Immigrant- Usha Kishore
Review by Prof. Nandini Sahu
Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: Eyewear Publishing
Language: English
ISBN: 9781912477081
ISBN-10: 1912477084
In an unpublished article “Post-Colonial Transformation and Global Culture” that Bill Ashcroft presented at the Department of English and other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, in February 2002, he mentioned about the spatial nature of home:
It occupies time as well as space; it becomes a way of seeing a way of inhabiting and ultimately, a way of transforming global discourses of power by being ‘at home’ in them. (p 12)
The 1980’s and after has fashioned a typical post-modern anxiety with the introduction of Salman Rushdie as an influential diaspora writer. Usha Kishore’s poetry book Immigrant seems to be addressing that anxiety, hypothesized around a series of topics like post-modern anxiety, identity politics, national and self definitions, the problematic of exile and diaspora, and an interest to prove the way Indian English poetry has established itself and set up as a separate discipline in the West. While the brilliant promises about Indian English literature refresh the Indian British writers like Usha, some apposite questions hang above her related to her identity, historiography and the political and national affiliation as a writer—and she takes up these issues pertinently in her poetry collection, Immigrant. Does the absence of a national identity affect the tone of Usha as a creative writer and the mind-sets of her readers as well? Does the post-colonial space invite and initiate her and the diaspora writers to take their ‘self’ and ‘national identity’ as the allegory of their creativity? How does she define and justify herself? What does she mean by home, nation and narration, women’s issues, subaltern conditions, nativism, post-colonialism, post-modernism and essentialism? What are her literary and extra-literary concerns? Does she thrive in giving a flawless appearance to the indigenous cultures and the narrative traditions of India through her poetry? What linguistic and stylistic novelties are being introduced by Usha as a post-colonial writer? I prefer to read Usha Kishore’s Immigrant with above concerns.
Usha Kishore, a British writer of Indian origin, is a promising poet of Indian Diaspora. Her concerns are the phenomenon of migration of Indians to the West, their status there, and nostalgic feelings for the motherland as well as their alienation and acceptance thereof. Although the theme of capturing Indian immigrant experience in UK pervades almost each of poems, her main focus is on her women characters, and their final emergence as self-assertive individuals; free from the bondages levied by relationships–mostly of the past.
This subject tempts me to quote Siona Benjamin’s keynote address at the conference of South Asian Literary Association 2001 at Rhode Island U.S.A. She created a series of paintings titled “Finding Home”. She brought to clear focus the issues which this seminar at the American Center, Calcutta, would lay emphasis on. She said:
In my recent series of paintings entitled “Finding Home”, I raise questions about what and where is “home”, while evoking issues such as identity, immigration, motherhood, and the role of art in social change. I am still trying to reconcile the conflicts I experienced in my own experience as a Jew who attended Catholic and Zoroastrian schools while growing up in (predominantly Hindu and Muslim) India. My ancestors came to India from the Middle East and perhaps also Spain centuries ago. My family has gradually dispersed (again), mostly to Israel and America, but my parents remained in India. I am now also an American living and working in a Midwestern University town. With such a background, to desire to “find home”, spiritually and literally, has always preoccupied me—a concern younger nation was largely formed by immigrants and descendants. The feeling I have of never being able to set deep roots no matter where I am is unnerving, but on the other hand, there is something seductive about the spiritual borderland in which I seem to find myself. My paintings also explore female energy and power, as I am inspired by tantric art (of ancient India). The work is informed as well by Indian miniature paintings, Byzantine icons and Jewish religious art from my childhood.
In this multicultural society, I would like the viewers transcend this apparent exoticness and absorb the core message—tolerance of diversity. (Benjamin pp.172-73).
Usha Kishore seems to be trapped in this ‘seductive…spiritual borderland’, which is evident in the poems in Immigrant. Let me quote a few seminal poems from this collection before I go further.
I AM NOT ONE, BUT TWO
India bleeds in my veins; England
Paints my feathers with her mists. (P. 13)
IN-BETWEEN SPACE
You have mapped cultural spaces with crepuscular icons
of demons and demiurges churning immortal serpents
in the misty oceans of the milky way. (P. 16)
IN EXILE
After Naomi Shihab Nye
Language is the magic carpet
of their exile. Strolling the streets
of London in alien garb, as striking
as the Himalayan tiger-sky,
they laugh like koels, calling
across the Ganges spring. (P. 20)
EAST LONDON
From the cascading sounds of cityscape,
A familiar tune flows out of a passing car ―
Hayo Rabba, Hayo Rabba, Hayo Rabba
―and soars past the smoky grey lines
of old terraced houses, wedged
between new glass monuments,
aspiring Taj Mahals of the 21st century.
Winding my way through a maze
of language – Hindi, Bengali, Tamil,
Urdu, Malayalam – I trespass
on bold immigrant dreams. (P. 21)
ABSENT SKY
Manasarovar
Rainbow flags flutter in tranquil prayer
and a twilight mantra rises on wings of fire,
as the mind lake meditates on an absent sky. (P. 9)
JOURNEYING INTO A FOREIGN TONGUE
I don’t need passports and visas
to journey into a foreign tongue,
I just need to lose myself in it.
I line up my Hindu gods,
adorned in monsoon winds
and trespass into English verse. (P. 10)
SOLITUDE
I do not live in loneliness l live in solitude when I look back
at the turn of the millennium I am amazed at a life lived in exile a silken sash
of thoughts stretches across this island my new home an island
within a bigger island ruled by old gods who travelled the seas
and colonized the world
I have given up fighting exile I have befriended new gods
I have drunk new wine tasted new bread breathed new air
I seek no wings I seek dreams that fly in darkness
to keep promises in light old gods come back
to claim me would they live in peace with my new gods
Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva meet Manannan, Ymir and Venus
(P. 45)
Usha writes experimental poetry, the theme being migration. She plays around with Champu, prose-poetry, on the theme of partition:
PARTITION 1947
This subcontinent is a nation no more no more it lies cowering under the mantle of never ending night when wolves howl when vultures tear open its guts when myths devour its children when daybreak is a legend that dawns upon other skies this subcontinent will weep until the end of time in blood for tearing itself asunder like some monster child tired of its own screams this subcontinent and its seismic shifts of ideologies its vicious politics of partition defining the contours of its land and sea defiling its people like a plague an eternal curse hangs upon its people in the poignant cry of an old nation self-immolating at the alter of freedom sometimes scarlet sometimes stygian sometimes silver like lightning piercing the heart of a weeping sky.
(P. 42)
The futile encounter of man’s existence with absurdity of life, the void and the indefinable nature of human life have become the contemporary paradigm. The progress of technology, the growth of communication, the objective nature of public and private policies, the increasing mobility of population, the changing family and corporate structures have immensely disrupted human bonds and networks in myriad unexpected ways and finally left people vulnerable—Usha somewhere tries to address these through her poetry. It is this transfusing sense of rootlessness and isolation that crushes human life— and Usha wants poetry to be the harbinger of harmony in such a chaotic world. Usha is a distinct voice of the Diaspora; and I can safely claim, her Immigrant is a signature text. She is here to stay, handling her ‘absent sky’, while her Muse has a pronounced identity.
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Prof. Nandini Sahu, Professor of English, IGNOU, New Delhi, India, is an established Indian English poet, creative writer, theorist and folklorist. She is the author and editor of thirteen books, and has been widely published in India, U.S.A., U.K., Africa and Pakistan. Dr.Sahu is a double gold medalist in English literature, the award winner of All India Poetry Contest and Shiksha Rattan Purashkar. She is the Chief Editor and Founding Editor of two bi-annual refereed journals, Interdisciplinary Journal of Literature and Language(IJLL) and Panorama Literaria. Her areas of research interest cover New Literatures, Critical Theory, Folklore and Culture Studies, Children’s Literature, American Literature.
www.kavinandini.blogspot.in
Works Cited:
1. Bill Ashcroft. 2001. Post-colonial Transformation. London: Routledge.
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