Poetry in Punjabi Women Poets

Gurdev Chauhan

Not very long in the past, girls used to write poetry on the sly hiding it from their parents and the public. In many Muslim-dominated cultures this practice still prevails. News of young girls, expressing love in poetry or in love letters being done to death in countries like Afghanistan still fills newspapers columns. The picture is not very different even now in some parts of India, although the situation is not so bad. But whatever be the land or gender, and whatever be the consequences, the human heart cannot stop beating with love or beating for love. Poetry usually carries verbal expressions of pangs, moans, groans, bouts of ecstasies or of depression which form the usual template of women and men in love or suffering requited love.

As to the current scene of women’s poetry, we see that women, of late, are coming to dominate the poetic space, for poetry is like second skin to most of those in love or those jilted in love. More so, poetry lends immediacy to matters of the heart.

It is heartening to see that a young Punjabi girl,Rupi Kaur, has stolen the scene worldwide, with her self-published book Milk and Honey(2014) which when later published by Andrews McNeil Publishing sold well over a million copies

Rupi Kaur says in one her interviews,“I want to put words to feelings we have trouble putting into words.” And at another place she says,“Like the breath before the kiss, I want to make the mundane beautiful.”

The current scenario of Punjabi poetry written by women looks bright with so many young and mature womenpoets writing. Fifty years back, it was not so. We had only Amrita Pritam. Born and raised in the Pakistani side of undivided Punjab, she was only28 when she came over to reside in Dehradunand afterwards in New Delhi. Her poem ‘Today I call upon Waris Shah’ is considered the most powerful poetic take on the brutal killings of innocent people on both sides of the border. In that poem, she had invoked the legendary balladeer, Waris Shahto pen the sufferings of lakhs of daughters so eloquently as he had donewith  the agony of Heer on her separation from her lover, Ranjha. This poem published right after the partitionhad instantly caught peoples’ imagination all over India and had made Amrita Pritam famous overnight.  Although she has written several best-selling novels like Pinjar which went on to become a very successful movie on the theme of partition, but her popularity rests primarily on her breaking the traditional grounds of thinking and living. With her book, Kagaz te Canvas, she became the first woman poet to write and popularize free verse in Punjabi.

After Amrita, the gap was filled to some extent by Manjit Tiwana who brought new sensibility and language to poetry giving expression to the superfluous and flimsy natureof love ofyoung Punjabi city bred girls so finely expressed in her poem, Girls, given below showing how theycome out of their age-old groovesfrolicking and merrymaking with their new-found freedom and empowerment.Her poetry foreshadows irony and devises suitable words-weapons to combat the age old traditional modes of living and thinking. It is first time the girls are learning to lead and enjoy life openly and on their own terms.With satire inbuilt in her poems, her book, Unidra Waratman for which she was awarded the Sahitya Academy Award, portrayed a funny but grim picture of the tension-filled, restless modern way of life.

Girls:

Some girls are long route buses

who do not take short route passengers

Some girls are Banarsi sarees

looking at whom even once, bores you

Some girls are golden framed photos

which may adore any drawing room

Some girls are lyrics

they get more amiable with every read

Some are westerly winds

who walk away speechless

quivering the cords of your heart

Some girls are butterflies

who for some young passion of theirs’s

end up imprisoned in the pages of years

Some girls are fledgling sandal trees

who muster the guts of taming the snakes

Some girls are conscience

who demand the accounting for

wrongsdone to them

and land up hung on the cross of their bodies

Some girls are ghazals sung by Begum Akhtar

who are liked by so very few

At present so many other younger women are writing poetry although none of them, except Vaneeta, has won the coveted Sahitya Academy Award so far. Vaneeta’s poetry highlights the plight of human beings caught in the existential web of life. Her poetry israther cerebral, born of dissent or dissatisfaction with the reality and condition of life at hand. She has, indeed, brought a somber sensibility to Punjabi poetry. In her poem, Sidharath, she addresses to Gautama The Buddha to change places with Yashodra, his wife, to attain a new kind of wisdom or nirvana.

This time

You would not go for nirvana

Yashoda would do that.

She feels ill

confined in the colorful walls

of your palace

Every color of those colossal walls

for her is drab

It saddens her

This time Yashodra

will place a beautiful

flower upon your lap

Do not be afraid

You achieved so much

Maybe, you will regain this knowledge too

looking at her

disappearing with hersad steps

you will reach one more

truth that endures

What did you attain

under the bodhi tree

I don’t know

Yashodra will seek nirvana

under that tree

Surrendering the pleasures of the palace

putting a little flower

upon your lap

she will go to seek nirvana

leaving you to attain thenewborn truth

Next, we come to Nirupama Dutt. She is well-versed and self-reliant poet who writes both in English and Punjabi. When it comes to writing poems, sheinvariably takes to Punjabi, although later she usuallytrans-creates her poems in Englishfor facility of their rapid journey across languages. Making poeticmock confessions, she celebrates joys, pains and gifts of her self-won carefree mode of life. Her poems grow out of herbid to get the most out of life.Brazen courage and grit marksher poetry.More so, her poems gain an easyflow soft on our nerves. Ek Nadi Sanwli Jehi, her maiden book of poetry, is generally viewed as trend setter in Punjabi poetry. Here is her poem, Dusky Girl.

A dusky girl nurtures

dreams, all fair- complexioned

and her truth is very drab

She is born

steeped in sorrow

the colour of which you cannot name

Her sorrow borrowing

its nature from water

wells up her eyes

It wallows in the red wounds

of her dusky body

She hides her ink in lacs of symbols

of anguish wedded toher color

and gets duskier

Her dreams fly far like black geese

and bring her a morsel of warm light

A dusky girl

undergoes every fair-complexioned crime

and nurtures a hope

for a fair-complexioned child of her

A dusky girl’s dreams

are very fair-complexioned

and her truth very dark

Manjit Indira has many volumes of poetry to her credit. Her poetry is marked byexplicit lyrical intensity and womanly expression of warmth, love, care and the play oftragedy and comedy in man- woman relations. Her poetic strength lies in evoking home-grown words full of tender connotations andallusions to Punjabi folklore.

Paul Kaur has of late come to her forteexhibiting rare courage in revolt against horde of injustices strewn in life. Her poems tend toward becoming a rallying point against social ills plaguing the society and the woman. Inequalities indistribution of wealth, discriminatoryand unjusttreatment based on differences of gender, language, religion, color, race and economiccondition are themes most common to her. Love, separation, loss, bad faith, double talk, betrayal and remorse are other concerns her poems are usually built around. Existential anguish andloneliness informs her poetry no less. Gentle humor and satirelendsmarked intensity toher poems. Let us share a bit of her talent:

Khabbal

I have heard

that when I was born

someone, looking at me, had

turned his face away

and, someone, had turned his back to evade

his looking at me

As they say, the newborn child

recognizes the turban of his father

in just twenty-one days,

I had recognized the averted eyes of my father

that very moment.

I had gone accustomed

to recognize and bear

the averting of people’s eyes

from looking at me

And whenever I filled my eyes

with fury for all this

I wrote the alphabet of my ire

on their averted faces

which they never could decipher

Her Another poem,Measuring cloth for my size,seems to make light of her body size.

I once donned quite a loose garb

but I felt squeezed in it

difficult to take a wholesome breath

When he met

I cut the extra cloth off

to make to my body size

but again,

my body measurementschanged

I felt trapped

in my dress

Sometimes I feel

That I should lay hold of these

cut pieces and sew them up

with my dress

but what use this

shriveled dress would be

Now I feel I should

discard this

and donning a shawl over me

make my body transcend

mydress measurements

Sukhwinder Amrit is yet another important poet towatch. She has written many books of poetry. Her poetry mainly consists of ghazals. Rhyme and rhythm with an assortment of exquisite images bearingromantic overtoneare central to poetry.Her ghazals are rich in emotional appeal due to thesubtle turn of phrase,apt descriptions,variety of images and skillful use of figures of speech.Her ghazals ring of love, passion, tenderness of feelings and grace. Below is an example of her free verse which too is quite near to the spirit of a sonnet.

I will not depart

I will not depart

from you like this

as a pale leaf

falls off a tree branch

I will take much more time

to take my leave of you

I will keep attuned to your silence

for long

I will seethe in your frosted seasons

will flicker in your dusks

stumble like a shadow on your paths

The dust of my illusions

will fly to fill up your eyes

My feathers will keep scattering

over your voids

I will keep gasping like a wounded bird

on your branch

each drop of me

getting cleansed by you

I will take my leave

from your universe

atom by atom

I will drop from your pen

word by word

Each image of me

will throb in your memory

before I depart

will groan too much in pain

in your waters

like a fish

And then at last

taking my departure

I will hide somewhere

in some curve of your breaths

I will take longto depart

Neetu Arora, SarabjeetKaur Sohal, Bhupinder Kaur Preet, Bipan Preet, Simrat Gagan, Deep Inder, Amia Kunwar, Kana Singh, Surjit Bains, SurjeetSakhi, Rajinder Kaur, Gurminder Sidhu, Amarjit Ghuman, AmanC Singh, and Taran Gujralare other women poets who have produced an encouraging body of work. All are well-known in the Punjabi literary circles. Almost all of them have published more than one or two of theirbooks of poetry recently. Rafugar by Bipan Preet,Ithe Hi Kitey by Neetu Arora and Khataas by Deep Inder have just arrived.Here are poems by Simrat Gagan, Neetu Arora, Bipan Preet and Aman C. Singh.

Simrat Gagan

Pain

Pain

Kept visiting me

As a pilgrim

Visits a shrine

The waiting

Kept its journey on

Troubles kept on pacing up

The flowers kept withering

The Thirst

Kept doubling up

Wells kept drawing water

Rains kept showering

The meanings

Kept changing

Becoming spectacles,

Love

Kept expanding

Deeper earthward,

Higher, skyward

Neetu Arora

My Loss

I have abandoned

all my math books

because every time

their fixed formulae

gave the fixed answer

No desired spot

could be reached

walking my way

Everything happened

as the formula

decreed

all sum rendered

meaningless

and the solution

like an eternal truth

I came to abhor

formulae

Freed, I got mobbed by definitions

When I countered and rebutted them

they returned with too many sums, results

Now whenever I spot the answers

I cannot reach the prime sum

Devising formulae to my liking

I have lost what I had

What formula

I applied to what sum

everything turned upside down

To whatever sum

I did add or substract from

divided or multiplied

I remember not

Applying my formulas

did not yield theresultsintended

I have lost my prime sum

Now how I am to deal with the answers

I will meet you like this

By Bipan Preet

I will catch at, and wear

upon my head, the golden

rays of the sun

adorning your body.

I will drink in the atoms of your

pure breaths dancing upon your lips

and live for a while by those moments 

I will close my eyes

and look upon you

with closed eyes

As one goes into deep meditation

I will roam in the realm

of each atom of your body

and would swim across the seas

of your feelings

I will melt into your rhythms

I will join in the souls

and donning the attire of spotlessness

undergo a new life

And, then, I would

scatter myself upon you

letter by letter

word by word

line by line

Whenever I would meet you

I would like to meet with you

the same way

As for poetry by Punjabi women living abroad, there is a lot of literary activity in Canada and other countries. So many Punjabi LekhakSabhas function in all the big cities in Canada. More than two dozen Punjabi Newspapers, most of them weeklies, are published in Canada, USA, England and Australia. Among women poetsin those lands, Surjit Kalsi comes at the top for the sheer number and quality of her poetry. She has done translations from and into English. She is well-versed in both. Other women poets includeHem Jyoti, NeeruAseem, Surjit Kaur, Gurmeet Panag,Sandip Dhanoa, Sandip Chauhan, Rani Nagender, Sandy Gill, Surinder Kaur, ParamjeetDeoland quite a few others. Surjit Kaurand Neeru Aseem have more than two books of poetry to their credit and they both have shown remarkable poetic talent in their work.Most ofNeeruAseem’s poems have already been translated into English and published in her book,’If’. Very creative and innovative, her poems are delightfully enigmatic for their elusiveness and depth. The poem below is redolent of herevocative poetic ease:

Homebrewed Red Wine

Home brewed red wine

A cold evening

The deck, the fire pit

Barbecue, sons, the husband

And the Polish husband wife

From neighborhood

Small talk

Mind content and at peace

And our small world

At this moment

Recreating

From ruptures

*****

Gurden Chauhan is the editor of the journal *South Asian Ensemble* published from Canada and India

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