In Gratitude

For me kynpham Singh Nongkynrih was the editor (along with Rima Nath) of the haiku anthology from India – Late Blooming Cherries – till I read a full article on him in Hindustan Times which described him as the voice of Meghalaya – one of the Seven Sisters of North Eastern India.

It made me realise how little I knew about the literary landscape of this multilingual and multicultural subcontinent.

I decided to find out more about him through his poetry.

In his book of poetry, the yearning of seeds, Kynpham talks about the changing contours of the terrain, cultural erosion, insurgency, growing chaotic lives of the people and lack of political will to preserve and uphold the rich legacy of the region which he fears are responsible for the usurpation of personal identity.

The softness of his poetic expressions time and again gets subverted by harsh and ruthlessly brazen overtones indicative of his disappointment and frustration with the  systemic and social flaws and failures. His verses are bold, blatant and unapologetically brutal making the reader wince.

Kynpham says his poetry is ‘anoetic’.

“…Something stirred inside me

I was racked by a sudden desolate yearning,

something fierce and restless, a gnawing, tormenting,

desire to reach out, to touch —

and I scrawled my first few lines,…”

When Kynpham says ,

“Let me sit astride a pachyderm and see saw

through the reeds in search of  the rivet-skinned rhino.

I would like nothing more than to look it in the eye

and say, “Mine too is a vanishing tribe.”

the reader is struck by the sense of finality!

There is an overwhelming sense of alienation in his verses. Kynpham writes:

“Strange sounds are crowding this town.

Like the rooster, I too seem

to have become obsolete.”

On a war torn world, Kynpham’s words cut through:

“Let them tell their stories. Let them speak of the

bombardment of nations, the conflict

of races, the squabbles of neighbours.

…

…Let them tell why and from whom they have

fled.

My knowledge is little, my suffering trivial.

Ask them. Let them speak of good versus evil.”

The book ends with a bunch of haiku.

dense smoke from pine copse

man’s baleful fire hell bent

on quick destruction.

first spring rain–

the bus shelter

only half-finished.

forest fire watched

by millions; fire in my heart

witnessed by no one.

rain for days–

only soldier’s clothes flapping

on a sagging clothesline.

A little about the author

Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih is a Professor of Literature in North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. He is a bilingual writer and writes poems, dramas and fictions in English and Khasi language. His awards include the first Veer Shankar Shah-Raghunath Shah National Award for Literature (Madhya Pradesh 2008) and the first North-East Poetry Award (Tripura 2004).