What Else Is Rain?, an evocative anthology curated by renowned poet Gopikrishnan Kottoor, immerses readers in Kerala’s rain-soaked memories and melodies, blending nature’s rhythms with personal reflection.
“Tonight, in the hesitant rain
The remembering earth
Your cenotaph.”
Petrichor…. That is the feeling one gets while reading the anthology “What Else Is Rain?” There have been moments, while going through this assemblage, that I got so strongly reminded of Sugatha Kumari teacher’s “Rain at Night” where the lamentations and hopelessness echoed deafeningly. But surprisingly, this collection soothed me too with myriad images of comfort and solace.
Writing a review is something that which is totally an engrossing one and if that happens to be for an anthology of poems, it is not going to be a cup of tea for everyone. Reading and enjoying poems have never been a pleasurable endeavour for me, personally. But this anthology totally blew me away for its plethora of images. It simply catered to my all senses that it was hard for me to stop scrolling and dreaming. I believe there are no hard and fast rules for reading an anthology where either one can choose a random one or read chronologically or even launch into a poet whom one is familiar with.
Compiled and edited by the well-known poet, Gopikrishnan Kottoor, one of the major themes that is recurrent in this collection is the pure and the undistilled version of nature and topography of Kerala. The beautiful and subtle amalgam of the poet’s individual façade along with nature has rendered this collection unique and alluring. Each one of the poems that is collected here transports the reader into a higher realm and turning them into a ‘poetry enthusiast’ Personal ethos, even though transient, while narrated lyrically, brings about a transcendent effect upon its readers and this anthology is a wonderful specimen of it.
As T.S. Eliot has opined that “poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate” Each one of the metrical compositions that has been incorporated in this compilation remind us of the need to delve deeper into the innermost corners of our conscience to relish and revel in the unnamed or rather the untamed impression that have been shrouded there.
“Here I am
put to sleep by a warm wrap of a word
awaiting yet, another to wake me up.”
Either wounded or swaddled by the ‘word’, each poet in this anthology has made it very clear what writing means and does to them. The salvation and redemption that writing brings to them is both exonerating as well as restraining them from the gritty nitty of making headway in this pathetic yet alarming world. The faint rays of hope, that shines now and then through certain mere words, make the poems beyond satisfactory.
“Emerald
Dissolving
Collected in the cupped palms
Of laughing children.”
Most of the themes in the chosen poems reflect the nature, especially rain in its full glory and whether it rejuvenates the writer or not is totally contemplatable. Some say rain has got different moods or rather rain awakens the ‘mood sublime’ in us as well as in the entire nature. As somebody has said, there can never be a rainbow without the rain. Likewise, there can never be joy and fulfilment without the finest artistic creations like poems.
One of the distinguishing features of this anthology is the distinct features and images pertaining to God’s Own Country, Kerala, exclusively. The themes and illustrations incorporated by the writers have been that of illuminating and lucid. Like the fireflies where;
“The skies have shut the stars inside
To reveal the lights flashing beside
Softly they glow in shades of yellow
Sometimes green, quite soft and mellow”
Last but not the least, the cathartic and poignant feelings that certain words washing over one’s own body and soul encapsulates the momentousness of lyrics. And the healing process is accentuated with such compilations where body and soul are enlivened and rejuvenated. The balm over the trauma, the healing over a wound and the sigh over an anxiety is well-addressed with this collection. It may feel like me skipping the nostalgia part but the salve is really there…
“In time
the wind has managed to
slowly heal the old wounds
I leave myself open
to new lashes.”
Publisher : Folio
Pages: 250
Price: 395
