Roused in Rock - A. K Ramanujan's 'Madura'
'O How did I make it?'
A couple of days ago, on Twitter, I came across an image of an ‘amazon archer’ carved out of stone. The image did not have the conventional explanatory caption. It was shared by poet, translator and founding editor of Poetry at Sangam, Priya Sarukkai Chabria:
For me, the appearance of this fragment in the scroll stream is like finding an orphaned silver earring glinting in the afternoon sun amidst misshapen bits of stone, behind some forgotten monument. Even as I write this, I am suspicious of this ‘wonder’, after Benjamin’s conceptualisation of the ‘aura’ of the original, and the revolutionary, technological value of art (against the context of mechanical reproduction). Perhaps this surge in feeling is more pronounced because of how commonplace such images of aesthetic value have become in the representational matrix of social media. There is still a value attached to the apprehension of original works (very figuratively, going to an art festival or a biennale, say). The profusion of ‘historical’ and ‘cultural’ imagery on the internet, however (paintings, sculptures, photographs - ‘media/text’), is lost in the transparency and ephemerality of the medium itself. Untethered from their ‘locales’ as faint reproductions of the intensities that make up the aura of the objet d’art, they float unwillingly into the oblivion of instant gratification.
But let us pause for a moment at this striking image of a warrior arching* her back, arrow poised, aiming, as it were, ‘across centuries’. Her eye is trained on the object of her pursuit. With one foot placed on the edge of the bow, cushioned by some protrusion, her body, strung taut, is roused in rock. There is a slight imbalance in the frame - the angularity of the body is offset by the direction, almost meditative, of the arrow shooter’s gaze. There are ways to time stamp this apparition - to enclose it in the dispersed meanings of its historical shadow, to imprison it in the language of cultural context. But to quote a line from Chabria’ s poem On Writing Poetry: Excavations and Predictions - “O How Did I make it?”
I am attempting a very thin sliver of analysis, in line with Barthes’ Death of the author, which was a significant contribution in the direction of the ‘reader making the text’. One is not dismissing the contextualisation and the anthropological and historical excavations of cultural association. However, if one hones in on the affective, and marries material with memory - this archer is another punctuating stroke in the eclectic queue of representations of figures engaged in dramatic, stylised movements. What is she thinking, as she waits for the right moment? What intense taleem has gone into the precise, stylised mode in which she contorts her limbs? Her body seems to be ‘prepared’ for the male gaze - a woman in war is acceptable as long as she’s sexualised in some way. But even these forays merely scratch at the surface of the representation.
Hold these thoughts as you read Ramanujan’s ‘Madura: Two movements'.
Note: The image has been extracted from the archives (lost with ‘poetly.in’) The silhouettes were part of certain ‘ornamental’ efforts that I tried in the first couple of months of this archive (for instagram) :)
The poem is rich in description - each image, as precise as the stroke of the sculptor. Perhaps you will see, through the ‘second movement’ why I was reminded of this poem. Some phrases are memorable, caught in the tension of that which ‘moves’, and that which is still. The poem oscillates between material and body in an archaic dance - turning both into a whirl of presence. The synaesthetic leaps bind both moments of spectatorship, scrolls of two distinct lifeworlds that are contradictory and different. What is achieved between these “movements” is a fraught reconciliation in the eyes of the viewer (the persona). The two oppositional moments are curled into arguments in the poet’s watching self, and the reader sees the final (unspoken) flourish as the third movement.
I read this poem many years ago, in a friend’s ancient copy of an edition of Quest magazine. It was nowhere else to be found, so I am happy to be bringing it back to this space. Ramanujan’s use of the simple formal device stayed with me, and found voice, again, many years later, when I witnessed police atrocity o,n innocent civilians and state violence during the anti-CAA protests in Delhi. One of the poems I wrote borrowed the dual modality from this poem. I wrote a lot during that time, out of anger, but also, to makes sense, to remember. To a person who routinely doubts even lived experience, writing is a way of handcuffing experience to the unreliable archive of the mind. My poems are my own way of apprehending the reality of those days. They do not presume knowledge or the claim to pain. Others who were there, know. Many continue to fight for justice. Inshallah, they will find it soon.
I reproduce that poem below (first published in Usawa Literary Review)
Dilli Pulis: Two movements
(December 21, 2019)At Mandir Marg police station, I saw,
as I stepped off a private bus spilling
with young anti-CAA protestors,
the oiled moustache
of a havaldar waiting for the student
whose tremulous gait cradles his fear.
His eyes gleam with the flower
of defiance, his lips atremble
with hope, and impertinence.
A smile quietly makes its home
in his eyes, as he turns to me-
“It’s my first time"
— A few kilometres away
in another cage,
Outside Daryaganj police station,
on the darkest night of this winter yet,
an orange nucleus of fire,
a piece broken from the sickled
moon, began to smart, and sputter,
now red, carved
into the palm of a tailor.
The night lay writhing,
ablaze in his eyes as he
stepped out of the police station
after a 7 hour rendezvous with
pain -
“It’s my first time”
On 20/12/2019, many underprivileged young Muslim men were taken into police custody at Daryaganj Police station, Delhi, from around Jama Masjid. They were kept in the police station overnight.
Articles that refer to this event:
Anti-CAA protests: 15 arrested in connection with Delhi's Daryaganj violence
CAA: From Daryaganj to ITO, the protest night that wasThe title and form is a reference to A. K. Ramanujan’s ‘Madura: Two Movements’
* Does the etymology of ‘archer’ have anything to do with ‘arching’? hm…
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