An Essay on 'On Human Road' by Pompen Hantrakool a Thai English Poet by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

On the Human Road is the second part of Hantrakools book of poems entitled Springs and Autumns Speeding  Through Time. On the Human Road is a sequence of poems and it is evident from their title that the poems under study dwell on the human predicament in the journey of life

The book opens with the growing of a custard apple or noina in Thai language and with the growing of a mango tree.Birds peck at the fruits and sing. The squirrels nibble on the mangoes and and raise their greeting tails.But the speaker observes that when the speaker cultivates human beings no songs no greetings.   The poem is in the first person and one wonders who could be the speaker of these. Is this the parole of God who creates the multiverse ? Or is the speaker a male who cultivates  a child in the womb of a woman? The Holy Quran points out that the women are the field and men cultivate children there. Sura Al Baqarah verse 221 states ---your wives are place of sowing of seed for you so come to your place of cultivation however you wish and put forth.Whoever the speaker might be God or a man his observation is candid .The speaker hints at Green Economics. The crucial problem of Economics is production of wealth and its distribution. The trees produce fruits for ages to gether. Some specimens of mango tree still  fruit even after three hundred years.Think of a factory. Does it last for more than fifty years?And  how much is spent to raise a factory and how much is spent to raise a mango tree? Besides Economics  only takes in account  the effective buyers- that is those buyers who have the money to buy  goods. Nature caters to all those who have demands. It does not ask for any money in exchange of what it gives. The tree gives shelter to squirrels birds and many other creatures without taking any rent. Thus unlike a factory the trees and rivers and the earth—the different agents of production belonging to Nature produce  multiple  commodities and comforts for our use.But it is a pity that the birth of a human child is not celebrated by Nature. Because what we call civilization today is an antithesis to Nature. This is not all .Life is too much with man getting and spending. And the prophecy of Malthus has pronounced a curse upon men lest they multiply beyond a limit set from the standpoint of distribution of wealth through the market The poet Hantrakool  puts in our mind Shakespeare. If love were universal Gonzalo in Tempest observes: 
All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.

But what man has made of man. Now a days as soon as a child is born the parents start thinking whether they can afford to give them a good bringing up which needs money and not love.

The next poem dwells on human trade. Trade in humans could mean human trafficking . But this is not all. Thanks to the economist Mr Schultz  a human being is to be evaluated in the context of how much he can contribute to the interest of the capitalist.In short man is no longer judged as a man or loved as a man. By the magic touch of the Gospel of Mammon he has turned into capital meant for further production the way the capitalist chooses. But suppose what happens if one is not groomed to become a human capital? Pompen describes him in telling word:

He lives a really wretched life

Raking up for food like chickens

Guess who he is?

A vagrant  living by eating scraps

He is a man and yet he does not look like a man . He gathers scraps or rakes up  in quest of food perhaps in the bins just as chickens do. He is dehumanized ,a man turned into subhuman species who lives on scraps or the food that is left over after the greater part is used. Since he cannot be employed in any production activity he has no value in the society. But capitalism can add value to what it calls worth nothing. The photograph of the wretch however sells. That is man seeks to make money from selling the portraits of misfortune  of man. Man lives on the misfortunes of his fellowmen. Pompen tells us that the man  who collects the scraps of food does not know that he is being photographed for the entertainment of the fortunate few among men. Pompen says:

The watchers laugh

 he is hungry

The  makers make money

He is dying

This reminds us of Nero  who fiddles while Rome is aburning.Now  a days Nero is espied in every man who is rich and fortunate. Pompen  uses  a sequence of photogenic imagery to bring home to the readers her keen observation about the predicament of man.And she is right. One Bollywood actor  Salman Khan ran over five people sleeping outside a bakery killing one while driving without a licence. A famous singer Abhijit by name defended Salman Khan by saying that roads are meant for cars and dogs, not for people sleeping on them. So people who  sleep on the streets can be run over just as dogs are run over!! Pompens poem depicting human trade has revealed the horrors of hell where men feed on men in the name of trade hiding behind  the masks of civilization

Thus our civilization is two faced.. One face always smiles as though very kind and the other is strained and horrendous. One face is open seen trusted adored and loved but the other unknown and unknowable.But one wonders whether the existence itself is two faced or not with appearance and reality phenomenon and noumenon  surface and underground as its two aspects. The poet is in the surface and she surmises that the Doomsday will show up one day and the dark visage of the existence  will be revealed reft of its accidental visage of unwitting love . Thus in her poem Two Faced Pompen is weighed down with deep depression

And why should not the poet be depressed with the world as it is? Man is the mirror of the universe. The poet is swayed to an autobiographical mood. She met a man noble and trustworthy on the surface. But  the friend turned out to be mean with his mouth maligninig  his fellowmen eyes aburning with wrath and vengeance and plans pernicious. This is character -study reminding one of Shakespeare. A friend turning hostile is an instance of peripetiea. And through the sudden reversal of situation the truth is found out. There is the serpent in the grass. There are devils in human demeanour.

And what disaster is caused by these devils in human skin? The poet knows that whatever is born is destined to death and annihilation. The flower that is born is sure to wither away . The child that is born is sure to grow old and die.But flowers are culled before they wither and are thro wn away. Men are killed even in their child hood. Civilisation does not wait to see the natural fructification of things. Impelled by greed and hurry it cuts the tree before it is dead.Lust for luxury impels them to borrow money before it is earned. The earth not yet decayed is being dragged to early and untimely  doom and destruction by man made contamination. Indeed the earth is the only spaceship where we can inhabit. If it is damaged we cannot alight from it and board on another. But who cares ? Because it is the devils in human attire who rule the earth.True that nothing is permanent under the sun.Human race also might be wiped off from the face of earth in times to come. But pollution makes the earth impossible for man to live in and since man cannot migrate from earth to any other space ship man must be extinct from the face of the existence before its time

Pompen is deft in creating situations. In the poem Voice it was Midnight. She says that the streets around were retiring.In the dimly corner of a restaurant which was already closed a girl hung on talking with a guy.Pompen has love and goodwill for everyone. She recognized the girl. She was a waitress with a restaurant. And young boys and girls might be engaged in love affair. May they be happy! She passed by blessing them. But alas ! After some time  she heard an inscrutable groan of a woman. Just imagine how the heart of the sleeping city in the night  moaned  inarticulately. It is an eerie  situation  built by the poet with great power and force. Coleridge had to hark back to the middle ages to forge his supernatural tales. But Pompen forges an eerie situation out of the materials of our every day urban life. In a moment our much known cities turn into a veritable inferno. Pompens  physical response to the voice is noteworthy. She says that the voice stopped her walking legs and then penetrated into heart and soul.This is significant.The chief aim of poetry is to appeal to the senses unlike that of philosophy that appeals to intellect. Thus Pompens poems are philosophical poems  where philosophy has been the stuff of poetry. And the message created by the voice seems to pass from the senses to purer soul. In this context one is apt to remember a few lines from Wordsworths Tintern Abbey:

...I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:...

Wordsworth owed his pleasant sensations to the sights and sounds of Nature.The sights and sounds of the city are just the opposite of pleasant sensation Pompens  comment on the situation is brief and poignant:

In that moment I felt a bitterness

In womans destiny.

Pompen is a poet who loves to show a situation instead of describing  the same.Through the revelation of a critical situation the poet reveals herself as well. Here is a dramatic lyric in the right sense of the term.

In the earlier poem Pompen has described how everything in Nature is being destroyed before its hour of death. Civilisation does not let things grow the Natures way or natural way. And the groan we heard at the heart of a city in the middle of the night could be the groan of Nature animated through the lamenting voice of a youthful woman. And indeed women and Nature are identical. Pompen shows this with the aid of a wonderful penpicture of a cowherd woman in the poem –her name is tua lek. The title of the poem is significant because there is no capital letter there. The first letter of the title—h-- is not  put in capital letter. Why? Because the protagonist of the poem a cowherd is not at all significant in the light of modern civilization.The sequence of the motifs in the poem  is significant. First comes a herd of cows on the gravel road. May be we can hear the hoofs  on the pounded stones.It surely suggests the neighbourhood of villages.They stop at the roadside to graze. This ironically tells us how pastures are contracting even in the country side.Then comes the next motif. After them is a young woman holding a stick This is a familiar picture not only in Thailand but also in India. The portrait of a vagrant searching food in the bins drawn by the poet earlier is also a familiar one in Calcutta India.Thus Pompens poems are as much Indian as it is Thai at least to the present reader who lives in India.So to repeat the cows came first and then we came across the cow herd girl. We the spectators of this film in words want to know the cowherd girl. Pompen tells that her name is tua lek—a name that sounds like the chirping of a bird. Is she a bird or ? Unlike the highland girl of William Wordsworth she does not sing and bind the grain single in the field. Here she drives the cattle. But she does .not know anything about herself  She does not know how old she is. She does not have even the three R’s. Only thing that she has learnt since her childhood is to look after the cows.Here the poet shoots a sharp shaft of satire at modern education system. 

But look at her. 
She is exceedingly beautiful

Her eyes are shining

Her lips lay a big smile

Revealing her white teeth

On her dark face

 sweating all over

We readers can see in our minds eye the sweats dangling from her dark face shining like pearls in the sun.Here is an aesthetics. The beauties of the plants of the garden have been outdone by a creeper uncared for grown up and groomed in Nature. The cowherd is truly a creature belonging to Nature like a bird or like a creeper. She is the portrait of womanhood. She is one with the Nature. And  her road joins the road of the cows!!

This is a civilization that is out to destroy women and Nature.

And this grim situation has impelled the poet to mope an instance of antipoetry in the poem entitled Death. In traditional poetry morning is associated with birth and fresh hopes. But with the poet our birth is but sleep and forgetfulness. As long as we sleep or rather live in this world we are haunted by nightmares where we see vagrant people nibbling food from scraps. And if such a person steals and is caught redhanded surely he will be deemed to be a criminal. It is the society that turns men into thieves and then sends them to jail The poem entitled Death opens with a morning that witnesses the withering away of Satinwood flowers  that bloomed in full fragrance during the night before the morning.The flowers are strewn along the path. Thus morning opens up the path littered with fragrant satinwood flowers. And Pompen says that this is the path which will lead an old prisoner presently dead beyond the sphere of sorrow. Because with her Death is kind and extremely just.Death does not distinguish between a free person and a prisoner between good and evil between rich and poor. Sceptre and crown must tumble down along with scythe and spade. Just as the satinwood  flowers are shed in the morning so does a prisoner die in the morning. Who is not a prisoner in the human society? Custom hangs heavy upon man. The poet says that the prisoner is set free during the morning. Pompen recalls:

This morning…

It freed

And took him (that is the prisoner) to the land of freedom

Forever

Thus contrary to poetic tradition morning brings death in its train and liberates the prisoners from the trammels of earth. With Pompen death does not have any sting. Death is the liberator. But the morning that the poet depicts is not a mellow one. She says that during the morning she refers to:

Rain poured

Wind blew

Heaven hailed

Here a pun on the hail is clearly descried With the poet Pompen therefore life brings suffering with it.Death might relieve us from that. Does the poet mean nirvana by the word death. Because the death that frees us from birth and death cycle could be called nirvana

Be that as it may the life we live is death in life haunted by nightmares and harrowed by the tortures let loose by our fellowmen. In this waste land what could protect us and protect the poet?Well the poet puts on a vest that her mother once sewed during a live long night.The poet says:

As this vest I will never discard

Has been close to my flesh and  my heart

Though time has since passed for fifty springs

My mothers embrace is still here around me

It is the love of the mother that can protect one in this vale of tears or the world. Though the mother has been long dead the poet still remembers her warm love and lives with a sense of security .If we remember the love of our mother for us  and make it a part of our being we could defend ourselves from the odds of life. This is not ancestor worship. What the  poet speaks of is mother cult perhaps

By the by it is the vest sewn by the poets mother that sticks to the body of the poet and gives the poet the pleasure of being embraced by the mother even when mother is long dead.Here is sensuousness which is time and again.

. This speaks of fetishism and worship of the relics of our loved ones

And now the poet recalls how someone asked for a pound  from her while she was walking along the streets of London.Does it not point out that the poet has in her mind the fact that there is stark poverty looming large below the surface of the so called developed countries? It was a biting cold evening and there was a man struck with chill penury asking for a pound. The poet had a pound only in her pocket and she walked aside and went away. A little after the poet thought to herself----I should do almsgiving. But in the meantime the man had disappeared.The poet laments:

 the giving only one pound could be a humane deed

I denied helping a human being.

Little acts of kindness like that could change the world

Hence the poet bursts into a hymn praising heart

Heart is beautiful when it gives

Heart is missing when it is mean

Heart deceives when it pretends

Heart can express at any time

Heart has much for giving

It depends on its nature rich or poor

Loving mother when remembered fills our hearts with the milk of compassion.

When the poet says –heart deceives when it pretends- she might allude to the protagonist of the poem Demon. And in reality we pose and pose and take our poses to be the reality and thereby hearts become mean. Heart mean when it poses. Heart is mean when it does not give. But heart is always very wealthy.Heart has much for giving. Heart does not consult almanacs to know when one should give and when one should not give. May be any time is not tea time. But any time is auspicious for giving away. And in other words heart can express any time And it is through giving that ones heart becomes beautiful. This is a significant poem. It tells us that everyman has untold wealth because everyman has a human heart. The wealth of a man is proved by way of his giving away the same to the needy and poor. If we had cultivated our heart there would be no one poor . The world would witness abundance and abandon

Everyone in the world does not possess a deceiving heart. The poet remembers her mother. Mothers love remembered protects the poet from the encircling dangers of being cheated and duped. Memory of a friend keeps the lamp of love aburning in the heart of the poet. The poem entitled A Forever Friend is a woberful elegy composed in an epistolary form in which a deceased friend has been addressed. The friend passed away without farewell to the poet. But his image is still bright in her heart. And here is recollection of emotions in tranquility. The friends smiling image reminds her of her erstwhile friendship with the deceased person which was erected on wisdom and sincerity. Such memories of mothers love for a child or a friends love for a friend protect a person in the weird wilderness of civilization. Here the poet seems to underline the need of right memory.

But this is not all . May be like the author of Walden the poet also took refuge somewhere away from human locality and madding crowds iignoble strife. For a time she felt a bit uneasy being away from the herd. She seemed to be a little scared in the utter silence that surrounded her. But we are never alone. Even in the womb silence there is lot of noise. Even in the womb of loneliness there are lot of friends.The poet discovered some houselizards moving along the wall. Done. The poet found her friends living under the same roof hence onwards.True compassion or cultivation of heart could discover the bond between man and man and between man and nature. And once we could be friendly with one and all there will be a. world beyond the sphere of fear. A world beyond the sphere of sorrow and fear is all that the poet Pompen looks forward to. Could we follow the poet in her striving for or trying to get rid of …