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POST script
FEBRUARY 12, 2012

SEVEN SISTERS

NELit review

FIFTH WALL
UDDIPANA GOSWAMI
Literary Editor

In Search of Freedoms Contemporary Poetry in English from Manipur W

HY do the poetry anthologies edited by Ranjit Hoskote, Jeet Thayil and Eunice de Souza, which have now come to showcase contemporary Indian poetry in English, not feature even a single voice from Manipur? Have we slighted regional writing in English while canonising mainstream poets who have turned solipsistic and failed to unravel what it means to be human in radical circumstances? Why was Irom Sharmilas poetry from Manipur singled out by publishers in New Delhi to be published as an individual collection? With these uncomfortable questions in mind, when I travelled to Imphal in 2011 and met up with a few writers, observations made by two poets summed up for me the essential struggle taking place in the poetry of Manipur. Moreover, they dramatised an experience quite alien to those writing from the mainland. On a drizzly, dank January morning, while discussing the literature from the valley, poet Yumlembam Ibomcha spoke of how his soul is in violence, morbidly suggesting that he could be killed by any kind of bullet. When Robin S Ngangom added that the people of the region were put to a loyalty test every day, that they had to prove to the rest of the country they were Indians too, the anguish of the poet provoked insights into the political and human needs for artistic expressions about Manipur: My home is a gun pressed against both temples a knock on a night that has not ended a torch lit long after the theft a sonnet about body counts undoubtedly raped definitely abandoned in a tryst with destiny. (My Invented Land) The poets writing in precarious times seek for their art a liberating role that is deeply sensitive to a land bloodied by secessionist demands for territory, draconian counter-insurgent measures like the AFSPA, which operates under a perverse principle that you are guilty until proven innocent, and more recently, an intensification of communal intolerance that has ironically overtaken resentment for GoI. The poet writing about Manipur then, primarily gives testimonies for a trying period in history and articulates the anxieties of a large, dispossessed population. What evolves in the process is a poetics of violence that alternates between impressionistic images, surreal crossings between the real and the unreal and a realism that reiterates the stagnation of life albeit in unadventurous symbolism. In an article that examines the recent history of poetry from the state, Contemporary Manipuri Poetry An Overview (2007), Ngangom describes

Why is poetry emanating from Manipur so deeply entrenched in images of the bullet and the gun? Preetika Venkatakrishnan tries to find an answer

FRONTIS PIECE
the dominant mode of writing as a poetry of survival. In the much varied and substantial corpus of poetry from Manipur that has been made available in English through the translations of T Bijoykumar Singh and Ngangom, works of Laishram Samarendra written in the 1950s ushered in a pioneering modernist venture. In what appears to be an economical style speckled with a wry sense of humour, the poet searches for the humane in society. For instance, in the poem Baby-land, pointing up serious political issues as petty childish squabbles, he defamiliarises image. Later, in the hands of the two angry young poets who began publishing in the 1970s, Thangjam Ibopishak and Ibomcha, dissent and the avant-gardist undertones of the surreal became tools to cope with the overbearing violence in Manipur. In an interview with Ngangom, Ibomcha points out the inadequacy of traditional linear forms to represent the realities of a people in crisis that compelled him to stage a huge mad laugh in his poetry. His poem Story of a Dream opens with nauseous images of mangled dead bodies of children oozing blood over which the poet walks, followed by a bizarre profusion of gun muzzles. The poet-persona quite dramatically gets shot, turns euphoric in a heightened state of frenzy and likens bullets to grapes, almonds and raisins: Its hilarious! Its hilarious the sound of gunfire, Its the soothing strain of the flute, the sitar, the violin. Its more hilarious than I can tell Flowers of lovely colours Blossomed from the barrels of the guns. Derived from a Puppy, again delineates a defeated society by using non sequitur, a common surreal technique of humour that results from a disruption of logic. The speaker of the poem, helped by his wife,

Meitei might

ANIPUR where the mortars and guns boom loud, but the peoples voices of protest are louder still. Manipur, the erstwhile princely state that resisted British colonialism, is now resisting the Indian States policy of militarisation, its spirit of freedom intact. Why should ones own State treat its citizens as security threats, it questions, and unlike many of the other aggrieved voices in the Northeast, Manipur remains largely vocal and free from co-option. It is true that there is a proliferation of insurgent factions making the formation of rebel groups seem almost like a cottage industry there. It is also true that the political establishment no longer reflects the mandate of the people. And yes, it is also true that ethnic conflicts and economic blockades are so routine there that the people have started devising alternative strategies to live with, rather than to confront, them. But it is also true that only Manipur has an Irom Sharmila, who continues to challenge the State from her hospital bed. And only in Manipur can a group of unarmed, undressed women force the States armed forces to retreat in the face of their anger. This issue of NELit review tries to capture a little of this indomitable spirit of Manipur through a close look at some contemporary Meitei poets. Preetika Venkatakrishnan takes our readers through the verses of some of these poets and finds what makes their poetry of survival so different. Images of violence and conflict can be found in much of the poetry from the Northeast, but it is only a Meitei poet who could so poignantly pen a line that says: I want to be killed by an Indian bullet. The younger, upcoming lot of poets is also today following in the footsteps of their predecessors, critically capturing their lived experiences in verse. Our book review section, Close Reading, takes a critical look at the poetry of three such women who recently anthologised their gendered politics of protest and finds what would raise their voices above the ordinary. Finally, through our Inkpot section, we have tried to go beyond the conflicts of a violent and political nature. A forbidden love and the conflict it creates within a woman who tries but perhaps fails to go against the sexual mores of society is the subject matter of the translated short story included in this section. T

G RRRRRRT

hill woman, most likely a Naga, and preavoids dictable rhetorical flourishes about hillvalley fluidity. Another face of Manipuri poetry belongs to poets who write of Manipur in English or are bilingual and may live away from their home state. Foremost among them is Robin S Ngangom, who lives in Shillong and writes about his vexed relationship with his homeland. Among the younger poets writing in English like Shreema Ningombam and Poreinganba Thangjam, Ningombam is known for her bold feminist poetics: The wicked wind licks lecherously Her thighs along which the phanek slithers Yielding to the wanton wind The phanek prostrate on the wayside cried Hey woman! You have dropped me She deliberately did not look back She too is a revolutionary. (The Other Revolutionary) Steeped in idioms of desertion and guilt, Ngangoms poems exude a strong sense of homelessness and a need to transcend territoriality. This and his choice of the lyrical-confessional mode of writing and quite significantly, a debunking of Meitei feudal history and narrow ethnic claims set Ngangom apart from his contemporaries in Manipur. He intertwines sensuous love poetry with history and politics in an inclusive human vision, documenting as it were the violence of maps that create conflict-widows: Im the anguish of slashed roots, the fear of the homeless, and the desperation of former kisses. How much land does my enemy need? When that youth who journeyed seeking light Returns covered with a white cloth Whod like to receive him? (Gun Muzzle) Though a Manipuri poets eloquent gift may be the capacity to laugh at oneself to survive dark times, and give to lyric expressions a political flavour, there is also, as observed by Ngangom, a cloying profusion of images of gunpowder and bullets in a section of Manipuri poetry. In their art of subtlety and quiet charm, Memchoubis poems make a striking contrast to the hackneyed gunpowder symbolism. For instance, in the poem My Beloved Mother, the poet empathises with a Poetry about Manipur then becomes a literary intervention into justice for a people, and shares its intent with Latin American testimonios and Third World poetry of witness. If we explore how and in what conditions Manipuri literature becomes the voice of a people, Indian poetry will be richer for it. Simultaneously, it appears important to ask why the poets generalise about violence growing out of insurgency and state control and are reluctant to speak out openly about the hill-valley conflict and communal carnages in the state. T

POETRY about Manipur shares its intent with Latin American testimonios and Third World poetry of witness
disguises himself as a tiger. She disrobes him and sketches stripes on his body with colour pens but that does not change his timidity, my throat only emitted/ a miaow, miaow like a cat. Ibopishak fastidiously builds the tragic-absurdist tour de force in poems like The Land of Half-humans and I want to be killed by an Indian bullet. In the latter, all five elements of nature that later metamorphose into insurgents conspire to shoot the poet. The poet, however, cashes in on the insurgents disdain for everything Indian and escapes unharmed by entreating them to kill him using an Indian bullet. Shockvalue, asperity and levity that strengthen the poetics of these angry men give way to a realism that seems to be the stance of Saratchand Thiyam, Ilabanta Yumnam, RK Bhubonsana, Raghu Leisangthem and Arambam Ongbi Memchoubi. Written in elegiac tones with a sincerity that is moving, Thiyams poems concern themselves with expansive emotions evoked by a society in ruins that bears resemblance to a mangarak kanbi, the ravine where the Meiteis used to throw away the bodies of those who had died unnatural deaths. Thiyam has a knack for depicting pathos in its mostrun-down quotidian forms:

CLOSE READING
SHALIM M HUSSAIN

NEW PRINTS
JD SALINGER: A LIFE RAISED HIGH
Kenneth Slawenski Tranquebar, 2011 `395, 423 pages Paperback/ Non-fiction

ATTOOED with taboos is an anthology of 77 poems by three women poets who try to understand what it means to be a young Manipuri woman. Like most of the recent literature from Indias Northeast, the answer is struggle. The poems are divided into three categories Tattooed with Taboos, Angst for Homeland and Love and Longingness (sic). The first set deals with the woman question the problem of female sexuality and the possibility of and need for emancipation. However, it is a very political and essentially Manipuri question. The second set moves slightly away from this theme to the wider political condition in a Manipur torn between tradition and change. Again, this is not an un-gendered condition as the problem of politics is strongly embedded in the femininity of the women poets. The third set is a collection of love poems. However, the love and longing is only sometimes about romantic or sexual love. Mostly, the tone is severely sarcastic and the style one of parody. The book is, however, an example of how a great deal of talent is lost for the want of a good editor. Atrocious grammatical errors and a generous amount of clichs make some of the better poems almost unreadable. For a very long time, Indian English Literature, especially the literature produced from non-metropolitan areas has been crit-

Talent robbed in translation

icised for exhibiting a ruggedness of translation. Sadly, many of the poems in this collection suffer from that drawback. The translation of thought from the languages of Manipur to English is not very smooth and betrays the process. Some of the phrases are out of place and in a few places the idiom seems to be borrowed directly from the mother language. Confusion of tenses is another hindrance to smooth reading. The third poem in the first set, Soibams I Died a Little deals with the three stages of a womans life puberty, loss of virginity and marriage. It is through these rites of passage that the persona is introduced to the patriarchal codes set for a woman and her individuality dies a little while passing through the three steps. A few common images run through the poems. One is the Swiftian technique of using the image of clothes as an extended metaphor. In Soibams Of Clothes and Robes, a sash represents individualism and femininity and the personas act of replacing it with another sash under the influence of other voices that speak of freedom and culture represents the polarised political situation of Manipur. The sexual politics of womens clothing, especially the traditional phanek, surfaces heavily in the poems of Shreema Ningom-

TATTOOED WITH TABOOS

Chaoba Phuritshabam, Shreema Ningombam, Soibam Haripriya Siroi Publlications and Loktakleima Publications, 2011 `200, 133 pages Paperback/Poetry
like Shreemas personas, the voices here are more universal. The language of the poems, however, is simple and unassuming. It is this property that gives a sharp edge to their meaning. Sample the business-like tone adopted in the poem Fruits of Your Taste where varieties of female bodies are put on display for the male gaze: Welcome to the market of fruits Some are like your favourite apple Some looks (sic) like your juicy orange Chaobas Questions on her is placed strategically at the end of the Tattooed with Taboos section. In its analogy between the prostitution of a woman and the prostitution of the Loktak Lake, it anticipates the next section, Angst for Homeland. This section deals basically with the identity crisis of the average Manipuri women. Between two

bam. In Unburdening Dead Spirits, To the Ema Lairembi and others, the uncleanliness and inauspiciousness of the phanek are celebrated. Shreemas poems are red-eyed and restless. The female personas are charged with the energy of protest and are unwilling to adjust within patriarchal norms. In the poem One Last Time, a phrase of which forms the title of the anthology, the woman seeks emancipation through the pursuit of prohibited pleasures and the reversal of societal codes. However, the frenzy is interspersed with absolutely delicate gems like In Red where the surrealism shifts from gloom to mellowness and the magical concluding line: No, you must go before the night turns red is filled with yearning. Chaoba Phuritshabams poems are less energetic and un-

flags depicts the problem of a state caught between its monarchical past and its current status as a state of the Indian Union. Patriot of My Land shows how power corrupts the self-proclaimed liberator. For Shreema, home and mother are indistinguishable from homeland and the angst arises from the feeling of strangeness on revisiting the primeval stage after a period of experience. The phanek stained with primeval blood returns to remind us that the angst is, again, very gendered and personalised. The conflict between the new and the memory of the old is summarised in the first stanza of Broken: I am home and they are still here The streets still scarred These hills still in reverie Which one is more sore? The broken strings of your guitar Or the broken notes of their Pena The analogy between the guitar and the Pena resonates with the guitar/balalaika pair in The Scorpions Wings of Change, though in an exactly opposite context. The home gives the persona everything except, like the tragic Mughal prince, a tiny corner To rest at long last Broken bones of our hearts.

Soibams poems in this section are vitriolic attacks on various aspects of the Indian democracy, especially India whining as opposed to India shining. In Another Polish for My Nails, my favourite poem from this set, an ordinary voter pines after the politician like a beloved waiting for her lover to fulfil his promises. The electoral ink is satirised as a lovers gift of nail polish for his beloved. The poem concludes in a mock-pining note Yet I believed Like a love struck luckless lover I wish I have (sic) chosen Another polish for my nails. The final section, Love and Longingness (sic) is the weakest link in the anthology. The metaphors are stale and the language is stiff and prosaic. Shreemas Becoming of You in Me is heavy on metaphysical conceit but the selection of words and syntactic errors make the poem almost unbearable. Only Soibam delivers in this set. In her pleasantly caustic loveletter-like To the Researcher, the relationship between the government survey analyst and a villager is parodied as a romantic relationship. The language shifts between a lovers rebuke and a song of yearning. T

HE biography of a man who created some of literatures most unforgettable characters. The reclusive author brought to light

JIBANOR SEUJIA XUHURI

Renu Prabha Hazarika Pratisruti Prakashan, 2011 `75, 140 pages Hardcover/ Poetry and Fiction

collection of Assamese short stories. Each story is preceded by a poem and an illustration by the author

BASARAR GALPA 2011

Saumitra Jogee, Racktim Thakuria (ed) AANK-BAAK, 2011 `60, 320 pages Paperback/ Stories

compilation of some of the best short stories of 2011. Penned by 30 authors and published in some of the leading Assamese journals