One day on the terrace of Goethe Zentrum. It’s early evening. The wind is gently pushing away day and making room for the night. A motley group of poets gather.

Collected on stage are Hoshang Merchant, Volga, Usha Raman, Jameela Nishat, Anand Viswanadha and Lattu…herded together by Sridala Swami. And batoned into a command performance of multi lingual poetry. Telugu, English, Hindi, Urdu…even German poetry delivered in short machine gun bursts at an expectant audience.

And the theme…women’s day…women, activism, problems, solutions. It’s part of the German Centre’s March…and a very noble initiative. But then…

…and this is where I am confused. I am for instance an absolute novice as far as poetry goes and respond only by gut feel but I have been also accused of being opinionated and I guess I will have to depend on my goodwill and be excused if I say something wrong or out of line.

My first response to Volga is to tell her that using almost all the words in the dictionary as a technique is passé. Even in Telugu. The age of the forced metaphor, the imagery of the injected colors of passion…that’s gone…or should have, anyway. There is a raw and sometimes blunt edge that simplicity gives to writing that has in the last many years become quite acceptable. But maybe her poetry was aged and written during a different generation.

Hoshang was Hoshang. Very impassioned. Very naughtily almost tongue in cheek (no pun intended). But it was Jamila who reached out and grabbed the issue by the gonads and one could see how the vernacular was scoring over the English. It was almost as if the Hindi (also used by Laltu) was caressing one moment, squeezing the other…while English had a near ‘from the pulpit’ feel of being spoken to by a Christian on Conversion mode.

The exception was of course Usha Raman who offered a more contemporary platter. Up next, Anand’s was a valiant attempt and I can see that with some practice he will soon be able to emote as much and as well as he writes.

The German Poem read out in German by Merle and the young lad did what the young Slam Poet did at Taramati a few months ago…left me unmoved…simply because I do not understand the language. While I keep promising myself that this is an area of concern and that I should get down to learning the language I think perhaps we should work more closely with Goethe Zentrum to develop a more engaging model of German/English Readings. Maybe the trick is in translating bits and reading out section after section, perhaps even using the Urdu style of repeating lines for emphasis and meter.

Very endearing were the girls who came straight from school and read out their chosen poems with naïve intensity…with their Class Teacher capturing their performance very diligently on Mobile. And Sridala’s mother who came on with all the enthusiasm of a teenager.

Every evening needs to have a lighter moment and I think the lighter moment that evening was provided by Sanjay Gadhalay who got confused between Robert the Bruce’s ‘Try, Try and Try again…till you succeed’ and Harvanshrai Bachchan’s ‘Koshish Karne Walon Ki’ and showed off the 54th Battalion’s ‘Bash on Regardless’ spirit with flair and persistency.

But hey…I find myself getting serious and almost critical. It was in all fairness a pleasant evening. The weather was on good behavior…and the bhel puri accompaniment was a master stroke. I only wish there was no time limit…somehow I got the feeling that everyone was looking at their watches more than necessary. And poetry readings should be perhaps more open ended. With more chai doing the rounds (Hint Hint).