Nirbhaya – Borderless

‘…Water is achromatic and otherwise called life…’

Book Review by Pradip Mondal

Title: Selected Poems

Author: Kiriti Sengupta

Publisher: Transcendent Zero Press (Texas)

Sir Philip Sidney, in his An Apology for Poetry, argues that the primary purpose of poetry is to “teach” and “delight”. Kiriti’s Sengupta’s Selected Poems serves both purposes though the poems do not preach at any point but leave the readers mulling over the ideas with the play of words. The book contains more than 125 poems, selected by Dustin Pickering, a writer and the founding editor of Transcedent Zero Press. The content covers an eclectic range of subjects—from personal musings to ecology, memory to myths and more — mostly republications from his earlier collections and some from journals.

An award-winning poet, publisher, editor, translator and critic, Sengupta believes himself twice-born as he states in his poem of the same name — ‘Twice Born’, written specially for this collection. He has embraced the calling of a poet, forsaking the lucrative profession of a doctor. It’s not that he doesn’t vacillate: “The ink has dried on the paper; the pot can’t be refilled with scribbles. Do I now surrender my pen?” But poetry is his vocation; it would sound ludicrous if someone could ask a noted poet, “What if you weren’t a poet?”(“Intrinsic’)

There is a sense of flow in the poems despite his stylistic terseness. Water permeates his poetry. The poet believes: “…water is achromatic and otherwise called life.” As the poet is a deep observer of nature and its surroundings, he observes that water carries out its own duty: “Water has no call, no décor either; it floats the bone and/ the ash free.” In ‘Evening in Varanasi’, the poet assigns the water of the Ganges with exceptional qualities: “The water here is not/a fire extinguisher. /Flames rise through the water.” He connects the water to the Sun: “O Sun, I remember/I’ve bathed your feet/with the water of the Ganges”. ‘River of Tears and Mother’ airs the deep concern about the recalcitrance of those who ignore ecological issues: “Ganga has her stories to tell;/wish she had someone to listen to her.”

Ecological strains seep through Sengupta’s poems. In ‘The Pillars of Soil’, he draws a fine connection between human beings and trees through the image of the roots. The poet invokes a supreme spirit: “the world would need another maestro/who could sing for the seasoned flesh—/those who walked the earth—/whose roots ran deep into the ground”. In ‘Hibiscus’, he evocatively draws a curious connection between the colour of hibiscus flower and human blood: “…I’ll bloom/like a hibiscus:/the blush will endorse/my bloodline.” The epigraph of the poem, translated by Sengupta from a poem by the noted ‘rebellious’ Bengali poet, Sukanta Bhattacharya, re-enforces his stance.

Concern for extreme air pollution in cities yields sardonic poetry: “Nature made the nasal frame fragile. /How do they breathe the vain air?” He also highlights pollution caused by plastics: “The earth has grown plastic. Water takes eons to seep”.

Some of Sengupta’s poems convey a sense of domesticity. “Clarity”deals with gastronomy as the poet succinctly invites the reader to succor ghee with all their five senses. In this piece, the poet reminisces about the aroma of ghee that his mother used to prepare. The poet here compares his mother’s organic ghee with his organic memory: “So organic is my memory—/the granular residue lifted us to heaven. /Ah! Pious Ghee, and incorrigible.”

In poems such as ‘Experience Personified’, the poet records his experience of the commonplace things: “Tiny droplets envelop my feet/and permeate the toes. /I don’t call it a feeling, I will name it/my experience”. It reminds a me of lines by Tagore: “But I haven’t beholden/what lies two steps away from my home/on a blade of paddy grain, a dazzling drop of dew”. Sengupta also doesn’t shy away from the recent happenings in India. In ‘The Untold Saga’, the poet recalls the abominable “Nirbhaya episode” and rues that, unlike Durga, Nirbhaya could not create an epic due to her untimely death.

The poet turns metaphysical – almost like John Donne [1]— when he asserts, “I now look beyond the flesh, bone and keratin, /I’ve been told/the finer body dwells undressed.” Though most of the poems are contemplative, the book offers some light-hearted ones too: “To my complete bewilderment, if the ghost appears, I’ve decided to offer it a chair first, and then I’ll plead, ‘Take a seat and relax! Let us share our stories.’” In ‘Gravity’, the poet offers a lighter note for the turbulence caused in the aircraft due to the inclement weather. He gives solace to his terrified son: “Relax, Bumps help us/ realize the earth.” In a haiku, punning on the word ‘wisdom’, the poet realises that it’s a test of a surgeon’s wisdom to pluck out a wisdom tooth (biologically called ‘the third molar’) of a patient.

Sengupta’s Selected Poems is a fabulous collection. These poems are like chosen seeds that contain intrinsic vigour to sprout through the age-old concrete floor, giving a message of hope in the face of all odds. Sengupta’s penetrating observations, coupled with his poetic prowess, can be vividly experienced by delving into the rich treasures hidden in between the covers.

[1] John Donne (1572-1631), Metaphysical poet

Pradip Mondal teaches at L. B. S. Govt. P. G. College Halduchaur, Nainital (India). He has been published in journals like Suburban Witchcraft (Serbia), Muse India (India), and Indi@logs (Spain).

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Are Some of Us More ‘Human’ than Others?

By Meenakshi Malhotra

Self-portrait by Amrita Shergil. Courtesy: Creative Commons

Post-humanism and the Anthropocene epoch have undermined the notion of human exceptionalism, the feeling that as a group or a species, human beings are superior to other species. It is time to interrogate the hierarchy of human/animal where we understand the category of the human as undoubtedly superior. One view is to see the human as a posthumous category, not just post-human. Most civilisations and philosophies across the world have privileged one set of values/qualities at the cost of another-thus categories like human-animal, man-woman, reason-passion, good-bad have become binaries where one term is considered better than the other.

It is in this context that I turn to Catherine MacKinnon’s work, Are Women Human? (2006). In her book, she poses the question of women’s relationship to the category of the human.

After almost a century from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which defined what a human being is and is entitled to, Catharine A MacKinnon asks: ‘Are women human yet?’ If women were regarded as human, would they be subjected to the privations and oppressive practices perpetrated in cultures? Would they, for instance, be sold into slavery and sexual slavery worldwide; would they be “veiled, silenced, and imprisoned in homes; bred, and worked as menials for little or no pay; stoned for sex outside marriage or burned within it; mutilated genitally, impoverished economically, and mired in illiteracy–all as a matter of course and without effective recourse?”

In the wake of recent events which have once again highlighted the scant regard in which women are held across nations and in societies, it is instructive to revisit the fundamental questions posed by Mc Kinnon. The Nirbhaya, Asifa, Unnao, Priyanka Reddy, Hathras cases in India, events that unfolded recently in Afghanistan and innumerable instances the world over, are traumatic and traumatising as they are instances where violence has been unleashed, consciously and deliberately, on women, children and whole communities. These significant events can be called ‘critical’ since they raise some crucial questions on the category and definition of the notion of the ‘human’ itself.

The category of the ‘human’, as Yuval Noah Harari and many before him discussed, became associated, in terms of evolutionary biology, with a large brain, an upright gait and other specific characteristics. Whatever its genealogies in scientific or anthropological parlance, the word acquired a specific set or cluster of meanings. The notion of ‘human’ gets associated with a set of inalienable rights(as in human rights), a set or cluster of affect/s such as kindness, compassion and sympathy/empathy. And yet, this is a term we revisit time and again, at important historical conjunctures. Sadly it is a term which emerges more in the breach than the observance. Further, it is one that seems to be taxonomically problematic and perplexing and shores up the category in a peculiarly exclusionary way. To substantiate and cite an instance, inter alia, were the Jews admitted in the category of the human by the Germans, the Dalits by upper castes and women by men? The problem here is not just of ‘othering’ but the fact that the persistence of asymmetric power relationships robs one group of a sense of agency and the power to name themselves and their experience. The other group, which calls the shots on how humanity is to be defined, becomes blind to its own oppressive behaviour, perpetuates atrocities and is condemned by posterity. It becomes a case where, in a manner of speaking, all of us are human but some are obviously more human than others. Thus the suspicion that peppers our mind when we come across liberal terms like ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’ also extends to the ‘human.’

Working with issues that are sited on the cusp of law and culture and that are a vital aspect of transnational feminism affecting the status of women, McKinnon in her essays takes her gendered critique of the state to the international plane. Her book/essays is/are a trenchant critique of the inequalities of international politics, which turns a blind eye to the consequences and significance of the systematic maltreatment of women and its condoning by a skewed system. Her sharp critique points toward fresh ways—social, legal, and political—of “targeting its toxic orthodoxies”.

McKinnon takes us inside the workings of nation-states, where the oppression of women is the common factor that defines community life and distributes power in society and government. She takes us to Bosnia-Herzogovina for a harrowing look at how the wholesale rape and murder of women and girls there was an act of genocide, not a side effect of war. She takes us into the heart of the international law of conflict to ask—and reveal—why the international community can rally against terrorists’ violence, but not against violence done to women. A critique of the transnational status quo that also envisions the transforming possibilities of human rights, this book makes us look as never before at an ongoing war too long undeclared, unspoken and relegated to silence..

It is important to recover voices like that of McKinnon since the self-appointed custodians of the ‘human’ are more often than not dyed-in-the-wool liberals, paternalists, self-appointed purveyors of law and morality. Most of them are so entitled that they are entirely blind to their own privilege as they declare themselves to be the champions of human rights, having practised and perpetuated the wrongs that need to be set right.

As we ‘celebrate’ the month of the Woman in March, we need to revisit these questions which have gained a new urgency in our time. Only then can we perhaps understand the full implications of the human and work towards making it a truly inclusive category.

Dr Meenakshi Malhotra is Associate Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory.

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