A poetic re-reading

Prashnegaliruvudu Shakespearenige

G.N. Mohan

Abhinava, Rs. 50

Deconstructing a work of literature or popular culture is often a jargon-ridden academic exercise. But G.N. Mohan chooses the medium of poetry to re-read texts in “Prashnegaliruvudu Shakespearenige”.

The protagonists of the grand tragedies of the Bard, Kalidasa’s “Shakuntala” whose fate hangs by the glint of a ring, Urmila whose agonising wait for Lakshmana gets somewhere lost in the grand sweep of the epic and the folk hero Sangya who is drawn to his friend’s wife like a moth to fire… Mohan looks at all of them from a new perspective in his poems. Rather, as the title suggests, he poses new questions to the characters and their creators.

While Shakespeare, “who wove sighs into beautiful dreams”, sends Mohan on a philosophical quest, Kalidasa’s Shakuntala leaves him wondering on the inexplicable ways of love. The fawn in Kanwa’s ashrama wonders why the gentle girl abandoned all the assurances and certainty that came with the verdant forests, all her friends and father’s unconditional love for “a touch, a smile, a sigh and a song” of a stranger from an unknown land.

Mohan, who has been associated with the medium of television for many years, comes up with some particularly striking poems using the flitting images of the screen as metaphors. In “Mr and Mrs Iyer” (this reviewer’s personal favourite in the collection), he juxtaposes the relaxed and festive atmosphere of a middle class living room and the traumatic situation faced by the characters in the film playing out on the television in the same room. In “Second Take” he talks about how all the highs and lows of life are packaged for a neat presentation. In “Kodangige illi kelasavilla” he says: “Whatever the state of mind/ there are always beautiful girls to smile/ and toothpastes aplenty to keep the smiles flowing.”

Mohan’s poems sound laboured only when he insists on being too direct and in a hurry to make a point in poems such as “Ayke embudu irulli dose alla” or when he picks a theme that seems to sit uncomfortably in the format of a poem as in “Sanna saalakke namaskara”.

BAGESHREE S.

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