Soma: Poems by A.K. Ramanujan | Poetry |
Edited by Guillermo Rodriguez and Krishna Ramanujan |
Penguin Viking (2023) | ISBN-13: 978-0670098040 | pp 208 | Rs. 599
 

Mythical Explorations and Poetic Revelations

Ramanujan and Soma
 

One of the editors of the book, Soma by A.K. Ramanujan, Krishna Ramanujan, writes in his essay, “Hummel’s Miracle: The Search for Soma”:

In August of 1971, in the afterglow of the psychedelic sixties, my father, the poet-scholar A.K. Ramanujan, swallowed a capsule of the hallucinogenic mescaline. … He … popped one [capsule] on a kind of whim. Then he fell asleep. When he awoke, … [o]ver the next twenty-four hours, he recorded his experience in fragmented, confused and overwhelmingly sensorial verse. By the end of this episode, his writing, like tributaries flowing into a river, had found a main channel, and he began composing lines that led to a series of poems on the theme of Soma, which he explored for the next decade. (Krishna Ramanujan, 2023, p. 3)

In Ramanujan’s “Mescaline Notes,” published as part of Journeys: A Poet’s Diary edited by Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodriguez, we find faint impressions of the aforementioned “main channel.” Towards the end of his notes, he writes:

“It’s such a rich culture – world –
where’s nature? Why is it all sculpture?
Where the seas, the trees, the grass (why is
it only a handkerchief of God) – ” (A. K. Ramanujan, 2019)
which brings us to the book at hand, which is Soma by A.K. Ramanujan (edited by Guillermo Rodriguez and Krishna Ramanujan).

Legendary Indian poet A.K. Ramanujan’s literary career spans from the 1960s to the early 2000s in the form of poetry, translation of prose and poetry from and into Kannada and Tamil, essays and criticisms, and academic writings. However, there has existed a gap in the records from 1973-4 to 1981. After the publication of the Saiva Vachanas in Speaking of Siva (1973), his next book saw the light of day in the form of the translations of the Tamil Vaisnava Bhakti poet Nammalvar’s works as Hymns for the Drowning (1981). Knowing Ramanujan, and as his first wife Molly Daniels-Ramanujan points out, he always worked with “multiple projects, texts, disciplines, languages, connections, and deadlines” (A.K. Mehrotra, 2023, p. xxi). Hence, the said gap is only a little less than unusual. That is where Soma emerges as a vital addition to the history of Indian literature (in English or otherwise), with its 22 previously unpublished poems on the mythological Soma plant.

The poet directly employs, in the poems of this collection, several of his translations of the Vachanas and Nammalvar’s poems. In Journeys too, we see a poem called “Jazz Poem for Soma” of which we see an earlier draft featured in this collection. These instances make Soma the essential missing link.

Soma and Ramanujan

Soma is many things, often interrelated by semantic, semiotic or narrative means. In the context of Indian culture, Soma is the divine plant that yields the Soma-rasa when pressed which is believed to have been consumed by Vedic Brahmin priests as part of rituals, as well as an anthropomorphic form of the same. In Vedic literature, Soma is also the moon deity or Chandra (also the lord of sacrifices and herbs, as he came to be identified eventually). In the Puranas, Soma is Visnu, Siva (Somanath), Yama, and Kubera. In Ayurveda, it is a miracle drug. In astronomy, Soma is taken to be a planet. Soma is a cognate of another mythical plant of Indo-Iranian origin, called Haoma, as mentioned in the Avesta, sacred text of the Zoroastrians. In Europe, Soma seemingly has some roots in ancient Greece. Soma is also a mind-controlling drug in Huxley’s Brave New World.

A.K. Ramanujan’s Soma, however, is none of these while carrying all of these aspects within itself and more. Ramaujan’s Soma engulfs the world and makes it its own; it is at the same time the plant, the god, the drink, the divine, the profane, the mythological, the mundane, the Vedic Brahmin priest, the drunk, the poem, the poet, the reader, and everything else.

The poet writes in “Soma,” the second poem of his collection:

“Soma, Soma is no god.
cannot manage a goddess
has no lotus no water can wet,
no third eye, no Lakshmi,
more like you or even me.
…

“Soma, Soma has no similar,
grows ordinary as mystery,
ancient familiar,
the always here.

“Soma is the same as you
and you, and you,
when you make
the right mistake,
fall to the ground,
and find your altitude.” (A.K. Ramanujan, 2023, p. 56–57)

The above lines set the stage for the erratic, mescaline-induced verse that is to follow in the form of the rest of the Soma poems. Through these lines, the poet communicates his intentions for what follows, which is an experiment with the mythical Soma plant, his fascination with the contemporary interpretation of Soma as a mushroom (fly agaric) by Robert G. Wasson, and his shapeshifting ideas of it, which enable him to demythologize Soma.

In two of the poems that follow, he writes,

“Soma, I said, is no Siva.
Yet Siva is sometimes Soma,” (A.K. Ramanujan, 2023, p. 61)
and,
“Soma, I said, is no Visnu
But Visnu can play Soma,
enter the nests of flesh
to make them sing…” (A.K. Ramanujan, 2023, p. 63)
He then follows it up with,
“Wish
we could talk about Soma and such,
without embarrassment, without capitals…” (A.K. Ramanujan, 2023, p. 65)

Soma here becomes the mysterious mythological plant, a divine entity, and yet remains ordinary. Soma is the vernacular Visnu of the Alvars in 5~^th century India, the Siva of the 16~^th century Virasaiva Vachanas, yet stays the very same Visnu and/or Siva of the household calendars when it is not the life force of the poet and the reader.

Soma and the Others

When I say it consumes “everything else” in the context of Ramanujan’s Soma, it also comes to mean the time and space surrounding the poet, universalising his senses. In “Soma (121)” inspired by Wendy Doniger’s English translation of the Rig Veda, the poet acknowledges her. The poem, “On discovering that Soma is a Mushroom,” references R.G. Wasson. In “When Soma is Abroad,” the poet identifies and recognises his contemporary Indian poets writing in English, such as Nissim Ezekiel, Arun Kolatkar, Jayanta Mahapatra, and possibly Gieve Patel and Shiv K. Kumar. In “Extended Family I & II,” Soma becomes one among the many that form the poet’s bloodline. In many others, Soma consumes the soul of the poet, and the poet, of Soma; Soma, the poet and the reader engage in a “mutual cannibalism” and perform a savage dance.

Apart from the poems, the book also features an introduction by A.K Mehrotra, essays from Wendy Doniger and the editors, and an interview by K. Ayappa Paniker. These essays aim to contextualise the poems, as well as to provide insights into the research on the mythical Soma plant that has been carried out so far. Paniker’s interview, on the other hand, gives the readers a peek into the creative process of A.K. Ramanujan.

The collection of poems, in combination with the said essays and interviews, make for a delightful read for the amateur as well as the veteran of the literary sphere. This edition is especially helpful to all the uninitiated readers of Ramanujan as it lays out a detailed explanation of the poet’s oeuvre in the Editor’s note, Introduction, and as part of other essays and their respective annotations. Without the extra material included with the efforts of the editors, this book had a lot of potential to fall flat, given the amount of complexity inherent in each poem. Indeed, as Mehrotra puts it, “[t]o have left [these poems] interred in boxes in a library would have meant, among other things, losing a critical moment of our literary history” (A.K. Mehrotra, 2023, p. xxii).

Works Cited:

Ramanujan, A. K. Journeys: A Poet’s Diary. Edited by Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodríguez, Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2019.
Ramanujan, A.K. Soma: Poems. Edited by Guillermo Rodriguez and Krishna Ramanujan, Penguin Viking, 2023.