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Women for better or verse
Heights of
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Women for better or verse Nirupama Dutt writes of three poets who translate the experience of being a woman in the affirmative
WE are in times when women are expressing themselves in a myriad ways. Their worlds have changed from the small enclosure of the home to include many other areas of experience. Although the age of the Seventies when poetic voices arose asserting their identity as women has been left far behind yet the concerns of being a woman and thus more sensitive in their responses to the inner and outer worlds is to be found in the poetry of women even in the present times. What does it mean to be a woman and the kind who goes about carrying freshly written peoms in her purse instead of a lipstick and a compact? Ask Paul Kaur, the Ambala-based poet of Punjabi, who has made a special place for herself in the world of Punjabi letters and she replies, “Having the gift of poetry and the love for it is a rare blessing. It gives a woman a very special way of expressing her dreams and emotions along with the harsh reality she may confronting in life Paul Kaur who graduated from the MCM DAV College in Chandigarh and then went onto do her post-graduation from Kurukshetra University teaches Punjabi in a college. She has published several anthologies of poetry and criticism. Recently she was given the Languages De[partment, Punjab , award. Her latest anthology of poetry called Barish Andare-Andar (Rain Within). Choosing to live alone, Paul says: “I am alone but not lonely. My poems always walk with me sometimes viewing my life and of those around more keenly.” The tone of Paul’s poetry is mellow, sensitive and times a little melancholy too. Melancholy she says is an important part of life and the task of a poet is to face it, address it but not indulge it. She expresses it thus in her verse: Tu udas ain/ Taan raj ke udaas ho lai dost/Udasian chon hi taaqn hundi ai yatra/ Agale parav di (If you are sad then brood in your sorrow as much as you can, My friend, For thus will start the journey to the next destination. Thus here is the poet and the woman who is willing to move onto the next destination and who has the courage to sorrow and then rise above it. Poetry for Goldy Malhotra unfolded in the city of Chandigarh where she graduated then fell in love, married and made her home. Now in New Delhi as principal of Modern School, Vasant Vihar, she is a woman of many talents. A painter, an actressa teacher and a poet, Goldy says “I enjoy doing many things but I find utmost solace in my poetry. In my poems I try to see the everyday world differently.” Beautiful Goldy, who is now a young grandmother, has recently published a book of poetry that has been earned appreciation for a sensitive imagery drawn out of the life around her. Her anthology in Hindi is called Canvas par Ubharate Chehare (Faces Rising on the Canvas) and is illustrated by sketches that she has made. Goldy’s is a very delicate way of grasping the truth around her and then turning it around in verse. “I try to translate my struggle and those of the people around me into poetry. I do so in the language in which I converse,” she says. And it is this ease with the language that makes her poems so fine. How does a poem come to a poet? To this question Goldy’s reply is to be found in one of her poems in which she says that in the race of time at some still moment an old rusted clock starts ticking and poetry comes like a child putting its arms around one. In her poems there is the game of lost and found and thus the constant renewal of life. She describes the transition from childhood to youth in the imagery of kite flying: Gir gaya thha bachpan/Chhat se udhata patang/Baithi jawani dekhti hai ab tak/ Boorhe nem ki daal par atki/Phati-phati si patang. (Childhoot just fell away while flying a kite on the terrace/Youth with the string in hand stares at the torn kite hanging on the old neem tree). Babboo Tir, the youngest of this trio, turned to writing poetry in Punjabi to express the innermost feelings, as she juggles life as a home maker mothering two children and a writer. Although schooled in English and a language she used to write in initially, she turned to Punjabi after the demise of her celebrated columnist father Gurnam Singh Tir. “I inherited the love of the Punjabi language and literature from my father. I felt I had to return something to the language that made me so rich. Also poetry comes best in the mother tongue.” Living in Chandigarh, Babboo has published an anthology of poetry called Surmayi Shaam. Babboo’s poems have the quality of being able to laugh away sorrow and not lose the moment for that is perhaps all that one ever has. So she expresses this so tenderly in verse written to someone estranged from her: Teri chup bahut lami ho chali si/Mera jee keeta uhada baar ja kharhkavan/ Tainu chanjohrh ke aakhan/Bas kar hun/ Zindagi iddi chhoti hai/Te gila aida lamba. (Your silence was so long that I felt like knocking it, shaking you and saying that life is so short so how can a grudge be so long). So these women are of a creed who take the long and short of life for the better or the verse.
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A brush
with the innerscape COLOURS creep into unlikely lines to create an experience that’s sheer depth in Sohan Qadri’s paintings. The resonance of abstract expressionism in the art of this Copenhagen-based painter is compelling. He has held over 40 one-man shows at galleries in New Delhi, Mumbai, Nairobi, Zurich, London, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vienna, Oslo, Cologne and Stockholm. His art has been acclaimed by critics and private collectors nationally and internationally. Initiated into yoga and tantra at the young age of 14, this septuagenarian artiste finds in the space-time continuum of his paintings a spiritually energising flow. On a visit to his relatives in Jalandhar, Qadri had a freewheeling chat Spaces
within His is the internal
universe. And it teems with infinite possibilities. In the silence of
his vision — a vision sans the noise of thoughts — he finds the
split-second-shunya that is pure awareness. I am a dot/born out of the
Dot/ passing by the dots/ dying into the Dot. “Some paintings force
you to draw meanings, some excite you to dream, and a few take you into
total awareness, where the dichotomy between the subject and the object
ebbs away. My paintings fall in the third category, if categorise you
must..” Himalayan
sojourn When he was barely
14, he took initiation in tantra yoga under Guru Bhikham Giri. Later,
for two years he had his tryst with silence and meditation in remote
temples in Tibet and the Himalayas. It was a rather tough time. His
mother had strong reservations about his ascetic way of life and she
wanted him to be back at all costs, though his father had an implicit
faith in him. Back to mundane life when he was 23, he completed his
Master’s degree in Fine Arts and took to teaching. Dissolving
boundaries Ploughed fields
with sun-dappled streaks, and muddy ponds where hands could scrawl and
shape myriad forms were his first unwitting teachers. His native village
Chachoki, near Phagwara in Kapurthala district, afforded him ample
opportunities to learn art from nature. A chance encounter with writer
Mulk Raj Anand changed the course of his life. The writer found in him a
spark which could ignite the art world. Qadri’s art moved out of the
village confines to Delhi, Mumbai and within a few years, had takers in
Asia, Europe and North America. Female
principle The feminine has
unique power. It lends dynamism to the male principle. “You cannot
negate Shakti. Without Shakti, the universe comes to a naught.”
However, women trying to be like men only take themselves a step lower
than their actual self. “I think women are ‘more than’ men. So why
do the women aspire to ‘reach up’ to men? It seems so ironical.”
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Heights of risk SHE'S
in love with elemental forces. Tall, rugged mountains thrill her to the
marrow of her bones. Thirty-something Nari Dhami from Pithoragarh
district in Uttaranchal has a passion for mountaineering. As a child,
she would watch AP2 range spread its awesome gaze over her native Khela
village.
“I have been nature’s child. I would often think about Kali River gurgling its way to some beautiful land beyond our village. I had daydreams about climbing the much-visible- from-village AP2 range that stretched itself high in the blue,” says this gutsy mountaineer, who is the world’s first woman to climb Mount Everest from Kangshung Phase, and the only woman to have made her way to Mount Shivling. Her very first chance to learn about mountaineering came when she was an undergraduate student. She bagged a trophy in her maiden adventure course that was government-sponsored. Later, she kept attending a host of mountaineering courses, including 131st Basic Mountaineering Course, 90th Advance Mountaineering Course, 9th Search and Rescue Course — all from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, Uttar-kashi. She has been a member of various expeditions to Mount Mukut East, Sasar Kangri, White Sale, Mount Stok Khangri, Mount Sudarshan, Ruinsara Tal Kalanag, Mount Shrikhanth, Mount Shivling and Lampak I. She was the deputy leader of the team that climbed Mount Kedar Dome from South Ridge in October, 2000. “When I climb mountains, I seldom get that feeling of ‘having conquered something’. The immensity overwhelms me. I feel as if I were rolling on clouds. I am at peace,” she says. During her Mount Shivling expedition, she had a close shave with death. The ascent went well, but the descent was treacherous. She had a fall of 300 mt and still there was no stopping. Badly bruised and bleeding, it took two of her team members to halt her downward trundle. “There was a split-second space between life and death, and this space could have been an insurmountable chasm had the help from my teammates come a little late,” she reminisces, adding that her brush with death gave her a new perspective on life. Dhami, who is a head constable, Punjab Police, PAP, Jalandhar, is also into para gliding, para sailing and river rafting. “Nature inspires me. My passion for adventure draws its sustenance from my upbringing in the lap of nature, and my parents’ unstinted support,” she signs off. — M. Z. |
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