Book Review:
CL Khatri. Ripples in the lake. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 2006, 72 pages, price Rs. 60 / -. ISBN 81-7977-164-4
CL Khatri has been a committed promoter of the new talents of Indian English as an editor, critic, proofreader, and scholar. Thank you for effectively using your Cyber Literature, a biannual English studies magazine, to draw attention to various creative names from Bihar and Jharkhand. Kargil (2000), his first collection of 42 poems, further established his fame as an English Indian poet.
Ripples in the Lake is Khatri’s second collection with 54 poems. He is notable for a rare maturity in his voice: “I will walk down the road / naked as a child with spring in my soul.” One can feel the irony in their articulation and choice of expression in poems like ‘Pitrivin’, ‘Brahm-bhoj’, Brindawan ‘,’ Summer ‘,’ Professor Saheb ‘,’ Winter ‘,’ Bapu ‘,’ Culprit ‘, and ‘Carrier Crow’. His native sensitivity defies answers to questions that haunt him poem after poem. Express the feeling of insecurity for everyone:
“Every morning when I go out
I pray to Dashanan to lend one of his heads
As a replacement
If I get beheaded, I’ll use it.
If I escape, I will return it. “
(‘Dashanan)
Khatri may sound “crazy” in his description of Bihar’s notorious backward policy, but he is not a defeatist and wears a “spring mask.” He’s grounded, confident and defiant, when he invites naysayers and critics to experience people’s basic humanity:
“You feel sorry for or for seeing.
Our buffalo rides, cow dust on the rise
Upon our return home to the retreating sun
Half-naked and messy hair
Rustic language, home full of
Scattered beans, straws, dead leaves …
Don’t close your nostrils with a scented handkerchief
Let your nose smell them. You’ll feel better
They are the feathers of our life. “
(‘Invitation’)
It sounds almost mythical, evoking the importance of Gaya (?) For the redemption of sins and final liberation:
“When you don’t have four shoulders
To take a body to the cremation ground.
Turn to us, so that it rests on our shoulders. “
In his ‘Hangover’ I hear the echoes of OP Bhatnagar in a postmodern vein. He seems, like everyone else, tolerant of the “hawalas” and “ghotalas” that he hears or reads every day:
“The screams still run through my veins.
cold stolid stones
I continue with my morning ritual. “
(‘Morning Ritual’)
CL Khatri’s new collection continues Kargil’s mindset with aspects of difficult life in the country today: natural calamities (‘Life and Death’, ‘Bhuj’), poverty and political immorality (‘Mirage’, ‘Mother’s Cry’ , Bapu ‘,’ Tears’), environmental pollution (‘Culprit’, ‘Bus Ride’), superstitions and prejudices (‘Tabij’), politics of terrorism (‘English Ghost’, ‘Karbala in Grief’) etc., but here is the poet most conscious of form. Some of his poems are not read as naturally as others. Sometimes I suspect that he didn’t need to use as many Hindi words as he could have avoided using the vital French elan in
‘Teddy bear’. However, the poet’s poems pave the way for Khatri ‘to become a powerful voice of the 21st century. Ripples in the Lake is very readable and affordable.