The Triple Path:Re-inventing Poetic Genre A Study of the Poetry of charu Sheel Singh

Book Review: RAJNI SINGH

THE TRIPLE PATH: Re-Inventing Poetic Genre A Study of the Poetry of Charu Sheel Singh Vols. I &II edited by Krishna Banerjee, New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2007, pp.xxx+325, Price Rs.1200/-, ISBN 97 8-81-8435-027-2(set).

The paradigm shift from the politics of the mainstream to the marginalized sub stream of Indian English poetry is indeed an historical shift. A decade ago it was quite common to come across learned articles and books on well-known Indian English poets but today the picture has totally changed. There are a few groups of academicians, critics and scholars who have the perceptive organs strong enough to realize the genuine Indian ness of Indian English poetry and the best example of it is the two volumes under review on Charu Sheel Singh, an eminent critic and creative writer of international repute.

Nevertheless, the full credit goes to the editor Krishna Banerjee who went around collecting scholarly essays on C.S. Singh. A very catchy and thought provoking title, The Triple Path, is actually referred to Singh’s creative skills as a poet, a critic and a literary theorist. Banerjee sees Singh as “a treader of the triple path like Arnold, Eliot and Aurobindo. The subtitle of the volumes Re- Inventing Poetic Genre is quite apt in the sense that in Singh’s poetry the structure is cyclic structure (like in Puran) i.e. coming back to the constant from periphery all-round whereas in Aurobindo and Tagore it is linear and productive- effect sequence. Banerjee skillfully puts the twenty- seven titles (essays, reviews and interviews) of the two volumes under five broad categories, keeping in mind the readerly problems- Epic Consciousness (eight essays), Cognitive Rhythm’s Way to Eternity (three essays), Lyric’s Temporal Satiety (four Essays), Collective Consciousness (nine essays) and Interpreting Death Beyond Eternity (three interviews).

The two volumes not only evolve an insightful discourse of Singh’s poetic craftsmanship but also see him as a questing panther in search of the traditions that go thousands of years back so as to constitute the mythical/ scriptural consciousness in the present times. In most of the essays affinities have been drawn between C.S. Singh and poets like Blake, Yeats, Eliot, Ezra Pound and even Aurobindo and Tagore. Singh shows his indebtedness, even though unconsciously, because such influences if any are thoroughly radicalized by Singh’s creative process. Further, he believes that a “ creative consciousness is constitutive of its perceptive capacities that evolve into a range of their own. Influences are derivative where the self- constitutive and self- evolving phenomenon of growth is not materializing itself out”(p.277). This implies that Singh is Harold Bloom’s “strong poet”.

Contributors to the volumes have emphasized the very essence of the Indian ness in C.S. Singh’s poetry along with the postmodernist idiom and symbols. Out of the many contributions only the major ones have been taken into account here, due to lack of space. Sunanda Mongia’s reading of Singh’s poetry is a scholarly piece with suggestions to read the poet in the light of his own theory as he has expounded in his book- Concentric Imagination: Mandala Literary Theory. She also states that Singh’s poetry is highly problematic for a common reader. What Sunanda Mongia says is quite true. The kind of poetry Singh writes appears to be abstractions. But this is so because the present generation has its own engagement with materiality that has taken us away from mythology and hieroglyphic language. Patricia Prime finds C.S.Singh’s poetry as a mediating point between modernism and postmodernism. Norman Simms’ scholarly article takes a stand, which may not be doing justice to the credentials of The Indian Hero as a poem. Prof. Simms’ says that poetry originating from Anglo- Christian tradition is not an agreeable proposition because he belongs to Hebrew and Jewish tradition. This stancing is to the best of my mind somewhat uncritical because the poem is the issue and not one’s personal system of beliefs, even though the article gives birth to many more studies that might follow from Simms’ insight. Maha Nand Sharma in his essay arrives at many meaningful comparisons between the Creation Cocktail and Milton’s Paradise Lost. He finds pathetic fallacy that is the key instrument used by the poet to create emotional ambience. To Bernard M. Jackson, C.S. Singh’s poetry carries the highest spiritual experiences that can ever be possible to man. Santosh K Pandey places the poet in the tradition of Blake and Aurobindo for the cosmic elements in his poetry while Versha Kushwaha makes a comparison between Singh and Allen Ginsberg as both the poets review tradition in the light of contemporary reality. Asha Viswas’s reading centers on The Indian Hero, which she finds as a composite piece of intuition and intellect a grand mixture of sublimity and absurdity, grandeur and grotesque, memory and imagination. O.P. Mathur and Kushwaha focus on the obscurity of Singh’s style. O.P. Mathur believes that Singh’s poetry is modeled on W. B. Yeats and Charles Olson and in order to have a comprehensibility of Singh’s poetry the readers shall have to initiate them-selves. R.S. Sharma examines Singh’s Terracotta Flames in the light of the Buddhist’s concept of dukkha. Similarly, Bani Brata Mahanta locates the genesis of The Indian Hero in Buddhism. I wish few articles could be more critical than they are. The interviews provide enough material to unlock the perennial puzzle of a poet’s creative sources.

In sum, the effort of various contributors to focus upon C.S. Singh’s poetic oeuvre is indeed commendable and immensely beneficial for researchers and students who are interested in examining his poetry. The price makes the book slightly prohibitive but who can withstand the enthusiasm of Krishna Banerjee? Or C.S. Singh’s scriptural consciousness and mythographic imagination:

Bring the pearl! O God!

On the mythic geography

Of linear constellations

And let the sea- shells

Sing hymns primeval. (Tapascharanam p.1)

Reviewed by:

Rajni Singh

Assistant Professor of English

Dept. of HSS

Indian School of Mines University

Dhanbad, India

Kashi: A Mandala Poem

Book Review: RAJNI SINGH

Charu Sheel Singh. KASHI: A MANDALA POEM. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2007,pp.xii+92, Price Rs.150/-, ISBN 97 8-81-8435-029-6.

The historiographical narratives on Kashi are immense but a meta- narrative exclusively on this divine city was missing. C.S.Singh’s seizural quest for the mystical secrecies could pave a way to “a poetic avatara of Kashi in English”, with his latest volume of poetry – Kashi: A Mandala Poem. The present book, under review, not only gives an authentic narrative of the story of Kashi but also goes on to the extent of envisioning this cosmic city from a newer perspective and in this creative process, generates Kashi as a Sri Cakra, a mandala which has several entry points and all the points are the different doors to eternity:

Kashi, Varanasi, Avimukta,

Antargrahi are twenty-four

fold, sixteen-fold and

eight-fold interiors of

Shiva leading into the bindus

seed of all creation. (p.83)

The poet brings in every detail of the configuration of the mandala. The exteriors of twenty-four Kashi petals are shielded by ghats “which are the monumental bodies of Tirthas”(p.88). The pragmatics of Sri Yantra is explained thus: “Sri-yantras are made out of/the ashes of the dead and the naval/is the ultimate burial ground”(p.69-70).

The poet sees Kashi as the body of Parvati, and life and death as the twin Parvati sisters, thus making Kashi the crematorium ground that foregrounds in one’s consciousness the temporality of all existence. In his ultimate acknowledgement, made to Lord Shiva, Singh says that it was Lord Shiva who made him “articulate death and life as the twin Parvati sisters simultaneously in temporalities that cross their own sublunary regions of consciousness.” (p.vii)

Singh defines Kashi as “the endless Pranava”: “a thought less/eternity where terrestrial heights/and brutish sea-deeps equivocally/meet and evaporate”(p.45). Singh in his foreword says that the poem is “ death in motion of life. We cannot escape the concentricity God has transcripted us into” (p.xi). Love for the divine is the only route to the divine, which in itself is full of hurdles; in Singh’s words it is ‘Veebhatsa’. This veebhatsa is nothing but a rendezvous with death that Kashi generates: “Kashi’s genetic/productions of veebhatsa continually/burns our bodies into evaporations/that nurture skills of torture/in the cuckooing pranava of an/endless game” (p.3). And the eighth place in the mandala is the Mahashamashana, the centrality of life that seasons “for all of us to cook on fire”, a ritual that celebrates eternity:

The burning

pyres mail bodies to eternity

in songs whose melody is the

fine itself renewing life again

and further more and ever so

again. (p.20)

The union of the temporal with the eternal is presented realistically. When one witnesses the splintering sparks of fire rising up from the funeral pyre at the burning ghats, one comes face to face with the eternal truth- the temporality of our journeys in a handful of dust. And Singh says that this “consciousness of death in life inaugurates another era within us.”(p.xi)

To Singh Parvati and Kashi are “alternate/designs of Shiva’s thought- process”- “Parvati is the kumbhaka inbreathing/while Kashi the rechaka out breathing”(p.45). He further goes on to say that Kashi is Goddess Parvati Herself. In his foreword the poet avers, “I have visualized Kashi in the form of a Sri Cakra which is the body of the goddesss inhabiting Shiva within. Kashi, therefore, is a mandala, and the mandala is the body of the goddess”(p.ix). With Shiva’s marching into the mandala, the text of texts i.e. Kashi blossomed.

Singh presents the tale of linga and creation into the epic modes of incredible reality. He narrates the theory of the bursting of the ‘Hiranyagarbha’, the cosmic egg, which was in the shape of a linga.

Supreme

Shiva bore His body into a

luminous linga sprawling its

nuptial designs into conch-shell

mantras ever reverberating unto

Eternity. (p.61)

And-

It were saints by the Ganges

who envisioned the blasting

dove of light divine; they called

it Kash! Kash!, and the oozing

corners of the globe gathered

into a luminous fold that was

Shiva as a jyotirlinga. (p.61)

He also makes a reference to the “panchakroshi yatra”, the area that is a mini-cosmos in itself. Towards the end, Singh says: “ Kashi tales are samadhi postures/that ever gesture renewed forms/of a panchganga confluence/enshrined in internal sentience” (p.92). Shiva, Kashi, Samadhi, Luminosity is all one. The state of samadhi in which all sorts of dualities dissolve into absences, gives way to realization of the emptiness of being which further leads to the understanding of Kashi and its luminosity, and this knowledge of luminosity means the realization of Shiva/ truth.

Singh leaves no stone unturned in marveling the scriptures on Kashi, which is quite evident from his acknowledgment made to a wide range of books. The present volume is a perfect blend of history/tradition and creation. Singh adds a dash of zing to history and creates a new metaphorical imagistic repertoire of Kashi.

When the present day poetry abounds in momentary thoughts and feelings; descriptions of petty experiences; the social and political problems and confines to the particular environ, a poetry like C.S.Singh’s Kashi: A mandala Poem stands apart, almost, making one reminiscent of Tagore or Aurobindo, for its spiritual, intellectual and aesthetic qualities/features. Certainly, Singh deserves to be commended for presenting a new holistic view of Kashi through his mandala theory.

An elegantly printed cover with a picture of Lord Shiva being seated on a lotus i.e. the mandala/ Kashi, the book is a sane voice from the mystic arena of grandiloquence.

Reviewed by:

Rajni Singh

Assistant Professor of English

Dept. of HSS

Indian School of Mines University

Dhanbad, India

Descending Dark Stairs

Book Review: RAJNI SINGH

K.S. Pal. DESCENDING DARK STAIRS. Kolkata: Writers Workshop, 2007,pp 54, Price Rs.120/-, ISBN 81-8157-622-5

K.S. Pal’s Descending Dark Stairs is about hypocrisies, lost worlds, effects of modernization/urbanization, cultural dislocations, exile, homeless and identity. The word ‘dark’ in the title of the volume symbolically portrays the darkness at the heart of the so-called civilized men .It is also suggestive of the dark stairs of old age and unflinching desires.

Poems like ‘No Choice’, ‘Of Leftovers’, ‘Growing Old’, It Hurts’, ‘What is Left…’ ‘Reflections’ and ‘On Retirement’ are on old age. The poem ‘No Choice’ reflects on the hypocrisy of time. Man, a slave of time, in his youth is greeted even by the mirror and when old just becomes an object of abuse-“Leave us alone, you old parasite”(p.10). The image of ‘parasite’ is employed to depict the insignificant existence of old people. Touching upon the same issue in ‘It Hurts’, the poet says-

It hurts when-

you are finally an old man,

confined to a cornered cell,

fed on monosyllables

of busy sons and their wives,

and on crumbs of visits

of distant daughters. (p.23)

The poems on age are stark slips- a critique of the moral bankruptcy in our society today. They also articulate the poet’s own anxiety of age and expose the psyche of young people.

Man’s rapacious nature of self-aggrandisement and its spiritual and moral bankruptcy have led to vacant ness in human relationships-

Now bright girls and boys

like dresses go on changing friends,

swapping for fun, and their marketing ploys. (p.18)

Man trapped between desires and fulfillment identifies success with possession. In his highly paradoxical piece ‘The Portrait of a Successful Man’, the poet says:

how he has worked

for a peacock tomorrow

and left

his present

to hungry vultures (p.27)

In the times of economic globalisation Man has become a mammonite He tries his best to escape reality but when faces it realizes the truth.

I feel like an amnesiac slave

who from the pit longs to go,

… … … … … … … …

For a few thousand dollars

I’ve mortgaged my soul,

my pride, even my goal.

I’m reminded of my date

with my little Lucifers

and the coming, tearing horrors. (p.47)

The poet vividly captures the diasporic experiences in ‘Among Aliens’, ‘Instant Revenge’, ‘What to Do?’, ‘Realization’, ‘Stirring Last Embers’ and ‘An SMS’.

Your hijab to me is nothing

but a burden of identity,

they don’t understand

They want us to change our shoes,

when we do, they still say,

we belong to a different land. (p.48)

Our black, brown bodies

can’t help stinking,

even if we name ourselves

Tom, Julie or Wilking. (p.49)

The gulf between the occident and the orient is unbridgeable. The shadow between us and them still remains and the poet sees them ‘more darkened and lengthened after 9/11’(p.51) and thus he says:

Parallel and charged lines

are not meant to meet,

and if they ever do,

they simply emit sparks. (p.49)

Let it be there, as it is.

Let us move on.

There’s enough light

to bask, and much left

to hang on. (p.51)

The poems are remarkable for their pungency and stark realism, under lining the social role of the poet. There is an ostensible ease in these poems. They simply come alive to the mind and heart of the reader.

Reviewed by:

Rajni Singh

Assistant Professor of English

Dept. of HSS

Indian School of Mines University

Dhanbad, India

Etching on the Edge

Book Review: RAJNI SINGH

Charu Sheel Singh. ETCHING ON THE EDGE. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2007,pp.x+68, Price Rs.85/-,ISBN 81-8435-066-X

Man is a victim of temporality and he creates or recreates this temporality consciously/unconsciously assuming it as the permanent. In this process, every moment a history is etched out only to be disfigured any time. Singh in his foreword to the book says, “All of us begin history even while we lose it.”(p.vii) The poems in the present volume reread Indian history in terms of mythical figures, characters and culture “with the interpretive web that might just inaugurate a new beginning.”(p.vii) Out of the thirty-two poems of this volume, five are based on mythical figures; fourteen are on historical characters and the rest dwell on diverse subjects. Through sumptuous narrative, Singh re narrates the mythical figures with contemporaneous idioms and juxtaposes India’s great past with its agonizing present.

In “Bee-hive”, Singh ponders over the degeneration of man. In the poem the human body is compared to a hive, a storehouse of oozing rasas. Singh says:

the purgatorial corridors open

close as we generate bee hives within (p.32)

It is very unfortunate that man’s ‘reasoned galaxy’ has killed honey-bees with intellectual arrows. He does not participate in the game of ‘sucking’ and ‘plucking’ which is a game of blissful trance. The poet questions:

Could our bodily-hives arise

to the call of innocent

life’s floodgates? (p.33)

Singh strongly condemns the modern man’s practice of commodifying even Gods and festivals:

Dewali is

not a marketable festival that

sells it piety on the Dalal streets

of London. Ram crucified Himself even

as we celebrated Dewali. Sita became

the earthen lamp burning tears into

the candles of night. (‘Deepawali’ p.30)

The change in spelling, from ‘Deepawali’ to ‘Dewali’ brings in a change in the pronunciation of the word that suggests the loss of devotion and reflects on the glamorization that is structured around the festivals.

It

Was Sita who burnt Herself

in the Deepawali earthen pots;

She gave away Her tearful

songs to a society that

knew not piety and love (‘Sita’ p.37)

In the poem ‘Holi’, Singh not only ‘states’ the grossness of the present times but also makes an attempt to ‘suggest’:

Prahlad was eternal fire

who consumed temporal ones. The

colours combine to cleanse and

purify the dross that is often

our self’s pitiable cross. (p.31)

Singh Says:

A lineage of demons often

breeds a pious soul into

the folded prisms of the

pages of history. (p. )

and the pious souls that Singh enlists in his volume are Prahlad, Baba Neem Karori and Gandhi. On the pages of history we have characters like Duryodhana-“stripping Draupadi/ naked into the jungle desires”(p.17) and on the other hand there are pious figures like Baba Neem Karori who, “wove blanket songs of love/and selflessness.”(p. ) This juxtaposition between the good / bad, vice / virtue, Godly / demonic runs down through out the volume.

In its first impression the poems appear obscure and ostentatious but on a careful and responsive study of these poems one finds that they manifest not only the nobility of the poet’s thoughts but also his mastery over the poetic genre. Singh with his narrative art lengthens and shortens his verse paragraphs according to the length of thought unit.

On the whole, Etching on the Edge is undeniably a rich and valuable addition to the corpus of Indian English Poetry as it lays out the very roots of Indian mythology. At the very outset Singh makes it clear that “Indian English Poetry is yet to see its full bloom for it is still searching for a Raja Rao or an Aurobindo.” It is quite true in the sense that many of our talented poets could not deviate from the Eliotesque track or shake off the influence of Bombay poets. Still there lacks in an honest experiment with truth, a need to give a creative worldview of India’s great past. Singh’s Etching on the Edge is a stepping-stone in this direction.

Reviewed by:

Rajni Singh

Assistant Professor of English

Dept. of HSS

Indian School of Mines University

Dhanbad, India

Ontime Untime

BookReview:RAJNISINGH

Pronab Kumar Majumder. ONTIME UNTIME. Kolkata:Bridge-in- Making Publication, 2007, pp.36, Price Rs. 50/-

The burden of time has occupied poets and seers since ages. Poets escape the burden of time with the help of their poetic craftsmanship whereas the seers transcend this time ridden world through mystical awareness/ timelessness / Ananta. The present book under review also deals with time. P. K. Majumdar like Tennyson and T. S. Eliot is preoccupied with time and yearns to escape the world of time by reposing in peace and compassion, the way T.S. Eliot reclines in the three “Da’s” in What the Thunder Said (The Waste Land) or as Tennyson who tries to evade the burden of time by looking back, from the painful present into the past.

Ontime Untime is a move from the transient to the permanent. The disjuncted links of the sections of this vol. Time - life - Philosophy - Ecology and Environment – Violence – Peace - Love is a metaphor for man’s onward journey from transience to permanence and appears very much in harmony after a thoughtful reading. These seven parts combine together to make a whole-unification of time bound into timelessness. In this time bound world life appears dwarfish and man in keeping himself update with time has brought havoc to the Ecology and Environment. He shun his innocence the day he tasted the fruit of progress. Benevolence and humility are the wishes that lie cold in the lap of past and violence has taken over the present completely. It is, then, through ‘Peace’ and ‘Love’ only that man can free himself from the clutches of time.

In the 1^st section of the vol., entitled Time, Mr. Majumdar makes an attempt to understand ‘Time’, defines it and compares it with ‘Life’. Mind and Time are juxtaposed. Intellect and Space are shower on a perpetual race and in this race time emerges victorious leaving the mind behind.

Time, the overpowering one smiles

at the mind’s diligence

Time is the teacher of all human

Creature, it teaches good and bad.

He further goes on to say that ‘Time’ is the cosmic power to which are bound the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. It is an unresolved mystery and the human mind can only feel it and measure it with its own life span. He also talks about speed of Time, which is determined with time product activity. In the machine less age ‘Time’ was slow but in modern/machine age it has sped up but the paradox lies in the fact that in this Time of Speed Man has -

No destination to go

A long walker walks slow.

The second section ‘Life’ features life with a flowing river which is again juxtaposed with the stagnant water i.e. death. The binary opposition life vs. death again brings to the mind the central there of the poem performance vs. transience. Life, though is prone to perish yet is permanent like the river with its ‘living force’ i.e. the power to create – ‘Life expands / Death strands’. The lines

Life is not just living

Life is what is giving

echo ‘Datta’, injunction of the thunder in T.S. Eliot’s . The Waste Land, which Eliot borrowed from the Hindu Upanishadic lore. The Lines:

A sleeping Man

Misuses life’s can

Pull of water

Life’s elixir

…………….

Life is learning

Life is teaching

Heavily resonate the Victorian poets’ preaching of a life of action. Tenyson’s Ulysses and Browning’s A Grammarian’s Funeral openly condemn the Victorian tendency of escapism. Majumdar too does the same and resolves the conflict between life and time by placing then as counterparts –

Life is time’s follower

Time is life’s conveyor

One is unlimited whole

Another is its soul.

In the next section ‘Philosophy’, the poet brings in another binary opposition – Light vs. Shade / Virtue vs. Vice / Knowledge vs. Ignorance and goes on to say that this ever perpetual war between good and bad can come to an end if one listens to his conscience. He sounds like Kabir in the following lines:

The house is ablaze

In incited rage

Ignorants set the house on fire

With consequences dire

The omniscient bird beats

Forehead while fire eats.

The section ‘Ecology and Environment’ focuses on the repercussions of ‘progress’ that has turned into “speed” in the present times. Man in his effort to be on time / to match with time has completely devastated the serene rural life and has produced morbid vicinity with cantankerous people. Modernity / urbanization has led to the emergence of concrete jungles. Rivers, the elixir of life are now at the verge of extinction due to Man’s lust of gain.

Crushed under the burden of Time, Man has become emotionless, insensitive to even his own race. ‘Hegemony’ and ‘arrogance’ are the soul of violence. Killing has now become a ‘global game’.

It is through peace and love that man can reliance himself from Ontime to Untime (timelessness). The poet grabs the best opportunity to preach ever:

Let us chant mantra of peace

………………………………..

Not words of speech

Will for it brings peace

Humans need to change soul

To have peace the ultimate goal.

Trust in man only can grant peace warranty

O M shanti OM shanti OM shanty

The line ‘OM Shanti ……’ once again brings to mind the concluding lines of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Like Eliot, the poet tries to evade the burden of time by reclining in ‘Peace and Love’.

The word’ ‘Time’ reverberates throughout the vol. The poet ‘s own preoccupation with Time is suggestive of a time obsessed world - the tragedy of modern man who lives in a ‘time conscious’ time and thus gets completely entrapped in this quagmire and the only way out for him is to conquer this Ontime through timelessness / Untime.

The seven parts of the vol. run down in spontaneity despite being grouped into 72 sections. Each section is a unit in it self that suggests qualities like poise and completeness. The units take the readers phrase-by-phrase, cadence-by-cadence, and line-by-line down the last page. The surprisingly few typographical errors cannot mar the beauty of Ontime Untime.

Reviewed by:

Rajni Singh

Assistant Professor of English

Dept. of HSS

Indian School of Mines University

Dhanbad, India

Scripture on Stone

Book Review: RAJNI SINGH

Charu Sheel Singh. SCRIPTURE ON STONE. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2007, pp. x +108, Price Rs. 95/-, ISBN 81-8435-019-8

Poetry in Indian English ought to express Indian ethos and sensibility as these are considered to be the important traits of Indian ness. Charu Sheel Singh as a poet, critic and creative writer has always tried to connect himself with the main trends and sensibility which has helped him find a place for himself under the umbrella of the present day Indian English poetry. Born in 1955 in Farookhabad, C.S.Singh is a critic and creative writer of international repute. His seventh volume of poems Scripture on Stone is a welcome publication to render one bemused at the first sight. His poems collected in this volume are a storehouse of rich heritage and have symbolic expressions and immaculate command of language.

The poems in this volume can be grouped under three categories-poems based on Indian mythological figures such as Ram, Shabari, Eklavya and Ganga; poems based on legendary figures like Gandhi, Meera, Buddha, Kabir and a poem based on historical subject-Taj Mahal. Although kaleidoscopic in nature, these poems get unified under the title ‘Scripture on Stone’-“a journey to the world beyond the word and the logos.”(p.vii)

Scripture on Stone opens with ‘Ram’ wherein Singh retells the entire story of Ram in a condensed manner. To the question’Who is Ram?’- a man/demi-god/god, the poet beautifully defines:

…. ‘Ra’ is the Sun which endlessly

substitutes itself while ‘ma’

makes the twin shores merge

into eternity. (12)

Ram’s infidelity to Sita is termed as ‘market fidelity’ by the poet. This ‘marketed fidelity’ becomes a source of Sita’s ordeal and Ram’s remorse.

… He

could not preach others

to put their houses in order;

He sold one of His own in

markets that never see the

light of the day. (19)

Ram’s ‘masterly wizardry’ over ‘twelve kalas’, ‘eight siddhis’and ‘nine nidhis’ could not help him escape from the wheel of karma. The poet towards the end of the poem raises a pertinent question and lays it bare for the reader to ponder over:

karmas though can also be imposed

and not necessarily bred; would

one answer this to inaugurate

a still gruesome new wisdom. (21)

The second poem ‘Ravidas’ focuses on the on- going debate of center /periphery, the powerful /powerless, the privileged /under -privileged; the rage of Parashuram that becomes a curse to Ravidas, putting his clan in the lowest hierarchy of caste system and his emergence as a ‘scriptural saint’.

‘Eklavya’, the fourth poem of this volume has an affinity to ‘Ravidas’ on the grounds of social structure of the society. Eklavya despite extraordinary merit becomes a victim to his sinuous origin. Drona’s ‘guru-dakshina’ is linked with the brutality of Shahjahan:

the one ordered butchery

while the other begged for it. (46)

Such sacrifices/butcheries that are half sung/unsung by history are ruptures in history.In his Foreword to the poems the poet says: “History’s interiors are defunct and the mainstream discourses are manipulative.”(p.vii)

In these two poems the poet with candidness expresses the anarchy/injustice that has been prevailing in the society since ages. Nonetheless, when Singh’s frustrations get coloured by anger; though veiled, he breaks forth:

Religion

is not a system but a living

tissue that we must all encase

and bathe in (31)

He even grabs the best opportunity to preach:

God

is one but forms multiple,

why not preserve them all

to get beyond the cradle? (30)

Singh’s feelings of patriotism find expression in ‘Gandhi”, the sixth poem of this volume:

India had less

identities and more differences;

the ‘other’ is a formula of

making differences as identities.

India is not a body but the ideation

of an idea; it is not to be

read or understood; it is

to be lived. (61)

Singh wishes to see his nation rising under the Gandhian ideologies:

If Gandhi is to survive as

a nation and a narration

we have to bury negations

into a new kind of quality summation.

Gandhi is the script as well as

scripting; let us live fictions as

reality where treachery and

difference go adrifting. (63)

The last poem of this volume ‘Ganga’recreates in a brief compass the well-known myth of the sacred river- the river that has the power to wash away the sins. The poem is a reflection on the socio-religious mentality of people. All these mythological /historical /legendary subjects that have been documented in history focus on the ruptures of time in history.

On the whole Scripture on Stone can be called a good example of tradition and individual talent wherein Singh recreates the myths faithfully and succinctly not because to explore its poetic possibility but to discover if it carries a relevance /significance even in the present times. Presumably, this is why the poet in his ‘foreword’ calls his collection “open ended since the poems try to re-live history in new- historicist modality of experience.”(p.vii)

Singh’s harking back to the traditional lore in these sumptuous poems has a dual role to play, first to project all our yesterdays and secondly to tell us where we are today. The book exhibits Singh’s deep knowledge of the Hindu scriptures. In the age of limericks, haiku and tanka, Singh keeps the flow of the language narrative alive and gives it new hues by employing images, symbols and words which essentially are Indian in tone.

A miniature epic at a fair price, Scripture on Stone would prove to be a treat to all poetry lovers.

Reviewed by:

Rajni Singh

Assistant Professor of English

Dept. of HSS

Indian School of Mines University

Dhanbad, India

English for Specific Purposes

BOOK REVIEW

Teaching English for Specific Purposes: An Evolving Experience by R.K.Singh, Book Enclave, Jaipur, 2005, pp. xii +289, Rs. 725/-.ISBN 81-8152-118-8

Reviewed by RAJNI SINGH

Assistant Professor

Indian School of Mines University,

Dhanbad, India.

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is a needs based concept to determine which language skills should be profitably developed for academic and professional success of students. It takes into account certain basic questions like: “who the learners are, what their linguistic background or level of competence is, what their view to language learning is, what their purpose and expectations are, what particular skill they will be needing in their actual, on- the- job situation etc.”

English as a medium of instruction is integrated into a subject matter area important to the learners, enabling them to use the English they know to learn even more English for all sorts of transactions. It is assumed that the ESP learners already have the basics of the English language and are learning the language in order to communicate a set of professional skills and to perform particular job- related functions.

Thus the ESP approach provides opportunities to the learners to acquire English naturally, by working with language in a context that they comprehend and find interesting.

Teaching English for Specific Purposes: An Evolving Experience by R.K.Singh is a useful resource material for aspirant scholars, teachers and especially for any beginner of ESP practices, particularly in technical institutions where English is both ‘a reading language’ and ‘teaching language’. The book is a compilation of the author’s 18 Research Essays followed by 22 Review Essays that have been already published in reputed national and international journals during 1970s-1990s.These essays unravel several facets of ESP from 1970s to 1990s in India and abroad.

The first section that comprises Research essays is a blending of theory and practice that should help the readers to understand the role of ESP in India and its future prospects in the ever-changing socio- linguistic scenario whereas the second and the final section of the book should help in taking the readers to the larger domain of language learning, in particular ESL, EFL and ESP. The ease with which the author links the two sections makes this book a convenient first book for aspirant scholars who have little or no background in ESP or EST.

The Research Essays are the outcome of the classroom experiences of the author as a teacher featuring the ESP approach at ISM, the role and the responsibilities of the ESP teachers and effectiveness of ESP programmes in techno-savvy modern society. The first two essays throw ample light on the role of English in the educational system of India. The third essay raises a pertinent question ‘Whether teaching of English should be for communicative competence, or for performance?’ The notion of re-viewing the conventional pedagogy is also elaborated in this article. The author advocates ‘Communication’ as the aim of English teaching and asserts that communicative competence and performance can’t be viewed separately. Both are indispensable part of any language teaching and the ultimate criterion of language mastery. Singh also feels that now the time has come for the teachers to adopt unconventional teaching techniques and seek ways and resources of making the contents of their textbooks relevant, meaningful and of interest to the students.

In the two essays “Exploring Possibilities: Why Technical English?” and “Exploring Possibilities: Why not General English?” the author sounds self contradicting given his performance for EST. Perhaps the author intends to show that like most teachers of English with literature background, he too had reluctance for content- based Technical English teaching. But it is also true that he views his ‘retrospection’ as part of a teacher’s evolution as an ESPist.

The next article “Reading Development: Some Questions”, deals with the significance of reading. In second / foreign language teaching and learning situations for academic purposes or other programmes that make extensive use of academic materials written in English, reading is paramount. But there are certain issues- Machine words reading vs. printed words reading; printed text vs. video text, computer reading skills vs. traditional reading skills; effects of new technology on spoken/ written language etc., which are still relevant.

In the seventh article Singh shares with the readers his experiences at ISM to suggest that a language teacher along with his literary sensibility and nuances of technical and scientific writing should develop skill-oriented syllabus to cater to the needs of his students.

The tenth and the eleventh articles “ESP: Communication Constraints” and “ESP: A Sociolinguistic Consideration” expose the problems of ESP teaching in Indian technical institutions where the students are from varied socio- linguistic backgrounds. The articles focus on the problems encountered by the learners and ESP practitioners and the ways to combat those challenges. The author traces out the constraints of ESP that are unfulfilling in Indian situation and pronounces that although an ESP course can only follow on from a thorough grounding in basic English, the teacher should not “close his eyes to the classroom actualities.” He should be sensitive and sympathetic to the actual/ changing needs of his students. The author shows his concern on the failure of Indian students in communicating effectively in English in social, cross- cultural, interdisciplinary encounters and in mutual communication with proper linguistic etiquette. The author points out that now there is a need for identifying the socio linguistic needs of the ESP learner and “ to restructure the needs- based ESP curriculum, accommodating socio-linguistic instructions which will develop his ability to function linguistically in society beyond the technical institution.”

The article, “Some Reflections on Terminology” stresses on the need to tackle with the terminological difficulties, which is the by-product of rapid advancement in varied academic disciplines. The author’s thrust is on the growth of research in Terminology, which can be possible, when the scientists and technologists, and the linguists work together.

The next article “ESP in India: Developments in 1984-1985” carries a profound investigation into the development of ESP in India in a single year. The year can be called an experimental phase of ESP in India as General English cause had to face open criticism from several quarters. However, despite an awareness of the students’ specific needs language teachers could attach only peripheral importance to ESP. But even in this state of upheaval the ESPists carried out different projects across the country. Some of the note worthy projects of that period were The Communication Teaching Project, Bangalore, The TITI Project, Calcutta and The ISM Project Dhanbad. The projects helped in establishing the ESP approach in India to a great extent.

In fact, as the essay on “Communicative Teaching in Technical Institutions: A Needs Assessment” indicates, Indian School of Mines is possibly the first institution to have gone in the ESP approach to English language teaching. The essay on “Interactional Process Approach to Teaching Writing” is R.K. Singh’s major contribution to ELT/EST practices in the world.

The first section of the book is kaleidoscopic in nature as it mirrors the emergence of the author from an EGP practitioner to an ESPist.

The second section of the book Review Essays provides readers with the alchemy of English and its different aspects. The essays of this section that concentrate on the tools of language, communication skills, intercultural and intracultural communication, teaching translation and translation and power will help teachers and researchers to become aware of what is new in language and literature practices. The author has been conscious in selecting his material for this section. Most of the essays are intended for classroom teachers to guide them and help them apply their mind in their actual teaching situations.

Teaching English for Specific purposes: An Evolving Experience, is the author’s journey through his career as well as his academic research from EGP to ELT and finally to ESP. The book is a store of experiences and even an ordinary reader can correlate himself with the practicing teacher’s evolutionary phase. The readers will find themselves with the author questing, analyzing, establishing and re-establishing his ideas on language teaching and finally firmly grounding his belief in ESP.

The experiences of R.K.Singh as an EST practitioner have opened up new vistas of academic possibilities for language teaching in the immediate future. The articles in the volume are reflective, analytical, informative and coherently organized. The book is written in a clear, lucid language making it a user-friendly reference material and a historical document.

A must read for a better understanding of the history of ESP and EST in India.