On a drive

English Romantic poet P B Shelley, in his famous lyric “To a Skylark”, described a poet as “hidden / In the light of thought / Singing hymns unbidden”, thus sparking the myth of poets divorced from their worlds and working in isolation. This myth was historically and practically untrue, because poetry has mostly been a community art, involving collaboration. For instance, epic poetry, composed over centuries by different people, or even Wordsworth and Coleridge — only a generation older than Shelley — who did not identify individual authors of the poems included in their Lyrical Ballads (1798). Yet, the myth of the individual poet, shrouded in his ego, gained wide currency.
 
Recently, two books have challenged this default assumption of readers and writers. The first one is Over and Underground in Mumbai and Paris by Sampurna Chattarji and Karthika Nair (Context). The second is the one under review. (Full disclosure: It has been published by my own publisher.) Sukrita is a New Delhi-based academic, poet and translator; Ladha is based out of Alberta, Canada. The third person on this team is Anandana Kapur, an award-winning filmmaker, who has illustrated this book. As its title suggests, the poets invite readers to abandon literary pretences and get into the car with them for a long drive. The road ahead, however, is not well-defined. “We are both very good at getting lost on highways,” claim the poets in an introductory epistle to the reader.
 
The journey through the 40 poems in this volume is neither linear, nor constrained by geography. One travels through Delhi and Alberta, of course, but also Schiphol, Amsterdam; Paris; the Himalayas; Nairobi; Wagah; and the Prairies. The poets are footloose, restless, curious — this is as much a book of poems as a travelogue. They travel together, alone, or with other people. In the introduction, they allow us a glimpse of it: “…there were trips to Lucknow… we were on a floating balcony… On another trip to Lucknow, I never found the balcony.” It is impossible to know who the “I” is here: Sukrita or Ladha? This anti-egotism is the hallmark of this book.
 

Country Drive Author: Sukrita & Yasmin Ladha Publisher: Red River Price: Rs 300 Pages: 32

The poems are divided thematically. For instance, there are three on Paris — two by Sukrita (“Arrival at Paris”, “Landing”) and one by Ladha (“Meet me in Paris”); and three on Draupadi — one by Sukrita (“Draupadi on a Hunt”) and two by Ladha (“Is Draupadi at Schipol?”, “Rendezvous”). The poets provide brief, often cryptic, introductory notes to each set of poems. For instance, for the Draupadi poems, Ladha writes: “Your writing of Draupadi walking out of the Mahabharat is a ping moment! Here is a giantess!” Sukrita responds: “This way, that way or not that way… just remain at the intriguing Schipol, somehow my transit airport, always.” Even in this one can discern the contours of collaboration. But I wish the authorship of the individual poems had not been mentioned. That would have pushed the envelope even more.
 
For the titular theme, the poets have written one lyric each, both elegies of sorts. In “Long Country Drive”, Sukrita recalls her childhood in Kenya, travelling in a blue Morris Minor on the highways of the African nation with her siblings: “Fighting for window seats / we jostled, all three of us / chirpy young ones / in the speeding car”. The reader is transported with her words to the drive, catching a glimpse of the montage of scenes outside the windows of the car: giraffes, savanna, insects, the wind, the women carrying water.
 
The images are stunningly bright, but also infused with nostalgia: “Bits of past come alive / through the open windows / even today / our arms stretched out / across the seven seas / the darkness of Africa / melting into black nights”. Personal history is the subject of this poem.
 
Ladha dedicates “Kroetsch, Summers are Wake-Up Hymns” to the poet Robert Kroetsch, who died in an accident in the summer of 2013. This poem is filled with personal reminisces: “Kroetsch… spew them with drunken poetry / like you and Purdy did at that fancy hotel in Edmonton. / I heard the waitress booted you both out.” In this, poetry is a sort of insurance against oblivion. Loss, as we know, is an undeniable constant. But, poetry — especially such as this — is a hope of immortality; a desire to cheat death. People must die, even long drives must come to an end; but their memory survives in verse.

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The writer’s book of poems, Visceral Metropolis, was published in 2017, and his novel, Ritual, is forthcoming this year