart Poetry Prize in 2012. I have won awards for teaching too.
20. Lastly, what are your ideas on Facebook creativity and also the future of online media that is gradually becoming more popular than the printed media.
Facebook is a hub or buzzing hive of creativity and the future belongs to such places as far as writing is concerned as writing needs readers more than anything else. In fact online media is what is going to thrive and flourish and not books and there is scope now mainly for the community of writers and not anymore for single, great writers as much as there used to be earlier. Defeating market constraints, self publishing and print on demand and ebooks and kindle will grow and be in demand and even big publications houses will go this way. My only warning is that writers should be careful they are not exploited in this new atmosphere by syndicates but get their due in terms of not only fame but money or they will be foolish to enter this arena, where love or passion for literature and an ability to do well at it is not rewarded and only market savviness is adulated. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to be interviewed, Pooja, and I wish you all the best.
Postscript: I would like to mention something interesting, that my poetry and writing hangs around places/spaces that are mental reconstructs, so memory plays a large part in my works in a fictional way. The places thus reconstructed are Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kerala, Bangalore, Delhi, Jeddah, Riyadh and Jazan in Saudi Arabia and Al Khums and Tripoli in Libya and Sri Lanka and Oslo in Norway. This will make my fictional world very different and rich in the future even as it already irrigates my poetry. Dr Zeenath Ibrahim has pointed this out in her research paper on me.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Dialectics of Being and Belonging: An Analysis of the Poems of A.V. Koshy by Dr Zeenath Ibrahim
Finally, the first paper on me by Zeenath Ibrahim published in Singularities pp79-89. The best poets call forth the best critics and I am not surprised that destiny made her write the first paper on me - I could not have wished for a better study, one I know will be a landmark. A poet or creator is only as great as his readers make him and I am blessed to have been granted such a fine reader. Thanks Dr Zeenath, Arundhati Roy scholar, for this. The full text is given below for all of you to read and enjoy. All copyright reverts to the author and the text can only be shared with due acknoweldgements to magazine and author. Thanks to Reena Prasad for technical or technological help. Forgive the spacing mistakes, if any, they are mine made in copying and pasting.
http://www.singularities.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/journal-pdf.pdf
The Dialectics of Being and Belonging:
An Analysis of Ampat Koshy’s Poems
Dr. Zeenath Mohamed Kunhi
Asst. Professor
Centre of Research and Advanced Studies in English
Farook College, Calicut, Kerala
The literary world of the twentieth century saw a revolutionary rise in fiction-writing, sidelining poetry, the once acclaimed genre. However, with the onset of the new millennium and the phenomenal spread and popularity of social networking sites, poetry writing and reading has gained renewed impetus. This one-time ‘endangered species’ which was limited to the syllabi of schools, colleges, universities, and probably to the few die-hard fans of poetry has found a productive platform on cyberspace, reclaiming its fading glory. A number of poets have stamped their marks, with a repertoire of excellent poetry in the rising number of online poetry groups and literary hubs. Such groups also stand witness to some mediocre stuff, but, what remains significant is that poetry is now read, enjoyed and critiqued like never before.
One of the most prominent poetic voices acclaimed and acknowledged by academicians,writers and laymen alike is Dr. Ampat Koshy, an Indian writer in English. He is one contemporary writer who has carved a niche for himself in the literary world of networking sites with his prolific outpouring of poetry and a commendable collection of prose works. His published collections of poetry include Soul Resuscitation and 2 Phases 50 Poems. His book A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners (now Art of Poetry) as the name suggests is a delightful discourse on the nuances of verses and verse-writing, and was chosen by Butterfly and the Bee as one of the best reads in India in 2012. His monograph of essays called Wrighteings: In Media Res and his doctoral thesis Beckett’s English Poetry: Transcending the Roots of Resistance in Language, both published works are proof enough of his astounding scholarship and erudition. A short story collection awaits publication by Lifi and his poem “A Shayira of Sorts” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for Poetry for 2012. His poems have also found prominence in many poetry journals, magazines, e-zines and anthologies in different parts of the world like USA, UK, Canada and India. He regularly contributes to The Camel Saloon where three of his poems have become editor’s picks, including “Africa” and “Hurt”. He is presently teaching English Language and Literature in Faculty of Arts, Jazan University, Saudi Arabia as an Assistant Professor. A versatile genius, he dabbles in art, music and literary criticism as well.
Writing is the quintessence of his existence and this passion for writing is well
articulated when he states: “I write, therefore I am. When I am no more, I won’t write anymore, of course, but when I stop writing, even if I am, I am no more” (terrestrian). Though he has experimented with various genres and has excelled in probably all of them, it is his poetry that has attracted a wider readership.
His verses are marked by a rare elegance that results from a blend of unmatched scholarship and eloquent simplicity. The poetic themes are variegated and are the products of a highly complex personality. His poetry also showcases experimentation in form and structure. Most of his poems deal with love, family, death, alienation, existential angst, meta-poetry and social issues. But mostly it is about a ‘quest’ for something: probably a quest forthe self, a search for wholeness, an insatiable desire for perfection both in art and life or an attempt to relocate his roots through memories from the past that probably provide him anchorage in foreign lands despite his rootless identity. The most intense of his verses spring mostly from his solitary life abroad, far from family and friends. This partly self-imposed exile and its ramifications find expression in most poems of Dr. Koshy.
The title and the opening line of the poem “I do not know what I seek” speaks volumes of his sense of nostalgia and his passionate yearning to be with his loved ones so as to add meaning to his exile:
I do not know what I seek.
In the midst of my island
This spreading pool of loneliness
widens
engulfing every green thing
on this auspicious day,
overflowing its borders.
His sense of longing is triggered by his inability to belong and the resultant attempt to find meaning in a converging experience defines his sense of being. The overflowing ‘pool of loneliness’ and its consumption of ‘every green thing’ evokes in the readers poignant images of seclusion and emptiness. The image of the lone rock jutting out like an ugly tooth emphasizes the dilemma of the diaspora on alien shores. The recurring images of nostalgia and dislocation
that reverberate through his poetry are also indications of his ambivalent identity. Again, the poet’s attempts to escape or seek respite in fleeting ties are actually thwarted by his firm bonds of permanence that form the basis of his essence:
The fish too escape.
Only a lone rock remains
jutting out like an ugly tooth
splashed by black waves
in the dying rays of the setting sun.
It’s another love I spay.
The poet’s identity is marked by his multicultural exposure. The series of poems
published in Brian Wrixon’s anthology Tripping on Words: a Literary Atlas” is a mosaic of his variegated experiences that lie scattered over differing points in the space schema. The long poem is an attempt to recreate meaning out of a disjointed, disintegrated and dilemmatic life and personality. Each poem acts as a fragment of a coherent whole and at the same time exhibits an identity of its own. This poetry of assimilation is an exercise in the process of acculturation, integration and identity formation.
The section “Trivandrum” takes the readers to the by-lanes and alleys of his childhood and adolescence. Memories of immaculate nature and a non-corrupt world remain etched in his “mnemonic memory’s cartography” (ToW 112). A world of smells and tastes haunts the poet who is still on the lookout for “the elusive answer” to a question that he never framed, that has none.
(loc.cit.).
The section “India” (ibid. 113) is the product of his indisputable love for his homeland – ‘Kafka’s father,’ as he states. The ambivalent attitude that he displays in the poem is the objective outcome of his deep love that comes from an insider viewing his world with an outsider’s lens.
The reference to Kafka is also an exercise in intertextuality, probably indicating the poet’s quest for the Kafkaesque womb!
“Bangalore” (ibid. 112-113) for him does not offer the idyllic charm of the Trivandrum mapped in his memories. It is only a world marked by disparities where the poet enjoys watching and critiquing the “rich lap up luxuries,” though he admits that he too was at times lured by the glitz and glamour of the ‘jaded metropolis’, when he states: “at such times/ you were the lover/ Iwanted/ to rape/ surreptitiously.”
“Jeddah” (ibid. 113-114) recounts the love-hate relationship with the royal port city. The ambivalence is marked probably by the ordeals of his professional life there and the brief hiatus of measured happiness in the company of his family and friends.
“Al Khums” (ibid. 114) is a poem about Libya where the poet calls to mind his dear and near ones even in moments of extreme happiness, anticipating them to partake in his joy in absentia.
Stuart Hall points out in his essay “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” that cultural identity in the diasporic existence “undergoes constant transformation” (435). Consciously or unconsciously the poet’s self too undergoes constant transformations, and that is probably the reason why the poet appears more composed and stoic in the section on Jazan. Perhaps the theme of longing here harps on the desire for change and movement. The eponymous city Jazan provides him with more hope:
…maybe you will be
my Alexandria
in Arabia Asia,
you let me wander your crevices
the why yet to be revealed
amidst your minarets and muezzin calls
as if I’m waiting for my Damascus
The last line of his poem “Hope” from Soul Resuscitation sums it all up: “Hope is what we live on.” These different fractions of poems fit in like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, framing the ‘whole’ of the poetic persona where the joints bear reserves of some elusive meaning. The series both in texture and structure reflect the fragmented self and its attempt to attain completeness through unification or the multiples selves that seek to converge into a single purpose of existence. The scattered presences of the ‘self’ without belonging to any particular place interrogate his sense of being. It is striking to note that his idea of being and becoming is rooted in the quest for meaning underlying the very fluid nature of his existence where the only waterfront seems to be love and duty. These fractions also assert the poet’s liminality as a diaspora and his endeavour to assimilate his present and past; his host and home; the conscious and the unconscious and his self and the other. It is in these liminal spaces that the poet undergoes the individuation process of self-realization, i.e, “the process of strengthening,
differentiation and assimilation (integration) into consciousness of the various non-egoic parts of the psyche…” (Fiumara 178). The unified structure of this poetic montage is also a metaphoric assertion of the fact that “Individuation begins with a withdrawal from normal modes of socialization, epitomized by the breakdown of the persona...liminality”(207)..
The cultural plurality of his homeland reflects in the expansive use of his language and expresses itself in the sublime and grotesque array of words. The poem peppered with abuses strongly underlines his frustration and inability to coerce with the new cultural ethos.
Simultaneously a part of him is sensitive to the changes and makes a constant effort to fit in.
Self-imposed or not, displacement does act as a stimulant to Koshy, as some of his best verses spring from his diasporic sensibilities.
The lines from the poem “Birds” again emphasize the intensity of the poet’s sense of nostalgia and grief at the thought of his separation from his beloved ones:
I never knew the face of death
has lips one longs to kiss
give death a miss!
and,
next year die of surfeit never stop
even an instant to think
of how those faces that face
you lost are tearing you up
The reader may be taken in to believe that the poet actually seeks to forget those bonds from which he finds no escape by indulging in the ‘cup’ of copiousness. But it is again his ‘childhood dreams,’ the ‘blue sky’ and ‘white clouds’ that he seeks solace in. A deep sense of his death marks his poetry and the poet in fact tries to brace up his ties by embracing his pain and anguish that keep his dreams and memories animated: “sleep and dream/ and mayhap find peace.” The poem redirects us to childhood memories and questions of being that the poet is now conscious of and inspired by.
“(After Rilke): An Explanation” the first poem by Koshy in Soul Resuscitation is one of his best and as the connection to the German poet implies, is a fine exercise in “impassioned monologue.” The obvious take off is Rilke’s first Duino elegy which takes Koshy’s theme of alienation and isolation to existential dimensions, attempting to make occasional penetrations into the phenomenon of existence. The poem which abounds in symbolisms and allusions is characterized by an ontological chase creating meaning out of residues nonentities.
In the poem, memory and past images accentuate the poet’s solitude and it is his sensitive consciousness that compels him to seek answers to his existential dilemma. His philosophy of living is rooted in love and faith and this forms the essence of his being:
you are that being
each atom beyond grasp
unexpected sweetness pierces him
occasionally
when he passes a window
and hears them play “in summertime”
The allusions to Bob Dylan’s “Covenant Woman” and “In the Summertime,” in fact,
unveils man’s desperation to achieve anchorage through the sublimity of love which he often feels eludes him. The mystery and elusiveness of love is as obscure as the phenomenon of existence itself. The oxymoron “murderously sweet” reminds one of Yeats’ “terrible beauty” which again is highly eloquent in Rilke’s line from his first elegy- “beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror.” Love for the poet does not rest in the magnetism of physical forms of
elegance but is something transcendental, a sublime entity that may even find expression in little acts of kindness and unstinting commitment to causes as the men in Yeats’ poem. It is through this medium that he aims to find answers to his ontological quest and connect to the Unknown.
On an autobiographical note, it could be argued that the poet’s self- imposed exile which may partly be pecuniary in disposition, something not driven wholly out of materialistic ambitions, and as the introduction to 2 poets 50 poems suggests, is something nobler: “His greatest desire is to build a village for people having autism where all their needs are met. He runs an NGO called “Autism for Help Village Project” with his wife for this dream to come true.” The poetic persona waits for the Lord to “rebuild” him and “fill him up” so as to save him from the vacuity of a purposeless life. The line separating his becoming and being seems to grow fainter at times. The idea is elaborated in the poem “When I consider how my life is spent” from the anthology 2 Phases 50 Poems:
I beat my wings against a pane of glass
behind it the light that would kill me off
this is living death. I neither die nor live
only one thing is clear. there is nothing called love.
To begin with, the pun on the word ‘spent’ is striking and antithetical. The idea of spending one’s life points directly to questions of ontology and the meaning of spent when taken as ‘wastes away’ reflects on the possibilities of damnation. The paradoxical nature of existence is conveyed by the clever play on words.
Again, in the poem “(After Rilke): An Explanation” physical beauty is merely transient and lacks essence as the hair that “false/falls across your face,” just a symbol of terror that points to the pseudo existence that mankind generally indulges in. The war images of “a cobbled street full of dead bodies” and the “small white wild flowers” littering the street take the readers to world of futility and terror. Man is obsessed with self-love and such narcissistic tendencies propel him to revel in a sense of false security, which eventually culminates in his own destruction –both physical and spiritual:
it only wants security to establish what one calls love
this is the secret
fear rules the city and her
and me and him (After Rilke)
Death and destruction leave man with residues of meaning to rebuild and reform his sense of being. The poet, probably see in ‘nothingness’ and ‘void’ the rationale of reformation that may carry one to the metaphysical realms of purpose and being. But man is yet to come to
terms with the essence of his existence and penetrate into the secret of eternal happiness:
the little robin red-breast sings outside her wings
each and every atom of hers
is still beyond his reach (After Rilke)
The speaking persona, unable to comprehend the selfless song of the robin red-breast
cries out in existential angst:
why do you love when such terror inhabits the world
of objects
that horrify us with their longevity? (After Rilke)
The bird is reminiscent of Hardy’s “Darkling Thrush” with its “full-hearted evensong/
Of joy illimited.” For both the birds, hope in humanity and love forms the basis of their living.
The resilience of the birds, not altered by corrupt thoughts is contrasted with the “crumbling” humanity which disintegrates into a state of nothingness. Koshy demeans human life and diagnoses the limitations of mankind by the contradictory images of the selfless bird and self-obsessed man. The references to Kahlo and Diego implicate the ‘false’ notions of love as perceived by the ordinary. Kahlo’s liaisons with Josephine Baker (Hubpages) and Diego’s infamous and incestuous relationship with Kahlo’s sister Christina (Fridakahlo fans) reinforces
the images of Eliot’s moral wasteland where love is mechanical, vacant and transient. Man’s inability to find real love, to move beyond superficial sexual gratification and his obsession with momentary indulgences are congruous to the dissolution of his very essence, his purpose of life and his sense of being. The ethical degradation and moral decay prevent man from attaining
ubermensch or ‘superman’ status. Violence, war and power are all consequences of man’s self-oriented objectives that further belittle his existence, forcing him to degenerate from nothingness to nothing:
like kahlo
outcast other killed forever voices stilled
gone under the earth forever
will mine too?
In addition to the theme of existential angst, this poem can also be taken to be an artist’s hunt for meanings, his/her attempts to trap “abstractions” in the permanence of his/her art and his/her urge to be heard. The bird mentioned earlier is as mortal as the speaking persona but it is its song that becomes the insignia of its essence and permanence. Perhaps the poet’s intentions in alluding to Kahlo are manifold. As writing is living for Koshy, painting was Kahlo’s essence. She states: “…I am happy to be alive as long as I paint” and “The only thing I know … is that I paint because I need to” (Fridakahlo fans). The act of painting and writing can be translated as the essential media for achieving what is ‘beyond their reach’ (After Rilke).
The poem “Son and father” is yet another poem that borders on the quest for ideal love.
The poem set in a conversational mode begins with a question posed by the father: “why does your heart ache, my son?” The failure of the son to meet his soul mate is deftly drawn in the son’s answer:
I longed to meet someone
in the journey who’d make me blossom
and someone I’d do the same for
I still haven’t come across such a one.
The title is fraught with biblical connotations and definitely, on a more sublime level deals with the discord and disparity that mankind is doomed to be in. The mistrust, guile, deceit and treachery behind the crucifixion, now operate at a wider level and the poem ends on a note of dystopia. The same theme is extended in his poem “Nirbhaya” but his philosophy of life rooted in Christian existentialism is more hopeful of the consequences:
then what a good thing
heaven and hell are separate
and a great gulf is fixed in between
His poem“Yekaterina: A Russian folk story retold in verse,” at the outset, comes across as
the poetic adaptation of a simple Russian folklore. The poem recounts the tale of a poor girl who was alienated by her step parents and given asylum by the moon. The moon which acts as a saviour in this poem is shorn of its mask in the sequel poem “the girl in the moon.” The ‘moon’ here functions as the metaphoric representation of the illusory gleam offered by his life abroad:
till later her laughter
suffused
by the orange
of a rising sun, changed to sorrow
Loveless reality on alien shores dawns on the persona as the ‘moon’ finally melts away “hiding
in the sky’s forests.” Even though he finds respite in divine faith, it is not done at the sacrifice of his worldly duties. It is love, duty and conscientiousness that form the core of his existence. As he sings in the poem “O Rumi”:
O Rumi
intoxication with the divine
is not the only way
O Ghalib
the way of the senses
is not the only one
It not sensual love either, but a love of a higher order, borne out of his sense of trust and responsibility that opens the “unending vistas / of Keen Delight.”
The poem “Hunger” is powerfully intense in its portrayal of the poet’s sense of exile and solitude. The reference to Marcel is noteworthy, especially in the context of this study. The allusion to the Christian existentialist and philosopher is obvious. “What defines man are his
exigencies” claims Marcel (34) and the poems of Koshy as portrayed are the products of his ontological exigencies. If the first name is to be considered, the ‘Marcel’ in question may be a reference to the French novelist and critic Marcel Proust. This leads one to the intertextual conclusion that the indication may be to his famous work In Search of Lost Time (previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past) which recapitulates certain past events as an attempt to anchor on to memories, which, again is a recurrent theme in Koshy’s poems.
The process of ‘rememoration’ found in many of his poems often functions as an antidote to his sense of isolation and aids in his strong urge for belonging. It is in his sense of belonging that he finds meaning. In addition to his endeavour to accommodate change and movement, he also makes an attempt to come to terms with his hybrid sensibilities – postmodern, diasporic,
Indian and sometimes even feminist. Milton Singer had remarked about A.K. Ramanujam’s poems as having “double self” composed with the components of Eastern and Western epistemologies (Singer xiii), but Koshy’s poetry points to the “multiple selves” that compose a complex personality. In spite of his sense of diaspora, it is not the physical places that matter to him but the “Real Spaces of the Mind” (ToW 114) where “places become driftwood” and residual experiences shape his being. “I did not find you in mandir or masjid” (2 Phases 30) is yet another poem that explores the inconsequentiality of physical spaces.
While most of his poems are retrospective in nature, the poem “Heart” is introspective and reflects on the desertion within. While his physical form experiences a floating existence, it is his heart that chains him to a ‘shape’ and this probably alludes to his love, his roots, his past, his God, his ideals or even his ideology. The ambivalence reflected in the line “I hate you for
chaining me to a shape” echoes his heightened sense of existential angst. The dialectic of being and belonging is seen to run through most of his poems, sometimes explicit and at times implicitly woven.
Koshy’s is a voice resonant with the anguish of living and loving. In an interview to
Copyleftwebjournal he states : “I bleed red tears on to paper, mainly, and they become words
and birds and fly away.” The flight of his imagination and poetry is triggered by the politics of his identity, pain of separation and the recurring memories of a past that provide leverage to a conflicting present. It also marks a consciousness that is in constant struggle with the self and the external world where he tries to spin meaning out of the ensuing pain, anguish and dilemma.
The adroit use of arresting allusions and images also points to the multi-layered nature of his verses and the possibility for further exploration of themes and forms. Borrowing the words of another noted poet and author of Ekalavya Prathap Kamath, it can also be said that Koshy’s works are “the products of a mind that is restless and vibrant, with a micro-fine sensibility, down to earth humility despite its mind boggling scholarship and an eye that sees a detail always left unnoticed by others.” He is definitely a distinctive and potent voice in the sprawling FB literaryscape. His postmodern sensibilities, adept use of English language, ever expanding intellect and sensitive approach to life put him across as a writer of extraordinary calibre.
References:
Fiumara, Romana. “The Psychology of the Individuation Process and Group Analysis: The Role
of ‘Pronominalism’.” Group Analysis, 22(2), 1989. 177 – 187. doi:
10.1177/0533316489222007 . Web.
Kahlo, Frida. Qtd. Fridakahlo fans. 1 Jan. 2008. Web. 5 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.fridakahlofans.com/biocomplete.html>.
Hall, Stuart. 2006. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” The Postcolonial
Studies Reader. Ed. Bill Asheroft, Gereth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin. 2nd ed.
London: Routledge. 435-438. Print.
Homans, Peter. Jung in Context: Modernity and the Making of a Psychology. Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1979. Print.
Koshy, Ampat. The Camel Saloon. 3 May 2010. Web. 20 Sept. 2013.
<http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/2013/02/i-do-not-know-what-i-seek.html>.
---. Copyleftwebjournal. Archive of Alasdupur. 7 Sept. 2013. Web. 8 Oct. 2013.
<http://copyleftwebjournal.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/world-poetry-is-trending-nowbecause-
of-the-possibilities-of-new-media-an-online-interview-with-ampat-koshy/>.
---. Slideshare. Terrestrian. n.d. Web. 25 Sept 2013.
< http://www.slideshare.net/terrestrian >.
---. “Tripping on Words: A Literary Atlas. Ed. Brian Wrixon, et al. Brian Wrixon Books,
2012.112-116. Print.
Koshy, Ampat and Gangane, Gorakhnath. 2 Phases 50 Poems. Ontario, Canada: Brian Wrixon
Books, 2013.
Marcel, Gabriel. Tragic Wisdom and Beyond. Trans. by Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick.
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Print.
Meredith, Angel and Koshy, Ampat V. Soul Resuscitation: A Poetic Journey. UK:
Destiny to Write Publications, 2013. Print.
Nicole, Corinna. http://lifeofanartist.hubpages.com/hub/When-Frida-Kahlo-Set-Her-Eyes-on-
Josephine-Baker. Web.
Rilke, Raina Maria. http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/rainer-mariarilke/elegy-i/. Web.
Singer, Milton B. “Introduction: Two Tributes to A.K. Ramanujan 1.”
http://www.singularities.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/journal-pdf.pdf
The Dialectics of Being and Belonging:
An Analysis of Ampat Koshy’s Poems
Dr. Zeenath Mohamed Kunhi
Asst. Professor
Centre of Research and Advanced Studies in English
Farook College, Calicut, Kerala
The literary world of the twentieth century saw a revolutionary rise in fiction-writing, sidelining poetry, the once acclaimed genre. However, with the onset of the new millennium and the phenomenal spread and popularity of social networking sites, poetry writing and reading has gained renewed impetus. This one-time ‘endangered species’ which was limited to the syllabi of schools, colleges, universities, and probably to the few die-hard fans of poetry has found a productive platform on cyberspace, reclaiming its fading glory. A number of poets have stamped their marks, with a repertoire of excellent poetry in the rising number of online poetry groups and literary hubs. Such groups also stand witness to some mediocre stuff, but, what remains significant is that poetry is now read, enjoyed and critiqued like never before.
One of the most prominent poetic voices acclaimed and acknowledged by academicians,writers and laymen alike is Dr. Ampat Koshy, an Indian writer in English. He is one contemporary writer who has carved a niche for himself in the literary world of networking sites with his prolific outpouring of poetry and a commendable collection of prose works. His published collections of poetry include Soul Resuscitation and 2 Phases 50 Poems. His book A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners (now Art of Poetry) as the name suggests is a delightful discourse on the nuances of verses and verse-writing, and was chosen by Butterfly and the Bee as one of the best reads in India in 2012. His monograph of essays called Wrighteings: In Media Res and his doctoral thesis Beckett’s English Poetry: Transcending the Roots of Resistance in Language, both published works are proof enough of his astounding scholarship and erudition. A short story collection awaits publication by Lifi and his poem “A Shayira of Sorts” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for Poetry for 2012. His poems have also found prominence in many poetry journals, magazines, e-zines and anthologies in different parts of the world like USA, UK, Canada and India. He regularly contributes to The Camel Saloon where three of his poems have become editor’s picks, including “Africa” and “Hurt”. He is presently teaching English Language and Literature in Faculty of Arts, Jazan University, Saudi Arabia as an Assistant Professor. A versatile genius, he dabbles in art, music and literary criticism as well.
Writing is the quintessence of his existence and this passion for writing is well
articulated when he states: “I write, therefore I am. When I am no more, I won’t write anymore, of course, but when I stop writing, even if I am, I am no more” (terrestrian). Though he has experimented with various genres and has excelled in probably all of them, it is his poetry that has attracted a wider readership.
His verses are marked by a rare elegance that results from a blend of unmatched scholarship and eloquent simplicity. The poetic themes are variegated and are the products of a highly complex personality. His poetry also showcases experimentation in form and structure. Most of his poems deal with love, family, death, alienation, existential angst, meta-poetry and social issues. But mostly it is about a ‘quest’ for something: probably a quest forthe self, a search for wholeness, an insatiable desire for perfection both in art and life or an attempt to relocate his roots through memories from the past that probably provide him anchorage in foreign lands despite his rootless identity. The most intense of his verses spring mostly from his solitary life abroad, far from family and friends. This partly self-imposed exile and its ramifications find expression in most poems of Dr. Koshy.
The title and the opening line of the poem “I do not know what I seek” speaks volumes of his sense of nostalgia and his passionate yearning to be with his loved ones so as to add meaning to his exile:
I do not know what I seek.
In the midst of my island
This spreading pool of loneliness
widens
engulfing every green thing
on this auspicious day,
overflowing its borders.
His sense of longing is triggered by his inability to belong and the resultant attempt to find meaning in a converging experience defines his sense of being. The overflowing ‘pool of loneliness’ and its consumption of ‘every green thing’ evokes in the readers poignant images of seclusion and emptiness. The image of the lone rock jutting out like an ugly tooth emphasizes the dilemma of the diaspora on alien shores. The recurring images of nostalgia and dislocation
that reverberate through his poetry are also indications of his ambivalent identity. Again, the poet’s attempts to escape or seek respite in fleeting ties are actually thwarted by his firm bonds of permanence that form the basis of his essence:
The fish too escape.
Only a lone rock remains
jutting out like an ugly tooth
splashed by black waves
in the dying rays of the setting sun.
It’s another love I spay.
The poet’s identity is marked by his multicultural exposure. The series of poems
published in Brian Wrixon’s anthology Tripping on Words: a Literary Atlas” is a mosaic of his variegated experiences that lie scattered over differing points in the space schema. The long poem is an attempt to recreate meaning out of a disjointed, disintegrated and dilemmatic life and personality. Each poem acts as a fragment of a coherent whole and at the same time exhibits an identity of its own. This poetry of assimilation is an exercise in the process of acculturation, integration and identity formation.
The section “Trivandrum” takes the readers to the by-lanes and alleys of his childhood and adolescence. Memories of immaculate nature and a non-corrupt world remain etched in his “mnemonic memory’s cartography” (ToW 112). A world of smells and tastes haunts the poet who is still on the lookout for “the elusive answer” to a question that he never framed, that has none.
(loc.cit.).
The section “India” (ibid. 113) is the product of his indisputable love for his homeland – ‘Kafka’s father,’ as he states. The ambivalent attitude that he displays in the poem is the objective outcome of his deep love that comes from an insider viewing his world with an outsider’s lens.
The reference to Kafka is also an exercise in intertextuality, probably indicating the poet’s quest for the Kafkaesque womb!
“Bangalore” (ibid. 112-113) for him does not offer the idyllic charm of the Trivandrum mapped in his memories. It is only a world marked by disparities where the poet enjoys watching and critiquing the “rich lap up luxuries,” though he admits that he too was at times lured by the glitz and glamour of the ‘jaded metropolis’, when he states: “at such times/ you were the lover/ Iwanted/ to rape/ surreptitiously.”
“Jeddah” (ibid. 113-114) recounts the love-hate relationship with the royal port city. The ambivalence is marked probably by the ordeals of his professional life there and the brief hiatus of measured happiness in the company of his family and friends.
“Al Khums” (ibid. 114) is a poem about Libya where the poet calls to mind his dear and near ones even in moments of extreme happiness, anticipating them to partake in his joy in absentia.
Stuart Hall points out in his essay “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” that cultural identity in the diasporic existence “undergoes constant transformation” (435). Consciously or unconsciously the poet’s self too undergoes constant transformations, and that is probably the reason why the poet appears more composed and stoic in the section on Jazan. Perhaps the theme of longing here harps on the desire for change and movement. The eponymous city Jazan provides him with more hope:
…maybe you will be
my Alexandria
in Arabia Asia,
you let me wander your crevices
the why yet to be revealed
amidst your minarets and muezzin calls
as if I’m waiting for my Damascus
The last line of his poem “Hope” from Soul Resuscitation sums it all up: “Hope is what we live on.” These different fractions of poems fit in like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, framing the ‘whole’ of the poetic persona where the joints bear reserves of some elusive meaning. The series both in texture and structure reflect the fragmented self and its attempt to attain completeness through unification or the multiples selves that seek to converge into a single purpose of existence. The scattered presences of the ‘self’ without belonging to any particular place interrogate his sense of being. It is striking to note that his idea of being and becoming is rooted in the quest for meaning underlying the very fluid nature of his existence where the only waterfront seems to be love and duty. These fractions also assert the poet’s liminality as a diaspora and his endeavour to assimilate his present and past; his host and home; the conscious and the unconscious and his self and the other. It is in these liminal spaces that the poet undergoes the individuation process of self-realization, i.e, “the process of strengthening,
differentiation and assimilation (integration) into consciousness of the various non-egoic parts of the psyche…” (Fiumara 178). The unified structure of this poetic montage is also a metaphoric assertion of the fact that “Individuation begins with a withdrawal from normal modes of socialization, epitomized by the breakdown of the persona...liminality”(207)..
The cultural plurality of his homeland reflects in the expansive use of his language and expresses itself in the sublime and grotesque array of words. The poem peppered with abuses strongly underlines his frustration and inability to coerce with the new cultural ethos.
Simultaneously a part of him is sensitive to the changes and makes a constant effort to fit in.
Self-imposed or not, displacement does act as a stimulant to Koshy, as some of his best verses spring from his diasporic sensibilities.
The lines from the poem “Birds” again emphasize the intensity of the poet’s sense of nostalgia and grief at the thought of his separation from his beloved ones:
I never knew the face of death
has lips one longs to kiss
give death a miss!
and,
next year die of surfeit never stop
even an instant to think
of how those faces that face
you lost are tearing you up
The reader may be taken in to believe that the poet actually seeks to forget those bonds from which he finds no escape by indulging in the ‘cup’ of copiousness. But it is again his ‘childhood dreams,’ the ‘blue sky’ and ‘white clouds’ that he seeks solace in. A deep sense of his death marks his poetry and the poet in fact tries to brace up his ties by embracing his pain and anguish that keep his dreams and memories animated: “sleep and dream/ and mayhap find peace.” The poem redirects us to childhood memories and questions of being that the poet is now conscious of and inspired by.
“(After Rilke): An Explanation” the first poem by Koshy in Soul Resuscitation is one of his best and as the connection to the German poet implies, is a fine exercise in “impassioned monologue.” The obvious take off is Rilke’s first Duino elegy which takes Koshy’s theme of alienation and isolation to existential dimensions, attempting to make occasional penetrations into the phenomenon of existence. The poem which abounds in symbolisms and allusions is characterized by an ontological chase creating meaning out of residues nonentities.
In the poem, memory and past images accentuate the poet’s solitude and it is his sensitive consciousness that compels him to seek answers to his existential dilemma. His philosophy of living is rooted in love and faith and this forms the essence of his being:
you are that being
each atom beyond grasp
unexpected sweetness pierces him
occasionally
when he passes a window
and hears them play “in summertime”
The allusions to Bob Dylan’s “Covenant Woman” and “In the Summertime,” in fact,
unveils man’s desperation to achieve anchorage through the sublimity of love which he often feels eludes him. The mystery and elusiveness of love is as obscure as the phenomenon of existence itself. The oxymoron “murderously sweet” reminds one of Yeats’ “terrible beauty” which again is highly eloquent in Rilke’s line from his first elegy- “beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror.” Love for the poet does not rest in the magnetism of physical forms of
elegance but is something transcendental, a sublime entity that may even find expression in little acts of kindness and unstinting commitment to causes as the men in Yeats’ poem. It is through this medium that he aims to find answers to his ontological quest and connect to the Unknown.
On an autobiographical note, it could be argued that the poet’s self- imposed exile which may partly be pecuniary in disposition, something not driven wholly out of materialistic ambitions, and as the introduction to 2 poets 50 poems suggests, is something nobler: “His greatest desire is to build a village for people having autism where all their needs are met. He runs an NGO called “Autism for Help Village Project” with his wife for this dream to come true.” The poetic persona waits for the Lord to “rebuild” him and “fill him up” so as to save him from the vacuity of a purposeless life. The line separating his becoming and being seems to grow fainter at times. The idea is elaborated in the poem “When I consider how my life is spent” from the anthology 2 Phases 50 Poems:
I beat my wings against a pane of glass
behind it the light that would kill me off
this is living death. I neither die nor live
only one thing is clear. there is nothing called love.
To begin with, the pun on the word ‘spent’ is striking and antithetical. The idea of spending one’s life points directly to questions of ontology and the meaning of spent when taken as ‘wastes away’ reflects on the possibilities of damnation. The paradoxical nature of existence is conveyed by the clever play on words.
Again, in the poem “(After Rilke): An Explanation” physical beauty is merely transient and lacks essence as the hair that “false/falls across your face,” just a symbol of terror that points to the pseudo existence that mankind generally indulges in. The war images of “a cobbled street full of dead bodies” and the “small white wild flowers” littering the street take the readers to world of futility and terror. Man is obsessed with self-love and such narcissistic tendencies propel him to revel in a sense of false security, which eventually culminates in his own destruction –both physical and spiritual:
it only wants security to establish what one calls love
this is the secret
fear rules the city and her
and me and him (After Rilke)
Death and destruction leave man with residues of meaning to rebuild and reform his sense of being. The poet, probably see in ‘nothingness’ and ‘void’ the rationale of reformation that may carry one to the metaphysical realms of purpose and being. But man is yet to come to
terms with the essence of his existence and penetrate into the secret of eternal happiness:
the little robin red-breast sings outside her wings
each and every atom of hers
is still beyond his reach (After Rilke)
The speaking persona, unable to comprehend the selfless song of the robin red-breast
cries out in existential angst:
why do you love when such terror inhabits the world
of objects
that horrify us with their longevity? (After Rilke)
The bird is reminiscent of Hardy’s “Darkling Thrush” with its “full-hearted evensong/
Of joy illimited.” For both the birds, hope in humanity and love forms the basis of their living.
The resilience of the birds, not altered by corrupt thoughts is contrasted with the “crumbling” humanity which disintegrates into a state of nothingness. Koshy demeans human life and diagnoses the limitations of mankind by the contradictory images of the selfless bird and self-obsessed man. The references to Kahlo and Diego implicate the ‘false’ notions of love as perceived by the ordinary. Kahlo’s liaisons with Josephine Baker (Hubpages) and Diego’s infamous and incestuous relationship with Kahlo’s sister Christina (Fridakahlo fans) reinforces
the images of Eliot’s moral wasteland where love is mechanical, vacant and transient. Man’s inability to find real love, to move beyond superficial sexual gratification and his obsession with momentary indulgences are congruous to the dissolution of his very essence, his purpose of life and his sense of being. The ethical degradation and moral decay prevent man from attaining
ubermensch or ‘superman’ status. Violence, war and power are all consequences of man’s self-oriented objectives that further belittle his existence, forcing him to degenerate from nothingness to nothing:
like kahlo
outcast other killed forever voices stilled
gone under the earth forever
will mine too?
In addition to the theme of existential angst, this poem can also be taken to be an artist’s hunt for meanings, his/her attempts to trap “abstractions” in the permanence of his/her art and his/her urge to be heard. The bird mentioned earlier is as mortal as the speaking persona but it is its song that becomes the insignia of its essence and permanence. Perhaps the poet’s intentions in alluding to Kahlo are manifold. As writing is living for Koshy, painting was Kahlo’s essence. She states: “…I am happy to be alive as long as I paint” and “The only thing I know … is that I paint because I need to” (Fridakahlo fans). The act of painting and writing can be translated as the essential media for achieving what is ‘beyond their reach’ (After Rilke).
The poem “Son and father” is yet another poem that borders on the quest for ideal love.
The poem set in a conversational mode begins with a question posed by the father: “why does your heart ache, my son?” The failure of the son to meet his soul mate is deftly drawn in the son’s answer:
I longed to meet someone
in the journey who’d make me blossom
and someone I’d do the same for
I still haven’t come across such a one.
The title is fraught with biblical connotations and definitely, on a more sublime level deals with the discord and disparity that mankind is doomed to be in. The mistrust, guile, deceit and treachery behind the crucifixion, now operate at a wider level and the poem ends on a note of dystopia. The same theme is extended in his poem “Nirbhaya” but his philosophy of life rooted in Christian existentialism is more hopeful of the consequences:
then what a good thing
heaven and hell are separate
and a great gulf is fixed in between
His poem“Yekaterina: A Russian folk story retold in verse,” at the outset, comes across as
the poetic adaptation of a simple Russian folklore. The poem recounts the tale of a poor girl who was alienated by her step parents and given asylum by the moon. The moon which acts as a saviour in this poem is shorn of its mask in the sequel poem “the girl in the moon.” The ‘moon’ here functions as the metaphoric representation of the illusory gleam offered by his life abroad:
till later her laughter
suffused
by the orange
of a rising sun, changed to sorrow
Loveless reality on alien shores dawns on the persona as the ‘moon’ finally melts away “hiding
in the sky’s forests.” Even though he finds respite in divine faith, it is not done at the sacrifice of his worldly duties. It is love, duty and conscientiousness that form the core of his existence. As he sings in the poem “O Rumi”:
O Rumi
intoxication with the divine
is not the only way
O Ghalib
the way of the senses
is not the only one
It not sensual love either, but a love of a higher order, borne out of his sense of trust and responsibility that opens the “unending vistas / of Keen Delight.”
The poem “Hunger” is powerfully intense in its portrayal of the poet’s sense of exile and solitude. The reference to Marcel is noteworthy, especially in the context of this study. The allusion to the Christian existentialist and philosopher is obvious. “What defines man are his
exigencies” claims Marcel (34) and the poems of Koshy as portrayed are the products of his ontological exigencies. If the first name is to be considered, the ‘Marcel’ in question may be a reference to the French novelist and critic Marcel Proust. This leads one to the intertextual conclusion that the indication may be to his famous work In Search of Lost Time (previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past) which recapitulates certain past events as an attempt to anchor on to memories, which, again is a recurrent theme in Koshy’s poems.
The process of ‘rememoration’ found in many of his poems often functions as an antidote to his sense of isolation and aids in his strong urge for belonging. It is in his sense of belonging that he finds meaning. In addition to his endeavour to accommodate change and movement, he also makes an attempt to come to terms with his hybrid sensibilities – postmodern, diasporic,
Indian and sometimes even feminist. Milton Singer had remarked about A.K. Ramanujam’s poems as having “double self” composed with the components of Eastern and Western epistemologies (Singer xiii), but Koshy’s poetry points to the “multiple selves” that compose a complex personality. In spite of his sense of diaspora, it is not the physical places that matter to him but the “Real Spaces of the Mind” (ToW 114) where “places become driftwood” and residual experiences shape his being. “I did not find you in mandir or masjid” (2 Phases 30) is yet another poem that explores the inconsequentiality of physical spaces.
While most of his poems are retrospective in nature, the poem “Heart” is introspective and reflects on the desertion within. While his physical form experiences a floating existence, it is his heart that chains him to a ‘shape’ and this probably alludes to his love, his roots, his past, his God, his ideals or even his ideology. The ambivalence reflected in the line “I hate you for
chaining me to a shape” echoes his heightened sense of existential angst. The dialectic of being and belonging is seen to run through most of his poems, sometimes explicit and at times implicitly woven.
Koshy’s is a voice resonant with the anguish of living and loving. In an interview to
Copyleftwebjournal he states : “I bleed red tears on to paper, mainly, and they become words
and birds and fly away.” The flight of his imagination and poetry is triggered by the politics of his identity, pain of separation and the recurring memories of a past that provide leverage to a conflicting present. It also marks a consciousness that is in constant struggle with the self and the external world where he tries to spin meaning out of the ensuing pain, anguish and dilemma.
The adroit use of arresting allusions and images also points to the multi-layered nature of his verses and the possibility for further exploration of themes and forms. Borrowing the words of another noted poet and author of Ekalavya Prathap Kamath, it can also be said that Koshy’s works are “the products of a mind that is restless and vibrant, with a micro-fine sensibility, down to earth humility despite its mind boggling scholarship and an eye that sees a detail always left unnoticed by others.” He is definitely a distinctive and potent voice in the sprawling FB literaryscape. His postmodern sensibilities, adept use of English language, ever expanding intellect and sensitive approach to life put him across as a writer of extraordinary calibre.
References:
Fiumara, Romana. “The Psychology of the Individuation Process and Group Analysis: The Role
of ‘Pronominalism’.” Group Analysis, 22(2), 1989. 177 – 187. doi:
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Kahlo, Frida. Qtd. Fridakahlo fans. 1 Jan. 2008. Web. 5 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.fridakahlofans.com/biocomplete.html>.
Hall, Stuart. 2006. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” The Postcolonial
Studies Reader. Ed. Bill Asheroft, Gereth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin. 2nd ed.
London: Routledge. 435-438. Print.
Homans, Peter. Jung in Context: Modernity and the Making of a Psychology. Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1979. Print.
Koshy, Ampat. The Camel Saloon. 3 May 2010. Web. 20 Sept. 2013.
<http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/2013/02/i-do-not-know-what-i-seek.html>.
---. Copyleftwebjournal. Archive of Alasdupur. 7 Sept. 2013. Web. 8 Oct. 2013.
<http://copyleftwebjournal.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/world-poetry-is-trending-nowbecause-
of-the-possibilities-of-new-media-an-online-interview-with-ampat-koshy/>.
---. Slideshare. Terrestrian. n.d. Web. 25 Sept 2013.
< http://www.slideshare.net/terrestrian >.
---. “Tripping on Words: A Literary Atlas. Ed. Brian Wrixon, et al. Brian Wrixon Books,
2012.112-116. Print.
Koshy, Ampat and Gangane, Gorakhnath. 2 Phases 50 Poems. Ontario, Canada: Brian Wrixon
Books, 2013.
Marcel, Gabriel. Tragic Wisdom and Beyond. Trans. by Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick.
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Print.
Meredith, Angel and Koshy, Ampat V. Soul Resuscitation: A Poetic Journey. UK:
Destiny to Write Publications, 2013. Print.
Nicole, Corinna. http://lifeofanartist.hubpages.com/hub/When-Frida-Kahlo-Set-Her-Eyes-on-
Josephine-Baker. Web.
Rilke, Raina Maria. http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/rainer-mariarilke/elegy-i/. Web.
Singer, Milton B. “Introduction: Two Tributes to A.K. Ramanujan 1.”
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