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Bodhisattva in his text says that love is never complete. Its completion would be the threshold where the emotion breaks into pieces. A similar philosophy gets established in Ashtavakra Gita where the bodily dysfunctional saint tells King Janaka, “The word prem is not a complete word, but it comprises everything the emotion wants to convey for our existence”. The genre of poemlets also signifies and propagates the same idea by not completing the thought in text, but by feeding the readers with its drizzle. Yellow, a collection of new and old poemlets by Sukrita Paul Kumar walks on that path shedding light on various daily occurrences, their untold or unseen assemblages, and gives shapes to their new constructs. Sometimes all we need is a droplet to announce a ripple, and what comes out of it could give birth to subsequent tides in our minds full of chaos and implosions.

The style of free verse tethers well with open endings. Yet a conclusion becomes evident with the clues we leave at the very end of either a poem or sometimes a stanza. In this collection, the poet wisely leaves us enough space to think by depending on the clues left in the text. The remains of these poems can be found in our stretched fragmented afterthoughts. They behave either like small pocket-knives or internal mumblings where we decimate and assimilate our inner turmoil. A drop of sweat moistens the skin and evaporates into the atmosphere when the temperature comes down. These poemlets, on the other hand, evaporate back towards their origin – that singularity which multiplies into infinite possibilities. It is tough to spill the heart with limitations in mind, but the process is an experience and here, the poet focuses more on preparing silence after every poemlet.

Bir poemlets is divided into four parts. Each one of them has a different situation, but meets to shower a single story – in the first one, Sukrita through the symbology of a black lamb, states how even a small moment of life is found where we choose to not look. In every situation, we stretch ourselves to reach our ultimate self and it lies either within us quietly or somewhere in our vicinity. The second poemlet speaks about how in love, the company of another breathing being often leads us towards acting for our own self even in unkind times. The association between bodies is required to experience what cannot be explained fully by any rational theorem. 

The third focuses on acceptance. We often deny acceptance of the strange elements around us to improve our mental health. While that is good, sometimes we become beings of strangeness because of the detachment we establish to maintain a smooth, unmarked line. The poet makes it clear by mentioning that even though the sun is a dragon’s breath, what accepts it turns into gold. The fourth one moves the reader’s attention towards cementing contentment when the rest of the world isn’t working on it. So, when the poet says that Buddha’s smile is stable even when the dawn greets him, she magnifies a larger picture of contentment where the being is focused towards attaining a bigger goal. Even in contentment a certain drive exists, but away from everyone’s eyes.

So, the poet writes:

the sun slips down

the horizon

to emerge at dawn

Buddha’s smile

is stable.

Sukrita’s poemlet Char Chinar, walks on the edge of politics without making it messy. The piece does not release an obnoxious stench of disgust, but also does not underrepresent the thriving sadness that comes whenever Kashmir and its politics is addressed. Here, the poet makes a deeper impact by establishing the beauty of the state and how search for that charm is tarnished by its adamant politics. Dervishes spread messages of peace, and the poet imagines them in the four chinar trees signifying its memory that is dissolved in prosperous bodies. When she talks about a heap of bodies and how their ghosts too, do not forget to show hope to their neighbours, it makes a statement about putting a seed of love in places where hatred is being bred without reluctance.

The poet writes:

as I float

lost on the lake

in search of the absent foursome. 

Human aspiration is something that can take us either inside a dark pit or can make us restless to fulfil our dreams. Yet in the long run, our dreams have to evolve beyond our aspirations to think without any thought, speak without uttering anything and listen to the space where sound has to cross dimensions to become audible. In the poemlet Crows are our Ancestors, the poet observes humanity and its composition from the eyes of crows. Crows have always been considered flying vehicles of negativity. But scientifically, they happen to stand on top of the evolutionary tree of Aves. Sukrita’s metaphoric crow symbolizes the observer which has been culturally ignored by both gods and human beings. In the poemlet, the poet wisely tells us that since crows live around human beings, they know how to evolve and reach a state where they might lose their body parts, but their spirits would rise above human conscience. It delivers a strong narrative about how fragile our tiny existence is before the extension of this mighty universe. In the same poemlet, the poet also gives the readers a clarity about the universality of crows. Their minds have an accumulation of communities, cultures and their own ways of establishing freedom.

The poet writes:

if only to

retain our spirit

of mystery, of omen

of premonition and insight

and not be like the human species.

In Pagoda Poemlets, the poet weaves a poemlet using Zen as the origin. She talks about the dual reality of our lives by scribbling about how a bird with its body is not separate from its reflection. But Zen Buddhism, asks us to question everything to ensure that all the layers of the truth have been peeled to get to what lies beyond it. The balance between Ying and Yang, man and woman, a dot and an infinity keep the world in motion. Sukrita writes how androgyny is a truth we need to accept, to stay fair and just. In the third part, the poet states the effect of our entertainment and lack of acknowledging the entertainer. We acknowledge the presence of a supreme power in the midst of fear and when there is nothing to fear, we allow its spectre to claim us. And thereby, we eliminate anything life has to offer us through the strings which form a connection between the Supreme One and those who move by succumbing its raw and vital energy. 

Yellow is a collection that connects the mystical with the earthly. It broadens itself for us to let us become a part of its entirety. It softly criticizes our belief system and crawls smoothly inside our minds, asking us to process what its constituents are trying to reveal. It strikes hard but refrains from injuring our identity. Rather the book tells us to reach a point where identity is not the only determining factor. There is much more to have and all we have to do is seek.