P K N Panicker

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PKN Panicker: Slant of Light

Book Review

M Mohankumar

Slant of Light

Anthology of Poetry

Thiruvananthapuram: Folio Publishers-Distributers. 2011

Pages: 85. Price: Rs 160

Relaxed and philosophical

M Mohankumar is a familiar name in contemporary Indian English Poetry. This is his seventh book of poems, others being Pearl Diver (1988), Half Opened Door (2000), Nightmares and Daydreams (2002), The Moon Has Two Faces (2004), The Diwan’s Discomfiture and Other Poems (2007) and Late Rains (2009). Mohankumar retired as Chief Secretary, Government of Kerala, and lives at Thiruvananthapuram.

M Mohankumar’s Slant of Light is a collection of 77 poems, his seventh. I had occasion to place a review on his earlier anthology Late Rains in Muse India (Vol. No.34, Nov-Dec 2010). I am extremely happy to see that the poems in this one show a much greater degree of maturity in thought and consequently less sentimentality. Whereas Late Rains reflect an agony, almost of a personal nature that could be discerned not only in the lines he wrote but also in between, left unwritten, the poems in this collection are reflective of a comparatively relaxed, lighter mood and more philosophical. Mohankumar is geared up to have a relook at the world and adapt himself to the changed realities.

Let us take these old bells down.

They have been ringing the same old way

for centuries, oblivious of changed times......

Let us take these old bells down, melt them

and mould them into new bells, new bells

to produce music pleasing to gods,

whom we have installed in our hearts.

    (Let Us Take Theses Old Bells Down, p 85)

His observation in the first poem in this book is evocative.

Life triumphs in the midst of suffering death.

    (Palimpsest, p 11)

He is witness to the fall of butterflies to the ground with broken wings. For him every hope about tomorrow is a butterfly that -

soars and soars

till the cross-wind

blows it off its course.

    (Hope is a butterfly, p 12)

Mohankumar turns extremely sarcastic when portraying certain incidents that hurt his sensitivities – happenings in his backdoor (Thiruvananthapuram) when the famous Malayalam poet A Ayyappan died on the footpath on October 21, 2010 and the goof-up by the Kerala government in organising his last rites. I do not wish to go into the details, but the following lines etch an un-erasable picture in our minds.

They have put him in cold storage,

and have got busy with other things.

Surely they will give him a fitting funeral

as soon as they can spare the time......

Peace after a long struggle;

quiet after a frenetic life.

Silent and helpless, he waits.

Icy fingers bite into his flesh

    (Cold Storage, p 15)

Everything that could be said of the poet, his admirers, nature and depth of his bonding between them and the goof-up - everything that needs to be told, is neatly and precisely narrated in those 22 lines. Nothing is left untold. Those icy fingers bite not only into his flesh but also into the consciousness of the inept in the government – sarcasm at its best. He continues:

On a flower bedecked platform

lies the dead poet, draped in white,

peace on his face, eyes slightly open.

There is a touch of smile on his lips,

As though he is watching the whole

‘charade’ with mild disdain.

    (Death of a Poet, p 60)

Through ‘Design’ (p 16), ‘Razing the House’ (p 17), ‘Rite of Passage’ (p 18), ‘The River’ (p 19) and ‘Cries and Rattles’ (p 20), the poet travels through the routines of life and explores the meaning and depth of relationships, the demolished hopes and frustrations, the ecstasy of growing up and the blossoming of life that reveals her tender charms, shyly, to the lover’s gaze. He would not mind sparing a few lines to look at what could happen after ‘departing from this world’. How did everything begin with? With a bang? But why bother about all that?

Did the universe begin with a bang? ......

Far-off events. They don’t bother us,

earth-bound mortals that we are.

What bothers us is closer home:

    (Cries and Rattles, p 20)

Even as the poet turns philosophical, he looks to the real world around him with a profound submission:

We have come all the way.

When you lead, I cannot resist.

    (Rendezvous, p 21)

But Mohankumar is not one who would lean back on the chair and while away the time. His mind is full of questions. He is not inclined to leave even the great Buddha without throwing an inconvenient one at him – and relevant too.

the Buddha spoke of death.

The body, he said, falls apart

like a worn-out cart.

What of the brand-new carts,

and carts that are sturdy,

that get smashed

and fall apart?’

    (Falling Apart, p 22);

and in ‘Tremor’ (p 22) he concludes that the way of the world is such that ‘as we rub our blurred eyes we could see our future reduced to hazy heaps of ruins.’ Even though ‘we board with hopes of a bon voyage, seldom are we in command’ (The Voyage, p 23). ‘The Night Train’ (p 31) is yet another example of the sharpness with which he approaches a subject and the force that he puts in every word that he uses. Except for his penchant to associate the darker side of life with night, it could equally have been a day train as well.

In the silence of the deep night,

I often hear it hurtling past,

faster than a bullet train.

Sometimes, it stops by.

(I would hear the creak of brakes.)

Then it carries a neighbour away.

One night it will stop at my gate.

And then I will sleep-walk

into this long-distance train.

    (The Night Train, p 131)

His affinity and love for nature could be measured in his nostalgic narratives of the green that was around him in his younger days. He finds time to look back at ‘The Album’ (p 42) and reminisce the good old days.

In those far-off days, when I was a child,

people in the village lived in houses

thatched annually with palmyrah fronds.

The trees grew everywhere, on vacant

lands, on the ridges of the paddy fields,

straight into the sky, dark and gaunt,......

Versatile leaves; sweet, fleshy fruits;

refreshing toddy, the sturdy trunk itself-

these were their generous gifts to us...

In the dead of the night I could hear

the whining of the palmyrah trees-

till they disappeared one by one.

    (Palmyrah Trees: An Old Man’s Tale, p 34)

As a child, he would often see

flowers glimmering in the evening sky,

strewn over Heaven’s blue, polished floor -

mandara, parijata…

    (Flowers in the Sky, p 37)

His subtle humour is equally pleasing.

I remember certain poets

whose imagination flies so high,

and never touches the earth,

not even once.

    (Rare Bird, p 63)

Modern hanging is a fine art.

So say the experts.

They should know.’

    (Modern Hanging, p 70)

Mohankumar defines poetry in his own way (p 26). Maturity of thought, wisdom born out of long experience, his grip on the craft as reflected in the choice of words, control on emotions and reigning of sentiments, subtle humour and avoidance of unnecessary embellishments are the hall-mark of every poem in this anthology. What I have attempted is to merely pick up a few ‘unwritten words and unspoken thoughts’ between the lines and in the space encapsulating the written ones, leaving the rest to poetry lovers and critiques to pick up.

This space

around the poem

and between its lines

is not empty.

It is filled with

unwritten words

of unspoken thoughts.

    (The Space Around the Poem, p 26)

END