THE CITYSCAPES OF UNDERSTANDING
By Sanket Mhatre
Artists grow-up in a place where the water-bodies are dry, people are not content, and things are used as metaphors. The battle of having art as a piece of bread should coexist with real bread. Cityscapes, in most cases, are empty ruins of a mindlessly developed misunderstanding. To synthesize a city by staying in one would be nothing but absolute misery. Sanket Mhatre’s book, ‘A City Full of Sirens’, scrapes the pieces of civil gratitude, desires, and benevolence to be a witness of much-needed personal spaces. Here noise is filtered – to make the entire crowd a part of it.
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The philosophy of the Upanishads has been classified into two major parts – one being ‘nothingness’ – the other being the entirety of everything ‘Aham Brahmasmi’. Spinoza says, ‘everything happens for a reason’, and the idea of reason is sufficient to involve everything that’s possible and impossible; discovered and undiscovered. The poem, ‘The Festivals of Mind’, weaves a major web to connect pieces left scattered around our habitual coexistence. Possibilities come with impossibilities – in this poem, the most impossible connections come out like a warm giggle.
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Sanket writes:
“We keep tying and untying tributaries of time
disentangling one soul from the next
until we catch our dragonfly tailing past in alphabets
tie them together with uneven hooks
of kaanas and maatras, rhasvas and dirghas
in a string of verses that light up against the evening sky.”
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Poets are wanderers and wanderers. Something we do not get to feel since a hardcore publication has taken the place of drinks, meetings and a kind of solitude. Figuring out the whole theorem from an abstract is objective. Poetry demands time and space – with a weeping soul and tantalised mind. Therefore, bluntness should not be expected from a poet. When the poet says:
“A corner of lips – reserved
Even before – you knew
this half – was always given to you
even – before we met.”
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…it is just the blunt expression of being unblunt. The receiver here must blend with the gesture to be able to cherish the offering. The seduction of a poem lies where we like being touched after we have been kissed. It always happens after love comprehends itself for the lover and the beloved.
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Perception about someone, or having a preconceived notion, is often ridiculed for the threshold we cross deliberately. The diabolic nature of perceiving someone makes it more beautiful, unless there is a knife to make a cut. Sanket keeps the unclean module of observing a person through his poem, ‘Hypothesizing’, to then embroider the messy consequence. If the entire process has been demonised, what should a poet do? Hiding behind words is a common trend. It is sexy for many. Sanket, although, envelops the being – who is perceived, using the synthesizing factors of insights.
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He writes:
“To hypothesize you –
I must pass through a river of silence
observing the unobserved terrains of your mind
smiling at the contours of your body
where heaven meets the sky
where your body flows into formlessness.”
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In modern cinema, a story is written and modified on multiple levels. The weird thing is that the same story takes different turns around different characters. We are subject to miniscule changes on a constant level. Its gigantic form comes out like a sacred occurrence – it can be criticized, stoned, praised, but cannot be ignored. The value of a situation lies with its origin, and it is the only place where multiple instances take their best chances to be with the ‘story’. The poem named, ‘Stories’ whispers the infinite worlds of finite beings – it finds an abode of any kind in everything.
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So, the poet says:
“A story wasn’t a story
but a million butterflies camouflaged as words
each with a trail of its own
into a deep forest that doesn’t promise a return.”
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Longing – the patience of longing – and the anatomy of longing constitute the same elements, stuffed differently. The former two make us secure beings with individual ways to get to the thing/person we desire. But the latter one should always go into the hands of someone who can bear the screams, and care about the joy surrounding it. The poem, ‘Bed No. 187’, is a fertile expression of anatomical understanding. It has moments where it is going to either break us into weaker molecules – or adjoin us to a tissue that can hold us together. Longing is one gruesome advantage.
“An island whose language is a mishmash of silence
she kept searching for her son –
now, a safe distance away
Always hungry, she gulped half-cooked broth, like truth
Regret tasted bitter but at least it tasted like home
she chewed hunger for dessert, and smiled.”
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‘A City Full of Sirens’ has the required awakening calls, juxtaposed rendezvous, and murmuring gargoyles of time. The book is a stepping stone towards the parabola of differences to ensure that they merge like conscious constructions. The poems are bathed earthworms – they appear with segmented body parts, but battle through the underground to nourish the ultimate happening. Seasonal wisdom is underrated, but its importance takes the upper hand over wise ones with overloaded opinions. Sanket Mhatre writes to send his readers to the unusual latitudes of mutation.