Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

BY: Bijay Kant Dubey

I

This is about the green miraculous trees,

And old clocks on stone towers,

And playgrounds full of light

And dark blue uniforms.

At eight I'm a Boy Scout and make a tent

By stretching a bedsheet over parallel bars

And a fire by burning rose bushes,

I know half a dozen knots and drink

Tea from enamel mugs.

I wear khaki drill shorts, note down

The number-plates of cars,

Make a perfect about-turn for the first time.

In September I collect my cousins' books

And find out the dates of the six Mughals

To secretly write the history of India.

I see Napoleon crossing the Alps

On a white horse.

II

My first watch is a fat and silver Omega

Grandfather won in a race fifty-nine years ago;

It never works and I've to

Push its hands every few minutes

To get a clearer picture of time.

Somewhere I've kept my autograph book,

The tincture of iodine in homeopathy bottles,

Bright postcards he sent from

Bad Ems, Germany.

At seven-thirty we are sent home

From the Cosmopolitan Club,

My father says, ‘No-bid,'

My mother forgets her hand

In a deck of cards.

I sit reading on the railing till midnight,

Above a worn sign

That advertises a dentist.

III

I go to sleep after I hear him

Snore like the school bell:

I'm standing alone in a back alley

And a face I can never recollect is removing

The hubcaps from our dull brown Ford.

The first words I mumble are the names of roads,

Thornhill, Hastings, Lytton;

We live in a small cottage,

I grow up on a guava tree

Wondering where the servants vanish

After dinner, at the magic of the bearded tailor

Who can change the shape of my ancestors.

I bend down from the swaying bridge

And pick up the river

Which once tried to hide me:

The dance of torn skin

Is for much later.

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is first and foremost a surrealist who has learnt his art of poesy from surrealism and has tried to lend a hand to it by dabbling in the verses which seem to be cramming with images, pictures, views and memories inter-crossing each other, so full of observation and personal reflection. While going to the bazaar or reading in the library or in the park, he comes across the different sections of people exchanging their thoughts and ideas, this or that and as thus he gets the materials for his poesy. To him, it does not matter what it is important or unimportant. He is a poet of gossips, chit-chats, tidbits; of time-spirit and is maniac and moody too. The unconscious mind, the litter and play of thought and the juxtaposition, this is the format on which he writes, sometimes rational, sometimes irrationally, which is what, we cannot say it. As a poet he is but a tagger tagging the loose things in his language the experiences of life as seen, come to feel and marked closely. A post-modernist, he is a poet of the disjoint self of man; of disintegration and dismemberment. Just as welder he keeps heating and welding the metal scraps of wayward, trite, common thing poetry. To go down the memory lines and to collect is the poetic habit of his as he can often be seen loitering on the balcony, terraces, the courtyard and into the garden stroking his white beards and talking with the green trees. His love of white beards is excellent. In the younger days he had blackly lovelier beards. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is but a poet of Lahore, Dehradun and Allahabad. The parallel lines running on the conscious and the unconscious levels he improvises them for his poetry.

What does he want to continue with here in this poem? But apart from giving a well-defined start, he starts it abruptly. This is about the green miraculous trees and old clocks on stone towers, the playgrounds full of light and blue uniforms. He remembers what has he as Scout Boy. He marks Napoleon crossing the Alps on a white horse. Here the lines are very striking as this one has to learn from history, from world history. Many fail to remember the dates and many go with learning by rote or some by hook or crook. To remember the names of the Mogul kings too is not easy as one often forgets them; the names are difficult to remember. Sometimes one does it when forgotten taking the tips from others. Such a thing it happens in the examination hall. What to say about the small children? Even the elderly fellows confuse them in taking the names of the Mogul kings chronologically. One who is parrot-like in imitation may be do it, we mean the learners by rote.

The second stanza is all about the wrist watches given, used and re-used, how we used to maneuvered to make it run, adjusting with, running abnormally, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. After that, he takes time in saying about the Omega Swiss watch running into trouble as for some mechanical and technical fault and he trying to adjust by hand. But what to do with the failed watches? The memories of the grandfather and his father hang over. Which home is he describing the Lahore home? The Dehradun home? Or the Allahabad home? Perhaps the second or the third is. But he is so much connected to Allahabad. There is something of family history, genealogy and his personal life in this poem. He sits on the railing till midnight above a worn sign telling of a dentist.

The third stanza tells of how he goes to sleep after his father has slept and started snoring. But before he sleeps he keeps standing in the dark alley and ruminating. There lies the dull brown Ford and the names of the roads come on the lips naturally,Thornhill, Hastings and Lytton as they live in a cottage. He grows on a guava tree as a line is suggestive of his plucking of the guavas frequently or may be it the tree is close to the building. But where do the servants vanish after the dinner is a thing of reckoning.

Mehrotra starts the poem with the green trees, old clocks on stone towers, playgrounds full of light and the blue uniforms doing the rounds:

This is about the green miraculous trees,

And old clocks on stone towers,

And playgrounds full of light

And dark blue uniforms.

His life as a scout boy finding craze in traffic control and others he takes a note of all that:

At eight I'm a Boy Scout and make a tent

By stretching a bedsheet over parallel bars

And a fire by burning rose bushes,

I know half a dozen knots and drink

Tea from enamel mugs.

People often mark it how the Scout boys and girls ask about to walk on the pathways and take to directions:

I wear khaki drill shorts, note down

The number-plates of cars,

Make a perfect about-turn for the first time.

But the routing changes it during the exam-time:

In September I collect my cousins' books

And find out the dates of the six Mughals

To secretly write the history of India.

I see Napoleon crossing the Alps

On a white horse.

At that time the watches used to mean so much for style and time-keeping and so is here the description about the Swiss watch here taking to the memory of his grandfather:

My first watch is a fat and silver Omega

Grandfather won in a race fifty-nine years ago;

It never works and I've to

Push its hands every few minutes

To get a clearer picture of time.

Again, he thinks of the autograph book and thinks of relocating it together with the homeopathy bottles. Bright postcards sent from Bad Ems, Germany engage the mindscape.

Somewhere I've kept my autograph book,

The tincture of iodine in homeopathy bottles,

Bright postcards he sent from

Bad Ems, Germany.

Again they return from the Cosmopolitan Club:

At seven-thirty we are sent home

From the Cosmopolitan Club,

My father says, ‘No-bid,'

My mother forgets her hand

In a deck of cards.

I sit reading on the railing till midnight,

Above a worn sign

That advertises a dentist.

The references to the dull brown Ford and the roads of Allahabad tell of his dormant passion and possession and the outing into those:

And a face I can never recollect is removing

The hubcaps from our dull brown Ford.

The first words I mumble are the names of roads,

Thornhill, Hastings, Lytton;

How the place where he lives, the cottage and the guava tree:

We live in a small cottage,

I grow up on a guava tree

Wondering where the servants vanish

After dinner, at the magic of the bearded tailor

Who can change the shape of my ancestors.

Here there is something difficult to explain so mythical, mystical and symbolical:

I bend down from the swaying bridge

And pick up the river

Which once tried to hide me:

The dance of torn skin

Is for much later.

With the flow of time and memory where does he want to go? The river consciousness it is there in him. The passage of time he seems to charter it, as seen, experienced and understood in life. This is as thus time passes off, memory slips down the lanes. This is as thus life continues it. One is connected with the other, one idea with another idea, one thought with another, one experience with another experience.