Pramila Venkateswaran’s book of poems, ‘We are not a museum’, has won the best poetry award at the New York Book Festival
By Shevlin Sebastian
(Published in scroll.in:
On the morning of July 26, when Pramila Venkateswaran opened her eyes, she saw it was dark outside the window of her house in Long Island. There was a steady pitter-patter of the rain. Pramila was glad that because of the summer holidays, she did not have to go to work. She is Professor, English and Women and Gender Studies at Nassau Community College 58 kms away.
She went to the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee.
After a while, her husband IV Ramakrishnan came in, carrying a black briefcase. He was wearing a blue shirt and black trousers. Pramila liked the way he kept his white beard so trim and proper. Ramakrishnan is Professor and Associate Dean in the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook university. It was a five-minute drive away.
“Happy birthday,” he said, as he gave Pramila a peck on her cheek.
“Let’s go out for dinner today.”
“Okay,” said Pramila. “Hopefully, the rain will stop by then.”
“I think it will,” he said, as he headed towards the door.
Carrying her cup of coffee, Pramila went to her study, opened her laptop and checked her mails.
One email said she had won an award. She thought, ‘What is this? I don’t remember applying. This can’t be true.’
Anyway, Pramila clicked on the link. She realised she had won the first prize for poetry for her book, ‘We are not a museum’. This was in the competition held by the New York Book Festival.
Pramila had sent an entry over ten months ago. So she had forgotten about the event. Immediately Pramila thought, ‘What a perfect birthday gift!’
She sent the link to her daughters living in different parts of America and to her husband. She also posted the link of the award online. Soon, congratulatory messages rolled in.
The book is about the life and times of the Cochin Jews, a declining community. There are less than 15 members left. As a child, she spent a few years in Jew Town.
“I would run in and out of the Paradesi Synagogue,” she said.
Her father, R Venkateswaran, worked as a manager in Canara Bank. The management had transferred him to the Fort Kochi branch. “He became close to the Jewish community,” she said. “And especially with Satu Koder, a leading entrepreneur, who was the warden of the synagogue for over 40 years.”
Both worked together, in 1968, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the synagogue. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was the chief guest. For several years after that, in her parents’ house, there hung a large black-and-white photograph. This comprised Indira Gandhi, Venkateswaran, his wife, Kausalya, and Satu Koder standing together.
What Pramila remembered was how entranced she was by the inside of the synagogue. She recollects the memory in this excerpt from her poem, ‘I was seven’ from her book.
Oh,
there is so much gold and red in this temple,
the tall lamps are lit and multicoloured glass dance
their hues on the windows. How strange
the objects in the room—the tall table, the big book,
the writing on the walls. I do not even know
what building we’re in until Amma explains,
“It is a synagogue, a Jewish temple.” I carry the sound
of my light steps, velvet in my eyes.
For the past 20 years, Pramila had been writing poems about her childhood. Inevitably, she wrote about her time in the synagogue.
She had no plans to write a book about the Cochin Jews, but as she reflected on the rich syncretic tradition in Kerala, where the mosque, church and the synagogue stood side by side and in harmony, Pramila felt she should do so.
In 2009, when she visited the synagogue, she saw tourists from all over the world. Pramila said, “I thought, ‘Oh my God, people are coming there to view it. But there are actual Jews who are living there.’ Hence, the title of the book came up, ‘We are not a museum’.”
And here is the poem:
We are Not a Museum
The whole world seems to have landed on our doorstep.
How did this happen? Yesterday a woman was peeping
into my bedroom. Now I close my doors and windows
to keep out nosy tourists creeping around Mattancherry.
A journalist called asking me about my life in Kochi.
I said it is like any other woman’s. I have a huge load
of laundry to wash, dishes to scrub, chickens
to pluck. I’ll rest only in the grave. So goodbye.
I don’t care if they think we are strange or important.
It is absurd. We’re like any other Indian in this town
struggling to make life better for our children. I want
the lot of them out of this town and out of our lives.
Pramila began researching the history of the Cochin Jews. She read books about anthropology, history, sociology and ethnographies related to Jewish women from Cochin and people who moved to Israel from Cochin.
When Pramila was studying at Bombay University, she came in touch with the Bene Israel Jews. Her English Professor, Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004), one of India’s well-known poets, was a Bene Israel Jew. “He was my mentor,” she said. “So, I felt very close to the community.” In New York, Pramila has befriended other Bene Israel Jews like the poet Zilka Joseph.
Not surprisingly, Pramila wrote about Anti-Semitism in ‘The Face of the Other’:
the face speaks to me and thereby
invites me to a relation…
Emmanuel Levinas, ‘Totality and Infinity’
Why do some see yellow stars
instead of faces, their marauding pens
marking the city’s walls with swastikas?
Hate clouds barrel down the ages
from the Black Sea and Ararat, from the Nile
and Babylon. It storms in
among starched shirts and rags.
Why is a Jewish child selected
to be erased? Philosophers say
to love is to see the other in oneself. But
the other blends into the unknowable.
I ask, doesn’t a child crying for his mom
on any street around the globe
make you wince?
Asked about the themes, Pramila said it was an emotional experience of what it is like to be a Jew in Cochin. “I was putting my imagination into the writing,” she said. So Pramila imagined the first immigrants coming to the Kerala coast.
One poem looked at the paintings of the Cochin Synagogue. A few poems talked about how persecuted Jews embarked on perilous journeys from Iraq and modern-day Palestine to India.
Another poem described the impact of the presence of the Portuguese, the Spanish and the English from the 15th to the 18th centuries.
“There was fighting between these European colonists,” said Pramila. “The Jewish community was caught in between. The Portuguese torched their synagogues in Cranganore and they fled by boat to the Cochin harbour.”
Pramila wrote a poem about the generosity of the King of Travancore.
Chorus: At the Palace of the Raja of Cochin
Rajadi Raja, your royal highness Ramavarma Kulashekara Perumal,
we bow before your blessed feet. The morning breezes bring
tidings of something new to our Keral coast. Men
and women with children arrive in boats, speaking a
tongue we have not heard before. They look like merchants
from Arabia, but are different. The men wear caps
on their heads and the women wear long, pale skirts,
have dark eyes like the apsaras in your court,
wear no ornaments in their dark brown and black hair,
and walk with a firm gait beside their men.
Rajadi Raja, the men are at the palace gates and ask
to pay their respects to you. They bear baskets of dried
fruit, dates, almonds, pistachios, apricots and olives,
saplings of plants that may or may not grow here,
seeds and coins. Their hands that bear the stain of labour,
lovingly hold their children. They speak words we
don’t understand, but there is grace in their speech
and beauty in the treasures they bear for your majesty.
We will open the gates for their visit, so they gather
in the shade of the palace courtyard and await your presence.
We bow to you, sire, lord of the Keral coast, master of our
blessed land of Parasurama who continues to bless us.
The King looked at them with sympathy.
“He felt they were worthwhile people who needed help,” said Pramila. “So, he gave them land to settle down. He allowed them to build a synagogue. And the Jews prospered. It was a very different engagement for the Jews with the outsider. It was so different from what happened in Jewish history in other countries.”
The surrounding communities were so varied. The Jews interacted with Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, members of the Gujarati community and the Konkanis from Goa. “I have written poems that bring out this varied culture,” said Pramila. “I also wanted to distil the historical record through poetry.”
There are 35 poems. And the book has been well received.
‘This is a sensitive and well-crafted collection. ‘We are not a Museum’ skillfully and thoughtfully blends two cultures into one with its unique juxtaposition of the two,’ wrote poet Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca. ‘The closeness and the shared bonds between the poet’s community and the Cochin Jewish community in her hometown in India become a timeless fabric of personal and universal history. The poet’s knowledge of the Jewish community is evident in each poem. I can almost smell the aroma of spices as the Jewish immigrants make their way to the Zamorin’s palace.’
Another poet Marjorie Agosin said, “An exquisite collection of poems, where history and lyricism dwell in the memory of the Jews of Cochin, where time and centuries of persecution have tried to erase them. Pramila Venkateswaran is a poet of resilience and of hope.
"Each of these poems engages the reader in the sensual landscape of Cochin, the smell of oranges and pomegranates as well as the poignant stories of those that lived in these places and those that return through memory and poetry. A poetry that moves your soul and enchants your heart.”
Pramila is an established poet. Her other books include ‘Thirtha’ (2002), ‘Behind Dark Waters’ (2008), ‘Draw Me Inmost’ (2009), ‘Trace’ (2011), ‘Thirteen Days to Let Go’ (2015), ‘Slow Ripening’ (2016) and ‘The Singer of Alleppey’ (2018).
Of course, the road to publishing has been difficult, because poetry has no market. For her first book, she approached around 50 publishers before she got Yuganta Press to publish it. The same thing happened for ‘Behind Dark Waters’, her next book. She approached publishers on three different continents. Finally, a publisher in Texas, Plain View Press, published it.
“The third and fourth were not that hard,” she said. “But my latest manuscript, tentatively titled ‘Walls’, I have been trying for the last two years, and have made no headway.”
Pramila said her win will not make any impact on the chances of publishing. “You are back to the drawing board all the time,” she said.
Asked about the poetry reading public in the US, Pramila said, “It is miniscule, when compared to the readers of the novel and short stories. This is the case with most countries, including India.”
Incidentally, the rain did stop and the couple enjoyed a celebratory dinner at Sagar Indian restaurant on Long Island.
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