Poetic Poetry

 

I hate maths. I can feel my brain scream and go on strike anytime I ask it to calculate anything more than five times. We have a mutual understanding that I shall not write a prescription that requires a calculation of dosage for more than five days and if at all I do I shall use a calculator and never ask my brain to calculate and my brain shall not go into a shut down. I have no shame pulling my phone out and calculating if a patient asks about a bill or requires a longer period of medication. Sometimes my patients get frustrated and they themselves tell me the value to enter which I totally welcome since I dont hv to use my phone while im handing old case sheets/ files. 

Imagine how I must have felt studying 9th and 10 th standard Mathematics. First thing in the morning. Six am tuition for Mathematics followed by physics or chemistry where they invariably teach only the frustration inducing formulae and never revise the enjoyable portions then I shall have to go stratto school where again everyday I had Maths class. The place I studied had rainy days all through the year so having got up, dressed, gotten wet in the rain while reaching the centre and sitting in between all wet people,wet bags, raincoats and umbrellas on wet benches in a room with central roof opening onto clear sky so when it rains you get splattered with water and distracted with the noise was not a welcome set up when your feel tend to get too cold and the rain exposure makes it cold to a point that its numb but the feeling of grains of sand and dirt clinging on from the wet floor is somehow more intensely felt than when the feet are dry but you have no clean/ dry doormat to dry your feet on but have two hours of Maths to look forward to. 

However there were days, very few days when a senior of mine used to sing to us. The whole set of students, from all classes and batched we tip toe and gather round to listen if we end up walking in while he is singing. Have you ever walked in late to a Prayer meeting and had to tip toe till you find a place to lodge yourself in? Remember all those moments you spend to make zero noise until you found your spot not to disturb the one who is singing/ speaking and the others listening.This will exactly be like that but even better because you will want to walk in faster so that you don’t miss anymore of it and you are already totally grasped by it so there is no time lost in getting the groove of it.

Whenever he sings we all shall not move, make any noise stay wherever we are and melt. Melt away into the sweet dream land where we are ruled by his music. The song and the lyrics will linger all through the day. The tune will be repeated in your heart during breaks and if you are having a good day and there are no tests to put your mind to and got a games period some of us will be humming it along the way from school to the playground. This all encompassing capacity of a song or a singing event must have been the basis for poets saying when Krishna played his flute the flora, fauna and the complete city shall be mesmerised by the tunes and be intoxicated by it. 

Rumi says

“We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.”

One might think he was a great singer one who sings on television shows or on school programs. He never sang in any of those.Not even at his school classrooms we were told. He always sang the same song “ kanne kalai mane “ by Kannadasan. Just this one song. Never heard him sing even a short verse of any other song. Sometimes when we are early or when the Tuition master is late we ask him to repeat the same. The most number of times he has repeated the song for us in one go was seven times. Once the master walked in but waited for him to finish the song. We all noticed him only when the song was over. He never said a word about the song.He just said get back to your classes so I can’t say of he liked the song and stood there listening or he knew that we shall not be able to concentrate if we missed the remaining part of the song. Once when we were getting our test papers i heard him scolding our Singer “u should put your concentration into the paper like how you put it into music read and write ”  ..that day I got the same scolding “common careless mistake cant you concentrate for two hours to finish one paper?!” So one can safely say that he was genuinely impressed by his careful performance or that he believed we were all careless about our exams on that particular day and may be we were making silly mistakes and music was just pulled into the conversation without much thought. However he didn’t make a living doing singing so he did take other things carefully and didn’t take singing seriously in later life I believe. 

I shall never know why he chose this song, if he liked the lyrics, music or if he wanted to impress one of those girls and sang what he sang the best, what suited his voice the best. I shall not judge. I can only wonder how much of an impression this event has left on me till this date. I didn’t hear the song much on TV. These days its not even played randomly on speakers or reels so I haven’t heard it much recently. Every time I do hear the song I can’t stop thinking how wonderful the experience was even without all the background music during those days. 

The lyrics are one thing that makes the song more enjoyable even when the background music is not available. The poem is poetic. The words rhyme. Even when you read it and that makes it easier to remember even when you haven’t seen it on paper. Thats the basis of us remembering folk songs and lullabys isn’t it? We don’t really have the script but repeating words in poetic form stays with us forever. 

Kannadasan’s poetry had this feature in all glory since the words were not just added for the times but they also had a meaning. Every sentence had a life lesson put in poetic manner in simple language that has made it easier to get to the hearts of mild to moderately literate people too and stay for ages. Thats why he is quite fittingly  Kaviarasar Kannadasan.

Once a “Poet” told me that my poetry rhymes and since it rhymes its not poetry at all about my translations of Rumi’s poetry. He even suggested that I should decompose it, add a few thanglish words, remove the rhyming parts and replace them with prose like portions. Thats when I realised not everyone who claims to write poems and calls himself a Poet actually knows what Poetry is.Im still learning and it was a huge life lesson. 

Now you might understand why I still prefer older songs and poems. I do. Only recently did I realise that my playlist is not update somce the last decade. Its still the same from my ipod collection. 

Having read most of the works and life of Rumi, this is one place where I connect with him. It’s easier to find your most concentrated self, clear your mind of surrounding noise by connecting to music. I believe this is how Dr Kalam must have felt about his veena sessions. I used to easily concentrate while studying my PG when I was not missing my veena classes. Unfortunately my Veena teacher had a crooked sense of humour by stopping me exactly while I started concentrating and enjoying the music and making small talk about how concentrated I was.

You win some, you lose some. If you did leave anything in writing to be read, by future generations that is poetic you definitely win. 

If you still have doubts then take Han Kang who has won the 2024 Nobel prize for her “intense poetic prose”. 

From prehistoric times we are after all guided by music and rhyming poetry is musical on its own🤍💫

Written on the death anniversary of Kannadasan.

Image courtesy: Google  

-Thenaruvi Marimuthu 🤍💫