Episode 8 - K. Satchidanandan

This week in Poetry - Episode Eight. In the coming weeks, we shall explore the amazing variety of poems in English written by Indian poets from the Pithamahan of Modernism, Nissim Ezekiel to the very young like Sivakami Velliyangiri, with their 'thoughts weaned in silence, but spoken as poems'. This is a whole new generation of poets exploring creativity with utter disregard for labels and canons, reading aloud, or performing their poems and expressing themselves on a dazzling variety of themes; provocative, transparent, and at times damning. In this episode, we shall read some of the poems of K. Satchidanandan, born in 1946 in Kerala, he believes Poetry is performance. Poetry is theater. He writes his poems in Malayalam. And he himself translates them into English. A bilingual, literary critic, playwright, social activist, and recipient of many awards, including the Sahitya Academy Award in 2012, Satchidanandan is heard and read with respect by his readers around the world. Now to his poems. STAMMERA stammer is no handicap.It is a mode of speech.A stammer is the silence that fallsbetween the word and its meaning,just as lameness is thesilence that falls betweenthe word and the deed.Did the stammer precede languageor succeed it?Is it only a dialect or alanguage itself? These questionsmake linguists stammer.Each time we stammerwe are offering a sacrificeto the God of Meanings.When a whole people stammerstammer becomes their mother tongue:as it is with us now.God too must have stammeredwhen He created Man.That is why all the words of mancarry different meanings.That is why everything he uttersfrom his prayers to his commandsstammers,like poetry.GENESISMy grandmother was insane.As her madness ripened into death,My uncle, a miser, kept her in our store-room, Covered in straw. My grandmother dried up, burst,Her seeds flew out of the windows. The sun came, and the rain, One seedling grew up into a tree,Whose lusts bore me. Can I help writing poems About monkeys with teeth of gold?THE MADThe mad have no casteor religion. They transcendgender, live outsideideologies. We do not deservetheir innocence.Their language is not of dreamsbut of another reality. Their loveis moonlight. It overflowson the full-moon day.Looking up they seegods we have never heard of. They areshaking their wings whenwe fancy they areshrugging their shoulders. They holdthat even flies have soulsand the green god of grasshoppersleaps up on thin legs.At times they see trees bleed, hearlions roaring from the streets. At timesthey watch Heaven gleamingin a kitten’s eyes, just aswe do. But they alone can hearants sing in a chorus.While patting the airthey are taming a cycloneover the Mediterranean. Withtheir heavy tread, they stopa volcano from erupting.They have another measureof time. Our century istheir second. Twenty seconds,and they reach Christ; six more,they are with the Buddha.In a single day, they reachthe big bang at the beginning.They go on walking restless, fortheir earth is boiling still.The mad are notmad like us.GANDHI AND POETRYOne day a lean poemreached Gandhi’s ashramto have a glimpse of the man.Gandhi spinning awayhis thread towards Ramtook no notice of the poemwaiting at his door,ashamed at not being a bhajan.The poem now cleared his throatAnd Gandhi glanced at him sidewaysthrough those glasses that had seen hell.“Have you ever spun thread?” he asked,“Ever pulled a scavenger’s cart?Ever stood in the smoke ofAn early morning kitchen?Have you ever starved?”The poem said: “I was born in the woods,in a hunter’s mouth.A fisherman brought me upin a cottage.Yet I knew no work, I only sing.First I sang in the courts:then I was plump and handsomebut am on the streets now,half-starved.”“That’s better,” Gandhi saidwith a sly smile. “But you must give up this habitof speaking in Sanskrit at times.Go to the fields. Listen toThe peasants’ speech.”The poem turned into a grainand lay waiting in the fieldsfor the tiller to comeand upturn the virgin soilmoist with new rain.That's all we have in this edition of This Week in Poetry with Professor Nedumaran. Thank you for listening to some of the great poems of K. Satchidanandan. I hope you have enjoyed his poetry and there is more to come. And I shall meet you again next week with more voices from Indian Poetry in English.Till then, take care and goodbye for now. This is Professor Nedumaran signing off. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit poetryprofessor.substack.com