In my childhood, when we asked our grandmothers for a story, they would often laugh and say, ‘Yenna kadai solattum, poranda kadaiya, poohunda kadaiya?’ (What story should I tell you? The story of my birth or the story of where I entered?) (meaning the in laws house into which she got married). We would get a medley, sometimes about an old widowed aunt or sometimes mythology like the story of ‘Dharmaputra Yudhishtra’, all in one breath. The illustrated book, An Empire Speaks: Kavya Narratives of India’s Cultural History by Rupinder S Brar and edited by Paul Michael Taylor, felt like I was in a story telling session of old times. Some stories are told of an ancient past which we all have accessed only through narratives in one form or other, and then moving through the gamut of time there are poems of nostalgia and personal experience. It is a book that brings together the emotional heart with well researched facts.
Dr Rupinder S Brar is a cardiologist, writer and poet who lives in California. Quoting Bhamaha, a seventh century poet, he says that his intent with this book was also, ‘… to grasp the nature of the world and all tastes (rasa), one by one…’. He chose the verse form to write because he says, ‘Narrative poetry… can be read aloud, sung to music, even enacted. Poetry can create an immersive experience that scientists have demonstrated can forever alter the brain’s chemistry.’ His reasons for choosing poetry being what they may be, his verses are easy to read and evocative at the same time. On Shankara, for example, he writes:
A murder of quarrelsome crows,
Resembled the land of Aryavarta.
Reduced was Buddha to an idol,
And Vedanta, to an argument.
Blundered even the scholars,
Floundered around, learned men.
In the same section there is one titled ‘Of Metaphysics—Who is I’. The poem begins thus:
I think therefore I exist,
The rest may well be a dream.
Thus, spoke up once, the intellect,
In words of an enlightened giant.
A hasty conclusion, it seems
Came a doubtful voice from the East.
Who does the speech belong to?
What is the I that speaks in you?…
To the contemporary youth, for which this book is also meant, the above verses may make no or less sense. Therefore, Taylor’s introduction carries a para on the context, brief but explanatory and enough to kindle the curiosity of the young reader.
Taylor also explains the design of the book which is truly interesting. He writes, ‘We have designed the present book with selected illustrative artworks relating to the themes of the poems… Consistent with the connections to diasporic extensions of the south Asian experience, we have selected a few great artworks from ancient sources and with their kind permission, also used works by “The Twin Singhs”…contemporary British artists …’ The arrangement of the artworks within the book is such that it does not compel you to adopt it as the imagery to the poem…both the poem and the illustration are in the book, the choice to match them is yours since they do not necessarily appear on facing or subsequent pages.
The elegantly illustrated book is divided into five sections. The first is titled Ancients, bringing together poems on a wide range of people and ideas, from Ganga to the Taj Mahal and Shankara to Khusrau. The second section is on the Nanakians. The third titled Acacia around the Orchard is described thus, ‘Like a fence guarding the field, acacia trees around the orchard, a serpent coiling the sandalwood tree, a hound watching the door. (So must a Sikh protect the saintly and Dharma.)’ This section has poems on Banda Singh Bahadur, Shivaji, the Marathas, Ghallughara 1762 and so on. This section is followed by one titled Imperium Imperfect which begins with an apt quote from EM Forester and an illustration by the Singh Twins titled ‘Jalianwala: Repression and Retribution’ on the facing page. The quote reads, ‘One touch of regret—not the canny substitute but the true regret from the heart—would have made him a different man, and the British empire a different institution.’ The last section is titled Diasporic Reflections. An interesting poem in this section is titled ‘On Pakistan—Three Homelands I Claim’. The title is self-explanatory. The poem ‘Immigrant Nostalgia’ ends with the verse:
Riding on the shrinking beams,
Went a message from a homesick heart,
To go tell a certain town in Punjab
A heart still beats for it, from shores afar.
An excellent production, an interesting format; cerebral and comforting read.