My Papa’s Lawn Mower and Other Spring Poems by Dr Santosh Bakaya is a beautiful collection of poems reaffirming a daughter’s love for her father. I often wondered why, of all the incarnations of her father that she could have chosen, this erudite Professor of English was portrayed on the cover as a gardener, rake in hand.
After reading the book, one understands this powerful metaphor. Just as a gardener works patiently to create a beautiful garden, a parent works to nurture a family that continues to flourish from the foundations he has laid, long after he is gone. And this family comprises five children, five beautiful flowers, with grandchildren now blooming in the garden of love he created.
The first poem, “What! Another Daughter!”, introduces us to a protective father who rises above patriarchal prejudices to gather his daughter into his arms, defending both her gender and her dark complexion in a place where people take pride in fair skin.
“You were born a girl, did your parents pray you should die?
Out you go, and don’t you dare to come back. Goodbye.”
Dr Bakaya’s penchant for quoting Browning, on whom his doctoral thesis still rests unpublished, or Dylan during those nocturnal ice-cream parties, or Mary Oliver as he strolled one spring day in Jaipur, must surely have been part of the rich literary world that went into the making of Dr Santosh Bakaya.
The poet talks about the impression her father made on her as he guided her in his impeccable baritone to enact Portia’s role or Iago’s. Sitting on the director’s chair, donning the director’s hat, was it his voice that guided her through her TED X episodes or the powerful manner in which she renders her poems?
In a dream, he handed her his Sheaffer pen, gifted to him by a student, and told her to write. And she never stopped writing. In fact, she is one of the most prolific writers we know, and with this book she celebrates her 33rd publication, itself a remarkable achievement.
There are simple moments of familial joy like “the watermelon cutting ceremony [which] was no less than a cake-cutting ceremony” with papa waiting to do the honours. Or the time the family and the dog crowded around the ice cream machine waiting for the magic to happen. “During this cranking process/ papa would compose poems. / Nonsense verse and doggerel mostly.” Indeed, “the ice-cream melted. Days melted. But memories stayed, unmelting… Nostalgia never melts.” And, those unmelting, bittersweet memories, continue to run like a sepia-tinted film through the book.
Gardening for Senior Dr. Bakaya was a great stress buster as one of the poems reveals. His lawnmower and rake often rested against a water tank into which unsuspecting Holi revellers were dunked. And some distance away grew a guava tree, playing host to a party of parakeets.
Here was a gardener who not only grew flowers, but also nursed a badly injured parakeet back to health after it had been viciously pecked, revealing the tenderness of a true nature lover. One of his sons is an interventional cardiologist. Perhaps, in some small way, he was inspired by watching his father care for a vulnerable creature. Who knows? We can never quite know which seemingly insignificant moments shape children’s lives.
Who knows what small actions influence children to lead their lives the way them do but undoubtedly a lot can be attributed to a parent’s actions. And, with his fine garden of children blooming brightly, the gardener must be a very satisfied man today.
Can anyone who has loved and lost completely accept that they will never see that person again? There is, after all, a strange comfort in being able to see the person we have lost, even if only in memory. I found that comfort here too:
Time was it when stardust coursed through our veins.
How lovingly your healing touch quelled the growing pains.
I see Papa evaluating answer sheets
in his beautiful handwriting…
gushing about the snow and the snowflakes back home
when he roamed the undulating meadows. [A June Winter]
Here was a Kashmiri from a cold clime settled in Jaipur, a hot place as he was a professor of English in Rajasthan University. And ironically, enough in hot June, winter arrived for the family when he left too soon at the age of 63 years. The book also has poems with the refrain that he left suddenly, too soon.
One can feel the poet’s loss but also understand her reason to celebrate his life for such an extraordinary man he was. Perhaps that is what this book finally does. It turns grief into remembrance, remembrance into celebration, and the father’s life into a landscape that continues to bloom through his children and grandchildren.
I for one came away with a very strong feeling of spending more time with one’s parents when one can because sometimes, without warning, June can turn into winter.
About the Reviewer:
Avantika Vijay Singh is an awarded poet, author, and a communications person. With a double masters’ degree and several professional certifications, she remains a lifelong learner. She believes that poetry matters.
