Obsession with death: Sylvia Plath

I have two Indian friends in the USA who regularly keep me informed about what is going on in the land of their domicile. One is a Punjabi, Amir Tuteja, a civil servant working in Washington. Every month he sends me a packet of clippings from American journals and a few pages compiled by himself under the pseudonym puraana paapee (the old sinner). It has all the latest unprintable, Clinton-Lewinsky, jokes. The articles are usually about ageing, impotence and Viagra. I often steal ideas from them for my columns. The other is my raakhi sister Prem Subramaniam, a Tamilian, who is a senior saleswoman with Barnes and Noble chain of bookstores. Besides ringing me up at least once a week to get news of my family, she sends me parcels of books which she has read and enjoyed. Mostly they are love-poetry, heavily marked to draw my attention. In the last packet she sent me was Ariel: Poems by Sylvia Plath. She rang me up twice to ask if I had received them and how I had liked them.

So I put aside other books and read Ariel. Besides her name, I knew nothing about Sylvia Plath. Sylvia was born in Boston. Her father was a refugee from Nazi Germany who died when she was only eight years old. She was deeply disturbed by his death, developed a loathing for Nazism and an obsession with death. After schooling in America, she went to Newnham college, Cambridge. There she met the poet, novelist Ted Hughes (made poet Laureate in 1984) and married him. For some years they lived and taught literature in American universities. They then returned to England and lived in Bevon where Sylvia tried her hand at gardening and bee-keeping (she wrote some poems on the subject) and then settled down in London.

She was suicide-prone and made two attempts to take her own life; they were the theme of her poem Lady Lazarus. She also wrote a novel The Bell Star. She finished it in the winter of 1962-63. It was the coldest winter of the century in England. It brought up the death wish on her. She had a third go at killing herself. And succeeded. In Lady Lazarus she writes of her earlier attempts at suicide:

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well:
Earlier in the same poem she hinted that she would make a final attempt to take her own life:
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is number three
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

Some of Sylvia Plath’s poems are full of bitterness. It is not known whether her husband was unfaithful to her but some other woman triggered off a diatribe to The Rival:

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
Youth leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected.

She goes on to demean the woman trying to steal her man from her:
The moon, too, abasesher subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
Your dis-satisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mail slot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.
No day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

Paradise plundered

Ever since my wife inherited the house in Kasauli where we spend a part of the summer months, I nurtured the ambition to turn its garden full of flowers into a fruit orchard. It took me many years to understand why previous owners had gone in for chrysanthemums gladioli, hydrangeas and hibiscus and not tried apples, pears, peaches or grapes. Monkeys and langoors rule the Shivaliks. They have no appreciation of the beauty of flowers nor their fragrance but have voracious appetite for fruits of all kinds. They don’t bother much about their being raw or ripe.

For the first few years I went to nurseries in Kandaghat and brought saplings of apples, plums, peaches and greengages. I had experts to advise me in the sizes of the pits to be dug and the kind of compost to feed them. All the trees survived and flowered in spring. Fruit trees in flower are a sight for the gods. Hailstorms took their toll of blossoms; nevertheless, a lot turned to fruit. Rhesus monkeys and langoors were quick to discover new pastures to plunder. They descended on my little paradise in the early hours of the morning before anyone in the household was up and denuded trees of unripe fruit. I had two dogs, and armed the mali with a shot gun to frighten them off by shooting in the air. They watched for the opportune moment when the dogs were snoozing and the mali taking his siesta. And took whatever remained. Hardly ever did I get a plateful of apples, plums or peaches on my table.

I turned to growing vegetables. I got seeds of the best variety of corn from Canada and the USA. Radishes, carrots, broccoli, Brussels Sprouts from Italy, Chillies from Australia. The first year they sprouted in good health. The next year local strains got mixed with them; by the third, the exotic strain was gone and they became pure Himachalis. Then vegetables began to be looted by monkeys. Now all I get are cucumbers some corn cobs and pumpkins which grow round the servants quarters and there are always some humans around to drive away simian robbers.

My garden was left alone for some years as there was nothing monkeys could find worth eating. Flowers blazed away in golden yellow, fiery red and crimsons. There was peace. Suddenly this summer monkeys re-appeared. And so did Himalayan Tree pies in flocks. I used to welcome their visits to the bird baths I had installed in the garden. The usual customers were hill crows, mynahs, white-cheeked bulbuls and Pekin Robins. Tree pies came occasionally in pairs. They are beautiful birds: red beaks, blue and white feathers; two-feet-long tails curving like scimitars. They announced their arrival by loud rancus, screams, chi, chi, chi, chi, chichick, chichick. This time one morning as I came out of the villa, I saw a couple sitting close by my tea table. They flew away. Then I noticed four more in the shrubbery. I understood the reason of their visit. I had all but forgotten that over 10 years ago I had planted a fig tree I had bought from the nursery of Pinjore gardens. It had taken firm roots but rarely produced any fruit.

This year it did — clusters of figs some turning a rich purple as they ripened. As I plucked a few I noticed many others were half-eaten. I assumed they had been eaten by insects and had the fig bush sprayed with insecticide. Then I discovered the real culprits were not insects but Tree Pies. I thought they were shy birds and avoided humans. They are in fact very cheeky. When I shooed away a flock of them, one continued sitting on the water tank a few feet away from me cocking its head and malevolently eyeing me as if asking, "who the hell do you think you are to prevent us enjoying figs?"Now they invade my garden silently. They have issued invitation to other birds and even monkeys. My season for savouring home grown figs has been cruelly cut short. Of the many dozens I saw ripening I was able to salvage only four.

I have decided to resign myself to my fate. I will only grow flowers to gladden my eyes; no fruits or vegetables to tickle my palate.

On Teachers’ Day

A nation’s fate, it should be clear even to a fool
Is fashioned in a school,
In a college or a university
Of which the teacher is the key.
But where is he
The teacher that used to be?
In any case, where is he or she
In the social hierarchy?
An object of pity,
Who’ll like to marry off his daughter
To a mere master?
And when the society’s curse
Makes him worse and worse
Is it not a small mercy
That country Radhakrishnan
He is remembered ritually
Once at least by the nation.

(Contributed by Kuldip Salil, Delhi)