A New Medium

Despite the possibilities, most poems lack a sense of completeness.

I Witness: Partial Observations; Kapil Sibal; IndiaInk (Roli Books); Rs 295





Kapil Sibal is entirely justified in referring to these pieces as ‘partial observations’. But neither he, nor Shashi Tharoor on the back cover, nor the even more fulsome front inside-flap copy-writer, is justified in calling them poems.
Some of them are incisive, some insightful, some amusing (claims the inside flap makes for the whole book). However, though they display possibilities, not least a good watcher’s eye, they are almost all lacking in completeness.
New form?
The cell phone is not a medium suitable for literary, or even very literate, composition. The reviewer’s duty, then, is to treat this book not as a collection of poems, but as a new form altogether. There is a sure appeal here for those who like their wisdom in byte-sized pieces, and lack the time to think things out for themselves. This audience does not care much for spelling or grammar, or at all for subtlety.
Sibal has, however, an infectious enthusiasm for scientific advances, and it redeems some of the clumsiness inherent in composing a work when you cannot see all of it — or even all of one line — at any time. A certain facility with rhyme is evident. Perhaps it is too facile; as in “Sunday”, where the rhyme pairs are ‘tea-memory’; ‘recklessly-desperately’; ‘glee-knee’; ‘curiously-nonchalantly’; ‘hungrily-peacefully;’ ‘lazily-nostalgically’. Some pieces — “Tsunami”, “Death” and “Mirage” — which rely on this kind of rhyming, yet at least commence to work, because they are ambitious and succinct. “Mirage” begins
How can we/all equal be?/That is the human/tragedy.
Unfortunately, too often observations which begin thus filter through a politician and lawyer’s mind and end like this:
A constitutional/guarantee?/No panacea/for inequality.
The medium that Sibal composes in favours the use of jargon, which does not look so well on the printed page. Besides, the public thoughts of a public man are not the stuff of which poetry is fashioned.
Ring true
The private verses are those which ring true: “In a Clinch”, “Lovers and the Chowkidar”, “As We Approach the Night”, which ends
Promise to/hold my hand,/for in this battle/I lack the strength/to fight.
In fact, these pieces are actually more readable, overall, when they eschew rhyme. There is a comprehension of the pause, the fragility of the moment, of the beauty of transience, as in “Wrath”, which ends
I never have understood/why so many of us/have to die.
Ones that work
One piece that largely works is the amusing “Meeting in London”; another is “Nano”:
Nano tubes/in nano pores./Nano tech/in nano stores./Nano thoughts/of nano brains….
Really, though, too much of this book is out of place between covers. I open it at random and find (“Whither Press”):
TRPs of channels,/soap operas,/get hits for you./News that matters/serious content,/of limited value.
It would be different if I read it as an SMS, I guess. The same is true of the pieces that follow, on the trust vote in the Lok Sabha, “123” and “POTA”. The next, “Man Behind the Mask”, addressed to Vajpayee, has a certain poignancy.
That Sibal composed these pieces on his cell phone has become a focus of breathless interest for the media: Poetry has entered the 21st Century! Excuse me. Poetry has always been at the cutting edge of culture. But if you are using new technology, why use it for an old-fashioned purpose you do not believe in?
In a few years, our elite schools will be filled with students who have never composed anything on paper. Educationists in Europe and the US are gravely considering allowing SMS contractions to pass in test papers.
A new medium
Sibal has told interviewers that he has no time for poetry, no time to write in longhand on paper, to edit, rewrite and revise. Why, then, are his works collected on printed pages? Surely his path-breaking efforts at composition are deserving of a whole new medium? Perhaps the 24-hour news channels would be best. Or a mobile phone services provider could take them up and send them out as text messages at commercial rates, as they do with cricket news and ring tones.
I offer this as a serious suggestion to the next journeyer on this trail.