Interview: Jacinta Kerketta – “I hope to read fewer books, and read more into hu

We met in Raipur, at one of her poetry readings last year. Like the rest of the small audience, I was shaken by her soft delivery of powerful words, her rich vocabulary, surprising tropes and swerving thoughts. Take for instance her poem, O Shehr! originally written in Hindi:

She was reading the French translation of Angor, her book of poems, in Paris, when she first heard reports of a raging virus. Dismissing it as First World paranoia, she continued her journey, taking a train to western Germany for work on yet another translation. Days later, she found herself stranded in her translator’s village – an ancient parish tucked between a mountain range on one side and the river Rhine on the other. She spent her mornings atop the mountains gazing at the green shrouded hills and the rushing river, listening to the quiet winds.

“Like us”, she said in Hindi (she otherwise speaks Kurukh, her mother tongue) as we sipped chai, “every home had a bari – a kitchen garden. They share their surplus produce, and never lock their homes when away for long holidays; neighbours are expected to look after their pets and gardens, and community life is respected. The locals guard their culture and their dialect very closely. They love music and they played the cello all day. They even set my poetry to music. They might release an album soon,” she said. “Unlike us, though, they use their spare time well – to create art and music.”

“In the last few years, I have never been as still,” she continued. “There has been writing, protests, poems, launches and more writing; deadlines were always around the corner. But in that village, all we did was enjoy the summers and climb up a hill every day. The higher I went, the more the world shrank before me.”

“In the evenings, we would sit around bonfires and discuss raising children, although I have none of my own. They were keen on knowing the Adivasi perspective on sustainable living and environment,” she said, adding that humans need to leave the land alone.

“Let the grass grow, die, decompose and make the land richer… I want to leave a bit of myself, leave chunks of my poetry and writing. Leaving what you have already written is the toughest thing,” says Kerketta who believes that people are now constantly hunting for more material to write about.

“But who is really reading? Who is absorbing? Hum log saansein le rahe the, par chod nahi rahe. (We are inhaling but not exhaling) This pattern had to be broken,” she says revealing that she believes the lockdown changed her as a writer. “I maintain a diary now. I hope to read fewer books, and read more into human lives, and into the lives of other living things – like the plants, the wind and the earth.”

The daughter of a policeman, Jacinta shuttled between various schools as her family moved between towns and villages. It was in the early 1990s in Betiya, Bihar, that she became aware of her tribal background, and of being looked down upon for having darker skin. “The teachers treated us like a pile of dust, assuming we’d be passive. We were singled out and often made to sit on the floor at the back of the classroom when space was short.”

She surmounted the discrimination and negativity with calmness, and courage.

“We were living in mainstream society in Bihar where a lot of evil things came into my life. At work, my father was fighting bribery and discrimination as an Adivasi and eventually turned into a frustrated man who oppressed my mother. She could only eat with her husband and was not allowed to speak to our neighbours, especially men. Often, he’d beat her up for small mistakes. My brother too turned into a dominating chauvinist. He didn’t want me to get educated or work and channelled his frustration into violence. This was the environment at home when I was growing up,” she says. Kerketta’s mother, however, continued to be her secret cheerleader, encouraging her to continue her education.

Soon she was topping her class and getting published in a magazine called Rahi that was printed in Ranchi and distributed across the country. Letters from admiring readers encouraged her. “Bachpan (Childhood) was one of my first poems, and then came poems about family, stories about the state of the youth, familial issues and more”.

Kerketta’s poems are passionate about the environment, women issues and Adivasi rights and speak out against consumerist society. A robust ‘I’ features in all her work, sometimes taking the form of an Adivasi mother, often that of a little tribal girl, a militant, a warrior woman and occasionally, herself:

“Publishing my poetry has never been an end goal; nor do I want my poetry journey to achieve anything,” Kerketta said, as she walked me down the road to an autorickshaw. It was almost dusk and there was a journalistic assignment to be wrapped up. “Its just a river, my poetry, charting its own path, continuous and flowing. The goal for me has always been to be financially and emotionally independent. It made my mother really happy. She would tell me often, in the last days of her life: “If I were to have another life on this earth, I’d like to live it as courageously as you do.”

Nidhi Dugar Kundalia’s latest book is White as Milk and Rice- Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes.

We met in Raipur, at one of her poetry readings last year. Like the rest of the small audience, I was shaken by her soft delivery of powerful words, her rich vocabulary, surprising tropes and swerving thoughts. Take for instance her poem, O Shehr! originally written in Hindi:

She was reading the French translation of Angor, her book of poems, in Paris, when she first heard reports of a raging virus. Dismissing it as First World paranoia, she continued her journey, taking a train to western Germany for work on yet another translation. Days later, she found herself stranded in her translator’s village – an ancient parish tucked between a mountain range on one side and the river Rhine on the other. She spent her mornings atop the mountains gazing at the green shrouded hills and the rushing river, listening to the quiet winds.

“Like us”, she said in Hindi (she otherwise speaks Kurukh, her mother tongue) as we sipped chai, “every home had a bari – a kitchen garden. They share their surplus produce, and never lock their homes when away for long holidays; neighbours are expected to look after their pets and gardens, and community life is respected. The locals guard their culture and their dialect very closely. They love music and they played the cello all day. They even set my poetry to music. They might release an album soon,” she said. “Unlike us, though, they use their spare time well – to create art and music.”

“In the last few years, I have never been as still,” she continued. “There has been writing, protests, poems, launches and more writing; deadlines were always around the corner. But in that village, all we did was enjoy the summers and climb up a hill every day. The higher I went, the more the world shrank before me.”

“In the evenings, we would sit around bonfires and discuss raising children, although I have none of my own. They were keen on knowing the Adivasi perspective on sustainable living and environment,” she said, adding that humans need to leave the land alone.

“Let the grass grow, die, decompose and make the land richer… I want to leave a bit of myself, leave chunks of my poetry and writing. Leaving what you have already written is the toughest thing,” says Kerketta who believes that people are now constantly hunting for more material to write about.

“But who is really reading? Who is absorbing? Hum log saansein le rahe the, par chod nahi rahe. (We are inhaling but not exhaling) This pattern had to be broken,” she says revealing that she believes the lockdown changed her as a writer. “I maintain a diary now. I hope to read fewer books, and read more into human lives, and into the lives of other living things – like the plants, the wind and the earth.”

The daughter of a policeman, Jacinta shuttled between various schools as her family moved between towns and villages. It was in the early 1990s in Betiya, Bihar, that she became aware of her tribal background, and of being looked down upon for having darker skin. “The teachers treated us like a pile of dust, assuming we’d be passive. We were singled out and often made to sit on the floor at the back of the classroom when space was short.”

She surmounted the discrimination and negativity with calmness, and courage.

“We were living in mainstream society in Bihar where a lot of evil things came into my life. At work, my father was fighting bribery and discrimination as an Adivasi and eventually turned into a frustrated man who oppressed my mother. She could only eat with her husband and was not allowed to speak to our neighbours, especially men. Often, he’d beat her up for small mistakes. My brother too turned into a dominating chauvinist. He didn’t want me to get educated or work and channelled his frustration into violence. This was the environment at home when I was growing up,” she says. Kerketta’s mother, however, continued to be her secret cheerleader, encouraging her to continue her education.

Soon she was topping her class and getting published in a magazine called Rahi that was printed in Ranchi and distributed across the country. Letters from admiring readers encouraged her. “Bachpan (Childhood) was one of my first poems, and then came poems about family, stories about the state of the youth, familial issues and more”.

Kerketta’s poems are passionate about the environment, women issues and Adivasi rights and speak out against consumerist society. A robust ‘I’ features in all her work, sometimes taking the form of an Adivasi mother, often that of a little tribal girl, a militant, a warrior woman and occasionally, herself:

“Publishing my poetry has never been an end goal; nor do I want my poetry journey to achieve anything,” Kerketta said, as she walked me down the road to an autorickshaw. It was almost dusk and there was a journalistic assignment to be wrapped up. “Its just a river, my poetry, charting its own path, continuous and flowing. The goal for me has always been to be financially and emotionally independent. It made my mother really happy. She would tell me often, in the last days of her life: “If I were to have another life on this earth, I’d like to live it as courageously as you do.”

Nidhi Dugar Kundalia’s latest book is White as Milk and Rice- Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes.