Book
Review
K.
V. Dominic’s Multicultural Symphony: A
Collection of Poems. New Delhi: Gnosis, 2014. Pb. 82 pp. Price: 195 Rs. /
$8.
ISBN:
978-93-81030-42-4.
Patricia
Prime
Multicultural Symphony
is Professor K. V. Dominic’s third collection of poems after Winged Reason (2010) and Write Son, Write (2011). Written in free
verse, the 47 poems in this collection are on a variety of topics ranging from
multiculturalism, global warming, conservation, poverty and unemployment and
there are a variety of other themes in the collection, relating to the human
and natural worlds. In this volume K. V. Dominic combines some big hard truths
on social, spiritual, political and environmental issues with poems that manage
a celebration of passed friends while avoiding the clichés of one big happy
multicultural melting pot. In no way are the poems sentimental nor didactic,
and never taking refuge in cynicism.
K. V. Dominic’s Multicultural Symphony is not an easy
book to get a handle on as he convincingly moves from one bold issue to another
innovative area. These mostly short poems are set in the Indian landscape which
K. V. Dominic knows so well and is a part of, and indeed these poems seem to be
themselves a part of a darkening and disintegrating landscape, a landscape in flux
and peopled by those themselves in flux, marginalised, on the edge, often
addressed by the poet, as we see in the lengthy opening poem, “Multicultural
Harmony,” which is in six parts. This is a supremely controlled account of the
way in which, with chilling inevitability, the diverse nature of human society
makes bedfellows of us all:
Multiplicity and diversity
essence of universe
From atom to the heavens
multiculturalism reigns
This unity in diversity
makes beauty of universe.
The cadences of this poem only make it more poignant.
The poem has a sadness to which many people will relate.
K. V. Dominic’s is a
restless poetry, expressing the angst contemporary men and women experience within
a context of environmental issues and subjective matters that feature strongly
in his poems. Yet there is also a need to try and anchor himself, as he
describes the place in which he lives:
My native
State Kerala
blessed
with equable climate
and
alluring landscape
crowned by
the Sahyas
she lies on
the lap of the Arabian Sea
(“Multicultural Kerala”)
K. V. Dominic is at home with the rhythms and diction
of everyday life, as we can see in the poem “On Conservation”:
Hey poet,
kindly heed to my plea
before you
thrust your pen
into my
bleeding heart
Though I am
a passive sheet of paper
I have a
soul as vibrant as yours
The need for stability in the changing world, and the
unreliability of change seems to be what impels him to record these poems.
“Child Labour,” for example explicates the life of a young girl forced to enter
the slave labour market:
Her parents
sick and poor
fail to
feed their children
Crying
hungry mouths
Forced the
wretched parents
to sell the
eldest lass
But alongside his camera’s eye, and insightful
analysis, there is extreme depth of feeling, as in “Caste Lunatics”: “My
country, the greatest democracy, / when will it be freed from / lunatics and
religion?” Again, when describing the tragedy of a girl who ended her life in
the poem “Beena’s Shattered Dreams,” we see the plight of parents forced to
witness a daughter’s suicide:
Unbearable to look at
their darling daughter’s still body
parents
fell unconscious
Beena’s
corpse was brought from Mumbai
accompanied
by her roommates.
“Pearl’s Harbour” is a lonesomely sad poem, and so in
a different way is the poem “Dignity of Labour” where the poet’s countrymen
mimic others they think are better than themselves:
Imitating the Whites
fashionable to the Blacks
particularly to my countrymen
Mimic dress, hairstyle
food, drinks and all
such sensory pleasures
In K. V. Dominic’s work he is essentially the observer
of human frailty, and the feeling and nightmarish qualities with which he
imbues some of these poems are part of the poetic journey he has undertaken.
The visionary quality in these poems can seem astonishing in its range. The
rootedness in the local landscape is no limitation at all, as its connectedness
to all humanity, runs through these poems, as we see in the poem “Ananthu and
the Wretched Kite,” reminding us of the cruelty waged by human beings on other
creatures that are unable to protect themselves:
When will we begin to love
kites, eagles, bats, owls
as we long for parrots,
cuckoos,
skylarks and nightingales?
When will we stop the massacre
of animals, birds and fish
and learn to respect
other beings and their right
to live?
Sometimes the emotion becomes simpler and calmer, the
poet’s feelings for the landscape break clear of the disintegration and are
articulated as love, as in the poem “Mother’s Love”:
Maternal love, love sublime
Inexplicable, unfathomable
Noblest of all emotions
Visible both on human beings
and other beings
Both on domestic animals
and wild animals
But the pain is there in love, and the darkness, the
overwhelming sense of despair that pervades the poems. In the poem “A Tribute
to Sakuntala Devi,” who was an Indian writer and mental calculator from Bangalore
popularly known as the “human computer,” the difficult final journey into the
afterlife is mapped with infinite tenderness:
Marvel to the East and the West
her loss is
literally irreplaceable
Praise to
the Almighty
For His
revelation through a human brain!
“Where shall I Flee from this Fretful Land” is an
honest, unsentimental poem, working well on many levels and eliciting a variety
of emotions in the reader:
Once fertile land for free
and secular thoughts
People lived in
multicultural harmony
Hindus, Muslims, Christians
lived as brothers and sisters
respected each other and
their religious views
Now hell of intolerance and
religious fundamentalism
So where shall I flee from
this fretful land?
The sharp details of the poem illustrate K. V.
Dominic’s respect for humanity and the natural world.
The final poem in the
collection, “Protest against Sand Mafia” has a passion that is central to the
poet’s life: that of pursuing, with direct knowledge, the ills of his country:
New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar
Haven of Satyagraha strikers
Thirty-one year-old Jeessra
with her three little kids
The youngest boy only two
Tented on the footpath
Staying on a cot under
plastic sheet
Neither torrid heat of summer
nor freezing cold of winter
can defeat her will power
Protest against sand mafia
looting thousands of tones
from northern beaches of
Kerala
Multicultural Symphony
is a book one constantly wants to return to. I believe it provides greater
challenges and is more rewarding than K. V. Dominic’s previous two collections.
The poetry in this collection appeals to readers who do not seek voyeuristic
identification or confirmation of what they already feel, but rather enlightens
the reader with its messages on a variety of social ills. To all those
interested in poetry that does not compartmentalize its various elements and
subjects but lets them commingle and enlighten with their thoughts and beliefs,
Multicultural Symphony can be
wholeheartedly recommended.
Dr. Patricia Prime,
Reputed English poet, critic, short story writer and reviewer is from Auckland,
New Zealand. She has published innumerable reviews in international journals
and authored several books.
