I Am in Exile

He never was a poet of God’s making;
The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
With this prophetic blessing – Be thou Dull;
Drink, Swear, and roar, Forbear no lewd delight
Fit far thy bulk, do anything but write.
— John Dryden
 
From Plato’s imagined Republic, not a single poet could truly be banished. Even today, with his thinning bag of tricks and a few lingering vagabond extravagances, he appears, undeterred. The city’s thousand blind Dhritarashtras search for him, wishing to seize him once as a “friend”—only then to shatter him to pieces.
 
And the poet? He hides himself in the shadows, presenting to society a decoy, a counterfeit self: a cold, lifeless, iron effigy of the poet. For self-preservation he remains beyond the grasp of blind hands—or, exploiting their blindness, extends toward them only his iron duplicate. Is this why, in resistance, the poets of the world today have all withdrawn, half-fox and half-ascetic?
 
My intent had been to write about the poets and poetry of the nineties. Yet, in thinking and drafting, it became instead a character sketch of the poets of the nineties. Perhaps because the precarious elasticity of poetry reached its crisis in this very decade.
 
This was an era when Western motion and Eastern middle-class emotion fused to plant the seed of a hermaphroditic culture in the fertile soil of the global village. Deliberately, strategically. Wars and militancy may rage endlessly over nation, religion, language, geography—but how strange, that in the matter of globalization, there is no opposition anywhere.
 
Where, then, has the poet’s place been assigned in the miracle called the twenty-first century? Globalization will gather all the streams of culture and civilization at the feet of the Statue of Liberty, in one magnificent tavern. There, a cosmopolitan elite will sit drinking wine infused with the fragrances of every culture on earth.
 
In that utopia of “free democracy,” the poet will have his place decided through open competition. He must contend with his imaginative fancies against the seductive allures of beautiful strip-teasers. In such an unprecedented social order, poets are not exiled outright, but in order to survive they must adopt cunning concealment. Our dazzled eyes are blinded by this new civilization’s brilliance. The modern order has given us competition—handed to the poet as a boomerang.
 
With the onslaught of the audio-visual media, he is cornered. Two paths remain: surrender, or helpless suicide. And one third path too—the brave one. Whose true answer only he himself can hear.
 
A blind man’s question—Who are you? Who are you?
The true answer only the blind can hear
In shadows, in shadows.
A narrow winding path, endless bamboo groves on both sides.
The stick in his hand—his wealth, his ally, his staff.
What others call light—what is that? why is that?
This darkness has given him a delicious road,
a fragrant household,
It has quenched all thirst, eternal waters of darkness.
— Arvind Guha
 
The poet-character of the nineties, stick in hand, is profoundly individualistic, self-absorbed, and possessive. Insecurity is the motive force behind their writing. Women, nature, beauty, love, sulking, private sentiment—these supply their themes. For some unfathomable reason, poets of the nineties appear politically indifferent.
 
I do not believe they are socially unconscious. Rather, I feel their social thought is ensnared in a massive dialectical dilemma. The tension between the individual and the collective is not only visible but overwhelming. They are afflicted with “collective individuality.” At the same time, they suffer the harsh, neglectful gaze of their predecessors—a gaze that offers no affection, only relegates them to the margins.
 
Over this head hangs,
Tyrant and ruler alike,
A permanent right of possession. Only I have none.
— Shamsur Rahman
 
If attack breeds defense, then the modern poet has had to spend most of his time in self-defense. First of all, economic self-defense. Poetry does not fill one’s belly. The mentors of the Middle Ages and the modern period have suddenly vanished. It turns out they have entered globalization’s glittering tavern and not yet emerged.
 
In India’s socio-economic structure, there is no constructive provision for a writer’s or poet’s livelihood. In the democratic order, the poet’s identity remains trapped in a feudal mold. Even if you set up a competition between a TV-serial actor and a poet, society grants recognition only to the former. A “professional actor” is understood; a “professional poet” is not.
 
Say aloud in civilized company, “I write poetry,” and the inevitable question arrives: That’s fine, but what do you do? No painter or singer is asked this, but the poet must answer. Thus the recognition of poetry is hidden away, overshadowed by society’s demand for “acceptability.”
 
A man with a government job—a poet. A liquor-seller’s wife—a poet. A proofreader at Anandabazar—a poet. A senior bureaucrat—a poet. A heart specialist—a poet. A wealthy idler’s housewife—a poet. Everyone, it seems, is a poet. Which means—no one truly is. Everyone only a hobbyist. And if this is so, then it is clear why there are no poets left in this country. They are, in truth, exiled.
 
If poetry is socially recognized only as a “hobby,” like watching cinema, then why is this hobby marketed, packaged, sold? Why must hobby masquerade in the garb of competition?
 
Poets today have neither readers nor publishers. The very qualities that make poetry—imagination, creativity, expressive mastery, sensitivity, passionate intensity—are recognized socially by antiquated standards, in a society not educated enough to discern the true poet. We often hear that poets must remain “responsible” to society. At the same time, society reserves the right to kick the idle poet at whim.
 
And so, poets of the nineties have turned instead toward the rich and powerful institutions, seeking protection there. This is not security, but the hunger of insecurity. Yet such hunger does not safeguard poetry. The distance between creative subtlety and the crude desire for security is so vast that, like a cook intending to prepare ambrosia but ending with khichuri, the poet often stumbles.
 
This “third way,” then, is the mask of the dialectical life of a poet. Like Ratnakar the bandit seeking worldly wealth, and yet, in his creative incarnation, Valmiki in meditation. Thus, in the age of globalization, the poets of the nineties are forced to inhabit this contradictory ornament.
 
Let me add a personal note. Though I had been writing poetry since class seven or eight, when at twenty I began publishing prose in various journals and magazines, never once did a single poem of mine appear in print. I have written far more poetry than prose—reams of notebooks filled. Yet I never published them, fearing slander. I prefer to call myself a prose writer, not a poet. As if being a poet were a kind of inferiority, a social burden too heavy to bear.
 
Even the most successful poet of the nineties, in the broad sense, is not a socially validated figure. However cherished by institutions, his recognition is minimal. Society’s ignorance of his work, its indifference, hounds him relentlessly. The fortress he builds around himself is so impenetrable that even fellow poets cannot enter into the depths of his soul. Not cast out as ultimate refuse, perhaps, but condemned to a social exile nonetheless. Not by Plato’s logic, but by lived reality, the poetic mind today is exiled.
 
Thus, a young poet of the nineties has written:
 
All contradictions have returned my mask,
Behind it remain man, and foolish poet alike.
The nerves of the sky laugh in humiliation.
How many paths must be walked before one returns to his own door?
How long this exile of pathways?
Let us now sit waiting for its end.