There were a series
of readings organised around clusters of writers, and one such session,
far removed from the world of celebrity literati, remains the most precious
of my Frankfurt encounters.
Tamil poetess Rajathi
Samsudeen, who writes under the pen name Salma, and I , were to read
in a small bookshop in Wiesbaden. Although the readings at the Indian
Pavilion and the universities and public places, attracted large audiences,
the bookshop reading drew an attendance of three-and-a half persons.
We had in anticipation brought our own listeners along, and on that
dark October evening in Wiesbaden, we read to each other more intimately
than we could ever have done anywhere in India.
Salma’s poetry,
which I had heard her recite in the lobby of the Intercontinental, sounded
different here. It reverberated with hurt, not the put-on pain of posturing
poetry, but the real, raw thing.
Salma stopped studying
in the ninth grade, and then, married into a conservative Muslim family,
she wrote poetry fearfully and under a pseudonym. Her novel, Irandaam
Jaamankalin Kathai, was published to great acclaim — it carried
no author’s photograph or biographical note. Her family was unaware
of her alternative life. But her life and her work gathered momentum,
and she is now a major, irrepressible, iconoclastic voice, as well as
a successful activist. A collection of her stories is due to be published
by Zubaan next year. What a long journey, and how skillfully she has
negotiated it….
Excerpts from
Salma’s poetry:
An evening, another evening
Another evening
falling, fading
into the crevices of loneliness.
Feet, lacking strength
to cross walls
circle and circle
within the darkness of the inner rooms
The breath of the room’s
proprieties rises, sulphurous,
in the hot wind
Meaningless to dig out
frozen dreams
or try to melt them down —
there can be no change of opinion
In the universe, it is possible
living creatures, alone with their prey
lead happy lives
in amicable conjugality
These tense nights
that are yet to come,
the baby’s restless whimpering
will be transformed, perhaps
into a joke turned against me
the present is as tangled
as the world of a cat
that lurks in the kitchen.
A thick skin forms on the tea
waiting to be drunk.
The smell of scorched food compels.
In reception rooms
full of animation
there is no one at all
whose acquaintance I can claim
The solitude of the bathroom
awakens a fear
of the loathing of nakedness
Houses risen high within cages
extend themselves
only to frighten me
Within those walls
in the gardens that have grown there
there is no shade to sit
The open spaces
of the roof-terrace
secure no privacy
There is no chair anywhere
on which I can sit
and swing my legs
If only the baby
were to lend me his cradle
it might be possible to sleep.
