SUKRITA PAUL KUMAR: POET OF HONOUR

Painting by Sukrita Paul Kumar

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Sukrita Paul Kumar chants with a tune that, often like Rumi, fuses the mystical rhythms of nature with stark yogic realism and the forensic reality of human loss. A former Aruna Asaf Ali Chair at the University of Delhi and the 2023 Rabindranath Tagore Award winner, her work transcends academic theory to explore the parallaxes of belonging. Born in Kenya and settled in Delhi, she cannot ignore the dislocations of migration; yet, rather than succumbing to spectres of loss, she offers measured responses, turning dislocation into a spiritual quest where the lost collapses into the field of the found.

In The Koel Sings, Paul Kumar refuses the Maya Angelou trope of the Caged Bird, transforming the familiar bird into a figure of existential yearning. The ghostly trees and throbbing forest resonate with a sing-song rhythm mimicking a muezzin’s adhan, creating a soundscape where nature is an active participant in a spiritual dialogue. The koel’s full-throated callings become a cloak of yearning, scanning for a missing mate while the trees lament the absence. It is a poem that masterfully captures the tension between nature’s cyclical repetition and the ache of loneliness.

Yet, her craft is equally sharp when she strips away the mystical to reveal the brutal mechanics of grief in Skeleton as Death Certificate, a True Story. Much like a war poem of late cleansing, it moves from the quarantined pain of exhuming a wife’s intact skeleton to the chilling pragmatism of a husband calculating financial gain. The imagery is visceral: the hollow of the abdomen resting on a shoulder, the dark hollowed sockets serving as a death certificate for a bank account. The cruelty lies in the lack of sentimental flinch; the poet forces the reader to confront the grotesque reality of a man carrying his wife’s bones to buy gulabjamuns. It is a devastating critique of how mortality is commodified.

From the silver snow-peaks to dead money in an account, Sukrita Paul Kumar’s range is breathtaking. Her poetry refrains from excessive sentimentality, even as it throws us into its furnace. These offerings result in a tranquillity of meditation that anchors us in multiple trajectories of nuance. She writes not just to observe, but to dismantle the human condition with the poetic ambiguity of Rumi and the soul of a seer.*

Yogesh Patel

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1.

The Koel Sings

In the early mountain hours
from deep within the host of
ghostly trees of the throbbing forest
rise the full-throated callings
of the koel ad nauseam, echoing
and bouncing on the lustrous snow-peaks
blushing with the rising sun
turning silver with day light upon them

The muezzin’s calling is in sync
Everyone’s ready to pray
the koel chanting
her chest swelling and expending
wind and sound

Lost within the
sing song rhythm of her chant
she wears the cloak of yearning and
seeking, her call searching
scanning branches of trees
where is the mate
trees lament the absence

With the sun setting
all those disembodied dirges
slide into
dark mysteries of the forest

Phantoms of the mystical night
wake up as chants
at dawn

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2.

Skeleton as Death Certificate, a True Story

Ninety days after burying her
he dug the grave delicately
to find the skeleton of his wife
intact
stripped of all thoughts
and emotions, of pain and joy

Only bones
no flesh no blood

He lifted the skeleton skilfully
the bones shouldn’t come apart

The hollow of the abdomen
resting on his left shoulder
half of her – legs, feet and pelvis
dangling on his chest and thighs,
her other half –
ribs, neck, skull, her torso
balanced on his spine
he carried what remained of her
(the bugs had not chewed her bones yet)

In the pocket of his shirt, he carried
her two cheery photographs
his loving possessions
with which the bankers would match
the structure of her skeleton
the semblance they will surely see
the long slender face with high cheek bones
the somewhat long neck
dark hollowed sockets
bereft of her beautiful eyes

Her long eye-lashes flapped in his mind
a smile spread on his face
they will be convinced that’s her
Maya’s skeleton
will be her death certificate
they will at once release the money
lying dead in her account

I will buy a full meal then
ending with gulabjamuns
her favourite

She will rest in peace

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Sukrita Paul Kumar (born in Kenya) has published several collections of poems, translations, and critical books; her most recent collections of poems are Yellow, Salt & Pepper and Vanishing Words. An invited poet at the International Writing Programme (Iowa, USA) and a poet-in-residence in Hong Kong, she is a former Fellow of IIAS, Shimla. She retired as Aruna Asaf Ali Chair, University of Delhi. Currently, guest editor of Indian Literature and co-editor of “Writer in Context” series of books published by Routledge UK, she was awarded the Rabindranath Tagore Award for Literature 2023.

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*The Poet of Honour series has been on hiatus after a long run and the pioneering days of Ars Notoria – The Art of the Noteworthy. This honour will remain selective and random. Please do not approach me (Yogesh Patel) for your inclusion.