Sudeep dwells on the poetic prose of several prose writers across a few genres, exclusively for Different Truths.
I am grateful to some amazing ‘prose writers’ whose works glisten with poetic radiance. Before I mention those poetic souls, let me spare a thought for this year’s theme, ‘Poetry as a Bridge for Peace and Inclusion’. I think the best way to internalize the theme is to recall the words of wisdom of the erudite
monk and an exemplary prose writer, Swami Ranganathananda, who in ‘The Essence of Indian Culture” poses a pertinent question: ‘Does not this tragic paradox (man as a creator-destroyer) highlight the mystery that is the man and the need to discover the creative potentialities lying deep within him, and to evolve the techniques capable of educating him into becoming the fairest flower of evolution and the saviour of his undoubtedly rich civilization?’ I believe poetry, or any form of creative expression, is committed to addressing this monumental question of human development and excellence. I acknowledge that the prose writers (call them poets) are wedded to this radical, emancipatory, and uniting vision.
I offer snippets of some prose writers, mostly contemporary, whose works, or to call them ‘poetic fruitage’, do not cease to fascinate me for their levels of poetic sweep and grandeur. Their poetic prose is suffused with intimations of immortality. They ‘tell it slant’ (Emily Dickinson) with a sense of timelessness that is a source of perpetual poetic inspiration to readers. These prose writers delve deep into life and living for human kinship and inclusion. They show as much insight into their felt experiences as into the realities of the human condition.
Teaching Ajeet Cour’s collection of Punjabi short stories translated into English, ‘Life Was Here Somewhere (Speaking Tiger, 2023), was a revelation. There were moments too soul-numbing to analyse. So, my students and I were left stranded in frozen fear. Cour’s poignant grief narratives like ‘Eyes’, ‘The Scapegoat’, ‘Black Holes’, and ‘Dead-end’ defy explanation as the haunting sense of foreboding grips us to no end. The unfolding of foreboding is poetic, where fear is the imposing protagonist writing intangible inscriptions on the psyche of readers. The pulsating poetry through the extended metaphor of darkness, where characters are neurotically dependent on darkness, exudes a sense of empathy to widen our sympathetic consciousness, negotiate the menacing ambivalence between sanity and savagery, and
develop a deeper humanistic ethos in the face of irretrievable loss and suffering.
Of story writers, I am fond of Ambai (C.S. Lakshmi). I recall my first encounter with the beauty of transcendence in her Tamil story in English translation, ‘One Person and Another’. The soaring rhythm of poetry is ineffable as Arulan slides off the cliff like ‘a monstrous white bird, wings outspread’. Like Veeru, I felt and visualised how the writer starkly juxtaposed the grotesque trap of vulnerability with the grace of the inevitable. The ending of the story left me in a trance: ‘…red colour began to spread on Arulan’s white clothes as though a painter had mindlessly splashed paint with a rough brush.’ Ambai’s recent collection ‘A Red-necked Green Bird (Simon & Schuster, 2021), translated by GJV Prasad, is a unique collection
where the lyricism of Carnatic raga adds a unique edge to the unbroken continuum of poetry. No wonder, readers must unearth the poetic richness of Ambai’s ‘journey’ narratives.
Salman Rushdie’s memoir ‘Knife’ touched me with its poetry of healing love that prompts questions about human angst, intolerance, resilience, and the redeeming power of inclusion. It foregrounds an optimistic future worth living. At the end of the memoir, the act of resurrecting K’s buried self is a benevolent move to nurture empathy and moral resonance besides its allegorical extension. Talking of empathetic imagination, inclusion is writ large in Mary Oliver’s collection of essays, ‘Upstream’ (Penguin 2016). I love this work for its poetry of revelation, where the ‘unseen’ beauty of the physical world springs into visibility. Her poetry, meditative in nature, embodies the Wordsworthian impressionistic philosophy of perception. What is hauntingly magical in her lyrical essays is the resurgent vividness of poetry coupled with a revolutionary vision of salvation. Another impressionistic writer is Han Kang, whose ‘Thehite Book (Granta 2019) is peerless for its luminous poetry, inviting the inner workings of truths. It conveys a hypnotic spell in the reciprocity of visual and verbal texts in capturing the serendipities of the heart and the mind.
Rohit Manchanda has an infallible ear for poetry. Poetry brims over into his works. It is a monumental sprawl where the vigorous individuality of idealistic Maya is pitted against the growing uncertainty of the world in ‘The Enclave’ (Harper Collins, 2024). Poetry stems from Maya’s epic quest of mind and the experimental style of Manchanda, where the luxuriant beauty of language is sculpted with poetic panache to evoke the rhapsodies of life that can lend to a polemical disquisition on free will, hegemony, hybridity, and mobility. Manchanda’s penchant for mixed metaphors is uniquely distinctive of his style. Mark the
passage: ‘Already slender, he flickers away into a tenuous thread of life, the pink air nibbling away at his edges. The marquee gazes down intently upon him like a hawk might drink in an approaching chick.’(The Enclave). Poetry is induced by the exuberance of synesthetic imagination.
In Saikat Majundar’s agonising moments of angst in ‘The Remains of the Body’ (Vintage 2024) and the liberating moments of divinity in ‘The Scent of God’ (Simon & Schuster 2019), poetry is thrown in for good measure. While in the former, Avik is found floating in the pool. A gentle monster with secret coils of energy, unfurled, they could light flame in the water,’ poetry is kindled as devouring illusions about desire and dwelling consume characters like wildfires as their libido-life is desperately off-kilter. In the latter
work, the writer’s use of extravagant conceit of Nirvana for spiritual perfection reigns supreme. Yogi and Kajol enter into a metaphysical merging as the loaded expression suggests an initiation rite into the numinous service of sublime poetry: ‘His corpse melted into nirvana’.
This year’s theme of peace and inclusion is tellingly relevant in today’s ‘age of monsters’ (to
borrow the phrase from Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Wild Fictions’)! Poetry takes us to uncharted terrains. As I read Pico Iyer’s ‘learning from Silence’ (Penguin 2025), I am a co-traveller in the world of enchantment. It is a world of stillness where the spell of multi-hued magic lingers as the banality of life is blown away and an epiphanic sense of discovery dawns on awestruck beholders. It calls to mind the consummate teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose reflective journals inspire a profound sense of stillness where poetry resides in the beauty of the bounteous nature. Is it not ‘poetry’ that ‘discovers a new world within the known world’,
to borrow D.H. Lawrence’s aphorism? We need the illuminating power of poetry to replenish the withering humanity. The prophetic words of the visionary Tagore ring true: ‘And art is like the spread of vegetation, to show how far man has reclaimed the desert for his own.’
Picture design Anumita Roy
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