Description

Kanji Patel is a poet who skilfully reconciles opposing centripetal and centrifugal forces of life and literature in his work. He creates linear divine forms in his poems, much like a Polynesian sculptor would, leaving ample room for the imagination to fill in the gaps of the world he has created. His ingenuity lies in his ability to seamlessly blend the real and surreal, so that dreams and reality become continuous, much like a child waking from sleep. — Dileep Jhaveri, from the introduction

Kanji Patel has four poetry collections in Gujarati to his credit — Janpad, Dungardev, Desh and Dharatina Vachan — besides works of fiction and ethnographies. Dahelu, translated in English as Rear Verandah, is his best-known fictional work. He received the Katha Award (1996), Umashankar Joshi Prize and the Dhumketu Prize (2008). Patel founded and published Vahi, a journal of poetry, rituals and multilingual expressions. He also organised the Kaleshwari Adivasi Fair in Mahisagar district from 1998 to 2017 to provide a platform for the cultural expression of Adivasis, denotified and nomadic tribes from across India. Former Director of Adivasi Academy, Tejgadh, Patel is currently curating contemporary poetry of Adivasi, denotified and nomadic tribes in India in translation from several languages into English and Hindi.

Dileep Jhaveri was born in 1943 and writes in Gujarati and English. He has published four books of poems, a play and a travelogue in Gujarati. In English, he has published four books of poems and autobiographical stories from New York. He is on the editorial board of Muse India and Nadwa from Hong Kong. His works have been translated and anthologised into several national and international languages. He has received multiple awards and has represented India and Gujarati in various conferences, poetry readings, universities and institutions in several countries. Additionally, he has also translated Gujarati and Marathi poets into English.

Kanji Patel in Conversation with Syam Sudhakar

Your poetry is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of rural, Adivasi and nomadic communities, reflecting a unique socio-economic and cultural perspective. How do you see this aspect of your work fitting into the landscape of contemporary Gujarati poetry? Additionally, can you share insights into your career as a poet and how you perceive this translation project of your poetry?

I was born in 1952. I am from the first generation in my community to receive education after independence. Hailing from an agricultural Patel community, my family did not have enough land to sustain ourselves. We survived and were educated through money borrowed from a moneylender, which kept us under significant debt until I was 24. Poor monsoon rains often shattered our hopes for a good crop, and many years were marked by scanty rainfall and government-run scarcity relief efforts. I have witnessed the material poverty of my own family and those around me. I felt a deep connection with the Adivasi and nomadic people living in the vicinity, sharing in their dances, songs, festivals and rituals. The area’s music, language and folk traditions left a profound impression on me. I felt equally at home with the oral culture I was raised in and the written culture I encountered through formal education. My fascination with rural, Adivasi and nomadic ways of life has persisted from childhood. The performed arts and simple lifestyles of these communities are fertile ground for new art to emerge.

‘Living words’ help us live and make us aware of our existence. Orality, consisting of the live performance of words, is a fertile land — a force that enables a sensitive soul to articulate the ‘heartscapes’ of simple, creative and self-sufficient people. It brings in fresh yet complex nuances, previously untrodden and unimagined in standard written discourse. I have been immersed in this sphere of the spoken and oral since childhood. I knew, and still know, that I breathe this air. I feel my heartbeat through the rhythm of the oral tradition.

The rural, Adivasi and nomadic people — their rituals, narratives, artefacts, orientations, performances and genres — are unique in content, articulation, modes, meaning, relevance and faith. The mainstream has its literary literature, while the folk and Adivasi traditions do not possess the same kind of literariness found in mainstream literature. By choice, I have been writing poetry with the texture and sound of a folk, Adivasi idiom. I naturally feel and think in this environment, which guides my actions and behaviour in writing poetry. It is an ever-growing trance, albeit with awareness. The power of suggestion in the oral tradition, its sounds, typically local and difficult to communicate, and little-known but vital facts, I bring into my poetry, which gives it a different socio-economic-cultural aspect of meaning. The organic connection of their oral narratives is a fundamental value to all art that aims to reach others’ hearts. Everything else may change, but the power to connect endures. Even when discussing poetic norms, one creates new norms and breaks the old ones. This is how the poetic mystery works on poetic minds within oral realms.

I also understand that this is just one of several ways of grasping poetic wonders and weaving poetry from them. It changes from place to place, from people to people, from time to time, and from poet to poet.

The selection of poems for translation has been guided by considerations of translatability and communicability in the target language, as I understand it. The translator Dileep Jhaveri, who is one of the finest Gujarati poets, has also provided an introduction to these translations.

Reviews

Kabir Deb in Scroll.in

Patel’s poems address the human desire to be free. They cut, they sting, and sometimes they simply observe. The collection gives voice to worshippers of nature, many of whom “civilised” society has forgotten, the advisasis. The poem “Come to the Village Fair”, for instance, can be considered an ode to creation. The reader is free to occupy either voice.

From the Book

Let the Crag Survive

On the top of the crag,
is a lake,
rippling waters,
even in a burning summer,
a river shimmering in the dale.

In the lake,
there is a fish.
The day
when this fish will swill the seawater,
the whole world will be submerged.

On the crag,
let the fish live.
Let the crag survive.
Let the crag survive.

Slash the Shrub

Motherless child
keeps prodding the Earth.
At some event,
the Earth spoke
and a seed emerged.
It became a shrub.
The vine bore muskmelon.
The child thrived,
devouring the melons.
The people suspected,
seemingly this child eats nothing
but why is it flourishing?

Cull this creeper of cantaloupe.

Privilege

Bunches of flowers clasped
Grandfather’s burgeoning mango tree.
In the scorching summer,
the mangoes ripened.
The fruits were plucked
and some were left on the branches for the birds.

Rains came
but not a single bird fluttered on the bough.
The mangoes kept swaying.
Where did the birds go?

At least a smattering.
Come
and peck at the fruit of your privilege.
I have shattered the sling.

Won’t you come?

Yei, the Ruler

There are three deities —
Mountain, River and Earth.
Mountain, River and Earth
are the three divinities.

Promptly providing the wild fruit,
this Mountain is a god.
Offering water to the living,
this River is a celestial.
Granting grain to gnaw,
this Gaia is a goddess.

Merriment for the twelve months,
hooky of the draught.
Why do you patrol the mountain
O wicked ruler?
We the self-made have survived and will
O tall mall keeper.
Mountains blazon name and base
O bleached panel holder.
Flout not the edicts of the prudent
O evil-aimed one.
What are the reigns and fabled fabs
O wicked ruler?

Our Turn Now

We were burning coal in the beginning
We came out to blow off the ash
The coal flared again
We said: This is magic
Ash said: I showed you the path
We said: We are sitting at the tie between ash and coal
Ash said: I am quenched coal
We said: Our turn now

Hang Him

The cattle sheds were swept,
Mother was aided,
the first letters of a poem
were scored in a stable.
From the river started a school
with the head resting on a rock
dowsing in the mirror-like waters,
sipped the sky above,
explored the body,
felt and sang
the anguish of people,
beats, plants and trees.
For the meals,
bread and onion.
The whole time was love-time.
Thus, poetry became
such a peril that the hearts of folks
were inflamed.
The ruler said
till the death
hang this killer poet.