I have followed the stellar haiku career of K. Ramesh for a long time and have translated some of his earlier work into Irish. He is a national treasure. A body such as Sahitya Akademi should give him an award, not just to recognize his own outstanding gifts as a haijin (haiku master) but to acknowledge the part that haiku now plays in the literary life of India and that of dozens of other nations across the globe.
This is an age in which ecopoetics has come into its own and haiku should be to the forefront in this universal movement. Why? Firstly, haiku is known for its keen response to environmental and seasonal phenomena. Secondly, the greatest haijin are those who eschew self-obsession and the cravings of the predatory ego.
winter morning . . .
the farmer’s sneeze
startles the newborn calf
This could have been written by the immortal master Issa whose haiku – over 20,000 in all – are infused with memorable tenderness.
wedding hall . . .
a butterfly lingers
around artificial flowers
I have read similar haiku and yet the tiniest difference is enough to allow a haiku such as this a complete life of its own, a moment quietly and unobtrusively observed.
Ramesh works as a teacher in a Krishnamurti school in Chengalpattu. How lucky are the children under his care:
sugarcane harvest . . .
every boy in the village
gets a piece to chew
Haiku take up little space on the page so it’s a pity that a second Indian language wasn’t included. When all is said and done, haiku have extra resonance and nuance in the ancestral tongue. How could it be otherwise?
Haiku can bring us from the microcosm to the macrocosm in the blink of an eye which means that it is both a literary genre and a purifying, spiritual exercise for poet and reader alike:
power failure . . .
I step into the night
of the Milky Way
This is simply sublime! The Milky Way was also a favourite theme of the above-mentioned Issa, as in this haiku from the year 1802:
it flows
into my home village . . .
the Milky Way
There are many ways of looking at a haiku. No two readers are exactly alike. This next haiku might amuse some readers. Others will sense abject loneliness:
barber shop . . .
only one fish left
in the aquarium
Haiku has the ability to zoom in on a moment, a reality, a happening – making that moment real for us, as real as anything else that might be happening in the universe. Haiku is an awakening. And who is to say what happenings are more significant than others?
winter night . . .
mother and I search
for a pill on the floor
There are haiku in this collection which equal the works of such grandmasters as Buson and Bashō (who both wrote memorably about herons):
a heron’s pulsing throat . . .
the river thin
on the river bed
There is so much sensibility and intelligence at work in this absorbing collection that it’s hard to pick a favourite among so many jewels:
long afternoon . . .
the church spire shade
reaches the beggar
Any anthology of Indian writing which focusses on communalism should include this outstanding haiku:
village asleep . . .
a crescent moon
over Shiva’s temple
