Dusk has just fallen and Delhi is being lit up, fragmented and swaying like Japanese lanterns between newly-blossomed Semul and Shahtoot in pockets of urban footfalls. The Piano Man jazz bar twangs on loudly as tall and lithe Arjun and Nikhil (I didn’t ask their last names) move like very tall graceful lizards between the wrought iron seats and tables and upholstery that drape us all like a 1970s movie screen.
The duo manages the venue and looks after the business, a newish experiment in this part of the city. For, now the orange haze of the jazz bar lights and C-sharp keys wait for an evening of poetry. I, too, wait to read from an unaccustomed iPad, fingering my ethereal letters, as it were all a lover’s message written in vanishing ink.
Writing about pockets of poetry in Delhi in this manner should usually do the spring season justice. But this has been a spring of discontent in many ways. Even before winter wore off, the University of Hyderabad’s Dalit PhD scholar Rohith Vemula’s suicide ushered in a time fraught with un-poetic highhandedness by the government, aided by the police and a highly bigoted campus administration. Wherever there was a whiff of dissent, things fell apart. And of course, obnoxious and concocted trials by the crowing media, especially the television channels, fuelled passions on all sides.
Where poetry is unknown
I am told by a few friends that New Delhi’s Safdarjung Enclave market, which is quite swish, does not have poetry as its USP. The island of a jazz bar in the middle of a spot for the upper middle-class to shed some money is a source of wonder and adventure for a lot of first time patrons learning to differentiate between, literally, the clink of a piano key from that of a beer glass.
Sheher Dilli, as some of us like to call it, has not however, been without poetry pockets since time immemorial. And by pockets I do not just mean geographical signposts of subcultures, but also the seamlessly diverse poetry traditions across what we now know as the National Capital Region.
This ranges from the Lodhi Gardens to Purana Qila, the nooks and crannies of Mehrauli and Chandni Chowk, and the Dargah of Nizamuddin Aulia, to the scores of streetbound un-templed singers of bhajans and pravachans, as well as present-day writer-singers spinning geets and ghazals in coordinates beyond the city. The topography extends far and wide and engulfs slums, bazaars, festivals and forums stretching east to west, north to south, and across seasons and festivals.
No wonder reading my own poetry at The Piano Man, an event curated by Raghavendra Madhu’s Poetry Couture, triggered musings such as these. Also, the question: how can poetry continue to matter in our moribund lives? Call it poetic justice, I see poetry flowing into our lives to energise us against state muzzling, keeping the spirit of dissent and free speech exactly the way it should be – strong, cheeky and unapologetic.
New platforms
Madhu’s recent event showed he has his finger on the nerve of non-mainstream poetry, through the numerous young poets who aren’t part of the who’s who. And that’s highly promising. The haloed portals of legacy book stores, Sahitya Akademi forums, university seminars, poetry festivals, etc., have long been the usual stamping grounds of poetry reading and performance.
But young patrons of poetry in Delhi have travelled beyond these venues and the usual suspects who can be seen there. This is where Madhu’s indefatigable efforts to locate newer exponents of poetry, art, film and music are evident.
A stand-up comedian himself with a Masters in Public Health, he has conducted poetry events at spots like Hauz Khas Social, Pot Belly in Bihar Niwas, and Flaming Chilli Pepper in Vasant Kunj, to name a few. Currently, Madhu is unrolling his more streamlined and carefully structured events with embassies and consulates in metro cities. The idea is to have more film-art-poetry combination events thrive under proper patronage.
Meanwhile, he tells me, new and known poets will continue to read at Chi Asian Cookhouse at Janpath, which is set to create a deeper pocket of poetry in Delhi – one that is in consonance with the traditional song-poetry culture in this part of the country.
Indeed, looking back from Ghalib and Khusrau to Faiz, Delhi has forever resonated with Kabir and Meerabai in its little lanes and bylanes. Waris Shah and Bulle Shah are still on the lips of mendicants, beggars and arthouse performers, however weird that spectrum might seem. In fact, on my way to the reading at The Piano Man, when a well-aimed water balloon bursts at my feet and I smiled, I was reminded of Holi with the jollity of an urban rendering of Bulle Shah’s lines:
Kaafi attributed to Bulleh Shah
... “Am I not your lord?” asked the Lover,
And all maids lifted their veils,
“Everyone said, yes!” and repeated:
“There is only one God.”I will play Holi beginning in the name of the Lord,
— Translated by Maaz Bin Bilal
saying bismillah.
It is almost an irony that, owing to a viral social media and the brutal repression on students, particularly the one on the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus, the season for Agha Shahid Ali and others such as Paash and Neruda has returned. A Country Without a Post Office is no longer just a title or refrain, but an exploration, an exhortation.
Delhi’s pockets of rhymes, where Bangad ballads and Dalit Sikh singer Bant Singh’s voice seeking social justice ring out in their folksy appeal, poetry from names such as Akhil Katyal, Aditi Angiras, Gaurav Deka, and Aruni Kashyap, among others, are making ripples.
At the beginning of this personal essay I mentioned the poetry night at the jazz bar. Everything seems perfect here. I read to the throbbing wood and wrought iron décor. But everything simmers too. I hear from fellow poets lines of seduction as well as sedition, themes straddling Ginsbergian passion and LGBTQ love – amorous and pervading. This Delhi should rise and shine in its poetry power, create more poetry post offices to correspond meaningfully. Just as my folk heroine Tejimola found her home in this spot as a modern metaphor.
Nabina Das is a poet, novelist and short story writer.