-Brian Mendonça
The body can arch
In pain or in pleasure
Both fictive mendicants
Of the coin of life.
On the 21 March – World Poetry Day - four of us poets
sat in the hallowed confines of the AC auditorium of All India Radio, Panaji. We were invited to read our poems to an
invited audience. The performance would be recorded and broadcast on the
relevant channels later.
The four of us did not know each other initially. But
at the end of the recording we felt we were on the same poetic page. Dattaprasad
Jog who anchored the show shared his ghazals
in Marathi. Ramesh Ghadi moved the audience with his poems in Konkani, bringing
into the rarefied space the dust of the Goan earth. He beckoned to the dead to return to relive their childhood in Goa.
Smita Darshetkar who recited her poems in Hindi, was
transfixed by the sea. She said the sea calls out to her but there were so many
responsibilities she had to fulfil before that. In another poem she reflected
on a humble stone/brick on the new Mandovi bridge. She envisaged how when the
bridge would be inaugurated with great pomp, no one would remember the ordinary
brick.
I shared my poems in English written in Delhi. Ironically when I was being recorded by AIR
Delhi, I read my poems on Goa. This is perhaps because the writer/poet writes
best from the third space. But the themes were universal. ‘Quila Mubark’ was
inspired by the Red Fort, New Delhi. It describes how the fort is a ‘trope of a
nation / but with access denied.’ ‘Jasmine City’ describes amma from Chennai selling gajras
of jasmine at the kerb in Delhi. In ‘Sleeve of Care’ I wrote about how the
homeless can sleep anywhere. Though Delhi is usually recalled for its opulence
and excess, the very poor also try to make a living, selling ice creams for
example.
My last poem ‘Dependant’ speaks of how, while having
lunch at Andhra Bhavan, New Delhi I am
enamoured by a woman wearing a beautiful pendant. Jog introduced my poetry with my lines quoted
in the epigraph above and followed it up quoting another short poem of mine:
9 to 5
The
needs of a man
Don’t
fit into a suitcase
Nor
a lunch box
For
that matter.
Earlier in the day I was at a seminar where I spoke on
ethics and media. I dwelt on the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.
Plato wanted poets (like Homer) and historians (like Hesoid) banished as they
distorted the nature of reality. Aristotle defended poetry saying it helps
mould character. Since I was reading on World Poetry Day I prefaced my paper
with Jorge Luis Borges’ poem ‘The Accomplice’ to argue we are all accomplices
of the media.
The multilingual mehfil
painstakingly organized by AIR, Panaji on World Poetry Day was not
publicized by any of the local English dailies I came across. This led to a meagre audience for the
significant event.
Comments