OUR LADY OF HOPE

By

Sherin Mary Zacharia 

for the anthology WINDBLOWN LANDSCAPES

The trawler boats would 

bring

A good haul of fish to Vypeen

The fish market would echo with

The loud call  of sellers.

Money would flow into my hands

To fulfill my dreams for my child

A few days more for the trawling

Ban to be lifted and July ends.

Light from the lighthouse

Shines on the sea and the shore

Minu will study nursing and bring

Good fortune to our house.

Her mother will call my dreams impossible

But she will go to attend the feast

Of Our Lady of Hope and pray on her knees

Asking for a way out from

The saltwater  flooded Vypeen

She will promise to light

Ten candles more, next Sunday 

To get a rented hose on the mainland.

Were each dream only a dream

Or did it slip into  a nightmare?

The hole in the wall I look through 

Shows me golden sand outside.

I search for my home,my child

My dreams vanish before

The one in uniform comes in

Kicks me and throws drychappatis at me.

Rice and fish curry I long for

Orange sun setting behind curves

Of coconut trees, I see

Boats,church bells I hear

Brawls in the toddy shops

Serials and family prayer at twilight

Ships sail silently across the sea

Our Lady of Hope takes me back to my shore familiar.

from the introduction by Dr.A.V. Koshy

Relevance of Tinai Poetry

Tinai poetry is from the classical Sangam age roughly corresponding to 300 BCE to 300 CE where a vast corpus of literature characterised by poetic excellence was established. So when a motley crew of poets set off to write on this they followed humbly on a voyage of Indian tradition and cultural significance.

But is the poetry relevant today? More so than ever before. Tinai poetry is very scientific, based on distinct geographic landscapes, what in modern ecology we call biomes, which is a large area of land or water with a specific geography, climate, vegetation and animal life. In that way, it has a deep ecological vision making it the forerunner of ecology and extremely relevant to today where we are looking for sustainable development, that is development where human needs are met without undermining planetary integrity. Tinai poetry has its own landscapes complete with specific flora, fauna, even Gods, and human occupations.

But is it merely geographical? No, it is the poetic amalgamation of landscapes and mindscapes…where the human bhava seeks it’s correspondence with the natural vibhava…where the effect of nature is seen on humans. Thus, the book revives an ancient tradition in a modern way.

How did the idea emerge to write on Tinai?

It was given as a prompt by Dr Ampat Varghese KoshyAmpat Koshy during TSL’s napowrimo in April 2023. He deconstructed a Robert Frost poem through the lens of Tinai and encouraged poets to rediscover this lost craft. This is given in his introduction to the book. And, so the poets who set out to write on this ancient form universalised it in their eloquence of today.

by Dr.Avantika Singh

Why ‘Windblown Landscapes’ is the name for TSL’s latest mini-anthology on Tinai poetry?

Since the poems in this book bring alive the traditions and cultures of different states with different geographies (characteristic of Tinai), it naturally followed to connect them a little Tinai-cally… a little poetically…

Hence, the poems were sorted into the states that they were written on… But what was the glue that held the states together? It was not a mere East West or North South direction.

It was something unique to the Indian subcontinent… the Southwest monsoons. Yes, the different states on which the poems are written are strung together like pearls on a string by the monsoon winds that blow across the Indian subcontinent. Thus, the name… ‘Windblown Landscapes’.

The states are arranged in the order that the Southwest monsoon winds blow over. So this mini-anthology wafts through the different states of India, weaving them into a poetic thread, connected by the flow of the monsoons, offering arabesque views of the lands and grandeur of the cultural heritage they travel over.

To know more about this TSL mini-anthology universalising Tinai poetry and Dravidian Aesthetics, please visit this book published by Authorspress: Publishers of Scholarly Books

by Dr.Avantika Singh