Poetry in times of demonetisation

Chennai: Poetry? Oh no! Who has time for such niceties when we can’t even withdraw cash from our own bank accounts? Only those who can ‘afford the luxury of surplus time’ or leisure dare speak about metrics and melodies.

Thus went the ruminations among a group of customers as one stood patiently for two hours at a nationalised bank, a day before cyclone ‘Vardah’ smashed Greater Chennai, only to be told by a pugnacious officer on the other side of the looking glass, “Sir, no cash, no change’, sans the only nominal saviour of the day - the singular, new Rs 2, 000 note!

But isn’t the auspicious Tamil month of ‘Maargazhi’ round the corner, a time of remembrance and daily recitation of one of the finest collections of pastoral romance from the heart of Aandaal, soaked in ‘Bakthi’, and unfolding a metaphysic in poetry on the relationship between the individual soul and the absolute reality?

As I gently tossed this coin to the person standing before me in the queue, he was furious. He at once pulled out from his back-pack a copy of an economic daily and showed me the verse for the day: Top Ministry officials in New Delhi say the ‘new normal’ in money circulation is expected only by the end of January 2017, that too with a hope rider.

Some of us in the queue sulked into the proverbial dilemma of Plato’s men in the cave, chained to a stone’, having to be content with seeing passing shadows on one side of its wall, with the bright sunlit outside world blinded by our own limitations (read cash crunch and consumption squeeze). Then, a bright young girl in the queue had a novel take. “Why think of reading or writing poetry? Every day is now poetry in action.”

Yes, daily money ordeals is more real than reel life and to the discerning eye, every piece of action by vast masses of ordinary people to overcome the ‘famine of notes’ - as former Governor of West Bengal, Gopalkrishna Gandhi recently described demonetisation in a different context - is poetry in itself.

Not every Suppan and Kuppan in Tamil Nadu is lucky like the Haryana Chief Minister, Manohar Lal Kattar to pay for a cup of tea at a roadside ‘chai’ shop there with the press of a button on their mobile phone. E-wallets and ‘e-filling of cash’ are still abstract poetry for vast sections of the population, particularly in the informal and daily wages sector.

And this poesy of everyday financial turbulence did not seem to smoothen either for the comparatively better off middle class. “Sir, only cash is accepted; no debit card or credit card or even the shining new '2, 000 note can be taken,” say waiters in even some of the best networked hotel chains in Chennai, when one steps in for breakfast or lunch.

Compounding this poetry of pain after demonetisation was the ‘Vardah’ cyclone when all networks snapped. E-wallets were at best psychological comforts, even as hunger got more real. There is food on tables, but access to it got ironically restricted, worse than the contraction of demand for FMCG (fast-moving-consumer goods) which some economists term as ‘second order preferences’ that reflect modern man’s quest for more choices.

“Deferred consumption augurs well for long-term growth,” was the next line of defence poetry from the pro-demonetisers. But the real reply to it came not from economists, but from 65-year-old Ponnamma, shivering her way in early morning chill from a suburb in East Tambaram to the ‘Koyambedu Wholesale Market’ in a rickety, yet safe MTC bus!

She managed to buy her bus ticket with two dishevelled ten-rupee notes. But after a little conversation with her, she virtually broke down. Kaayo, Poovo, Pazhamo, Metre Vaddiyil Vaangum Panathil, Konjam Vaangina Porul Kooda Thirumbi Vandhu Vikke Mudiyavillai Saami (What little I manage to buy at the wholesale market with borrowed money, I can’t sell my ware when I return) was her requiem for the day. The simple reason is the continued paucity of lower denomination rupee notes even 40 days later.

Movingly, a more thoughtful noumenal perspective came from a woman selling cut fruits opposite the now MGR-Jayalalithaa memorial on the Marina. As tens of hundreds of people swarm every day to have a glimpse of that little guarded enclosure, since the former Chief Minister was laid to rest there right behind her political mentor on December 6, this lady was in tears, saying in Tamil, “we don’t know what ‘Amma’ really wished about what should be done after her death. She suddenly flew away, worse for poor people like us than this rupee notes shortage.”

This reminded me of lines from Wordsworth’s well-known poem, Tintern Abbey: “That serene and blessed mood, / In which the affections gently lead us on, / Until, the breath of this corporeal frame / And even the motion of our human blood / Almost suspended, we are laid asleep / In body, and become a living soul…”