Signing in the Air is a striking collection of poems in which the poetic voice moves fearlessly across landscapes, cityscapes, seasons, timelines, and explores the transience of both life and words. Professor Lal is a celebrated academic, a teacher mentor for generations of students, an ardent activist and crusader for women’s empowerment, and a renowned critic and poet. This collection, however, has a mystical and meditative streak that is unique and different from her earlier forays into research and criticism: the keen social observation and insight into challenges faced by women are now informed with a ‘deeper consciousness that responds to the surfaces of living’, as the author observes in her Preface to the collection.
The Preface in fact, begins the introduction with a quote from the Bhagavad Gita (chapter 2 verse 20), which is an assertion of the immortality of the soul (Na hanyate hanyamane sharire) and the idea of the soul being separate from the body. This comes as no surprise from the co-editor of the Goddess anthologies: the trilogy of books exploring Sita, Radha and Lakshmi.
Lal’s is a voice that speaks with the confidence of being embedded in her cultural roots and her formidable research into the vast terrain of Hindu mythology and Indian folklore. In both of her anthologies, Mandalas of Time and Signing in the Air Lal manages to link the past seamlessly with the present, interrogating cultural fables while still conveying a comforting sense of continuity with the past. In Signing in the Air, there is also a poignance with which death, infirmity and the limitations of the human body are viewed. The poet plays with the tool of binaries when speaking of the past and the present, life and death/death-bed, objects and intangible feelings, women in myth counterposed with real life, the solace of friendship and the pain of losing friends, history and fiction, and finally, signing on paper as an assertion and fixing of identity versus the free play of meanings in the air, to convey, as Lal puts it , ‘intimations of spirituality as well as social truth’ which ‘coexist without definable boundaries’ (Preface, p. 13).
The book of poems begins with an Invocation which is a re-writing of the Devi Stuti from Devi Suktam, of the Durga Saptashati, from the Markandeya Purana: specifically, slokas 6 to 26 of the 5th chapter of Durga Saptashati, each of which begin with the refrain, Ya Devi Sarvabhuteshu. Just like the original text reaffirms the presence of the Goddess in all beings and creation, even in things one dislikes, Lal praises the Goddess as the ‘feminine power’ that ‘creates and destroys’; and even though it might seem that ‘evil seems to flourish/and goodness struggles’, ultimately the Goddess ‘knows whom to vanquish/in the final reckoning’ (p. 17). The invocation seeks divine protection not just for the poet but for all womankind:
The sacred halo
Keeping away
Violence, brutality, torture
Of the everyday woman (p.17)
The simple words effortlessly touch upon the unique experience of Indian women who face the duality of a culture that celebrates the divine feminine and simultaneously flounders to protect women from violence and indignity. The Stuti adds a note of optimism and wisdom that suffuses Lal’s writings and commitment to social causes. The anthology ends on a personal note celebrating her bond with her own mother. Just as the faith in Devi and what she represents anchors the present in the past heritage, the poet feels held by a mother who passed on but who is a living presence at her home Shyamoli. The tears on the cheeks of the speaker seemed to be caressed by a saree pallav. The poems seem to come full circle with the memory of the ‘womb that sheltered’ providing the same strength that one invokes the Mother Goddess for. She also pays tribute to women who battled odds and left an impact, as for example her mentor Mohini Giri, a pioneer for the cause of widows and the founder of Ma Dham shelter for widows in Vrindavan. In ‘Remembering a Mentor’, she celebrates Giri’s gentleness and elegance, and counterposes her traditional feminine attire to the radical contribution she made to challenging mindsets about widows.
Like the ‘saree’ that clads her mother and mentor, the poet celebrates other objects associated with the women in her life. Grandma’s Blouse, in the eponymous poem, becomes for her grandma, a tool for negotiating race, class and gender identity. By adapting the lace ensemble made fashionable in the Victorian era by memsahibs to a ‘beautiful and modest’ blouse paired with an Indian saree, while still covering her body, the grandma ‘learnt new ways/ without dumping her legacy.’ After all, as the poet reminds us, ‘the blouse is the assertion/ of independence by the/ educated nineteenth century woman’ (‘Grandma’s Blouse’, p. 110). Similarly, in ‘Bindi, The Third Eye’, Lal infuses another everyday object with a new symbolism. The dot on the forehead becomes more than a mark of conformity with tradition and submission. It is interpreted as a marker of the third eye, the site of the ajna chakra and evolved consciousness and psychic powers (in chakra/yoga philosophies). The poet reminds women and onlookers that the inscription on the third eye has been read as a marker of ‘enlightenment and supreme knowledge’ (p.125) in Hinduism and Buddhism. The poet urges women to recognize their own power and to ‘invite the chakra’s volatile energy /to thwart violence against women/Awareness is all’ (‘Bindi, the Third Eye’, p. 125).
An object from the past provides an opportunity to compare the richness of the past with the impersonal and lackadaisical attitude to belongings in the present. The solid, comforting presence of the artistic ‘brass studded and filigreed’ chest in ‘Pitaara the Wooden Chest’ evokes the romance of a bygone era and its ‘gracious living’ (p. 51). ‘Orange Juice’ is another delicious poem that explores the theme of nostalgia and the function of memory in the evolution of consciousness. The speaker meditates upon the importance of living in the moment and its effectiveness:
I enjoy every sip
Of the pips that touch my tongue
Of a well-tasted life,
And a wistful letting go,
unable to mark a difference between them. (p. 47)
The poem speaks of longing, of distance in relationship, of loss and a resigned acceptance of what life brings all while using very sensual imagery.
The nature poems in this collection are refreshingly original in their use of images and similes. In ‘The Dancing Maina’, the maina bird’s head and neck movements are compared to those of a kathak dancer:
neck steady
feet unmoving
Epitome of the Sundari Greeva in kathak (p. 29)
However, the delightful description in the nature poems is not overly sentimentalized. Almost always, there is a glimpse of the element of danger:
her stage is the cushioned grass
her audience—the eagles circling in the sky (p. 29)
In the first section titled ‘Whispers of the Earth’, the six Indian seasons feature in the title of the six poems under Indian names. Each covers a different part of India and captures both the acutely observed beauty and ferocity of nature, its power to transform, deprive but also resurrect, as for instance in the ‘Birds of Paradise in Winter: Shishir’, where the birds of paradise flower that thrust their heads through thorny pikes. This poem, like the other nature poems reveals a twist in the tail and ruminates on the nature of language itself:
Paradise is a cheat
Birds, a misnomer
Language, only a blister (p. 26)
In contrast in the poem ‘Climbing Roses’, the roses serve as a source of inspiration and an example of how plants respond to affection. What started life as a ‘bedraggled bush, barely alive’ now greets the poet:
With a profusion of white blooms
And plenty of thorns
Your petals are simple, single
Unbruised by the sun
You are a survivor
You are a mirror. (p. 27)
Nature proves to be a trail that leads to meditation on the self, survival and transience. If roses learn to grow blooms as well as thorns to survive, the tigers in the poem ‘Ranthambhore’ are less lucky. With wicked humour Lal observes that modern tourists kill tigers ‘with cameras, dust and destination events’ (p. 81). Nor does the speaker exclude herself from the ironic gaze. In ‘Phantoms in the Snow’ she laughs indulgently at the escapist paradise in Summerhill where wrapped in ‘warm quilts/ made of soft, woolly cloud covers’ a ‘she’ is lost in reverie and reading ghost stories while:
The snow peaks smile at hearing
Yet another story of self-delusion. (p. 30)
Humour and satire are directed at city women as well with their ‘words distilled from sugar’ and the ‘forgotten art of conversation’ (‘Chocolate Wrappers’, p. 41). ‘Naani’s Magic Meals’ contrasts the bonhomie shared by cousins over a simple home-cooked meal served by their grandmother which is contrasted to the paradoxes of modern day life where the ‘cousins haven’t met for years/ scattered as they are in the diaspora’ (p. 43). With precision, Lal traces the phenomena where:
Rasoi is a concept
That has converted to a branded kitchen
A showpiece of marble and glass where no one cooks
(p. 44)
Contrast as a device is extended to all urban dwellers in ‘Jalebis in Jaipur’ where ‘non jalebi eaters/ flock to Gyms and GPs’ while farmers can still enjoy ‘the potful of sinless jalebis’ (p. 40).
Just as in the Devi Stuti that begins this collection, all aspects of life, with its ups and downs, good and bad, sadness and happiness comprise a divine cycle. The dominant mood of these poems is of observation from within a situation and without, from a space of the soul’s vantage point. There are moments of pain and longing for death and oblivion as in ‘Cloud Portraits’, ‘Inviting Yama’ (p. 105) and the desire to ‘stay’ in the ‘calm sleep of anaesthesia’ in ‘Mimicking Nirvana’ (p.
95). There are portraits of the girl child and the value of social intervention in ‘The Little Girl in Pigtails’, ‘Street Girl and Her Teddy’ and ‘Palna at Qudsia Bagh’. There is a section with poems on mythological figures: Hidimba, Ahalya, Alakshmi, Holika, Parvati and the point of view is contemporary and feminist with the added element of poetic surprise. For instance, Ahalya questions her liberation thus: ‘you pushed me back into a woman’s interrupted servitude’ (p. 65).
The poet traces her own journey and the experience of her parents’ support and guidance, her baba smiling as she ‘signs’ her ‘farewell in the empty air’. Signing in the Air is a collection that everyone can relate to as it fills the heart and soul, in more ways than one.
Namita Sethi is Professor, Department of English, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, Delhi.