Nadistuti, Poems  – Reviewed by Sudha Rai

The fifteen poems in the second section ‘Nadistuti’, trace antecedents and mythologies of the names of India’s great rivers, for example Sindhu, or by evoking the dance of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu on the banks of the river Godavari. Riverscapes and rituals on the banks of Ganga are rendered luminous, with the poet’s words imparting the sensuous experience of water as in the poem ‘ Ganga, Her Many Faces.’ Again, a parable like poem ‘ Said the Ocean,’ illustrates Kannan’s use of self-reflexive irony as the ocean (representing  the Infinite), provoking the river (the persona of the poet),  wryly comments: ‘ But tell me, it seems you write more about rivers?’ The center piece of the second section for the present reviewer is the title poem ‘Nadistuti,’ that deftly brings together the depiction of a middle-class man’s anxiety regarding the rationed stored water resources, in buckets, available for taking a bath, as well as his almost  second nature conditioning while bathing, of loudly invoking the sacred rivers in a flurry of piety, concluding in relief and pleasure too,  as the blessed flow of water lasts the duration of his bath.

Kannan unhesitatingly picks up one of her strongest concerns in the third section ‘Chamundi,’ grasping sensitively, the emotional being of her female personas,   unraveling the intricacies for the girl child, wives, and mothers in India, of an existence bounded by patriarchal attitudes, myths and rituals. “ Anger Becomes Her,’ lays emphasis on “ cathartic anger,” rather than tears. Women need to become Kalis and Chamundis and subvert masculine control over their minds and bodies. The poet’s anger against a blatantly privileging social system for the male is unapologetic, as she states in the poem “ Hemavati “- “ Infant girls, birthed by apologetic mothers/ received stoically, a half-hearted welcome./Baby boys ushered celebrations with a feast.” In the poem “ Snake Woman,” fleshed out through an elaborately worked out dream semiotics, Kannan narrated (in my first public Conversation with her on Nadistuti ( at Rajul Bhargava VOICES with UEM, Jaipur, 31/01/24), the impositions on her own mother to conceive a male child, through oppressive and painfully austere rituals of Nagapuje. Motherhood is a very special theme in this section, as Kannan resonates the refuge provided by  real mothers and mother Kaveri. Control over women’s body language is ridiculed as Kannan explores the metaphors of swinging and swiveling in “ Swivel Stool.” Espousing the integral strength of the rural household help Muniyakka, from the village Kokkinahalli, Kannan creates a memorable character , as she pitches for her virtuosity and no-nonsense attitudes,  over  that of the cosmopolitanism Bangaloreans.

The fourth section “ Mandala” develops the poet’s reflections on the themes of time and timelessness, permanence and impermanence. Breathtaking in its beauty of imagery- , the poem “ Kolam” (Tamil for ‘rangoli’ ), focuses on  women making street rangolis, that the poet equates in its symbolism with the Buddhist mandala : “ …white dots of rice powder rain down/like bright stars on the dark earth.” In the four-stanza poem “ Jiva and Isvara,” Kannan constructs the Upanishadic explanation of the mutuality of the individual soul and God, the Jivatma and Paramatma, rendered in the description of the two birds Jiva and Isvara.

In the final section ‘Fireside’ of Nadistuti, bridging the separation between narrative persona and herself, Kannan gives us  an intimately personal autobiographical set of poems, on her family, retrieving imprints and detail stored in her consciousness, expressing deep-felt gratitude. In this section three poems work out through varied poetic techniques, stand out for addressing the beauty of the binding thread between mother and daughter. In the first poem “A Dialogue,” the young child Kannan poses questions to her mother Saradambal, who was a reputed painter in her times. The creation of art from a blank canvas, a mystery to the child, is conveyed through subtle suggestion by her mother, leading Kannan to grasp later on , the birth of creativity, in her own discovery of the emergence of writing from a blank page. The interstitial spaces of modernist techniques that Kannan works out here with apparent artlessness, result in a profundity of semantic levels. In the second poem “Lost and Found,” the metallic box containing oddments and treasures ( that the young Kannan has lost), sincerely found and ‘saved’ by Kannan’s mother, resonates the importance of having a childhood, especially for the gendered girl child. For Child brides, as in the case of Kannan’s mother, childhood is a distant dream.  In the third poem “It Took a Lot of Growing Up,” Kannan posits her admiration for  her mother as she is “sorted” as a mother,  despite being a famous painter

Kannan’s voice in  Nadistuti, is that of the committed artist who takes up cudgels for women’s causes, their rights and their fulfillment, with a resounding roar , in the real-world battlefield. The second declared autobiographical voice , belongs to the artist-poet who submits her own private self, in a tempered confessional mode, as a humanist and spiritual seeker, to the grand mandalas of nature, time, experience, and eternity,. It is important to note in conclusion, that despite Kannan’s devout relationship in her latest volume of poems , with the cultural portent of Indian rivers and their ecological value to life, despite her firm hold on their historical, geographical and mythical antecedents, the achievement of Nadistuti is the manner in which  waters emerge as fresh signifiers,  as the poet deflects their course to interpret women’s experience of reality.

Confluence: South Asian Perspectives, London, U.K. Feb-March, 2024.