Of Poem, Poet and Life

Malashri Lal’s poems from her book “Mandalas of Time” are like a string of pearls. Each distinct and yet each one is a part of narrative that speaks of the experiences, perspectives and the emotions of the poet. Malashri says that when she writes, her poems flow on their own.

Malashri Lal’s childhood was a riot of different cultures. Her experiences in Jaipur’s Parda clad world were starkly different from those in Shanti Niketan where music and art were made to flow freely for everybody. But such contrasting worlds have only helped shape and enhance her poems and her perspective. In this candid chat, she talks about her connection with Tagore and more.

What is your connection with Rabindranath Tagore?
My father’s side of the family is from Shanti Niketan and some what linked to Tagore. My mother’s side of the family is from Kolkata, they are very urban people. My father’s uncle, Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee was a very well-known scholar. He was Tagore’s disciple and official biographer. Much of the Mukherjee clan had settled in Shanti Niketan right from the time Shanti Niketan had been set up. They had rows of plots in one particular area of Shanti Niketan. My uncle was very fond of my father and had kept aside a plot for him. He wanted him to relocate to Shanti Niketan after retirement. However, my mother flatly refused as she was a total urbanite who loved parties and beautiful clothes jewellery, fun and games, travel. She certainly enjoyed the good life. My father on the other hand was this scholarly, serious man who was nicknamed ‘the walking encyclopaedia’ who just knew everything.
It is believed that children are a combination of their parents. How much of your father and mother are you?
I think I am a bit of both. Like my father, I was a good student and I continue to keep my reading and writing as my principal occupation. I have written about 21 books. I enjoy studying for the sake of studying and not because some one will give me something for studying. Like my mother, I thoroughly enjoy a good get together and party.
What were your growing up beliefs?
We are Bramho Samajis which is mostly a reformist Hindu Samaj. It believes in women’s liberation, education, equality. So we grew up with a very liberal environment at home which was deeply rooted in culture but also great respect for all other cultures, religions and places. I have a very homogeneous bunch of friends who come from different backgrounds.
Where do your poems come from?
A lot of my poems come from this fragmented identity that I have. At one time I used to worry about it because if anyone asked me where was I from, I never had an answer. People would say, they are from Rewari or Ajmer or Udaipur but I never had an answer because I couldn’t honestly say that I was from Jaipur. I was in Jaipur because my father was in Jaipur. I couldn’t say Kolkata or Shanti Niketan because I had never lived or studied there. So, I would say I am from India. But Delhi helped me a lot. It was in Delhi that I realized that every body was from somewhere else. I started feeling far more comfortable in Delhi because there no one would say the kind of things or answers that I would get in Jaipur. If someone would ask a person from Delhi about where they were from, they would reply without a qualm that their grandfather was from Pakistan but then they shifted to Amritsar and now they are settled in Delhi. So, it was in Delhi that I developed a multiple identity like the people there. But my poems are a lot about this fragmented identity, so somewhere I talked about the Poshak worn by Rajasthanis and the ‘than’ worn by the Bengali widows.
When did you start writing poems?
I started writing poems from the age of 12. I used to write them in the back pages of my notebooks and never showed it to anyone. I wrote poetry for years and this is my first collection of poetry which has come out just when I am 74 years old. I have learnt that it is never too late to begin. Slowly I started showing some of my poetry to my friends who were amazed with it and wanted me to publish them. Then something happened during COVID, when I started collecting my poems which were written all over the place, on napkins, pieces of paper, back pages of the books. When I put them together, I realized I had over a hundred. I showed it to a young friend of mine whose judgement I trust. She wrote back to me and urged me to publish them because they had such a lot of values in them. She made me see things that I had not seen in my own poetry. I chose 75 of those poems for publishing.
What made you write this poem “Crushed”?
This was a very brief poem. I had written it for a friend in America who is a painter and a writer. She was doing a digital exhibition and needed very short poems. So, I sent her this poem which was mostly about how young women are supposed to be.
//Crushed
“Words crushed into silence
Lips sealed against utterance
Eyes hooded guardedly
Body cringing into wrinkled tightness
Is this what elders called
‘Maidenly virtue’?”//

You have also written another poem “Escape” on similar lines.
We were the first generation of women who actually started working outside home. Our mothers were homemakers, not that I look down upon the home makers but our generation was the first were women who were going out of the house. So, there were assumptions that the women had to not only work outside the home but also tend to the kids and take care of the house hold too. In our generation, there were two sides of a working woman’s life. One was the excitement of earning your own money and doing whatever you wanted to do with it and the other side was also the challenge of doing a professional job with respect and dignity. So, in a way it was an escape from domesticity and all the assumptions that went with it. At another level, it came it with its own demands. So, I don’t have an answer to why or when that kind of an attitude changed but I do know that in our generation (I am talking of the generation that came into teaching in the 70s- 80s in Delhi University) there was a certain assumption that the women can only do this much and many of us were fighting that assumption at a cost to ourselves no doubt. Whatever it was, it also meant educating the men. Many of the men were perfectly unaware, nobody had bothered to explain these things to them. I thank my stars that I was very lucky in this regard. I had an extremely supportive husband and very understanding parents and in laws.

//Escape
“The toxic air of a false home
Turns oppressive again and again
In about four weeks;
Unseasonal yet so predictable
So much of a pattern.
She runs away, yet hardly moves,
Packs and leaves her home
The sorrow of neglect lodged in a dark room
Struck dumb by the quiet controlling powers.
Then she returns
Unlocks the suitcase while shutting her heart
Sends clothes to the laundry
Lifts the empty case to the upper shelf
Her soul secretly yearning
For the next great escape.”/

What made you write Bougainvillea? Is this poem also about migrants?
No, Bougainvillea is a metaphor for colonial control over India. When I wrote it, I didn’t imagine it would get so much of attention. I wrote it because I used to see bougainvillea all over the place. Of course, I am interested in flowers and trees. When I looked more at the bougainvillea, I realised it was an imported plant. How did it spread so much? When I wrote the poem, I didn’t consciously create it as a poem about colonialism but that is what it became. It often happens with most poems. When I write a poem, I am not intending to writing it in certain way or suggest a certain thing but it just flows. The ending of the poem “A traveller who landed, on our shores and conquered it with careless abundance,” is not just true of the bougainvillea but is also true of the British. The colonial rule suppressed a lot of our local culture, belief and practices.

//Bougainvillea
“Bougainvillea cascades in parks, shops, homes, Metro, fences,
Clawing, creeping, clinging
To surfaces
Crushing them under a weight of thorns.
Disguised as flowers
The Bougainvillea is a migrant tree, blossom and thorn
That took root in our land
And spread its deception
Of beauty.
The barb is hidden
The leaves play with colour
Branches spread wantonly
Our land is host to this migrant
And its imperious authority,
The gentle chameli vine is shattered
The harsingar is pushed to the corner
I gape at the invincible Bougainvillea
A traveller who landed
On our shores and conquered it with careless abundance.”//