Dr Sukrita Paul Kumar in New Delhi.
| Photo Credit: V.V. KRISHNAN

She is invariably calm and always soft-spoken. Sukrita’s new collection of poetry Vanishing Words marries the eye of à poet with the reason of à philosopher. She explains why: “I just wanted my poems not to lean too much on “words” for meaning, it’s the word as a gesture that mattered; that is why I tried to get rid of more and more of them so that what remained would be “revealing, not explaining. Reflecting, not reasoning.”

“I believe what is between the lines and behind the words is what goes into the making of a poem. Actually words need to vanish in order to unravel some experiential truth,” she says.

Sukrita, who held the prestigious Aruna Asaf Ali Chair at Delhi University, has been a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla. She shows her wealth of experience, and a heart that has wept with many a tragedy when she pens a few lines about the pandemic; the rows of corpses, the anguish of those struggling to breath.

She says, “What was witnessed ironically during the pandemic, was the complete helplessness of humanity that has been revolving — rather arrogantly — around the notions of ‘development’ and ‘progress’ in modern times..” The poet in me struggles to make sense of life in the face of onslaughts of unnatural or premature deaths.”

Sukrita’s new book ‘Vanshing Words’
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

There is an immediacy to her poems here, particularly in the way she talks of poisonous air, man gasping, and society in slumber. Sukrita explains, “The immediacy comes from the fact that these poems emerge from deeply felt reality. Poetic utterances are the result of some compulsive need for expression. When experiential reality throbs behind the expression, poems inevitably acquire a life of their own along with a sense of urgency. The voice acquires a ring of authenticity.”

With such measured words, she turns the notion of poetry on its head. Her poetry is not about love and romance but times that are dark and bleak. “Poetry becomes all the more relevant in times of receding sensitivity. What after all is the essential calling within each poem…for me, a good poem is one that awakens me to something that is erstwhile, not accessible to me. A good poem arouses my senses and is transformative. I am not the same any more after experiencing the poem.”