Sukrita Paul Kumar in Conversation with Koyel Chanda

As a multi-hyphenate who is intent on exploring personal stories along with social concerns of a deeply polarizing world, Dr Sukrita Paul Kumar has successfully manoeuvred different genres in her long career. She is a poet, critic, academician, translator, and painter who, through multiple mediums, tries to understand and explore her identity as an Indian writer. Born in Kenya, she later immigrated to India when Kenya got independence from British rule, Sukrita Paul Kumar has grappled with the idea of ‘home’ in a space that seemed alien to her initially and became her home eventually. She struggled constantly to negotiate her identity as an Indian writer in English. Sukrita’s impressive creative output includes her many volumes of poetry, Rowing Together, Oscillations, Apurna, Folds of Silence, Without Margins, Poems Come Home, Dream Catcher, Untitled, Vanishing Words and her selected poems, Salt and Pepper along with her critical works titled Narrating Partition, Conversations on Modernism, The New Story, and Man, Woman and Androgyny. As a translator, her remarkable oeuvre comprises translations of Vishal Bharadwaj’s poems titled Nude and two novels by the eminent writer Joginder Paul, Blind and Sleepwalkers. Along with teaching literature at Delhi University, Sukrita Paul Kumar is an Honorary Fellow at the International Writing Programme, University of Iowa, US; Fellow of Cambridge Seminars and Hong Kong Baptist University, Centre for Developing Countries, Delhi University. She has also delivered lectures on Indian literature at many Universities abroad and in the country. Her paintings were exhibited at AIFACS, New Delhi. Sukrita Paul Kumar is Muse India’s Contributing Editor for Hindi and Urdu Literatures.

Koyel Chanda met Sukrita Paul Kumar at Pondicherry University in 2020 when she delivered a talk at a conference. In her interview with the writer here, Sukrita unreservedly talked about her craft and creative process.

Koyel Chanda (KC): You were born and brought up in Kenya but later immigrated to India. How did this experience shape your identity and your writing?
Sukrita Paul Kumar (SPK): Indeed the fact that I was born and brought up in Kenya greatly impacted me and my writing. For my mother, Kenya was home, while my father who came to Kenya only after marrying her, home was India.  Having migrated from Sialkot, he was a refugee in India. The sensibility of a refugee developed even more strongly in my father as he came to live in Kenya. India as a home for us children was merely an abstract concept or a dream. An imaginary homeland, as Salman Rushdie put it, grew in our minds. When we came to India, I was nearly fifteen and actually felt like an alien initially … Uprooted from Kenya and technically declared an Indian, not equipped with any language of India, how could I be home here? I started reading Premchand, Nirmal Varma, and Kamleshwar, and other famous Hindi and Urdu writers, as an entry point for India. That also helped shape my Indianness to some extent. And I think, in the process of negotiation, and exploration, I started writing poetry. Poetry was a way to locate my roots through reflection. It made me reflect on issues of identity. It was after having done my PhD (in American fiction) that I devoted myself to academic projects dealing with Hindi and Urdu fiction in English. All this was bound to have an impact on my writing. I would say that I became perhaps a stronger poet, because of the conflict and the anguish that I experienced in the process. My research as well as my poetry became a source of my dialogue with myself. This is what sustained my creative process. Each poem was perhaps a little bit like going further into the domain of understanding… if only to get into a greater confusion at times. If you are dealing with questions of identity through your creative process, you become aware of the paradoxes one confronts. I learnt gradually to reconcile with the contradictions and paradoxes of being not just an Indian but also with the very idea of “being”. 

KC: One of the major themes that emerges in your poetry is related to war, displacement and migration. You wrote on Ukraine at one point and also on Tibetan refugees. Can you tell me something about that?
SPK: I think I identify very easily with refugees. Having migrated from his birthplace, Sialkot, in 1947, my father seemed to have become a kind of permanent refugee. His writing was sustained by the anguish of not belonging to any place once he was uprooted from Sialkot. My mother was not technically a refugee. She immigrated here to India. And I? I found myself in the mode of being suspended between the two kinds of homelessness, and that feeling of suspension itself became my home. Once you find your home, you start decorating and embellishing it …and start putting things in order. I think through my poetry that is what I have been doing, constructing my home in words and creating my own self and identity. My homelessness became my home. If you creatively engage with this phenomenon, it helps generate energy and infuses dynamism into your creativity. Writing poetry keeps a record of that dynamism of creativity and documents -so to speak- how it moves from one point to another. And though you tend to find your distinct voice, the voice too doesn’t remain fixed, it changes with time, with maturity and understanding; in fact, the quality of imagination also may transform and transmute. To go back to your question, if confronted by a phenomenon like the Ukraine or the Gaza/Israel war, or social instability within the country, the mind is deeply dishevelled and it keeps pounding in distress till you write and find a creative outlet for it. Several times have I been rescued by poetry from sinking helplessly into depression.

KC: As a multi-hyphenate, who is adept at different forms of writing (whether prose or poetry) and painting which do you think is the most effective medium for voicing social concern of the modern world or is each form suitable for a specific purpose?
SPK: Depends on the nature of the experience one wishes to write about…sometimes when I feel that painting is not adequate for the expression of what I want to communicate, I pick up my pen to use verbal articulation; the experience dictates its own form and its own medium. Sometimes it is words that give shape to the expression. What is very intriguing is that while I choose words as the medium, at the same time I also wish to cancel out as many words as possible to tighten the expression. I want to delete all words that may disturb the essence or the spirit of the poem. Sometimes the word by itself may be very beautiful and so there is a strong temptation to retain it, but if it does not fit in exactly the way your poem is developing, then it is extraneous. If you hang on to the word, the poem is marred. A constant watchfulness, and alertness to monitor expression has to be honed for this purpose. Sometimes we don't realize that we ruin our writing just because we have fallen in love with one or two “beautiful” expressions that actually do not fit into the poem. An acute scrutiny or ruthless editing of the poem after some gap of time might then allow us to wrench ourselves away from the unhealthy attachment to the beautiful but extraneous word/s. The context has to organically establish its relevance.

KC: While reading your poetry I discovered that you make creative use of spaces (eg. In “Aging in America” and “Generation Gap”). Could you elaborate on that?
SPK: I believe there is a lot of meaning transmitted visually through the spaces created between the lines, between stanzas, and also between words in a poem. How a poem is placed on the paper would also depend on the content of the poem. How much vacant space should be kept between two lines or two stanzas is deliberated upon only at the dictate of the poem being written and …the meaning within that space gets created by the words used before and after the space. Depending on how the words are placed, the meaning as well as the experience of the poem gets manipulated. In the poem “Generation Gap” I have centred the whole poem. This is crucial for the poem since it demands complete focus on the lines. There are two small stanzas with the suggestion of a break between the two…it’s like one generation moving on to the next one with a sense of both, some rupture as well as a continuation. No digressions, not this way, nor that way. The centring of the words (and the lines) makes its own meaning, different from what it would be if the lines were to be left or right aligned. While you read the poem, you may not become conscious but psychologically this does impact the mind of the reader. The poem demands it. The poet is helpless.

KC: In your poetry, there is a concern about finding a suitable language for poetry for example in your volume of poetry Vanishing Words and even in your first volume Untitled. Tell me something about that.
SPK: I am intrigued by how the idea of a poem comes about, and from where it emerges. How does one capture it in words? There may be a rather abstract imaginative experience going on in the mind followed by a compelling desire to put it into words. But why should one want to write it? It may seem so irrational at times and yet its hold is too strong to escape from. The abstraction has to be translated into concrete words. This is when you are in search of the right words, and the right language for the poem. Each poem has to find its own language. The poem actually creates its own language. This brings to my mind, my planchette experience… as an adolescent, when somebody led me on to it, I felt my finger moving hypnotically on the planchette, making words on its own. I was told that some power had got hold of my finger and that the answers to my questions were being answered by some loved one’s spirit. A poem, I believe, gets written like that. You don't know from what stream of consciousness you receive an insight as a flash. The mind is captured by it and you are convinced that it has to be respected. After a little struggle, you get on the track and follow it unquestioningly for a while. Sometimes, when stuck at some point, you stop and reflect, and find you have lost the track, or found a by-lane that explores yet another path to a new perspective. It is an adventure that is joyful but risky as well. The poem starts dictating its language. You might hit upon new words, phrases or metaphors; cliches have to be discarded and different linguistic strategies are employed to get at what is relevant to the poem. The poetic license is handy…but it has to be used with utmost sense of responsibility…

KC: In one of your interviews you stated that sometimes a translator creates another original in translation. As a poet how do you relate to the translations that you make?
SPK: Indeed, literary translation has to be done as imaginatively as is the ‘original’ source text. It has to emanate the same fervour and energy. Only then will it attract and involve the reader. There is no doubt that at the outset, the translator has to totally submit to the text chosen for translation. The poem you wish to translate has to be owned. In that, in a way, translation is far more difficult than having to write your own original poem. It is after all somebody else's creation and yet it has to be owned. You have to start the journey backwards from where the poet may have ended. And so you travel backwards with all humility and not arrogance. The creative experience of the writer requires to be first decoded and then recoded in your own words, in a different language. The poem has to also go through a process of reception, interpretation and understanding. And interpretation and understanding can be a little subjective. One’s subjectivity gets compromised with the owning of the experience of the poem. However, the filtration of that experience through the translator’s consciousness does make the new poem a little different and that’s what makes it yet another original text. The translator needs to possess a wide range of vocabulary, linguistic and cultural sensitivity and imagination to give the poem an appropriate tone, content and shape. We generally talk of a loss in translation but forget that there is also a gain there, precisely because it becomes another creation in another language and its culture.  The translated poem must stand on its own legs.  In order to stand on its own legs and to have a poetic appeal to the reader, it has to acquire the same energy as that of the original poem with its own wings of imagination. The translator inevitably possesses his or her own aesthetics and ethics. The ethics of translation I believe demand that the departures from the source text should be self-consciously declared in a preface or translator’s notes; the translation should not run away too far from the original and should succeed in making yet another original. It is tightrope walking.

KC: In this highly media-saturated world that we live in where people are engaged in creating virtual content how effective do you think poetry is?
SPK: Remember, there is no shortcut to creative excellence. For creativity, one has to reflect ‘in tranquillity’ to access different glimpses/visions of the universe. Whether in imagination or in actually reaching the moon, you will have to be industrious and skilled. A poet, and a reader of poetry too, needs to have patience. And once you enter the domain of poetry, it is difficult to withdraw from it. It may take you in its own way. In today's world, it's all the more meaningful and relevant that we contact the reality that is otherwise not visible, not as an escape but to explore the truth. We live in an age of advertisement and commerce. The dominance of social media and the easy technology for communication are overwhelming and overpowering. Where is the space for poetry? To keep yourself in touch with yourself and poetry, extra pains and labour are called for.

KC: Could you talk a little bit about your writing process?
SPK: The idea of a poem may arrive in the mind at any point of time over the day, in a crowd or isolation, in the hustle and bustle of the market or the quietude of a library. When suddenly there is a compelling urge to write a poem, no other deadlines matter. Poetry…the poem, is a priority and it demands attention. If not captured when there is a calling, it escapes into oblivion. One can completely lose it. There is no going back to it. That is why if I have my phone with me, I immediately note down some words or lines that dawn upon one in a flash, even if they are 2 or 3 of them, just to capture the inspiration, to conserve it. When it comes to the actual writing of the poem that may take a very long time. I may go back to my notes at some point. And as I told you at the outset, one of the most important features as far as my own work is concerned, is that I have a strong desire to minimise the number of words in my poems. Don’t want an extra word. Also, I accord a lot of importance to the quality of silence that can be produced by words. That to me is very evocative.  It is silence that provokes and triggers a plethora of voices and meanings. If the poet can adorn the poem with silence, the job is done. Something vital gets communicated that way. 

KC: What are some of the major influences on your work?
SPK: One of the reasons why perhaps I have been writing poetry is because I am incapable of writing detailed descriptive pieces.  I envy those who do. I try to get to the essence. In that I believe Samuel Beckett had a great influence on me. I resonated with the way he used language. He told me he was writing plays to exorcise himself of words. I met him in England when I also had the good fortune of watching the first production of his play “Not I” with him by my side. The focus of the camera remained on the lips and the tongue of the speaker throughout. This seemed so grotesque and absurd! How much nonsense and superfluous words we blabber and throw around most of the time! That experience was indeed so impactful.
And then at some point, I think I suffered from what is called “an anxiety of influence’, when I was young. My father was a well-known short story writer and logically I too would have become one. I do not know why I did not write short stories…Was this a reaction to my father? I do not exactly know if that can be seen as an anxiety of influence.

KC: What are your upcoming projects?
SPK: Currently I am co-editing a series of books under the rubric of “Writer in Context” for Routledge, UK and South Asia. I'm also the guest editor of Indian Literature, Sahitya Akademi and for the last three years, I have been co-editing the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English. But my main preoccupation remains writing poetry and painting. That’s what I am carrying in my mind all the time.

******
 

GENERATION GAP

---Sukrita Paul Kumar

(1)

I cannot fathom

This ocean between us
The ocean filling up with
Alligators, big fish, sharks and all,
Corals and weeds
Going in circles
With elephantine waves
Gushing over them
Round and round
over and over.

(2)

Fiery sunflowers
Holy marigolds

Roses smitten with love
You, the droplets
Of dew
In the garden of
My mind

So many selves
Yours and mine
Dancing in the myriad
Mirrors, each morning.