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Holy Cow and Other Poems THE praxis of poetry has undergone a sea change in the past couple of decades. From being the favoured form of literature and colloquial expression, poetry has lost its moorings and become a caricature of its former self.
Life today is being lost in the living. The youth speak, wear, eat and breathe in an alien tongue. Kitsch and ephemeral theories of fashion, dieting and art spout from the drawing rooms of the ‘learned’. The man on the street has quietly acquiesced. He sweats it out the whole day, buys monthly rations at a fancy store or mall, watches a movie shot in foreign locales and goes back to his daily grind. Everyone dances to bollywood tunes. Kids sing Johnny, Johnny `85 mechanically. And no one needs lullabies. S. Nihal Singh’s poetry captures these times. Having been a close observer of global politics, these poems are addenda to his observations in prose gleaned from his many travels within and outside the country. The contents are neatly sectioned in this slim volume of pithy poems. Nevertheless, it is the endings where the poet, with a rhetorical question or two, pushes the poems into a cul-de-sac. As in Past as Present, where he talks of the obtuseness of the visiting cards of the ‘has-beens’ that are handed out with a flourish, "`85when one’s life/is metamorphosed/into the dreaded word former/Must we remain/what we were/because we are/nobodies now?" And sometimes with a turn of phrase, childish almost, derides sculptures installed in our cities, "What is it that/propels/our netas to/go for works/that are same to same?" and in QED where he muses, "Lecturers call themselves/professors. So why can’t/drivers be/ pilots?" Frame by staccato frame, he captures the India that has ushered in Westernisation. And then gladly vulgarised it. Loud noise in the Habitat centre, cell-phoning during concerts, even the gaudy display of goods by those who have arrived, hurt the poet’s sensibilities. He takes potshots at those women who wager a clerk’s monthly salary at a kitty and men who haunt only nightspots on jaunts abroad. Even newspapers which print news more for its entertainment value are not spared. He also ponders over the have-nots, roadside barbers and construction workers, who sweat it out for a living. Nihal Singh’s poetry takes a pedestrian’s view of life—a bit critical, a bit humourous, accepting all and ignoring nothing. Zahir Islam Mammoon’s illustrations blend perfectly with the written word.
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About two decades ago,
poetry flowered everywhere. One waited eagerly for the ‘Holi’
mushairas, post-prandial ‘baithaks’ or even marriages when people
‘made’ their own poems (‘sithnies’) eulogising relatives—all
in good humour. ‘Dooms’ and ‘bhands’, the people’s poets,
brought cheer to every occasion. Mendicants (called ‘bauls’ in the
East) upped your philosophy quotient, with patrons ‘begging’ for
more. That kind of poetry sprang from the earth. It smelt of the mud on
your feet. You sang it when the skies poured; you hummed it with the
koel hiding from the scorching sun. A lullaby in your mother tongue was
the legacy from your grandmother that you passed on to your
grandchildren. That kind of poetry no longer exists.