Special Feature India, March 2008

Photograph Copyright: Susumu Takiguchi

Introduction

The World Haiku Club conducted its 9th World Haiku Festival in India at the incredibly beautiful site of The Art of Living Ashram situated in the outskirt of Bangalore on the Deccan Plateau. Over fifty Indian haiku poets from different parts of the country and representative of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the USA gathered together to discuss issues including the future of haiku in India, undertake various haiku workshops, hold the newly created The World Haiku Club Award and enjoy Indian classical dance and the fascinating performances of reading ghazal poems by renowned actor and actress. According to a seasoned participant, it was an epoch-making event in India and is likely to have profound impact on the future course of haiku in India, which in turn will contribute to the healthy development of world haiku.

A Report on the Inaugural Function

by Kala Ramesh

DIRECTOR OF WORLD HAIKU FESTIVAL 2008 IN INDIA

INAUGURATION CEREMONY

In the grand and pristine ambience of the Visalakshi Mandapa of the Art of Living Ashram, we had our Inaugural Ceremony. The white marble flooring of the majestic stage was all set with a 5 ft majestic bronze traditional lamp, with a huge banner proclaiming the theme of our festival, ANANDA The Joy of Haiku: The 9^th World Haiku Festival 2008 in India as a backdrop against which the three-day event took off to a beautiful start. Beginning with a short prayer in the form of Vedic chants, the oil lamp was lit by Swami Sadyojata of the Ashram, Susumu Takiguchi, Founder and Chairman of The World Haiku Club, Norman Darlington, haiku poet and renku expert from Ireland and Stanford M. Forrester, haiku editor and a distinguished poet from USA.

Kala Ramesh welcomed the gathering, and after thanking our sponsors Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Ji and Sri Ratan Tata Trust, and her core-cell members, A. Thiagarajan and Vidur Jyoti, she went on to talk about the importance of the third day moon, and how an adult can only lead the child to that last leaf on the branch, but after that the child has to take the leap into space to find that thin slivery line of the dark sky. Kala correlated that leap with the leap that poets need to take inward, to be able to write that one prefect haiku. She said that we had some haiku masters here to take us to that last leaf but that after that the effort was all ours. Kala ended her welcome note, quoting a Tamizh proverb: All that we have learnt is just a handful of sand, all that we have not learnt is as wide as the world itself.

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Susumu Takiguchi gave the Key-note Address.

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The World Haiku Club India honored eight poets who have contributed to the growth of Indian haiku. Each was bestowed with a beautiful Kashmir shawl and a wooden Ashoka pillar.

Stanford M. Forrester, the editor of 'bottle rockets' and formerly president of the Haiku Society of America. He feels blessed to be at this haiku festival and in the company of such esteemed poets. Our member Mr. Kameshwar Rao honoured Mr. Forrester.

Norman Darlington, from Ireland, Renku Editor for the journal Simply Haiku. He is the originator of the Triparshva, a modern renku pattern designed to facilitate a close approximation of the classical style in a format suitable to our 21st century environment. Mr. K. Ramesh honored Mr. Darlington.

Dr . Angelee Deodhar is an ophthalmologist by profession and now works as a haiku poet, translator, haiga artist and a home maker. Ms Kala Ramesh honored Dr. Angelee Deodhar.

Mohammed Fakhruddin is the Editor of "POETS INTERNATIONAL" monthly journal of short verse, President of Haiku Society of India, a media person, Writer and a Film Maker. Dr. Vidur Jyoti honored Dr. M. Fakhruddin.

Dr Dwarakanath H. Kabadi is an internationally reputed poet and is well-known for his flickers. His experiments in new forms of poetry have earned him a unique place in both Kannada and Indo-Anglian literature. Mr. Johannes Manjrekar honored Dr. Dwarakanath.

Dr. Jagdish Vyom is the editor of a bilingual journal Haiku Darpan, devoted solely to haiku and its genres. He writes in Hindi and is the principal of a government school in Delhi. He has taken up the challenge to introduce haiku in Hindi not only across the country but also on an international scale. Mr. A. Thiagarajan honored Dr. Vyom.

Narayanan Raghunathan, philosopher [published two books of philosophical aphorisms], mathematician [transcendental numbers, continued fractions, number theory and foundations], writer of poetry and haiku, founder of "Wonder Haiku Worlds". He also pursues Indian classical music and photography. Prof N.K. Singh honoured Mr. Raghunathan.

Susumu Takiguchi is the founder and Chairman of the World Haiku Club, a global haiku organisation and movement for the dissemination and study of haiku worldwide. An established haiku poet, essayist and artist, Takiguchi has been active in developing world haiku. Mr. Aju Mukhopadhyay honored Susumu san.

After this we listened to a talk by Angelee Deodhar who spoke at length about The Joy of Haiku and what it meant to each one of us. She followed this by reading out several of the haiku of Indian haijin.

Then we had a heartfelt vote of thanks which was given by A. Thiagarajan on behalf of the organisers. Thiagarajan thanked sincerely our sponsors Sri Sri Ravi Shankar ji and Sri Ratan Tata Trust for their most gracious help. He also extended deep gratitude to each and every participant for helping to make this festival a great success.

A scintillating classical dance performance by Ms Yogini Gandhi along with five of her students gave the inaugural ceremony a spectacular grand finale. In honour of the haiku festival Yogini Gandhi danced themes from various seasons of India and her performance about the monsoon was of exceptional quality. The meticulous planning the troupe had undertaken of the entire recital was most appreciated by one and all.

KEY-NOTE SPEECH

BY SUSUMU TAKIGUCHI

CHAIRMAN, THE WORLD HAIKU CLUB

(Thoughts compiled and revised from past lectures for this Festival)

THE FUTURE OF WORLD HAIKU AND HOPE FOR INDIA

By Susumu Takiguchi

Chairman, The World Haiku Club

23 February 2008,

Bangalore,

India

PART ONE: RABINDRANATH TAGORE

I wish to start with a special poet who is a national hero and pride in India but who is also a father of, inter alia, all modern poets in the world, Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861-7 August 1941).

Tagore wrote a brief account in his travelogue of his first visit of Japan in 1916. Brief, but in it every word is a jewel and the whole prose reads more like free-flowing poetry even in Japanese translation. It is one of the most exhilarating readings, at least to me.

Exhilarating, not because it is full of praise of

Japan but because every observation is told not in isolation but as a representation of deeper realities or broader universality, which seems to me to be a characteristic of this first Nobel laureate in Asia. It is also exhilarating because it teaches that one can say so much in so brief a writing. Who needs a volume like War And Peace to say what it is that is to be said? All we need is the best words, in the best place and in the best order. And the more one knows what one wants to say the fewer the words needed. The fewest words of all are silence. It seems as if we may be talking about haiku here, doesn’t it?

However, the greatest exhilaration comes to me because Tagore sought to promote a new world culture which was based on ‘multi-culturalism, diversity and tolerance’, according to a study. I might hasten to add that the phrase ‘multi culturalism’ Tagore used had no pejorative or debased meaning which it has sadly acquired in modern Britain. This remark of Tagore is almost identical with the aim of the World Haiku Club. With such a fortunate coincidence, I am emboldened to appeal to my friends in India to take part in the world haiku movement which was started by us in 1998 but which needs to be passed continuously to new haiku poets in all corners of the world and to continue to be pursued and developed in earnest by them. Tagore showed us the way how that could be done. World Haiku Festival 2008 in which we rejoice at taking part here in India marks a high point of following in the footsteps of Tagore, in our case in the field of haiku literature.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) taken by John Rothenstein 1912

In his travelogue, Tagore introduced two haiku by Basho, one about the old pond and a frog and the other about the withered branch and a crow. About the former, Tagore comments after citing it, “That is all. And that is sufficient”. This is because, according to him, there are many eyes in the Japanese reader’s mind, which can see that which is not mentioned in the haiku but only implied in the most succinct and beautiful way. Nothing more is necessary. Tagore, it seems, got straightaway to the essence of haiku, and without reading any of today’s haiku textbooks or frivolous explanation about haiku at that.

About the second poem of the withered branch and the crow by Basho, Tagore made a similar comment but this time emphasised the importance of the power of intuitive understanding of the Japanese reader. Because of this, the author of haiku not only has no need to put him- or herself forward into the poem but also must indeed withdraw and step aside. This, by the way, has nothing to do with the popular assertion that ego must not come into haiku, which is all too often admonished wrongly by so many.

The reason why Tagore could get to the heart of the matter in appreciating the essence of haiku so easily is not just that he was an exceptional Renaissance man. It is because he approached haiku with unadulterated and open heart. Quoting another Japanese poem (heaven and earth are flowers/kami-god and Buddha are flowers/man’s heart is the essence of flowers), Tagore introduces an almost identical Indian verse (heaven and earth/god and Buddha/these two flowers blossom from the same stalk) and points out that the beauty of things beautiful stems from human heart.

This is an important point for haiku-writing in the present circumstances where what could be termed as the ‘author’s right’ is ignored in preference for the ‘reader’s right’ with the former made to worry far too much about what the latter might or might not think about his or her haiku of originality and newness. It is also important because we should really leave most things to our human heart when writing haiku and not to irksome rules and regulations.

Then Tagore goes on to explore the sensibility unique to the Japanese, which he calls ‘restraint of the soul’. By this he means that it is possible to increase the feeling and expression of beauty by restraining the feeling and expression of the emotion. Less is better than more. This strikes me as one of the best explanation about the essence of haiku.

If the same blood runs through all Indian poets and the same sensibility is found in them as that of Tagore, they will have already made a good start with haiku.

Part 2

Part 3