One Man Two Executions

by Arjun Rajendran

In his latest poetry collection, Arjun Rajendran begins by resurrecting voices and stories from 18th century Pondicherry: of a French ship that must change its flag to render itself invisible to the English fleet, of blind men contemplating a lunar eclipse or an unfortunate condemned to the absurdity of a second execution.

Then jumping across centuries, the other two sections in this book explore intimacy, travel, hauntings and generational angst.

Arjun Rajendran's new poems have a huge appetite and a magnificent ambition. Here, the spectres of the past are given flesh and blood and begin to live again. They are not marionettes against a backdrop but living people and like living people they infiltrate your memory and stain your consciousness, leaving strange odours: durian, gunpowder and hypocrisy in your nose.

- Jerry Pinto

Arjun Rajendran writes a poetry of genuine surprise and reinvention, soldering together the most far-flung elements of experience into a compelling lyric unity. The historical fragment, the topically political, the shared cultural and the minutely personal -- all of these are transformed by his acute metaphorical vision.

- Anjum Hasan

Experimental and inquisitive, these are poems that demand an imagination where ‘Dravidian’ is struck out for ‘Darwinian’ and ‘whale’ replaced by ‘while’, time becoming space like it does on a clockface.

- Sumana Roy

Genres: Poetry

125 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Deepan Maitra · Rating 4 out of 5]

My reading experience with “One Man, Two executions” was very similar to walking into the open wilderness, not knowing what to expect. Sure, there was that open anticipation of stumbling upon a wild flower in full bloom, but there was also the worry of hurdles I was feeling under my feet. 

This collection of poetry is certainly not for beginners, or those who find comfort in classical styles of writing poems. Pivoted around “free verse”, these poems came to me decorated like a faraway stranger, holding out his hand for me to shake. When I had just started with the book, and was flipping through the various pieces under the various sections, it seemed impossible that I could actually fathom the meaning of them. In a way, they felt distant and hazy—I knew the words, the phrases I was familiar with, but still the implications were a bit opaque. But as I started to work my way through them (with some vigorous note taking and jotting down probable meanings) the reading experience slowly started to become like an activity I was enjoying, like rowing a boat with minimum efforts, on a ripple-free lake. 

These poems are marked by disruptions in the verses, and express themselves through the disarray they portray with the help of a myriad of phrases, words and humour. They move forward in lurches, in jolts and they seek to express through a close-knit, solid punch of underlined meanings, without devoting much time in elaboration. To me, reading the poems was a very concentrated affair, since these poems really require time and effort to pierce through. Most of them come with an acute sense of hyperbole, and a very prominent delivery of allegories. There are twists in the verses written, and there is a very tangy dose of literary humour ingrained into every syllable. The poet has let his poetic liberty flow like a gushing stream, and it has freely accumulated in puddles of deeper contextual understandings. 

The book is divided into three major sections. The first section is largely the most exciting and promising one, and this is also the section which seems to have undergone a wide range of research, editing and brainstorming. This section, named ‘Pondichéry’, takes inspiration from the French colony that Pondicherry housed in the 1700s. It has imbibed a lot of history and a humongous amount of facts rooted deep into heritage. Intricately visual, the poems in this section construct a well-painted picture of the colonial society of that time. The poems here, although deeply historical, often left me groping around for the actual implication that they were trying to achieve. I kept feeling like a lot was being left unsaid, a lot being pointed to but never accusingly, and I did have difficulty in wrapping my head around the scenarios and facts that they were trying to reach. In the end, I had to conclude that the poems here wouldn’t be much understood at all, if the readers are not concretely aware of the historical backdrops. 

The next two sections, namely ‘The girl in the peapod” and “Were it not for” takes a different turn in the tone of the poems. This second section talks a lot about the author’s romantic interest in a very articulate and funky way. There’s a very pointed sense of humour inscribed into the lines, and the metaphors comes to us with much awe. Everything about this section of poems is raw, free and very original. They verses are brisk, the selection of words very crude and exemplary—and therefore the poetic touch is unique. 

The last section called ‘Were it not for’ was my favourite section of the lot. Here, the author resorts to a more simplistic style of poetry, without investing too much time in decorating the verses with unconventional elements. These poems came with a vivid sense of sadness and retrospection, talking about common people with their habits, love and loss. In all, these poems to me, shined brighter than the other poems. 

“One Man two executions” with its colourful style of poetry, is a unique and deep effort on the part of the poet to convey, record and making us understand. 

Thanks Westland Books for the review copy.

[Jayant Kashyap · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now, this is a rather brilliant book in several ways: a poetry collection driven by facts and tethered, at times, with humour. Everything it has is its own, only sometimes it isn’t the most engaging of collections.