In the world of plants: A poetic engagement

The world of gated complexes and multiplexes, of factory-produced lifestyles and a corporate-driven existence, has essentially pushed us either into a tree-less world, or a world of artificially manicured greeneries around us. A general apathy towards nature is what probably distinguishes our life today. In such a context, when a poet wants ‘to become a tree’, one cannot but feel hopeful. This month’s Poetspeak discusses poet Sumana Roy’s latest anthology of poems, V.I.P (Very Important Plant), and her deep relationship with the plant world.

As the title of the anthology suggests, it is a book of poetry where plants form the central concern. Continuing the legacy of the scientist Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose and the artist Nandalal Bose, Sumana Roy has been on an almost lonely journey as a plant humanist in this part of the world. Her previous work How I Became a Tree has already set the direction of her work. V.I.P is in many ways a poetic counterpart of that work.

As the blurb in this latest anthology of her poems, V.I.P states, these two books complement each other – ‘Even as she was searching for people who had wanted to live like a tree… Sumana Roy was simultaneously writing poems to imagine the opposite’. To live like a tree is to live organically, to be a part of the nature that one belonged to, which is very different from the lifestyle that the human race has created for itself. She individualizes the trees, giving each of them an identity, a unique characteristic. The title itself is interesting and ironic. It reminds me of the controversies surrounding the VIP tag that has remained a topic of discussion for the past few years – the tag that points at the gap between the privileged and the not-so-privileged ones, a divisive device like many such markers of identity. Along with this thought, a question takes form – are there any such hierarchies in the plant kingdom? What does the title, Very Important Plants mean? Does it speak about some plants being more important than the rest or in general about the importance of plants? My engagement with the poems in this anthology begins with an exploration of this musing and it opens doors to an engaging discourse of plant poetry.

To read Sumana Roy’s poetry and prose is to open oneself to a freshness of discourse. There is an individuality of thought which is extremely subjective yet, pulls the readers into her universe. The poems included in this anthology are all reflections of her deep engagement with the vegetal world. It calls for a total obliteration of the self as it is understood in human society which is egocentric and often parasitic in its relationship with the rest of the world. Her poems go against the anthropomorphic subjectivity that tends to assign a value to every other kind of existence by a utilitarian scale.

The desire to superimpose human thoughts and actions upon everything in nature is a tendency that has become central to human beings as a race. The title of the opening poem jolts the readers by questioning the human tendency to ‘correct’ everything or to improve upon nature. The poem, ‘Anonymity of Trees’ is another poem that makes us rethink the namelessness in the plant kingdom and how it’s the humans who inscribe their names upon the trees. Names and their importance are the vanities of the human world, not found anywhere else. This also points to the identity politics of the human world from which plant life is completely free. According to the poet, the anonymity of plant life can give direction to the process of evolution –

It’s always a surprise, the history of anonymity

You look at the trees, their indifference to recognition

And you begin to see the path of evolution –

The mammal’s backbone needs fame… (12)

Like many poems in this unique anthology, the title poem too raises some difficult questions. It is poetry that allows the poet to pose these questions. The poem V.I.P enquires about the very idea of ‘importance’ that is assigned to a certain individual by others. It criticizes the arbitrariness of this notion of being a VIP by highlighting its irrelevance in the plant world. A tree planted by Obama, in memory of the Mahatma, becomes a VIP only in the human world. In the plant world, it is completely irrelevant. The plant life is not affected by it in any way.

This tree, suddenly V.I.P. etiolates a new folklore

Everyone was once born a stranger. Importance was such profligate art. (17)

The last line of this poem hits hard at such vanities of human existence – Fame is such a waste. It can’t even be recycled. (17)

There is a uniqueness of thought and metaphors in Sumana Roy’s poetry. Comparing the process of death to that of turning into meat brings the human and the animal world together, underscoring the self-importance that humans have been assigning themselves.

What we actually mourn is our turning to meat

So you must never take a mirror to the dying (19)

But while the animal world is scared of being turned into meat, the plant kingdom loses its signal –

Everyday the plant turns a little more into an aged radio –

It will lose signal soon. (19)

The line – ‘Death of plants a permanent epidemic’ (20) brings to mind the indiscriminate felling of trees for anthropomorphic reasons.

The poem, ‘I want to be a tree’ acts as the bridge that joins this book with Roy’s most celebrated work of non-fiction, How I Became a Tree. The desire to become a tree comes from a consciousness that completely obliterates the self into an existence that is beyond the egotistic and sybaritic engagements of human lives.

“I want to be a tree

As naturally branched as body’s posture in sleep.” (24)

Sleep is the closest to death – the state in which the body is at rest. It is also the state in which one leaves behind all the appendages of life and exists only with oneself. Like plants, one is stationary and unselfconscious.

The plant life, therefore, is of a higher order and that is why the post can compare God to a vegetable:

Everything you can imagine about God,

Calmness, stillness, nourishment, silence;

One-sided communication, lack of rabble

You will find in a vegetable. (30)

The poet’s imagination turns the poisonous parthenium plant into a VIP. She compares the small white flowers of these shrubs to “Tiny white, like an ancient sculpture of spit” (32). What is poisonous to humans, may have its place in the natural order, and have its beauty too.

There are three poems in this anthology associated with three important locations, and with three important personalities – Jagadish Chandra Bose’s house in Darjeeling, Shakti Chattopadhyay’s house in Baruha, and the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya. Each of these places evokes a very different sensitivity which is communicated through the plants and their behaviour. The poet goes to the scientist’s home to learn a new language – the language of nature:

I have come here to learn a foreign language –

Plants must have a mother tongue?

To the aborigines the words for tree and house were the same (43)

If Bose’s house makes her “think of myths/ the forgetfulness of the scientists” (44), then at poet Shakti Chattopadhyay’s house, she can “spot trees that look suicidal” (45). And finally, in Bodh Gaya, it is almost as if the poet has reached her destination –

Only I know that the tree is Buddha.

And that the Buddha was a tree. (46)

Even Tagore finds a place in this anthology with twin poems on his ‘trellis’ – Saptaparni and Madhabilata. It is almost as if the poet identifies with these important personalities, those who have been a source of inspiration and influence to her, through the plants that they had surrounded themselves with.

The anthology ends with a poem on turmeric – a plant traditionally known for its healing powers.

Turmeric.

Terra merita. Meritorious earth.

I think of the origin of your English name

As I peel your skin, terra falls off

The merit stains my finger. (97)

Apart from turmeric, there are several other individual plants like onion, banana, potato, asvatha, jackfruit, amla, and many more. What is interesting is all these are plants that have become intertwined with our every day, not the posh, ornamental plants that we find being sold off from nursery windows or amazon delivery at high prices. Plants near home are like our extended selves. In Sumana Roy’s poems, they become the V.I.Ps or the Very Important Plants. V.I.P. has a unique way of engaging with plant life. There is a desire to inculcate the attributes of plant life in one’s self and at the same time, there is a singularity of engagement with the plants that are associated with our daily existence. In many ways, this anthology adds to the entire corpus of plant writing in a meaningful and constructive way.

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