The joy of melancholy

Upcoming poet Mukul Kumar finds beauty in ruins

Not for him the meadows and the prairies, the daffodils and the lilies. Mukul Kumar finds beauty in ruins and dilapidation, greys and gloom. It is not company, but loneliness that inspires the poet in him. The result? A collection of poems aptly titled, ‘Rhythm of the Ruins’. (mention publisher)

From one page to another, there is a celebration of life and loss, death and despondence. No tear goes uncelebrated, no sigh untapped. Says Kumar, “Ruins symbolise distress and disorder, and the consequent sadness. But in a poet or any artist for that matter, this sadness metamorphoses into a melancholy that is absolutely crucial to creativity. And creation is beautiful, and that’s why I write in my blurb, quoting Oscar Wilde, that an artist is the creator of beautiful things; beauty breeds pleasure. Hence for me, poetry is a means to derive pleasure from pain, find rhythm in the ruins.”

In his poems, Kumar talks of love, loss and reconciliation. How much has real-life shaped the poet in him? “Love, Loss. Reconciliation, these are the various states of the human mind and various dimensions of human existence. But when the reality is treated with imagination, the mundane transfigures into the sublime. As T.S. Eliot aptly says, ‘The man who suffers is different from the artist who creates’.” 

Talking of Oscar Wilde and TS Eliot, irony is a recurring emotion in Kumar’s works. “Irony is a great tool to depict the chasm between the real and the ideal, between what exists and what should exist. This chasm breeds alienation that is the bedrock of art. Like in the poem, ‘Air is Morbid’, the ways to protect life stand in stark juxtaposition against the vulnerabilities of human life. This poem basically deals with terrorism.” 

Kumar has been a prolific creator. A career diplomat who is happier letting his imagination take him beyond the corridors of power, he penned another poetry collection during Covid. Now comes ‘Rhythm of the Ruins’. How does he manage to strike that balance? “Many a time, the sharper the contrast, the more urgent the creativity. It is so thrilling to experience that from the mundane to the sublime there is merely an impulse, the moment when the creative fire ignites the fodder of experience and emotions emerging from the mundane life. Hence the bureaucrat easily gives way to the poet.”

So, did he find the new order that he is forever yearning for with this collection? “I firmly believe that passion is the only way to create meaning in life; art brings into existence what didn’t exist earlier. As Albert Camus says, otherwise pretty often life feels absurd, devoid of any meaning. ‘Rhythm of the Ruins’ does represent ‘order out of the chaos’.”

Here is to orderly reading!