
Journalist-turned-author and publisher Anand wants to ‘meet’ Kabir. His latest book, The Notbook of Kabir: Thinner than Water, Fiercer than Fire (Penguin), though open to many interpretations —considering the poems included in it are part of oral history and thus may not exactly be Kabir’s actual verses — indicate the author’s quest. Take, for instance, these lines from the book: “Of all the dead poets, Kabir is the most alive. He comes to us with a song in his step and a dance on his lips….” They express the author’s wish to meet the 15th-century saint in the world now through his songs and poems performed by a handful of artistes.
Interestingly, these artistes, belonging to various sections of society, perform Kabir’s songs and poems as part of their quotidian existence; they are unaware of the academic discourse around Kabir. They are also bereft of ownership of the poetry they sing and perform, even as they mix their creativity and interpretations to keep the saint alive. The book works towards locating the poet-saint, who lives in people’s minds. It breaks away from the traditional academic pattern of framing a figure such as Kabir.
Not a book
“The idea of a book changes with time. Today, we call PDFs and e-books books—so, it is an evolving idea, as is Kabir. Besides, I have given instances of 50-plus Kabir songs I have heard from various artistes. These songs have been passed on to them as a generational practice. So the whole idea of taking songs and putting them in a book itself is a kind of an exercise in contradictions. That is why there are no chapters; only the flow of 50-plus poems. Hence, it is a ‘Notbook’,” says Anand.
The book has a dialectical composition. The author has the thesis-versus-antithesis structure of Kabir poems work its way into how those poems have been printed in the book – he begins by rendering the poems in the Nagari script followed by their Romanised version and, finally, their English translation. On a lot of occasions, that pattern, too, gets broken. The Nagari script also does not follow a standardised orthography to highlight the many accents in which Kabir is sung.
Of negations
That the book is dialectically composed becomes even more evident when the reader sees that in its unfolding it articulates a moment of negation and then takes it to a higher plane, with the author connecting Kabir with BR Ambedkar. The author uses the following Kabir lyrics, “In this world of mine/No Brahma/No Vishnu/No Shankar/No god, In this world of mine/No Veda/No Gita/No text/No secret,” sung by Mahesha Ram, a singer of the Meghna community from Rajasthan, and connects them with the lines that Ambedkar used while denouncing Hinduism: “I shall not consider Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh as God nor shall I worship them/ I shall not consider Ram and Krishna as God nor shall I worship them./ I shall not believe in Gouri-Ganesh and other Gods and goddesses of Hindu Religion nor shall I worship them./ I don’t have faith in incarnation of God”. Hence, Kabir appears in a casteless utopia through the performance of Ram. The central figure is the negation of the hierarchies, and this is not only an affirmation of Ambedkar but also the philosophy and the teachings of Gautam Buddha.
To put the impact of Kabir within two covers is an impossible task. This is why, according to Anand, the book is an unfinished project. “I had to stop and abandon the book somewhere because I could keep adding these Kabir poems as I found them and encountered them. But then the book has to be manageable. The idea is that from this book, you will find other kinds of Kabir,” he says.