Smita Padmanaban’s Walking Together to Eternity is another masterly structured verse composed by the young unpublished poet from Jabalpur now working in Dubai .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.
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.
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
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.