Is there a season for love? After all love has been expressed in times of cholera, during wars, and countless hearts continue to beat today in times of poverty, shame and hate. There is a lovely song about Spring being the planting season, Summer the growing season, Autumn the harvesting season and Winter the very problematic season. But love knows no season. Love is eternal, not seasonal. It is as boundless as the open sky. It never wanes, nor does it die because love knows no season.
That is the opinion of some poets. Others like Lucknow based Hindi poet Katyayani have different thoughts. The idea of whiling away one’s life pining for the arms of the beloved, in the midst of threats of a coup by fascists, makes no sense to Katyayani. In a powerful poem titled ‘Romantic Poems in Times of Murders’, Katyayani says things that have upset many, including women.
In the poem Katyayani questions all those women who even during a bloody Spring burn with the desire of the beloved’s touch. All that they look forward to is a meeting with the lover, crying copiously when they have to wait to do so. They boil at the thought of their body separated from that of the lover. They worry about how youthful they look even as smoke does not seize to rise from razed settlements, clouding the atmosphere with the scent of burning wood.
After a pack of murderers follow the unsuspecting one who is alone, the exhausted rapists rest. Emancipated women draped in modernity continue to be on the prowl, unconcerned about the politics of the day, their bodies lusting after more sex…
The poet warns that the murderers are at rest till they discover a new road leads them to the next target. The murderers need to ‘quench their thirst’ and to find another to disrobe. To be able to do this the murderers need women, lots of women of every age. Katyayani is considered an important poet today. She cannot conceive of talking shop when fellow human beings are made to bleed before her eyes.
Writes editor, Samyukta Poetry, Sonya J Nair on the online portal dedicated to featuring poetry in all its psychedelic colours that there is a flame lit underneath her cauldron of words and she stirs them to dole out portions of molten angst. She names things. Calls them out, contests them. Talks about anger, subjugation and the need to be free.
Her liberty is not one that comes from the sweetness of a docile apology. It is one that looks people in the eye as it walks out of the door slamming it with a resounding bang.
Katyayani is one of the best-known names in Hindi poetry.
The magnificent lines penned by Katyayani in another Hindi poem titled ‘Yeh Kiya Jaye Ki’, have been translated by Nair as ‘Let’s Do This’, let’s conspire-lay tunnels of gunpowder and blow up the world of silence.
Katyayani is at the moment on the road participating in the month-long march called the Bhagat Singh Jan Adhikar Yatra (BSJAY) that was flagged off on March 12. The Bhagat Singh Public Rights march is organised by students, youth and workers’ organisations. The yatris will meet with citizens not only in cities but in the bowels of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Haryana, Bihar, Uttara Khand, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Chandigarh, Rajasthan and Telangana.
The demand is for a secular India and for a law that will make the mention or use of any religion, community, or faith by a public leader a punishable offence. Other demands include the fundamental right to employment, the strict implementation of pro-worker labour laws, the control of inflation and every citizen’s fundamental right to education.
Katyayani was born in Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP). Today she is the talk of Lucknow’s literary world. What disturbs the poet most is increasing violence that is inflicted brazenly upon citizens even as society seems to be perpetually concerned about the welfare of women.
The job of a poet is to be aware of what is wrong with the world. A poet has got to engage with the politics of the day. After all, the root of the problem is greed and the politics that is spun by the greedy to show that they are not greedy.
Katyayani gets her name from the goddess Mahadevi, the sixth out of nine avatars of the goddess Durga. She is the warrior goddess in shaktism, the primordial energy that makes the world go round.
The Story of a Stork
A stork has added to the woes of Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav. The story of the stork goes like this. Last March, a citizen named Arif found a stork with a wounded leg in the fields of his village in district Amethi.
Arif brought the stork home and nursed it back to health. During the healing period the stork and Arif became close friends. Once back on its feet the stork had followed Arif everywhere and for the past year the two had shared meals together.
Soon the story of the deep friendship between the stork and Arif found its way online, and it created a storm on social media. The photographs and the comments on the internet caught the attention of Akhilesh, and he was so touched that he decided to meet Arif, and the stork in the Amethi village.
He went to congratulate Arif for saving the life of the stork. But some others thought that the SP chief went to Arif to ask for votes from the family belonging to a minority community.
That event of Akhilesh in Arif’s village made even more headlines and the ruling party could not help but take note of it. Fearful, perhaps that the SP may get a few more votes in future elections, the ruling party took immediate action.
Last week a team from the office of the Forest Department had marched into Arif’s village to take the stork away. The stork is now said to be at the Samaspur Bird Sanctuary. While Arif is heart-broken at being separated from the stork, Akhilesh is angry at the vindictiveness of those in power.
He had met Arif for the goodness of the man’s heart. Akhilesh was sorry that Arif had to pay for the politician’s visit to his village by being separated from his beloved stork.