Book Review: of the ten hands of a fuchka seller byDaipayan Nair

Reviewer: Nishi Pulugurtha

Form poems have a charm of their own. As one works one’s way through them the form and the content weave patterns with emotions creating images that linger on. Writing form poems during the difficult months of the pandemic this reviewer found the structure disciplining while allowing for the expression of ideas. Popular in India, the haiku and senryu has seen quite a number of practitioners, experimenting with the form, some using the traditional form, to create images with words and Daipayan Nair is an important poet among them all. The Ten Hands of a Fuchka Seller, Nair’s volume of haiku and senryu, the volume under review, immediately conjures up images of the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata). For a city bred person fuchka is Calcutta, fuchka is an emotion.

Nair experiments with the form using different number of syllables and his focus is on creating an image in each poem, an image of city spaces that throb with life.

Kolkata street corner –

the ten hands

of a fuchka seller

The ten hands refer to the goddess Durga, dasabhuja, the one with ten hands and each hand armed. For those used to the sight of a fuchka seller with his customers all around his cart, he juggling to satisfy different taste buds, is no less as deft with his hands as he makes sure each one has got customized fuchka that fills the senses. The image of a goddess is seen in another poem –

headless

at Kali’s feet

ash gourds

The goddess Kali is almost synonymous with the city, a goddess who these days is no longer offered animal sacrifice as part of her worship, an ash gourd is sacrificed.

            The sights of the city are clearly seen in several of the poems. The hand pulled rickshaw for instance in one –

returning home

on a hand-pulled rickshaw

school song

that nicely creates an image of school children going back home, happy and joyful. The tram and the fish laid out for sale in another –

tram window –

fresh carp splayed out

on a sidewalk

The idol maker inhabiting the space beside the river working with clay and adding final touches to the idol crafted with care –

setting-sun eyes

the final brushstrokes

of an idol maker

People playing cricket in the lanes and bylanes.

gully cricket

the screams drown

in the dusk

            Each of the poems in the volume takes the reader through the city of Calcutta/Kolkata. The sights and sounds of the city, its familiar places, the iconic markers of the city are all over the volume. It is almost as if Nair takes one through the city streets, showing the reader what he sees, at times rushing through, at times pausing to linger for a while. The familiar sights, the graffiti on the wall, for instance, the Kolkata biryani, the kashphul that reminds one of the imminent arrival of the goddess Durga in autumn, the adda, the breeze from the river Hooghly, the ghats, the people, memories, stories and conversations. In a volume of poems about the city the iconic Coffee House would surely figure and there it is –

Coffee House

a teaspoon of Marxism

in her argument

The old buildings of the city, that room in the attic, the ‘chilekotha’ that is a storehouse of memories and nostalgia, in a city that is losing so much of its character as urbanisation takes over, is there somewhere –

to think

that was love . . .

Chilekotha

            The volume also has photographs amidst the haiku and senryu. The images add to the visual element of the poems. At times some of them seem to stand hand in hand with the poems asking the reader to see and feel the city and its pulse, its history and its tales. Nair lives in Assam as his bio note mentions and it is interesting to see his view of the city of Calcutta/Kolkata in the haiku and senryu in the volume under review. Here is the poet taking one along the city – the mundane, the commonplace, the iconic, all reveal the heart and soul of the city.

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