The Horizontal Rain: A Review of Collection of Poems ‘XXL’ by Aditya Shankar
“No word is big enough /To be its meaning”
In a world where words fail to define, Aditya Shankar has sketched images that zoom in on life from what he calls ’wanderlust’. XXL, is an anthology that speaks volumes of this talented poet who has a perspective that defies the mundane. Scenarios from different walks of life are strung together to portray the beautiful and the dark.
At the outset, the poetry of Aditya is a trance of metaphors — he draws symbols from myriad places to give shape to his themes. Be it the nostalgic pain, the paradox of life or the meaningless existence, Adityan illuminates his themes through a series of metaphors — they connect and converse with the world around. In the “Night Vision Gadgets” the ironies of the mundane life that reduce it to a rat race is exemplified by the journey by the night train. One cannot but pause to reflect on the purposeless, mechanic life when the poet pictures the ‘overpowered prisoners of war’ commuting to ‘predestined destinations’. A life bereft of pristine nature and one’s cultural roots is depicted as ‘ a gaggle of the faceless’, where:
“ The marginal man yearns to know
The one who designed his game
The one who pushes back the oar from
Beneath the water, keep sailing
The one who plants mirages at
The eyeline of your horizon, keep walking
The one who drifts air beneath your wing
Keep soaring”
Similarly, in The “Stray Dog’s tail”, the curvy tail of a dog is posed as a symbol for the submissiveness of a generation for varied pretexts — the one who flees his debtors, or the hitman who assumes a political name for his survival. The wagging tail recalls years of subjugation and yearning for freedom. Adityan has a fascinating way of tossing images to show a different perspective of life. A murder and the consequent terror is portrayed in “ Mortuary Warehouse palindrome” to ruminate on the paradoxes of life and death — the sack comes to denote both the dead and the one made lifeless by terror.
The warehouse , a mortuary of silence
The mortuary , a warehouse of silence
The distance we traverse from
One to the other is the only myth
The sarcasm explicit in most of these poems is used to reach out to the hapless and the downtrodden. “The Clown’s Bicycle” captures the pain behind the clown’s chortle when he vacillates between ‘happy pedalling’ and ‘painful fall’; the ‘rag picker’ is another satiric spoke in the reckless pace of the ‘rat race that hurts’. A note of reverence goes to ‘Peeling of Onions’, where the poet extols the’ dormant voice’ and highlights the metaphoric ‘shame’ of generations of male chauvinists. So does the “Eyebrows” that reverberates the thanklessness for the rituals of a homemaker, who rises to be ‘an eternal optimist ‘inspite of swimming in a sandwich or appropriating the fins of the fish she cooks for dinner. Environmentalism is brought out through the seething image of trees bearing placards and the satirical tone in “New Enlightenment” employed to show the sacrifice involved in survival in the word:
It is outliving
the soil for the concrete
The loss of childhood strikes a chord for the poet; the flashes of memories are brought forth by indelible images — the river, which the poet remembers as ‘horizontal rain’, the vacant house that is reminiscent of a weary father returning home. The poet builds the nostalgia through a series of imagery: the extinguished butt of the first cigarette, the first stink of alcohol or the first movie ticket. The irony in taking vacation at river lodges complements the process of ‘growing old’. Aditya also makes an effort to portray the deep seated fears and inhibitions — the elusive nature of dreams, fears and lust comparing them to the tangible and the concrete in “Geometry of Solitude”.
In ignorant nights
In a deep sleep
Fears, dreams, lust
Come marching
Along unknown roads
In unknown shapes
XXL is a compilation of the pebbles the poet picked up from various shores to display varied beauty. While Folklore gives an enchanting definition of religion, “A Part within Me” discloses the inner paradox each of us fight every day. Here is an excerpt:
But I obey the devil within
And fail to renounce
The pleasures of little sins
Touching upon myriad sores, Aditya Shankar has given voice to the ‘gaggle of the faceless’ in XXL. By sketching on a wide canvas of experience and using experimental tools, Aditya gives the reader ample opportunity to interpret different levels of meaning in his poetry.
