Smita Padmanaban’s Walking Together to Eternity; A Step into a New Epoch

Smita Padmanaban’s  Walking Together to Eternity is another masterly structured verse composed  by the young unpublished poet from Jabalpur now working in Dubai. The poem opens with the protagonist’s soliloquizing the present with tacit reference to the past. The poet skillfully structures the contrast between the speaker and the surrounding and  delineate the emotion with impeccable accuracy of perception.

 Crowded were the pavements

 With a thousand feet promenading

 Yet deadly serene seemed everything

 As I lay solitary in destiny’s enslavement

There is a precise but oblique reference to life in death and death in life as everything around seems to be nothing but ‘deadly serene’ and she ‘lays solitary in destiny’s enslavement.’ The first stanza of the poem makes is clear that the speaker of the poem is a realized soul enduring emotional stasis. The second stanza of the poem further highlights the idea of emotional stasis as the ‘people around’ her ‘marched along’ but she ‘stayed numb jaded in the fair gown.’ It is remarkable that despite numbness the speaker jades in the fair gown which reminds us of the image of rose used by Shakespeare (The Twelfth Night) and later by William Blake (The Sick Rose)

People around me marched along

As I stayed numb jaded in the fair gown

Free from the cage I moved around

Looking how candid were the moans

The speaker makes use of the image of ‘cage’ in the third line of the stanza which draws a sharp contrast with the similar image of destiny’s enslavement in the last line of the first stanza. The emancipation from the cage in the second stanza paves way for the solitary submission to ‘destiny’s enslavement.’ The idea of emotional stasis can be traced by interpreting the two interpenetrating images of confinement used consecutively in first and second stanzas.

The speaker shares the idea of stasis with the people around her as ‘all eyes looked somber but none in pain.’ It is however noticeable that the stasis in this stanza has neither philosophical magnificence nor any emotional exuberance but it paints a grim picture of the surrounding veneered with indifference intensifying the alienation of the speaker. The poet makes another very subtle use of the image of confinement in the third stanza with an entirely new imagistic significance. The poet imparts a new figurative implication to the idea of confinement and limitation;

All eyes looked somber but none in pain 

Everything’s a mockery- a show insane

I was happy escaping life’s slavery

Lost of identity but could move sanely

The speaker is ‘happy escaping life’s slavery’ and the state of being knits syllogistic patterns from the structural point of view and also from the point of view of the development of the poem within the structural confines. The speaker is happy escaping life’s slavery but she lay solitary in destiny’s enslavement before being ‘free from the cage’ and moving around. The cyclic interdependence of confinement, emancipation and confinement leads to the realization of the inevitable and renders gravity to the tone and mood of the speaker. The loss of identity in the last line of the stanza quoted above, refers to the merger identity, that metaphorically represents love in characteristic sub continental cultural set up and as discussed above, the poem begins with unfortunate and inevitable escape quest and reinstitution for a new identity of the realized soul as despite the loss of ‘identity’, the speaker ‘moves sanely.’

The next stanza of the poem subtly fuses various images of time and space into a single organic unity. The movement of time is contrasted with the stagnation of the protagonist’s soul. 

The twilights kissing the land good bye

Darkness preparing its final siege

Birds squealing for homeward reach

And evening winds humming dying lullabies.

The twilight kissing the land is complimented by the darkness preparing its final siege. The skilful blend of the images of time and space paves way for the final movement of time and the consequent stagnation of the speaker. The penultimate stanza of the poem clears the clouds of lingering uncertainty hovering over the mind of the speaker and prepares him for the final movement. The stanza begins with the exclamation which on one hand reminds of the exclamation used by Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach where the speaker, like the speaker of this poem is a realized soul chafing against the pressures of the past and yet preparing for a new course of action for the future with a new and somewhat retarded zeal. Arnold writes;

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

It is remarkable that the poem of Ms Padmanabhan neither has the notes of sadness nor the nodes and antinodes of philosophical remorse but the in the purest sense it is a revelation of the realized soul true to social, cultural and even personal predicaments. The speaker denies any possibility of regret and remorse;

Oh dear-finally, here comes our day,

We’ve served our terms, He’s kept His say

He has been Great: our desires granted

As together we’r freed from our confines

The speaker is ready for the reconciliation without grudges and grievances and even without any note regret and remorse.  The last stanza of the poem is the much anticipated nostalgia of the speaker about the past;

With you I wished to walk all life

That wasn’t meant for us this time

Brood not my love coz soon we’ll

Together walk hand in hand to eternity.

The poem ends at the node of reconciliation with the inevitable and preparedness for what is to come. The reference to the world beyond the visible does not seem to be the realization of anything mystic but it intensifies the sense of reconciliation and the consequent readiness for the future that the speaker has to live if not alone than definitely not with the one she aspired for.

The poem reminds us of Andrew Marvel’s The Definition of Love which is knit around the idea of impossible union between two lovers and the impossibility of the union of the two lovers imparts Platonic value to the emotion of love enshrined in the poem;

My Love is of a birth as rare
    As 'tis, for object, strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair,
    Upon Impossibility

.

 However in Marvel’s poem fate is directly treated as the main villain. He writes;

For Fate with jealous eye does see
    Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;
Their union would her ruin be,
    And her tyrannic power depose.

 The poem of Ms Padmanabhan is so deeply steeped in the contemporary  spirit of manifest in the complex web of circumstances that fate is identified with the action and  realized in the circumstance thus created. It can easily be assessed that the emergence of the poet in the horizon of Indian English literature will unambiguously create a new reputation with distinction and the much needed efforts of emancipating the genre with commonly pervading eccentricities and whims that is due course have acquired the defining significance as far as Indian English poetry is concerned.

The Opening of My New Novel

It is an untold fable of hopes and despair; of initiation and withdrawal; of generations changing with time and of generations not changing with time. It is the fable with times unknown to some and known to some few. Stories never end. Stories never begin. They live with die and seem to die with age and memories. It is the same tale I know not when it began and I know not if it would ever come to an end. It is too big to have a beginning or an end; it only has a middle. Characters never die nor are they ever born. They are realized on different points of time; they are manifest along different points of space. They are simply realized and they are simply unrealized.

But they exist

It is an untold story splashed on the glossy transparent surface of time. It is an unheard tale about the characters peopling the middle; an unseen play about the unseen characters, having unknown events; something new, something old; something known; something unknown; something wise; something stupid.

But they exist.

Stories never go smooth and idle (if they do then they are not stories). There are streets and stairs; there are mirages and marry go rounds; there are interpretations and interpenetrations. But there is movement; there is pace; there is speed. They move and they vibrate; they rush and they turn. And they vibrate; sometimes in a transversal manner and sometimes longitudinal. But they vibrate and enthrall us. And we live in them; we inhale the fragrance and the sick air; we people the cosmos confined between the two hard ends and enjoy the confinement of the free soul; the existence of the inexistent; the fragrance of the meshed paper shaped into an organic look with pink shade.