“Poetry doesn’t help you make a living”

Says Mumbai-based Sahitya Akademi Award winning poet and author Arundhathi Subramaniam in a correspondence with Lampshade

I looked up the web to find the details of your life and writing, I realize you have had a good life. There hasn't been any catastrophe or a moment of awakening (to public knowledge) that must have prompted you to choose sacred as the theme for your writing. What then directed you to write prose and poems about the sacred? Usually, people turn to a theme like this after an intense realization or intense suffering. 

I’ve been an unconscious spiritual seeker for as long as I can remember. At age ten, I remember writing the autobiography of a cloud. It was actually an attempt to understand what it really was – matter or vapour. Or perhaps nothing at all? A year before that, I wrote about a restless chicken in a farmyard that longed for freedom. As children, I believe most of us are full of existential questions, but we are encouraged to defer these – often indefinitely. Later, in my adolescence, I was drawn to Eastern philosophy: Buddhism, Taoism, the Upanishads. However, I did have an experience in 1997 – an experience of emptiness that was unexpected, and for which I had no description – that terrified me and compelled me to become a more conscious seeker. There was no external catastrophe. But there was certainly an internal one. I emerged from it, bewildered, desperately aware that I needed guidance. That guidance took many years to come, and the only thing that sustained me in the interim was all manners of spiritual literature – from St John of the Cross to Rumi, Eckhart Tolle to Sogyal Rinpoche, Ramana Maharishi to Nisargadatta Maharaj. I devoured all of it, and more, desperately.

In prose, you have written on the Buddha, Adiyogi, Sadhguru. What inspired you to choose these characters, among so many others, to write about?

I have been drawn to the story of the Buddha for as long as I can remember, and for all the usual reasons: he represents the unlicensed seeker, the brave solitary questor, and he formulates a path to self-understanding that requires no belief in the divine, only quiet unswerving practice. He is the ideal spiritual guide for the modern secular pilgrim.

As for Sadhguru, I met him in 2004, and felt an immediate connection. His contemporary vocabulary, his logic, his humour, his absence of holier-than-thou scriptural piety, and above all, his mix of pragmatism and profundity appealed. When he suggested that I write his biography, I agreed right away.

What was the selection process of the poems for your anthology Wild Women?

I wanted Wild Women to represent all manner of diversity. I wanted women from different regions, who represented as many Indian languages in there as possible. I also wanted diverse persuasions: Buddhist, Sufi, Vedantin, Bhakti, Tantric. Additionally, I wanted diverse orientations, from the intellectual to the devotional. Above all, I wanted women who had made very diverse life choices: from monks to householders, from mendicants to courtesans. I wanted the whole gamut!

Do you think your poetry can impact people in a positive way? Given the fact that the choice of your theme is 'seeking the sacred'. Also because while you speak of seeking God, you do not preach seclusion from pleasure prompting the readers to see seeking the truth as a drab act.

We are, regrettably, encouraged to live in a conceptually fragmented world. We believe that the thirst for the sacred is incompatible with the thirst for the sensual. But these mystics remind us that spirituality is not spineless obedience, lukewarm religiosity, or life-denying transcendence. Instead, they demonstrate that it can be a passionate, urgent, sometimes skeptical, sometimes argumentative, sometimes erotic, relationship with the sacred.

For Janabai, for instance, the sacred lies in the here and now: ‘I eat god, I drink god,’ she says. For Rupa Bhavani, it is not enough to simply worship god; she seeks instead to embody him: ‘On Shiva’s path, become Shiva himself.’ For Sule Sankavva, the body is not impure; instead, she terms her god the “Shameless Lord” who sees nothing polluted about the body and its needs.

These women are not meek supplicants; they are women who dare to demand personal answers to ultimate questions. What makes them inspirational is the fact that they remind us that we cannot be spiritual without being human.

Writing poetry or even prose books is not an economically viableprofession. What are your thoughts on it? What would you like to say to a young aspiring poet?

It is impossible to live off royalty cheques as a poet. So personally, that has meant making a livelihood through other means. I spent many years working as a literary and performing arts journalist and curator. That not only paid the bills, but also nourished my creative practice in its own way.

My advice to younger writers is simple: poetry can be your vocation, but it cannot be your profession. And thank god for that! There is a certain freedom when you aren’t dependent financially on your writing. It ensures that you write for the right reasons: not to follow the diktats of contemporary fashion, or to appease a readership, but simply because you want to. Poetry doesn’t help you make a living. But it does help you make a life - a rich, deep, rewarding life!

Do you have a writing routine? If yes, what is it like?

I prefer not to get too self-conscious about my writing routine. I am usually at my computer daily, but I try not to turn it into a punishing regimen. Both forms entail revision. Neither is done with the first draft. And even when I’m not writing, I’m invariably reading poetry or prose. That is as much a part of my sadhana as writing is.

Prose is hard labour. Poetry, on the other hand, is more a jeweller’s art. It’s about fine-tuned chiselling of a phrase, not hacking away at chunks of language. With poetry, I prefer to work when the mood seizes me, rather than force the pace. When it comes to prose, there are deadlines at times that have to be met. That entails spending long spells of time at the laptop. When one is immersed in something, however, it doesn’t feel like penance; it’s pleasure!