Poems by Sukrita Paul Kumar

COLOUR AS NATURE?

When Orhan Pamuk spoke recently on the making of his novel My Name is Red , someone asked him if the use of colour red in the title was symbolic. His reply is what I want to start this essay with. He said “I use colour as texture, not as symbolism.” And I wondered, is it at all possible to disassociate one’s self from the culturally, and even politically, defined symbolic ramifications of different colours as we may use them in writing, painting or during the course of everyday living. Some of Pamuk’s other novels such as The White Castle, The Black Book and Other Colours too, forefront some colour or the other in the title as is evidenced. It is a sure feat of creativity to be able to shake off  cultural labels from the colours, to perceive them phenomenologically and present them with pristine innocence. Mind you, I am not using the word naiveté here.

In fact I wish we could recreate that innocence, go centuries back in history, cleanse our brains, eliminate genetic memory and regain our ability to see colours in the freshness of their own texture – without the baggage of cultural prejudice and meaning, or any historical symbolism, infested with political tension and psychological oppression. The human mind today is enslaved by orientations of a society that is certainly not colour blind in its perception of the white, the black or the brown people, perpetually fanning issues of racism ironically, even through endless articulation of its denouncement.

Nor are we able to disengage ourselves from the religious symbolism of colours…in fact in our part of the world, “saffronization” of education is a term thrown up by recent history, when a major political party in power was perceived to be attempting to give a specific ideological “colour” to school text books in history and philosophy. The colour saffron today languishes in a very insular political prison house rather than blossoming in the fields out there.  

The question to ask is, can an individual triumph in releasing colour from the oppression of cultural identity, when we do not today live as much by nature as by nurture. How have some colours been nurtured in the context of the colour of skin? I am reminded here of an example of a white couple who adopted a black son precisely to free themselves of racial prejudice. They did not realize the existential cultural dilemma they put this child into. Years later, despite his loving parents, he recorded how he passed through intense moments of alienation and anguish repeatedly because as a black child and then as an adolescent, he received messages from all around that convinced him that he was “different, unacceptable and inferior”…his black skin endowed upon him identity ascriptions different from his own identity claims as a child grown up in a white household. He had to actually undergo various kinds of therapeutic treatments to come out of his psychic dilemma.

The blacks are compelled to remain together to empower each other with energy to combat an all-pervasive racism, nurtured over times immemorial. We know then why there aren’t any white ghettos. Identity politics have laid out the superiority of the white in the hierarchy of power. Culture actually becomes an accident of birth if identity is so dependent on the colour of the skin or the race one is born into. When recorded history or visible history constantly reinforces the myth of the superiority of a particular race, poets such as Derek Walcott lament :

“Where are your monuments,

your battles, martyrs?

Where is your tribal memory? Sirs

In that gray vault. The sea. The sea

Has locked them up.”

                   From “The Sea is History”

      Thousands of gray vaults will have to be retrieved from the sea and then opened to excavate the history of “the wretched of the earth”, for the wretched to turn the tables after being empowered with self-knowledge. Remember what James Baldwin said “I left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the colour there’

      To move on to a demonstration of an absurd example of the internalization of “white is superior, and also indeed more beautiful”, let me go closer home to my country, India, and scan the matrimonial advertisements in the newspaper dailies. Ninety percent of the girls being advertised for marriage are described as “Fair” or as they put it with greater clarity of expression, “Fair complexioned”. The latest cream that is being advertised and sold wildly is “Fair and Lovely”. The cult of the worship of the white goes on perpetuating itself on its own in a land where some gods themselves - Kali, Krishna and even Shiva - are dark in colour. Political history obviously plays a more emphatic role than mythology or even religion in the building up of definitions of beauty or in the evolving of cultural aesthetics.

        Referring to my personal history at this point, whether in Kenya where I was born and brought up or in India later where I gradually wrenched myself out of a colonial hang over, the colonizer was the distant, white devil, someone to hate but also attractive enough to emulate subconsciously. It took years of adult thinking for me to strip the Anglicized cultural veneer from myself to be able to find my forked tongue for a natural expression in English, my English, not that of the white British. This reminds me of another poem of Derek Walcott’s lines: “ Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?

I who cursed/ the drunken officer of British rule, how choose/ Between this Africa and the British tongue I love/ Betray them both, or give back what they give?” Well I did not choose to be born into it, but I did choose to make it my own, and fill the language with my own cultural symbolism.

Colour serves as a vital perceptual tool for visual cognitive operations but when these operations rest heavily on the deeply embedded political orientations that distort, pervert or abort natural identity, new palettes need be created for the remixing of old colours and the creation of natural colours for natural identity.

I end this piece with a small poem of mine written long time ago:

Love is

an osmosis

of all whites

and all

blacks:

Hate is

blacks

pulled out

of

whites.

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SPEECH FOR INAUGURAL CEREMONY

I stand here to speak on behalf of the visiting writers from Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, India, St.Martin, participants in the International Writers Workshop 2004, being held at the Hong Kong Baptist University here in Hong Kong.

At the outset I wish to express and record our gratefulness to Professor Chung Ling and the University for having instituted such a programme as this and then for selecting us for this one-month-long residency in the inaugural year. In an age of technology and management, creative writing usually takes a back seat and gets so easily marginalized even in institutions of higher learning. We are therefore specially appreciative of the bold initiative taken by the University to establish a programme of this stature for the cause of creative writing. But then, isn’t this in tune with the ancient wisdom of these lands – that the equilibrium be maintained between the Yin and the Yang for purposeful living. We realize today that modernity in fact is the expression of the dynamism of tradition even in its semblance of revolt.

We appreciate that this programme has brought together writers from different, countries - I must hasten to add though that one of us is from St. Martin, an island still lying in the colonial yoke. While our coming together is an opportunity to interact, understand and respect cultural differences, we need to also identify and face common issues in locating our creative expression. One of the common features is that all of us write in English…A persistent theme of academic discussions and seminars. Which English? Why English? And then, of course, -- Because English! Writers can empower each other in building fresh resources of expression in a language that has become one’s own, through forces of history and politics. Creative action and not negative reaction is the response of the writer, don’t we know.

Thank you for creating space for such creative dialoguing and for indeed strengthening this community of writers. To have so much diversity and yet fruitful sharing, all under one roof, and receiving excellent care, graceful attention and hospitality, calls for abundant competence and generosity. We wish the International Writers Workshop continued success.

Thank you all.

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HEIGHTS 

The Seventh floor

Tells Buddha’s tale

Above desire, above suffering

One day I was born

One day I shall die.

……………………………….

From the Peak

Fog settling on

Masses of cement and iron

the skyscrapers of Hong Kong

opaque in the abstraction of nature.

………………………………….

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