The cloak-and-atom bomb story
Review by Kuldip Dhiman
The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb — Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State by Itty Abraham. Orient Longman New Delhi. Pages 180. Rs 300.

Little of ‘rasa’ in English fiction
Review by Rekha Jhanji
Rasa in Aesthetics: An Application of Rasa Theory to Western Literature by Priyadarshi Patnaik. D.K. Printworld, New Delhi. Pages 280.

World is a stage, money is power
Review by Harjinder Singh
Cooperation South: No 2:Special Issue on Globalisation. United Nations Development Programme, New York. Pages147. Price not mentioned.

Depoliticised, polls tear society apart
Review by G. V. Gupta
Culture and Rationality — The politics of social change in post-colonial India by Subrata K Mitra. Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pages 438. Rs. 525.

Exuberant lover-boy at 60-plus
Review by R.P. Chaddah
Love Poems by Som P. Ranchan. Vrinda Publications, Delhi. Pages 76. Rs 100.

Filigree and Flint — Poems by Kamal Gurtaj Singh. Minerva Press, London. Price £ 3.99.

The cloak-and-atom bomb story
by Kuldip Dhiman

The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb — Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State by Itty Abraham. Orient Longman New Delhi. (Published by arrangement with Zed Books Limited, London). Pages 180. Rs 300.

IN the mid-fifties Homi Bhabha took a bet with Sir John Cockcroft, the then head of Britain’s Atomic Energy Authority facility at Harwell, that India’s first nuclear reactor “Apsara” would be ready in a year’s time. Although the one-megawatt reactor finally went critical on August 4, 1956, Bhabha lost the bet because the reactor was late by a few days. But with that event the hyper-traditional met the hyper-modern in the shape of the atomic reactors, the most modern of objects so similar in shape to the lingams found in countless Shiva temples across the country.”

Contrary to popular belief, India decided to develop nuclear energy, albeit for peaceful purposes, the moment it gained independence. This was rather ironical because Nehru, who was a great champion of science and technology, was one of the first to propose a complete ban on testing nuclear devices. And 50 years after India set up the Atomic Energy Commission, the question arises why did India not conduct nuclear tests in the fifties although it had the capability to do so; why was the Chinese nuclear test not followed by an Indian one although India was way ahead of China in nuclear technology?

Most importantly, if the Indian nuclear test of 1974 was in response to the Chinese one, why did India take a decade to respond? And, then, why did India “not behave as we have grown to expect of nuclear states such as China, France, both of which followed their first fission bomb tests with thermonuclear explosions a few years later, leading finally to the deployment of these weapons?”

These are some of the pertinent issues Itty Abraham raises in his well-researched book “The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb – Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State”. India claims to be a nuclear power now but, barring a few autobiographies, and sporadic accounts, nobody has bothered to make a serious study of India’s nuclear programme. The author, a former student of economics, Loyola College, Chennai, and currently Program Director for South Asia and South East Asia at the Social Science Research Council in New York, gives us perhaps for the first systematic account of how and why India split the atom. It is rather ironical that in order to write a book on the Indian nuclear programme, he had to take the help of Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University, because of Indian bureaucracy’s obsession with secrecy.

Taking the 1974 explosion into account, Abraham tries to establish the balance of political forces at the moment of Indian Independence. He tells us “how atomic energy filled a discursive vacuum in the production of the post-colonial state and met the strategic needs of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru”. He tries to examine why the Atomic Energy Commission was set up in 1948 with Bhabha as chairman; how Bhabha used his contacts all over the world to set up India’s first reactor; the petty rivalry between the two factions of Indian physicists: the “Calcutta-Allahabad axis” headed by Meghnad Saha and the Bangalore group under the leadership of C. V. Raman; the endless debates in Parliament whether India should go nuclear or not; the role played by Britain and Canada in our search for nuclear technology; international pressure and the developments in neighbouring countries.

Commenting on the relationship between national development and national security, Abraham observes that the past 50 years has seen a move from a civilian nuclear energy programme to a nuclear weapons programme. Here we might rather go along with Nehru’s response to this issue: “I do not know how you are to distinguish between the two.”

Stretching the argument a little further it could be asked if national development is possible without national security. It is rather unfortunate that nuclear energy has become such a touchy subject the world over. Although nuclear energy could be tapped for the benefit of mankind, it has sadly come to be associated with nuclear bombs and the destruction that follows.

In her book “Men and Women behind the Atom” Sarah R. Riedman states ironically that on December 2, 1942, for the first time energy from the heart of the atom was released by a machine, the nuclear reactor. The actual energy was hardly enough to light an electric bulb, but the tiny speck of matter from which it came was three million times more powerful than any fuel ever used by man. And though atomic energy could be used for various useful purposes atom’s first duty was to go to war.

Nuclear energy by itself is as harmful or useful as electricity or fire, and it is up to us what we choose to do with it. All the test ban treaties in the world are useless if the superpowers themselves keep violating them blatantly. Abraham himself concedes that various plans to control atomic energy globally, whether initiated by scientists or by policy makers, have led to nowhere.

And what about the double-standards adopted by the super powers when it comes to declaring a country a nuclear offender? “Even among the potential proliferators post-1964,” Abraham points out, “some states are treated differently than others. Countries like Japan and Germany have both the means and, some would argue, the desire to develop nuclear weapons, but are not classified on the checklist of suspected proliferators. North Korea, Iran, Libya — countries with considerably different abilities and resources which have yet to take the final step toward nuclearisation — are habitial members of the suspected proliferator family.”

There are other quesions, too. If, as some believe, the 1974 test was conducted in order to boost Indira Gandhi’s declining popularity, why didn’t she conduct the tests in the late 1960s, when she was battling the “syndicate” of regional political leaders, or after the victory over Pakistan in 1971? “In other words, it is equally possible to argue,” writes Abraham, “that the1974 explosion was an expression of power rather than weakness, especially when we recall that the decision to conduct the explosion was taken nearly two years before the actual event.”

Notwithstanding the turgid prose and the tiny font size used by the publishers, the author deserves accolades for painstakingly reconstructing the events that led up to the nuclear test of 1974. Indians had a good reason to be proud, but by then India was about 32 years behind the USA, 25 years behind the Soviets, 22 years behind the British, and 10 years behind the Chinese. If only we had exploded an atomic device in the fifties or even the sixties, we would have found a place in the UN Security Council, rather than being considered a pariah.

Pokhran II came too late for India because atomic energy, Abraham sums up, “no longer has the significance it once had. A country acquires neither international respect nor prestige by developing, or continuing to hold, nuclear weapons. The latest movement against nuclear weapons is not led by the super powers eager to monopolise atomic energy for themselves and to prevent other countries from obtaining them, but rather by non-nuclear countries. . . . India has demanded its right to become a nuclear power just when the atomic age has come to an end, and thus remains an outsider. . . .”

In spite of all ideological concerns, the prime duty of a nation is to be strong and be prepared for any external aggression; otherwise it should be prepared to be ruled by others. Let us remember Robert Frost’s words — strong fences make good neighbours.

World is a stage, money is power
by Harjinder Singh

Cooperation South: No 2:Special Issue on Globalisation. United Nations Development Programme, New York. Pages147. Price not mentioned.

GLOBALISATION — a concept that has acquired prominence in the nineties — followed perestroika and glasnost in the erstwhile Soviet Union. In fact, the demolition of the complex of Soviet states provided one justification for it. Perestroika was an economic term that meant restructuring the (Soviet) economy towards open market. Thus globalisation is interpreted mostly in terms of economic restructuring. One says it in diverse ways — opening up to the world economy, free market to accommodate more multinational investment, etc.

The science of economics is a quantitative one. Globalisation is studied in terms of investments in a national economy by parties abroad. The discourse occurs in precise quantitative and technically well-defined terms.

This poses a problem for interpreting human realities the way they are — gross and yet fuzzy — not always so clearly quantifiable. It is on such aspects that the UNDP issue of “Cooperation South” focuses. The exact subtitle appears as: “Globalisation and how it affects culture and communication, trade and technology, regional issues.”

To look for the end beneficiaries of globalisation is a difficult exercise. One cannot simply compare in qualitative terms the life-style of people in the less globalised country of a decade ago with the world today. Economic indices like purchasing power and per capita income, etc. leave the less pedantic observer at a loss. Economics will show that the total investment of developed countries in the Third World is a small percentage of their overall economy. That one can get as much work done in India for $1 as for $25 in USA is another matter.

Features like workers rights, occupational safety provisions, infrastructural and peripheral assistance to workers in numerous ways in an advanced country and the lack of these in the less advanced countries are not always precisely quantifiable.

Imagine free trade between people a large number of those who relieve themselves in public because they have no other choice and a country where hygiene has been a matter of everyone’s concern for about a hundred years now, or the trade between a country where most people keep their money in places that are highly unhygienic and another where money is mostly an abstraction flowing via optical fibres. Globalisation brings the powerful and the powerless in contact with each other. Gunna ka ras has to face competition from Sachin Tendulkar and Shahrukh Khan-hawked Coke and Pepsi. A whole generation grows up identifying superiority with caffeinated and carbonated coloured water and inferiority with what was their own. And thus the psychology that they must be the children of the lesser ones.

How can one quantify the loss of a culture because of irrational applications of technology? What is the quantitative definition of culture? The situation is at its worst when reactionary forces insist on a unique definition of majority culture and demand that any deviation from this culture is punishable. Even qualitatively, there are difficult questions to answer. For instance, why should one care to retain a culture that is not keeping with the times? Isn’t it better to integrate local cultures into the global culture? Why, after all, is it so difficult to give up “lassi” and “gunna ka ras” and accept Coke? Many seem to be doing it anyway, just like they are accepting with greater vigour the disco more than they ever accepted kathak or kuchipudi!

This is how globalisation turns out to be more than an economic concept (or seen differently, economics is seen as a motivator of trasformations in human beliefs that may not have any useful value for human growth). But still, isn’t this merely a period of transition?

What is wrong with everyone eventually speaking words of intimacy in a language that still remains alien to most of us? Why is a certain language more important than others? Why should we insist on certain kind of clothes to wear and have certain food habits? And when we give up all this, why do we do it? Isn’t globalisation also a vehicle for the local culture to reach the farthest corners of the world?

This is where the catch lies. The naive Ayn Rand slogan of capitalism still goes on. If you are good, globalisation will benefit you. The catch is, not everyone in a billion can be good.

Besides, other than being good (whatever that means), you also have to have enough money and power to use the opportunities that the market may offer. What remains in reality is generations lost in cultural hotch-potch with no confidence in what they own — language and culture.

As we grow older, we learn to adapt to the unfamiliar, often hostile, circumstances. The mental health and as its consequence, the physical health to a large extent, depends on how creatively we develop our abilities to express ourselves. With maturity, we go beyond the local environs and limited learning that these have to offer to newer horizons and carve new dimensions of productive and aesthetic alternatives.

The evolution towards this maturity involves a mastery of natural skills. Culture provides the protective environment in which such a mastery can take place and grow. The loss of culture is perceived most intensely only on the emotional plane.

Perhaps the most intense crisis occurs in critical thought. Globalisation initiates unidirectional processes from a world that is highly modern and towards a culturally metastable world.

We are told to believe in technology without discrimination, to live in compartments like the newspapers with the front pages on politics, the second regional, the fourth on science, the fifth on women and the sixth on sports, etc. We learn that Sachin Tendulkar is nothing but a sportsman though he sells us the caffeinated beverage.

Our interaction with technology is non-participatory, with technology dictating our life rather than we choosing to use it for our own ends.

The disintegrated modern living stretches further. It allows for confusion in the confrontation with powerlessness. We begin to locate social tension in people’s beliefs and appearances, rather than in greater social forces. Thus the struggle for the lost identity is expressed in the enhanced search for community faith which is often divisive and isolating.

With inability to master one’s fate and with little place left for creative expressions, anger and frustration spills out in identifying the fellow-beings as enemies. Community as a creative entity is marginalised and community as a divisive monster gains prominence. Thus there are more challenges than opportunities.

Yet globalisation is irreversibly and irrevocably here. Thus the need for a human face. How do we reconcile with the monstrosities it lets loose? The UNDP issue looks at the problem positively and emphasises the opportunities.

The first section in the issue on culture has three articles, including one by Nobel winning writer Nadine Gordimer of South Africa. Gordimer points out: “...the great difference (between economics and culture) is that culture is a trade foremost in intangibles, not materials and money, and it is, paradoxically, both its power and its weakness that it is only partially dependent on the exchange of money on order to operate”.

Hamid Mowlana looks forward to globalisation of mass media mostly as beneficial to the South and Nazli Choucri finds knowlege networking “leapfrogging” for technology, important for sustainable development.

The section on trade and technology with articles by Bhagirath Lal Das and Steve de Castro is relevant and offers valuable information on multilateral trade negotiations and technology policies.

The last section has five articles on regional issues.

Overall, it is yet another useful UN publication and is highly recommended for general reading.

Depoliticised, polls tear society apart
by G. V. Gupta

Culture and Rationality — The politics of social change in post-colonial India by Subrata K Mitra. Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pages 438. Rs. 525.

This is a collection of 14 essays written by Prof Mitra over a period of 20 years and now presented in a book form with minor revisions and integrated as a whole with an introduction.

Prof Mitra did his doctorate from the USA, spent a decade in the University of Hull in the UK and thereafter moved to Germany. The author emphasises this point to establish the different ways in which academicians in these countries look at India. While the American interest is a post-war phenomenon and essentially based on a statistical analysis, Englishmen react to India either in an apologetic fashion or with a sense of superior knowledge. For them cultural limitations play a significant role in the process of development.

Germans, on the other hand, deeply conscious of the problems of national and racial assertion and having had a deep interest in Indian philosophy, respond to Indian situation in a far more probing fashion and are quite wary of emphasising culture as a dominant influence in the process of change.

The Nehruvian model of social change meant distancing of the state from religion, caste or creed. Development was supposed to be a linear process started and sustained by the state. However, a low rate of growth, communal riots and incidents such as the Babri mosque demolition rampant corruption and the emergence of caste as a dominant element of political discourse have cast a doubt on it. Mitra, however, feels that an objective look at some of the important parameters should make us discard some of the elements of this model but there is no cause for pessimism.

Institutions of state in India, though not perfect, are no paper institutions. The governments of different parties at the Centre and in the States have cohabited well. Courts have been effective and assertive. Participation of voters has been impressive and increasing. Citizenship as an entitlement to civic rights has continuously enlarged its space. Welfare programmes have been able to keep the hopes of the have-nots alive. Security in terms of law and order and flow of essential commodities has not broken down.

Mitra regards “project modernisation”, a classic expression of rationality, as flawed. All the three western paradigms of looking at India are not satisfactory. The State hegemony model resulted in the emergency of 1975-77 and failed even if there was some appreciation of popular authoritarianism. The revolutionary model was abandoned after Telangana and is no more valid with the demise of the Soviet Union and with the pragmatism of China. The functional model, “do what works”, has no universality behind it.

On the other hand, traditionalism cannot survive because of its obviously oppressive character. Therefore, following the paradigm developed by Bikhu Parekh, Mitra opts for “critical traditionalism”. There is enough of resilience in Indian tradition; if properly identified and tapped, it can not only facilitate but also become a resource for adequate flourishing of citizenship entitlements and creation of a responsive state.

Secularism in India does not have a universally accepted meaning. Equal respect for all religions is one definition. Total separation of the state and religion is another. Nehruvian discourse emphasised the later. But this is not acceptable to the political process. The political process over the past 50 years clearly marks the shift. The dominant opposition in the first Parliament came from the Left putting the Congress on the right of the political spectrum. By 1967, the political Right had occupied the main opposition space, putting the Congress to the Left of centre. The next 30 years saw the emergence of the BJP as the party of governance, and the Congress significantly changed its concept of secularism. Does it mean the abandonment of the object of equality and human rights?

Looking at the process of change, Mitra’s answer is in the negative. Relying on Rajni Kothari’s model of one-party-dominance, he feels that the process of electoral politics forces the power seeker to continuously shift his position to give expression to the emerging mass political combinations. It is clearly reflected in the changing reactions to the acceptance of the Mandal Commission recommendations. The BJP as also the rural middle caste formations have come to accept it. In fact this reflects the core of the politics of social change. Hankering after an ideal secular state only emphasises the BJP’s inability to engage in a dialogue with the religious reality in India. To be a Vaishnavite or a Ramanandi has as much political meaning as cultural significance.

Mitra feels the same about caste. Caste at the village level is an instrument of oppression, but as a political formation it can be a resource for equality. The ideal state formation looking for the immediate banishment of caste from discourse is unrealistic. Dependence on a moral discourse exposes the inability to engage in a rigorous structural analysis.

Mitra’s thesis is somewhat simple. For him the electoral political process in India has shown great resilience to take society forward towards social equality in a consensual mode in spite of Babri, riots in the wake of the Mandal Commission or the border unrest. “Gaon ka neta” has been effectively able to mediate for equality while drawing on his caste and religious resources.

But equality here has only a social content to meet caste and religious “otherness”. It is part of the growing literature that looks to change as a challenge to modernisation be it pre-modernisation, anti-modernisation or post-modernisation. It is moving away from the economic compulsions of change. Agrarian economic and the political changes have created a new bourgeoisie which is in direct conflict with the local have-nots.

Thorough corruption of the electoral process in Kashmir to safeguard its “national” interest by the Congress has made the problem depend totally on force, apart from exposing the limitations of the electoral process. This has created a grave danger for the democratic polity. The same applies to the North-East. Therefore, seeking safety in the electoral process without strong ideological backing may prove inadequate. Mitra also does not touch the modern version of modernisation — that is, economic globalisation and its implications.

Mitra’s ideological stance of “critical traditionalism” has not been adequately defined. In Bhikhu Parekh’s paradigm, tradition has been taken as Vedantic tradition only. It has been strongly challenged by the post-modernists as mimicking “nationalist westernisation” and therefore, only a variant of modernisation. Polytheistic “Sanatan” tradition as defined by Gandhi does not seem to find a place in it and critical traditionalism is not democracy-friendly, being highly elitist and monotheistic.

Still the collection has its value in emphasising that dominant intellectual discourse on caste and religion in India has been largely devoid of social relevance but there is hardly any cause for pessimism on this score.

Little of ‘rasa’ in English fiction
by Rekha Jhanji

Rasa in Aesthetics: An Application of Rasa Theory to Western Literature by Priyadarshi Patnaik. D.K. Printworld, New Delhi. Pages 280.

THE book under review is an attempt to apply the theory of rasa to some literary works from the western tradition. The rasa and dhvani theories mark the culmination of the ancient Indian debate on poetics. India has had a long history of poetics and dramaturgy that begins with the first century AD and ends around the 18th century. For nearly 2000 years Indian thinkers were engaged in abstract discussions on the function and nature of poetic communication, its distinctness from ordinary discourse. Bharata’s Natyasastra marks the beginning of the extant treatises on dramaturgy and poetics.

Out of the several attempts at definition of poetry the rasa theory seems to have the greatest appeal because of its all encompassing quality and applicability to different art media. Attempts were made to see rasa as an overarching concept which is applicable not only to drama and poetry but to dance, music and painting.

The author has tried to apply the theory of rasa to western literature because he holds that a literary theory is judged by its practical application. The more universal a theory, the greater its appeal. The author translates rasa as aesthetic enjoyment, or rapture experienced by the reader as a response to a work of art.

He traces the development of the concept of rasa from the Rgveda, to its adaptation in Indian poetics and dramaturgy. He rightly points out that meaning is a continuous and living process. In our intellectual activity, we have to start and stop somewhere although the tradition goes on; it neither begins nor ends with us.

The use of the term rasa in Natyasastra retains the various connotations of the concept of rasa that range from mysticism to rasayana sastra and Ayurveda. The quintessential quality of rasa in all these uses is its being as essence.

Looking at the various dimensions of the different interpretations of rasa, the author concludes that rasa as a concept has within itself the implications (and also the possibilities) of both a process and essence.

The author defines rasa in theatre by quoting from “Aesthetic Rapture”, a translation of the sixth chapter of Natyasastra. It states that rasa comes from a combination of vibhava, anubhava and vyabicharibhava, quite like flavour coming from a combination of spices, herbs and other substances. Similarly, just as the test of a flavour lies in its taste, rasa depends on its gustation.

Among the different bhava (which the author translates as “states”) sthyayibhava occupies a central position while vyabicharibhava is secondary. Each rasa has its specific sthayi and vyabhicharibhava. Its rendering on the stage depends on its respective vibhava, anubhava along with sthayi and vyabhicharibhava.

The most interesting part of the book is the author’s application of the rasa theory to contemporary western literature. He recognises that it cannot be applied without modification. For instance, referring to sringara rasa, he says that in western fiction, poetry and drama “we see violence, unnatural love (incest, homosexuality etc.) and unnatural separation... Unless such literature as is problematic is scanned and the ancient theory of rasa reinterpreted, criticised or even modified, justice can be done neither to works under scrutiny, nor to the theory which scrutinises them (and is scrutinised in the process).”

He further states that “every interaction is also a series of modification. When the ancient theory of rasa is brought face to face with modern literature, what we inevitably have is more in the nature of confrontation than a meeting. In the process both will lose or be modified to some extent by the interaction if they are both to coexist. It is with this in mind that we must proceed.”

One can hardly contest the author’s substantive position that a theory is valuable only because of its applicability, and an attempt to apply the rasa theory to alien literature alone would prove its efficacy. The assumption behind such an attempt is that some of the basic human emotions like love, sorrow and fear are universal but the modes of their expression and communication are cultures-specific.

We have already seen that the author does recognise this in his discussion on the application of sringara rasa to modern western literature. For in western literature one does not find many examples of simple straight forward cases of love-in-union and love-in-separation like what we find in Sanskrit literature. What we see is violence, unnatural love and unnatural separation.

In such a situation one is left wondering whether one would really be doing justice to sringara rasa by applying it to modern western literature. For sringara, as understood in the Indian aesthetic tradition, presumes a framework of values where the expression and communication of love must be based on a certain degree of social acceptability. For instance critics of Sanskrit literature do not see the love of Ravana for Sita as capable of evoking sringara rasa because if Sita were to reciprocate, she would violate the norm of fidelity of an ideal woman. That is why this is taken as a case of rasabhasa rather than rasa.

Thus these cases of “unnatural love” would not qualify to be treated under the rubric of sringara. I am giving this example just to caution the author to take care of details while applying the different rasas to western literature.

However, by pointing out the above lacuna I am not trying to dampen the author’s enthusiasm for innovation. It is indeed refreshing to see his treatment of vibhatsa rasa in the light of the concept of absurdity. It is indeed a very insightful view of both the concept of vibhatsa and absurdity. There are many more interesting observations in this book regarding the application of the rasa theory to contemporary western literature.

There are also examples from Japanese Haiku and Sankara’s “Atma Bodha” but one is struck by the absence of examples from modern Indian literature. Perhaps it is due to the author’s major interest in English literature. But some of these concepts could have been appropriately concretised in terms of contemporary Indian literature which often blends the traditional view with the contemporary influences from the western tradition.

But I suppose that any research project can only explore a limited area; perhaps it is unfair to expect the author to have a wider field than he has chosen for himself.

In any case, the work could have been more exhaustive had the author not confined himself to the sixth chapter of Natyasastra and that too only in its English translation. This is no reflection on the excellent translation of Masson Oursel and Patwardhan, but the insights that one can draw from the original Sanskrit text can hardly be comparable to one’s understanding formed from a translation (however good it may be).

Exuberant lover-boy at 60-plus
by R.P. Chaddah

Love Poems by Som P. Ranchan. Vrinda Publications, Delhi. Pages 76. Rs 100.

SOM P. Ranchan is a significant signature in Indian English poetry since the 60s when he published his first volume of verses along with a friend Reginald Massey. His single-minded devotion to the cause of poetry has seen 40 summers, 20 volumes of verse as diverse as “Christ and i”, “To Vivek Then I Came,” “Soul Making with Sri Aurobindo,” “To Krishna with Love”, “Anteros — opus on friendship”, etc.

After travelling through the realms of self and soul through mysticism and meditation and in 60 years plus, we find him writing “Love Poems”. Through “Splintered Mirror” and “Loose Ends” (the titles of his earlier collections) this young-old man theorised about love and its various manifestations. The blurb of the present volume says, “The emotive force in the cycle stems from psychic and spiritual wrestling with the ancient verity, love as the dialectic of polarities...”

The poems — 44 in number — are not just about love but are cereberal quests, rich in myth, mythology and metaphor, jostling the readers with intellect and intelligence from the word go. After a time, one gets the full flow of the poet’s mind. Ranchan has tried to maintain continuity with his earlier writings and has consciously tried to make them lucid and compact.

Rarely does the following type of thought check the flow of ideas.

“You are not Minerva sprung from Zeus’ head/not Apollo’s loin-enmeshed Semele/nor Sophia fallen from the sky/but a flesh and blood reality (Beyond Measure).

Ranchan can be direct and effective even without the trappings of intellectual pyrotechnics.

“Yet your awareness that I care for you/in an ancient way/ turns me on...”

A look within “Time to Confide” brings out a revelation.

“My interiority is not just meshed with meditation/Stepped into the contours of the other/but also be shot with Rilkean solitude.”

Over the years the Ranchian thoughts have come to clearly reveal that no experience is one-dimensional to him. One encounters the meetings of the opposites, the personification of the abstractions in plenty, even the nature-imagery reveals the poet’s state of mind. As in early collections, here in “dialogue” poems he tries to clarify and illumine the deep, dark recesses of not only his mind but also those of his type and temperament.

“We will sit... saying sweet nothings/mostly monosyllables/not extended lines which are/for the feigning poets.”

And a Browning optimism: “I have no jibes, no regrets/ no sucking of bitterness like a weasel.”

The poems explore a variety of themes — observations, self-analysis, reflections on the man-made world and, once in a while, the mundane realities which bind the poet to the shackles of tradition, so on and so forth. A good number of poems are free from the “special Ranchian effect” —“Replacement”,“The Consummation”, “Gratitude”.

“Perhaps I’ll grow once again/between your glance and smile/and unfold my soul’s scroll” or “The thing is/ to drop the I from oneself/Easier said than done.”

After a long time Ranchan has published a book which is bound to reveal that side of the poet’s self which is mellow and soft. He has experienced it, felt it within and cherished it and the last poem says it all.

“Once upon a time/I dreamt of being a love poet /The inspiratrice was missing/ Not any more though”. (Void)

“Love poems” a book worth a buy to read and add weight to your bookshelf...

***

Filigree and Flint — Poems by Kamal Gurtaj Singh. Minerva Press, London. Price £ 3.99.

Kamal Gurtaj Singh’s started writing poetry in English in the early 90s with her first book of poems “Mindscapes” which delved deep into the spiritual realm of Nature. The book under review appears after a gap of four years. Her religious fervour finds an outlet in her latest book of ten poems grouped under “The blue saga”.

The book centres on the life and times of all 10 Sikh Gurus, in which she attempts to create a panoramic effect of the history of the Sikh ethos. It is her humble contribution to the tercentenary celebrations of the Khalsa foundation. Acclaims and accolades have come her way; she deservedly features in Sahitya Akademi’s who’s who of Indian writers.

“Filigree and Flint” is almost a sequel to her earlier collection of poems, her response to the purity of nature and her memories and dreams of various hues and colours. The blurb says she is ”onto painting and she imbues her landscapes with a sense of expectancy, metaphorically expressing a desire for the touch of God in our lives.”

After a close reading of the poems this reviewer felt that in the quagmire of nature the real Kamal (lotus) is lost. The dictum that God is in heaven and all is right with the world, is not true, especially in these turbulent times.

A surfeit of nature images take precedence over personal reflections, but still Kamal’s imagination weaves fanciful shapes out of the warp and woof of natural objects to create rainbow-like reflections in her petal-soft poetry.

“Behold the setting sun/ A panorama unparalleled/...

“The sun sinks to rest.”

or

“I don’t mind if a pretty pansy goes unnoticed/But I do mind if it is plucked and beheaded.”

The “Panorama of life” takes its cue from Tennyson’s “I will drink life to the lees” and in Kamal’s hands it becomes almost didactic.

“Live life to the brim, be a toughminded optimist/Bind life with ties of love and truth/Shed away all malice/Instill faith in yourself and the Divine.”

A little thought away from the ramblings on nature makes Kamal think of other things. “Laugh it off” is one such example:

“A suppressed giggle; A loud guffaw/Adds music and spice,/to the bland drudgery of routine.”

And “Today” is another in which she takes an intent look at herself, as a daughter, wife, mother et al and says “Life — I know not how long you are”, and then builds on this theme from childhood to old age and after.

In an Aurobindo-like thought she feels that death is not the end “but the beginning, the sine qua non of existence is he, the Creator, The life of our life”.

The penumbre of memory, dreams and loneliness creates images which she relives, remembers and the poems act as a therapeutic exercise.

“Misty-eyed and embittered, I retreat/Into the dark and dusty recesses of my mind.”

Or

“Dreams — those crumbling sandcastles/Where past, present and future/Roll and coalesce into one.”

or

“Loneliness is a lone weeping willow/silhouetted against the burnished red sky.”

A few images of nature reverberate in the mind long after one has read it. “Nature with its sleepy lids/Rocks itself to sleep, by the/Lullaby of slumber.”

or

The dainty daisies/The frail and limp lily/ The smiling cornflowers —/ I could go on and on.”

Kamal belongs to an army family and is married into one, but her poems do not at all reflect that side of her life. Maybe she wants to keep herself away from army ethos, at least in poetry.

The book has been beautifully produced by Minerva Press, London, but the price at which it comes to India (£ 3.99) is a bit too high for a book of poetry.