Review of the poetry pamphlet 'Bulbul Calling' by Pratyusha

Pratyusha’s pamphlet ‘Bulbul Calling’ published by Bitter melon Press, is at once a dense and a fluid reading where emotions carve out a translucent space, reminiscent of the portrayal of Nature often evoked in the poems. It reiterates the magnificent power of words when used with perceptive control to breathe life into fresh, unusual imagery.

 

This pamphlet brings to life the poet’s main absorptions – nuances of mythology, familial emotions, history, Nature, and language itself, and she succeeds superbly in most cases.

The usage of Urdu and Tamil words – which make themselves an integral part of the work right from the cover art - strike not as forced inclusion for the sake of inclusion, but as a natural path to an honest emotive display. There has been considerable debate about italicising or hyphenating words of other languages used in a largely English text; is it ‘othering’ the language? The annoyingly simple answer is that it depends on the intention of the writer and the character speaking the said words; and it does hold true to a large extent, in my opinion. I do not see it as othering but rather as acknowledging the distinct language being used, a deliberate act of not allowing it to camouflage into English. 

This is precisely why the usage in Pratyusha’s poems come across as necessary to the text as a whole.

For example, in her poem a(version), the printing of the word ‘Mahabharata’ in Sanskrit helps it retain its unadulterated identity instead of being anglicised.

The poem ghazals has verses in Urdu with English translations. This lends the poem a rather dainty atmosphere, subsequently anchoring it with the physical space of Andheri and especially through the last line ‘his breath is here’.

In the poem pakeezah;s thumris, ‘mazaar-e-Pakeezah’ and ‘tawa’if’  wouldn’t ring with the same authenticity if translated (​‘Pakeezah’s grave’ and ​‘courtesan’ respectively).

The other quality of the poems is the deceptively simple language which is made more luminous by the fresh, unusual, and personal imagery that it effectuates; making the reading experience a quenching of an inner thirst hitherto unknown. 

A poem that particularly illustrates the poet’s greatest strengths is a(version). It talks about the character Ganga from Mahabharata who drowns her sons in the river; and meanders seamlessly into the present day space and the poet’s own environmental concerns. It combines mythology and contemporary nature poetry, threading in personal scenes of her listening to her grandmother’s stories.

Her fascination with Ganga is depicted through the reaction of her grandmother, who ‘is puzzled by the stories I choose to fixate on in the महाभारतम.- Ganga’s story, for instance.’

‘Who is this story really about?’ The poet asks, before going on to describe how -

‘The sons sink into wave-foam, pulling currents from their long hair, swallowing dead leaves, the ashes of corpses, washed-and-cut glass…’

Of Ganga, she says she‘…is more singular. She waits for her fate, the silken texture of inevitability brushing her ankles.’

The next stanza begins - ‘She hears, dully, the forest’s shadow call …’

The ‘she’ here has travelled from the realms of mythology into the present day, as is evidenced by the lines that follow:

‘…where her body still adamantly flows, carrying now the vestiges of plastic along with her children’s ashes, cigarettes, posters turning back into tree, her voice fogged with pollution’s hot veil.’’’ 

Returning to the point where the poet is wondering about the story, the verses personalise the elements of the poem – the mythology, the drowned sons, the mother, the body, and the dirt thus – 

‘today I hold my own body choked with dirt / where do I wash myself.’

Any accomplished poem will have achieved either of the two things - simplification of grand, complicated ideas; or a challenging perspective of simple, common ideas. Pratyusha’s poems hold encouraging glimpses of both. 

Her attempts at bringing in her cultural background are commendable, but some lines, as in the poem if still forest (winter) - ‘remember the thirteen-year-exile that the five brothers lived … & two women’ might push the uninitiated reader slightly to the edges than the heart of the poem. How then, can poets depict their culture without it being merely explanatory, and simultaneously make the poem immersive?

The poem pakeezah tackles this task by giving information of the scene/character of the old Bollywood film that has inspired it. The poet calls it ‘re dreaming’ and brings forth a lavish internal mind space.

‘what pieces of my life do I lack?’ the character asks. 

‘every night at three

a train leaves its tracks and travels through my heart ...’ - alludes to a haunting love, and ends with a renouncement not entirely instinctual – 

away from Pakeezah.’

‘I am drifting— [smoke]

 

The pamphlet indulges in richly textured expressions and explorations; and foretells a thoughtful young poet’s exciting future.