Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. We will upload one poet’s post at time. If you would like to be part of this please submit to inhaikumumbai@gmail.com. Up to 10 haiku and tanka or 3 haibun, and some illustrations if possible. The deadline is now extended to the end of April 2020. Subscribe to this blog to read the rest of the series and be updated about future series like this one.
The sixth poet in this Lockdown Poetry series is Rohini Gupta.
Lockdown days
So, nature decided to take a hand and when she speaks all we can do is listen. The skies are baby blue and the seas sparkle. The birds and trees are in a frenzy of singing, mating and flowering.
We are excluded, this unwanted human race. She rapped us on the knuckles and put us in detention. Then she gave the world to dancing peacocks, sparrows, dolphins, leopards, nilgai and elephants out for an evening strol
We watch from the windows. What else can we do?
we didn’t even know this world comes with a reset button
Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. We will upload one poet’s post at time. If you would like to be part of this please submit to inhaikumumbai@gmail.com. Up to 10 haiku and tanka or 3 haibun, and some illustrations if possible. The deadline is now extended to the end of April 2020. Subscribe to this blog to read the rest of the series and be updated about future series like this one.
The fifth poet in this Lockdown Poetry series is Vidhya Venkatramani.
Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. We will upload one poet’s post at time. If you would like to be part of this please submit to inhaikumumbai@gmail.com. Up to 10 haiku and tanka or 3 haibun, and some illustrations if possible. The deadline is now extended to the end of April 2020. Subscribe to this blog to read the rest of the series and be updated about future series like this one.
The fourth poet in this Lockdown Poetry series is Gautam Nadkarni and the illustrations are also his.
Muscling In
My older brother has always been after me to keep fit. For some obscure reason he refuses to believe that I already am.
When I demonstrated it to him by doing a dozen push-ups for instance he chose to focus on the fact that I got breathless. What’s that got to do with push-ups, I ask you. Next I grabbed the dangling Roman rings and did half-a-dozen pull-ups. But no go. The fact that afterwards I was flat on my back trying to recoup filled him with devilish glee. There should be a law against older brothers. Yessir.
Now that Covid-19 has made homebodies out of all of us bro takes the greatest delight in converting our home into a makeshift gym. He even wanted to bring in a treadmill but Mother put her foot down. I have been lying on the couch for hours exercising vigorously. That’s right. Turn by turn I flex each of my fingers a dozen times. I am sure to have very muscular phalanges by the time the lockdown is lifted. And if tongue wagging is taken into consideration I am also likely to have a well-developed jaw.
But oddly enough bro is not convinced. Doubting Thomas could have taken a tip or two from my older sibling. Talk about skepticism. Sheesh!
unisex gym… the neighborhood Samson too stands in line
clipped wings… and yet this skyward soaring of my dreams
my spirit still surging uselessly in this lockdown… slowly the emptiness seeps into me
Submissions are extended till the end of the month for our series, Lockdown Poetry. You still have time to write your verse and send it to us by the end of April 2020. Details below.
Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. We will upload one poet’s post at time. If you would like to be part of this please submit to inhaikumumbai@gmail.com. Up to 10 haiku and tanka or 3 haibun, and some illustrations if possible.The deadline is 15th April. Subscribe to this blog to read the posts in the series and be updated about future series like this one.
Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. We will upload one poet’s post at time. If you would like to be part of this please submit to inhaikumumbai@gmail.com. Up to 10 haiku and tanka or 3 haibun, and some illustrations if possible.The deadline is 15th April. Subscribe to this blog to read the posts in the series and be updated about future series like this one.
The third poet in this Lockdown Poetry series is Andrea Cechon.
Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. We will upload one poet’s post at time. If you would like to be part of this please submit to inhaikumumbai@gmail.com. Up to 10 haiku and tanka or 3 haibun, and some illustrations if possible.The deadline is 15th April. Subscribe to this blog to read the posts in the series and be updated about future series like this one.
The second poet in this Lockdown Poetry series is Jesal Kanani.
Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. We will upload one poet’s post at time. If you would like to be part of this please submit to inhaikumumbai@gmail.com. Up to 10 haiku and tanka or 3 haibun, and some illustrations if possible. The deadline is 15th April. Subscribe to this blog to read the posts in the series and be updated about future series like this one.
The first poet in this Lockdown Poetry series is Paresh Tiwari.
Art credit – Alex Movchun
Art credit – Tomato by Abbey Ryan
Social Distancing
The cat has hobbled over a mound of loose earth and is now sharpening her claws over the bark of the old tree. The oddly shaped idol of Maruti – saffron and silent – watches intently as the cat licks its paw before setting out to scavenge.
seventh day
all the birds I’d never
seen before
Art credit – Knife, Onion, Water by Chris BreierArt credit – Creation of Adam by MichelangeloArt credit – Exodus by Marcella Doanne
At the year-end my family and I visited Hampi. As we walked through the city of stone poetry that was studded with precarious boulders, majestic temples and wide courtyards, we couldn’t help but imagine how this densely populated city must’ve thrummed in the 14th century, with Persian merchants, Arabian horse traders, Jain merchants and Chinese traders— all, mingling in pillared bazaars. It’s the same buzz I felt on reading Red River book of Haibun, where poets come together across the sweep of continents and geographies, cultures and age groups, to offer writing that’s slice of life and one which is imagined into reality-inducing lushness. That hum of life lived and loved, is shared with candour and honesty in this collection. Half-way into the book, you surmise the words you read, have been pursued and sought out, and then thoughtfully applied, as poets know to do.
The haibun in this collection (as haibun are wont to) is concerned with the everyday through which it interrogates and expresses what it is to be human. Daily objects become totems for the larger questions of life. Consider this from a haibun about grocery shopping: ‘confronting mortality in front of overripe bananas is simply too awful to contemplate.’ Here, harmless domestic settings can propel into action very dark fundamental musings. Through irony, humour, stoicism, life comes pulsing through. Reading a book of Haibun for the first time, I discover the win-win symbiotic relationship between prose and haiku and part of what was rewarding for me was tracing the connections —of the placement and choice of haiku within the prose and how that affected the reading of the prose. A well-chosen haiku lent in a whole new perspective to understanding prose and conversely, prose added depth and weight to the brevity of the haiku. Kind of like meeting someone and then in the course of time, being invited to their home, each object there, furthering and deepening your understanding of their person hood. In the Haibun Spic and Span, the prose about a grandma’s OCD for cleanliness, is given an edge by the haiku at the end, which talks about family reunions that bite. For a form that is short, using the apt verbs can make the writing tighter. And that’s something I learned from this collection too, as a fiction writer. It is a diverse collection: its wide eye lens encompasses ageing, youth, motherhood, love, work-life, and shines light on even the inanimate such as trees, clouds, alphabets, words where they become living, breathing entities. And because of the brevity of the form, it’s fascinating how something so short can give the feel of a whole. Yet, sometimes some of the haibun feel unfinished, like a paragraph taken out from a main story and I’m left wanting for closure. The collection is robust enough to carry off writings from the POV of sexual orientation, caste, economic marginalisation and politics, and I felt this could’ve made it more inclusive and richer a collection. Prose as a form could also be opened up to more experimentation? Though it’s fair to say it’s varied enough with short-shorts, slice of life, magic realism pieces. The strongest writing in the collection was by far, I felt, nature writing; beautiful lines: ‘on leaf-beds/ late season fireflies/ faintly pulsing; and then: the curve of August crescent moon slices through the clouds. Silvery canoe of it.’ Like the gentle art form of origami, mundane life is folded, coaxed into beauty by talented writers in this anthology who know where the plains of the paper terrain lie, and where to smoothen or press deeper that clean precise crease of a fold to create something of lit beauty. ‘
This is a review of the following haibun by Rochelle Potkar.
Palimpsest
Aparanta comes alive in the way the sculptor chooses square sand grains over round, surf-kissed ones. Square grains stick better. He pounds them into place with water, like hope, block upon block, and removes the molds with fine knives, when it turns hard like belief.
He chisels her into desire, lust, love, prosperity. The strands of her hair, the poise over shoulder, nose curves, eyelashes. Freckles, frown, the heaviness of lips. Her gaze is set to a dream, bosom made heavy with sand brought in from the riverbed.
All come to see her now for the one flash that can set them free. Their eyes rove, searching her, as if staring into a mirror to become another person. So they can go back to their clockwork cities and say, ‘You know what happened to me once in Aparanta?’
They have to be quick. The sea breeze breaks thick, carving out new expressions over her face each minute.
captive—
the sun shaping trees
on her dungeon pane
A review by Raamesh Gowri Raghavan:
Aparanta is the ancient name of the Konkan, a land on the western coast of India, which because it was the western coast, has always been a melting pot of cultures from both the Indian hinterland and those who came across the seas. This sculpted region of hills, forests, creeks and beaches has long been desired for its wealth and beauty, and so the haijin calls Aparanta a woman to be desired, lusted after and perhaps loved. Much as empires from the Mauryas to the Marathas have tried to ravish this land and possess its strategic and material riches.
Rochelle writes, in taut prose, two histories for Aparanta, which isn’t just a name but a personification of Goa, the fragment of the Konkan that is still coveted by the lustful. The first history, metaphor-ed in the sand sculptor’s craft, is perhaps the 65 million years from the time the land emerged from the sea in the lava flows of the Cretaceous. The hands are then those of wind and water, eroding the landscape into the craggy ghats, the muddy estuaries and the rich red laterite plateau, and of evolution, creating the thick forests alive with birdsong and cricketsong and frogsong.
In the second history she pictures the flight loads of ravenous loafers, from Delhi and Moscow and Jerusalem, who drunkenly roam the once quiet streets of both Catholic and Saraswat neighbourhoods, or set up fortresses of rape and drugs, while a parallel overwriting of the region’s geology is attempted far away from its tourist magnets, in the mines for cheap iron ore. Yet as Rochelle writes, Aparanta is timeless, and her new expressions, from the volcanic rock under the beach sands, may not be pleasant.
In her ku, Rochelle deftly employs the link-and-shift paradigmata so beloved of haibun, as she imagines a human captive, perhaps Aparanta personified as a princess in a fairytale prison, seeking the shape of her redemption in the shadows cast by the tree outside. Or is it my own imagination, a Goan boy reviewing a Goan poet’s haibun about Goa, lost in his own sausage, a memory he perhaps never had?
A review by Dr Brijesh Raj:
PALIMPSEST, the title sets the tone for a powerful piece that is at once evocative and intriguing. Set to Aparanta, whose old old sands have been writ and overwritten at the vicissitudes of the moon Goddess and her moods. And a mortal who dares sculpt his deepest desires on her shores. Traverse the distance between hope and belief for all to see, live and emulate. That dreams, hitherto roiling and heaving inside the dungeons of the mind, can actually be set free if momentarily, for others to touch, feel and marvel at. Get lost in. That one moment where nothing else matters but the truth and anything is possible. Until writer and reader alike trudge their way back to a space of fettered hope and shackled dreams.
A review by Geethanjali Rajan:
Palimpsest by Rochelle Potkar is a prose poem, not just in the form of haibun but in that the prose is poetic, rich in metaphor.
Looking up the Oxford dictionary meaning of the title, I come up with two interpretations that are interesting –
a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing
Or
something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form
I wonder which one the poet intended and decide that it is both.
Aparanta, the kingdom in the western border of Southern India, I find out, refers to the Konkan region and perhaps, more. The extended metaphor, not much different from Donne, comes alive in Potkar’s writing with the sculptor choosing his/her grains that stick better. The sculpted turns into hope, belief (hardened?), prosperity, lust, love. What the reader takes away is that Aparanta becomes what you make of it. In all the rich metaphors, perhaps, all one wants is just that one flash that can set them free, if they stare into the mirror, much like the sculpted and the sculptor in this work of Potkar’s. What Palimpsest gives us, is the opportunity to get away from our clockwork cities and revel in the few moments when we alter our reality and remain captive in the poem. That is the power of poetry, Palimpsest, Aparanta, Potkar’s poetry in general and the genre of haibun.
The haiku also offers hope, the sun shaping trees through the dungeon pane, rewriting the scenery of Aparanta and of the mind, skilfully linking back to the title.
A review by Gautam Nadkarni
Rochelle Potkar uses an extended metaphor in her haibun, Palimpsest.
Aparanta, the ancient name for the Konkan coast on the Arabian Sea in South India, is likened to a lady who is being sculpted into existence by the relentless waves of the sea.
Square sand grains are preferable to round surf-kissed ones. A touch of the masculine perhaps. The poet carries the metaphor further with little details emphasizing hope, belief, desire, lust and love, truly human attributes, over strands of hair, nose curves and eyelashes which are stereotypically associated with the femine mystique.
The haibun ends on the transience of the moment, that precise moment which liberates the viewer from an otherwise humdrum existence.
The concluding haiku complements the prose and adds a dismal touch to the haibun. As if to say that ultimately each one is a captive locked in his or her own dungeon or private hell.
The title of the haibun suggests that the poet is rewriting the history of Aparanta in particular and the world in general over the original manuscript or parchment.
A great part of my early stumbling along the path of haiku was thanks to the internet and the faceless poets I encountered there. I enjoyed their poems and wondered whether they had day jobs. Then I would imagine what kind of people they were – would they be different from the sense of their poems or would they be similar?
Many years after I started reading and admiring Johannes’ haiku and haibun, I met him. There he was on stage, talking about haiku and the first thing that struck me was his honesty while answering the questions and his message – cut out the fuss. Say it as it is. That was definitely like his poetry.
silent cafe table
four young people
with six cell phones
JM was easy to get along with. He was always busy but made time to answer email, call back if he had a missed call. His photographs were fantastic – and that sense of observation probably seeped into everything he did. Once we were walking together in Pune and JM suddenly went missing from my side. I turned around to see that he had stopped a distance away, to take a pic on his DSLR – of a tree – that I hadn’t even noticed. Yet another time, when he visited Chennai, Vidya, Sreelatha and I accompanied him to a park after lunch. He wanted to smoke is what he had jokingly told me but what he did was to take some fantastic pictures there. Again, on the way, he went missing. We turned around to find him taking a shot of a mushroom on the side of the road. Something we had all missed.
He had strong views on the justice of things, an admirable sense of fairness and was an encouraging senpai. His incisive intelligence and his knowledge of music, movies, aesthetique never once let his haiku friends feel inferior, however junior. He would say the more the merrier. “Art can’t be the domain of a few.”
His humour and the ability to not take oneself too seriously is what I admire the most. His sense of humour permeated his writing and also, his interactions with me. I remember a message from him once –
“So you really know Japanese?” I reply in all seriousness, “Yes.” “Then what is Japanese for hehe?”
The pathos in his poems were very often couched in a self-deprecating sense of humour. Like in this haibun:
How now, brown cow
The slightly bloated cow – now is it or is it not pregnant? – is standing motionless in the narrow space between the parked cars and the fence. “Hello, cow,” I say to it companiably. It ignores me completely. “Hello, brown cow,” I make another attempt, a little more specific this time. The cow continues to ignore me. “How now, brown cow?” I try for variety. No reaction. “Gai, gai. gai!” I say, switching to Gujarati. The cow responds immediately, turning its head towards me and staring expectantly. When it realises I have nothing to offer, it turns away. “Gai, gai, gai!” I go again after a moment, just to be sure. The cow’s head swivels once more to face me. It seems to me that its expression slowly changes from expectant to accusing. Feeling a little sheepish, I manoeuvre past the cow’s large curved horns and get on my cycle.
flickering neon lightthe cow's tongue wraps arounda crumpled paper
One of my last conversations with him was about how he should bring out his collection of haibun. As usual, he replied with – “I should. Let’s see.”
I am sure I was someone on the periphery of JM’s life, someone with whom he had interacted with a couple of times about haiku. And I am shattered to think that we won’t see him in this world again. To the people who knew him well, his closest family, his friends, his students – It’s difficult to deal with the loss of a human being like JM. My prayers for strength to you, to stay in his warmth, always.
Meanwhile, thank you Johannes, for your poetry and your friendship. Till we meet again…
breaking freeof dark grey cloudsthe Snow moon’s rise
(The Snow Moon of 2020 was on the night of 8th/9th Feb.)
Geethanjali Rajan
Johannes was a jolly person. His humour was subtle, and one could see it in his haiku and senryu! ‘Karumi’ is the word that comes to my mind when I think of Johannes. What comes to my mind first when I think of him is, his smile!
camera on his table...play of lighton the lens
K Ramesh
Image credit – Nandini Manjrekar
Sometimes, you know it is a privilege to have met someone the moment you spot them. With Johannes, it was just that. At the haiku Utsav in SIES many moons ago, I remember chatting with him ( in awe) and his easy demeanor. He made haibun sound effortless and was indulgent when I asked if I could send him some work to critique. He graciously obliged. It was only many years later that I realised how grateful I was to the early mentors: he and Angelee, in my journey.
He will always remind me of true artistic spirit: humour, a tad bit of irreverence, an eye for detail and a devotion so committed to the art that the limelight doesn’t quite appeal as much as the calling.
It saddens me that the haikai community has lost two of its brightest stars, Angelee and Johannes in a span of less than two years.
Those of us who knew him are lucky and it is our responsibility to talk about his legacy to those who don’t know him, yet. Adieu, Johannes. Until we meet again.
Shobhana Kumar
Coimbatore
I have not known Johannes for a very long time. We met briefly at a Haiku symposium at SIES in Mumbai a couple of years ago.My next meeting was in Pune last year at thé Triveni Utsav. It was there that I really got to know the extent of his talent as a haijin and a professional photographer. Both his writing and his attention to detail in his pictures of nature fascinated me – but most of all the man himself – soft-spoken yet assertive in his views with a unique sense of humour. I had the good fortune of driving back with him from Pune to Mumbai – a long but interesting journey thanks largely to him.
a light goes out -
but poets voice
stays intact
Sandra Martyres
Silence
Today I have ordained that the evening sky shall be deep blue. It is in fact much closer to orange, but it doesn’t matter- for me, this evening, it is blue.
evening tea
the lizard hunts ants
in the compost pit
shower of leaves
a langur tugs another’s tail
like a bell rope
The roosting pigeons erupt into a chaos of animated punctuation marks in the cloudless sky.
slanting sunlight
two mynahs ignore
the peacock’s display
The ponderous grey of the day sky has begun to deepen into the blackness of night…There are multiple words for most emotions and states of mind…But for loneliness there is only one word. Perhaps there was no need for more.
two minutes silence
a cell phone keeps ringing
Nehru smiles from his frame
Darkness…like a vapour rising from the baking earth, making its escape from gravity as soon as the sun is no longer watching.
Here by the little lake there is complete silence, respected even by the indomitable crickets. The darkness seems to have swallowed not only light but sound as well.
traffic argument
the camel’s sneer
is impartial
Johannes must be smiling down, pleased with the unique cross-stitched visuals only his keen brain could have conjured.
Today the haikai Gods have reclaimed a brilliant mind and sensibility. Johannes was an alchemist who could convert the seemingly mundane into pure gold. By way of camera or pen. A soft-spoken man with a wry sense of humor his was a voice that resonated easily with every haijin. I remember being thrilled and humbled by this senior poet walking up to me at a conference and congratulating me on a ku. And photographing the fading sun on our ride back to Mumbai. His snapshots were stunning to say the least, and we at Café Haiku were blessed to sit in on a lecture of his on urban photography at SIES college. Once again, clothes lines and langurs were converted into vibrant visuals. We were looking forward to many more such interactions. Perhaps in the afterlife, where the spirits of haijin past and future stroll free.
my window bars
langurs playing
on the grass
The bars are gone Johannes, magically removed. Enjoy your next great adventure.
Brijesh Raj
I was taking a picture of a garden but I got a poet
That was not intended. I was aiming at the bland, neatly spaced poppies of the formal garden and had not even noticed Johannes kneeling beside the bushes, with his camera.
It was the last time I met him. We did not meet often. Usually at the conferences where we balanced cups of hot tea with cheerful chatter and scrolling through his latest photos. I usually gave him a lift back to Mumbai so we could spend a few hours talking. His dry, unexpected wit kept us laughing.
He was the first person to introduce me to haibun, by putting up pieces almost every day. They were lovely, detailed as his photos, little slivers of life deeply seen and felt. Over the years I got to know him quite well and will miss meeting him again. We won’t be sitting under another banyan tree, eating lunch and talking about haiku and life. That last time he talked to me about collecting his work as a book, asking my advice. Sadly, the book did not happen though he must have had enough work to fill several books. I was looking forward to reading it.
I will miss you, Johannes. I hope you are making your wonderfu,l poignant and powerfully imagistic poetry wherever you are.
Rohini Gupta
Remembering Johannes Manjrekar
Some people speak to you in their poetry as much as they do in a persona l meeting. Johannes Manjrekar was one such a person.
The first time I meet JM was at Haiku Festival in Pune in 2016. I remember telling him how I simply loved his senyru which was on display and that it reminded me of a brief while which I spend in a hostel run by nuns.
women’s hostel wall
a langur rests an arm
on the barbed wire
For the rest of the Festival, I saw him as an unassuming gentleman, who despite his stature was a good sport.
On another occasion, I remember chuckling aloud when commuting, much to the horrified faces of fellow passengers as I read these lines:
traffic argument
the camel’s sneer
is impartial
There are days when I am a bundle of contradictions, and those are the days when I am reminded of;
Science day
the programme begins
with rituals
The second and the last time I met JM was at Chennai with fellow haijins. A leisurely lunch at our favourite haunt, a walk through the streets to a park, haiku, photography, science. A perfect afternoon with a legend !
Cafe Haiku 