AMLANJYOTI GOSWAMI

Gandhi Bhawan, Chandigarh: Two Poems

Gandhi Bhawan, Chandigarh

They want poetry to read like theory these days, I was telling the professor, while showing him a picture of Gandhi Bhawan, the one I took, with the sky behind, vast as distance, blue and empty. The professor liked the picture. I told him that Pierre Jeanneret was very different from his more illustrious cousin, that he supported the resistance in France while Le Corbusier pitched his tent with the Vichy puppet regime. Later I came to know that Pierre was the more rooted one, with feet on ground, the artist, getting along with people, grooming and mentoring new people, staying the course. His cousin, the most famous architect of his time, would come for a few months and leave. But Pierre liked the city so much he wanted his ashes scattered in the Sukhna lake. All this is legion. What is not so well known, at least outside the architect community, knit tight as it is, is that Pierre was a delicate furniture maker. He liked carving wood, making chairs. He would sit there for hours, thinking about something, then he would make a chair. Sit, he would say, to his juniors, and think some more. There was something playful about him. You can see that in his house, the red brick jaalis peering out into the open. In the curved staircase leading upstairs. In the niches where you can preserve ideas and feelings. He reminded me of Joan Miro, the Spanish painter whose work was surreal but playful. Pierre was closer to the earth, and yet his abstractions took shape in the present, using local material, like sand from nearby Ghaggar. Why was I telling my professor this? I was trying to carve an argument, as response to his critique about ekphrasis. I was trying to tell him that the building, Gandhi Bhawan, was both matter and its representation. The sky was a vast canvas, and the building a fine-drawn line. Shabd nirantar. My photograph too was representation but also a subject in its own right, like Pierre’s Chandigarh Chair, now sold in auction houses for a profit, or displayed in museums. The building’s shape reminded me of Gandhi’s face, but that must have been only me, distracted by Joan Miro. Gandhi’s hooked nose, bespectacled, as if Pierre found in the curves of the building, Gandhi’s face. When the professor read that, he was silent. He understood that if we got stuck on forms, we would have to go all the way back to Plato, and that wasn’t so good. Back to the cave. And we would have to start all over again. The reason I wrote this was to make him believe that a poem could be written this way too, even if it didn’t mean a thing. This is what the theorists say, who believe in the purity of theory over beauty. I found the building beautiful. It was raining that morning. The green was glistening, nature after a bath. My mood must have helped with the photograph. I thought of turning it into a sketch or painting. It was much later that I came to know that the man who made the master plan was someone I met thirty years ago, when I first came to the big city, Delhi, to study. He welcomed me at his house. A charming man, well-travelled, well read. We did not discuss architecture because I knew nothing of that. But he had a twinkle in his eye and said I should do other things, not just study. He seemed the kind who would design a master plan for a university campus with a building like Gandhi Bhawan in it. He liked curved walls, they said. A man for many seasons. His name, if you ask, was Jugal Kishore Chowdhury. JKC, to his colleagues. I knew him as a friend’s grand uncle, who ran away from Dhaka, where he was sent to study, all the way to JJ College of Architecture. And from there to USA and wherever else. Returned to Chandigarh, was guided by Pierre. Came back to Delhi. Designed IIT Delhi. Why am I telling you that, professor? I realise my poem has no beginning or ending. It isn’t even a poem, or an apology of a poem. It is not even beautiful. It has no song. No hands or feet. It is like Kolatkar’s Yeshwant Rao, one bobbly mass of words deepening into a sentence. It will make a theorist happy. But it will disappoint readers of poetry. It does not even touch me that way. But I wanted to show you that it can be done. Just as buildings get made every day. But a Gandhi Bhawan? For that you need much more.

The buck toothed man at my bed this morning

When I woke up this morning, I was surprised to find the room full of people. I tried closing my eyes, just to see if I was really asleep. Sometimes, my colleagues say I dream with my eyes open. Closing my eyes made no difference. I could still see people around. Some were looking at me, some talked with each other in an animated way. There was a buzz about the room. I tried to recognize who they were, now that I was dreaming fully awake. I expected to find some of the usual faces from my life – my wife, some colleagues, my mother, my father. My father is usually present in all events of my life. But none of them were around. It was just me with these people.

Sometimes, my mother is all over my dreams. Yet this time, no one I knew was there. I could not recognise anyone. I am terrified of ghosts. They hover around. They stare. They seem to know what I am thinking, where I am going. They follow me. I do not turn back. The best thing to do with ghosts, as with fear, is to face them. One stands up to a bully. But the people in front of me were not ghosts. I was sure about that. Ghosts are dead presences. These were as alive as I was.

I decided the best way to resolve what was happening was to look straight and hard at what was going on. I am a quiet sort, not very good with social graces. A little awkward, they say. Perhaps, I would die alone and lonely. I value privacy. Without privacy, how would we know who we are?

But who on earth would bother to arrive this early and walk around my house? Perhaps I missed something. I looked again, this time with eyes open. There was no one anymore. I was sure something was amiss. Maybe the house was bombed out in the past. Maybe, this house was sacred, and someone did something terrible by sleeping in it. I grew very tired at this exercise, so early in the day. Monday mornings are not good for great explanations. I knew there was something in that vision, yet nothing that I could understand by thinking any further. It would be revealed at some other moment, perhaps when I least expected it.

My mother said one could not laugh at just anyone. If you really had to laugh at someone, laugh at people with buck teeth, she told me once. Her father told her that. You could never get bucked teeth you did not already have. Today, I sat wondering why I remembered my mother so early about those bucked teeth. I understood soon enough. One of the men in front of me, as real as any, had bucked teeth. He seemed to be saying something, but I did not understand him. I did not laugh at him. This was the only man I would have recognised later. Of course, like everyone else, I did not see him when I opened my eyes the second time.

I decided at that very moment, if ever I were to look for a purpose in my life, I would find out why those people came to my room on a Monday morning and what the man with bucked teeth seemed to be saying to me. This was as good a purpose as any. I later looked for the colour of the room, the blue in those eyes, the lightning speed with which things happened. I tried finding out what the wall was saying. Were they from another realm, another time? Why were they acting so busy? These details fade from memory. Only the buck toothed man stayed with me.

Amlanjyoti Goswami’s new book of poetry, Vital Signs (Poetrywala) follows his widely reviewed collection, River Wedding (Poetrywala). Published in journals and anthologies across the world, including Poetry, The Poetry Review, Penguin Vintage, Rattle and Sahitya Akademi, he is also a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee. His work has appeared on street walls of Christchurch, buses in Philadelphia, exhibitions in Johannesburg and an e-gallery in Brighton. He has reviewed poetry for Modern Poetry in Translation and has read at various places, including New York, Boston and Delhi. He grew up in Guwahati, Assam and lives in Delhi.