Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Sivakami Velliangiri, Geetha Ravichandran & Shikhandin about their book ‘Footnotes in G Sharp’

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RS: Footnotes in G Sharp transforms walking into a central metaphor. How did the act of walking evolve into a poetic framework for exploring memory, identity, and movement in this collection?

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Sivakami: Shikandin proposed the concept of bringing out a book of poems based on walking. All three of us are nature lovers. Each of us had her own poems on walking.  However the triptych works because all three styles are different. While Geetha’s poems are musical, Shikandin’s are contemporary and mine are anecdotal. The variety is what makes the collection unique. Though I do not walk now a days I realised that I had several poems on walking which were journal entries.

 

Geetha: The suggestion of writing this book came from Shikhandin. Once I agreed to be part of the collaboration, I was struck by the immense possibilities this theme offers. I remembered being spell bound reading Thoreau’s essay on ‘Walking’ during my student days. The majority of poems I have included in this book, were written over the last year, reflecting on the past and observing what the present holds. The act of walking as pilgrimage, as a means of survival and even the indelible carbon footprints we leave on  earth, find their way into my poems.

 

Shikhandin: Since I had read both Geetha’s and Sivakami’s poetry before, I knew they shared my love for the open skies, the free-flowing air. Of course, people abound too! While our walking routines and rituals may be different, and even though Sivakami does not go walking any more, it is an activity we relate to. And when we stopped to ponder, we found many facets of walking that seamlessly wove themselves into our poetry. It was not difficult for us, in my opinion, to pull out pages and pages of poems that one way or another were connected to walking, the physical act of it and also its metaphorical, symbolic and even metaphysical expressions. I think the framework was already there, and we had to just see it.

 

 

RS: Although each of you walks your own path, the book feels unified and symphonic. How did you negotiate individual voice while creating a shared tonal and thematic harmony?

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Sivakami: It seemed ironical that I should be writing about walking when I no longer walk more than is necessary, these days. I looked back into my journal entries and found many of my jottings could be turned around into poems on the theme of walking. However, I did write three new poems to introduce this memoir of ‘walking poems’, in a sequence of a girl child growing up. That is writing ‘memory.‘ ’Identity’, because some specific moment that had caught my attention, and movement because I had to bring these poems of walking from birth to the present day.

 

Geetha: We discussed our poems, edited each other’s work and most importantly agreed to disagree. I think in this collaboration we have expressed our individual creative voices, which though diverse has a shared love of exploration and openness to new experiences. And incidentally, we found that we have written poems on  the same theme. Sivakami and I have poems on the ritual walking associated with walking. Shikhandin and I have written about the migration of labour across the country, during the pandemic through different lenses. The book came together like a beautiful patchwork quilt, each part distinct yet meshing in.

 

Shikhandin: We gave each other absolute freedom to put together a folio of poems on, around and about walking. The goal was to absolutely retain our individual voices. The theme was the spine. How we spread out our poetic limbs from there was never placed under a grid. I think it is this freedom, to be ourselves, that gives the book its unified feel. Also, as women of a certain age group, I believe we have some shared values, and that seeps into our poetry.

 

 

RS: The poems evoke childhood terrains, ancestral echoes, city streets, and ritual spaces. How does landscape — both physical and emotional — shape the way each of you writes about memory?

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Sivakami: I started with my first steps, memories of my mother and me in her maternal house, making my uncle walk from over the bridge to the railway track below, Padmanabhan elephant strolling with coconut leaves, the horse Rohini trotting , the gait of fisherwomen, performance dance steps, trekking with a tour guide, flaneur-ing to watch my daughter explore burial urns, a prose poem about our past President, and also me tripping on the escalator belt. The ancestral echoes are present in ‘Tree Walk,’ and “Night Walking,’ where the Sapta Kannis are questioned. ‘Peria Muni, Chinna Muni’ can be taken as the ‘other worldly’ walk. To me all poetry is recollection of some stunning images-especially little Andal disappearing into the Garbha-Griha of a temple in a movie, and wild elephants coming near the Congress Maidan in my dreamscape.

 

Geetha: Landscape is often the matrix of memory.  For instance, a park or hospital cannot in our minds, be delinked from events that transpired there. Emotion often permeates into the landscape, the stage and setting of an experience. With the passage of time, there may be a blurring of what happened and where it happened.  In my poem, ‘The Park Bench’, I write about loss, but the association with a park bench also allows a softening, an act of letting go.

 

Shikhandin: Speaking for myself, landscape shapes everything in my poetry. Memory is also a landscape for me.

 

RS: The title suggests musical precision and resonance. What does “G Sharp” signify for you — musically, metaphorically, or emotionally — within the architecture of the book?

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Sivakami: One fine morning or night, I do not remember, Geetha Ravichandran came up with this ‘one title’ and both Shikandin and I unanimously exclaimed, ‘Ah! What a lovely title this is for our book !’ I kept rolling it on my lips and it did sound musical.

 

Geetha: This title literally struck me, as the most appropriate one for our book, when I was walking on a path surrounded by tall trees. Both Sivakami and Shikhandin agreed to this readily. The act of walking involves a rhythm, an expansiveness in some ways, that is also true of music. As children learning classical music, G-Sharp was the note we learnt to sing in, during our first lessons. For me it signifies clarity, brightness and something joyous. Footnotes could be seen to be a play on walking, or as something that offers unique insights. Footnotes in G sharp is something to sit up and take note of!

 

Shikhandin: The title was created by Geetha, and I instantly fell in love with it. There was no looking back or putting together a list of titles to choose from. This title was IT! G sharp, as you know, is a ‘walking chord.’ It seamlessly allows the musician to move from one chord to the next, allowing the listener and the player to remain immersed without interruption. When you look at the book in its entirety, you can see how our individual voices have fanned out without losing a beat.

 

 

RS: Footsteps are subtle sounds, yet they carry presence. How do silence, pauses, and stillness function in your poetry alongside rhythm and lyric flow?

 

Sivakami My poems state many anecdotes, but they also leave many things unsaid. Most times my ending lines work in that way. The rhythm and lyric flow are the natural flow of thought and reading them aloud, I pause where I have to.

 

Geetha: In poems about loss, silence stands for the overwhelming void, a perpetuity of which we have no understanding. Stillness is a device to counter the inexorable movement of time that allows the poet to observe, to process a difficult reality and even make peace with it. It allows room for juxtaposition and contrast. Stopping and pausing are essential for the poet as an observer, as a chronicler.  It creates the space for detachment, for nuance. I think stillness brings an ineffable quality to poetry, the room to contemplate.

 

Shikhandin: Silence, pauses, and stillness form the sinews of poetry for me. Without them the poem will collapse. A poem’s lines rely on the pause to create deeper meaning and create rhythm. Footsteps carry a beat.

 

 

RS: Themes of womanly endurance, ritual, and inheritance surface across the poems. How consciously did you engage with questions of gender, tradition, and resilience while writing?

 

Sivakami: We are three women poets writing about women. In the gait of fisher-women, the child splashes water on them trying to drive them away. The same girl when she becomes a woman understands the plight of women who had to earn their own living. Similarly, a blasphemous act of garlanding a deity, has drifted with the progress of time to the deification of the girl child. We being women poets are constantly aware of the gender differences and we are constantly fighting for each other.

 

Geetha: As women, we are constantly made aware of gender, the roles imposed by society and an inner resilience that we possess, despite all odds. In my poem Earth Mother, I delineate not just the hardship and the sacrifices of a woman but the triumph of her spirit. Similarly, the poem Thimedi is about the fire walking ritual dedicated to Draupadi. In some parts of North Tamil Nadu, Draupadi is not considered the cause of the great war but worshipped as a revered deity. Exploring the layers of this myth proved to be an uncovering, an affirmation of a woman’s intrinsic strength.

 

Shikhandin: As an Indian woman, the questions of gender, tradition and resilience, are part and parcel of my mental make-up. I cannot not engage with them. It is an essential component of who I am, and how I process life as I have experienced it. It naturally becomes a part of my poetry.

 

RS: This is a collective act of creativity. What does collaboration mean to each of you, and how did your friendship influence the emotional and aesthetic direction of the book?

 

Sivakami: Our first bond is poetry. Second, friendship. We met in common places and in Geetha’s residence, and edited each other. We also kept track of each other’s word counts and gave each other editorial tips. Shikandin saw to it that our manuscript was professionally formatted. Geetha gave in a lot of inputs about word counts and the length of poems. We had formed a WhatsApp group in which we up-dated each other’s work. And we are three mature women writing with a focus. In times of ‘low’ we boosted each other with encouragement. It is a joint venture. We were transparent.

 

Geetha: Collaborations are interesting as they bring different voices together, which still speak in unison. Sivakami and Shikhandin have known each other for decades. I got to know them when Shikhandin launched my first book Arjavam and Sivakami my second book The Spell of the Rain Tree. Among the things we share in common is a love of poetry and a belief that women are strong and are born to lead. I love both Sivakami’s and Shikhandin’s poetry. Shikhandin is a well-established novelist and short story writer, and her books have been published by reputed publishers. Her prose is also lyrical. Sivakami is known as the poetry aunty in Chennai circles and is a great mentor to upcoming poets. Although they are senior and established poets, they graciously drew me into their fold, when I returned to Chennai after retirement. I think the humour, irony and empathy you see in the book is the outcome of shaping our poetry on our lived and visceral experiences.

 

Shikhandin: For me collaboration means complete trust and respect for each other. Without these two qualities, it is not possible for any collaboration to survive. The book that we are creating together is the most important part of our collaboration. Once you have that in place, negotiating your way becomes a lot simpler. Regarding friendship, I have known Sivakami for many years. I love her poetry.

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Geetha and I are relatively new friends. But it is not her poetry alone that draws me. I must take this opportunity to mention that throughout our journey with this book, and right from the beginning, it was Geetha who shepherded us. From coming up with such an evocative title, to putting us in touch with the right publisher – Sreetanwi and Supriyo Chakraborty of PenPrints are simply wonderful! - to making sure we kept the book to a decent readable length instead of going all over the place, to reaching out to the right people to promote and publicise Footnotes in G Sharp, to literally holding us together! I don’t think our collaboration would have seen the light of day of it weren’t for Geetha.

 

 

RS: If readers were to “walk” with this book, what do you hope they discover about themselves? Is there a particular emotional or philosophical resonance you hope lingers after the final footnote?

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Sivakami: I was able to come across the different kinds of walk in Geetha’s poems. The poems ‘Pasayadan , Thimedi ’ are  religious walks, which I have come across but would never dare to venture. Shikandin’s walks are solo walks either with a companion, her dog or with her thoughts. She has one memorable poem about walking during the Covid, ‘Track-Spill’. My walking is from what I remember, and stories that have stayed vivid.

 

Geetha: Walking is the best way to navigate our spaces and our lives. It enriches us, while keeping us grounded. I hope this book will spur readers to think of the beauty and meaning walking opens up and walk on. In the end it’s an invigorating experience.

 

Shikhandin: Personally speaking, I don’t have any specific ask from my readers. I have given my poems to them to read and enjoy and discover what they will. I believe a book and its reader together create a specific dialogue, one that is exclusive to that reader, and no other. It would be wonderful though for a poet and/or writer to listen in to this dialogue, wouldn’t it? I would love to get a chance.

 

RS: Thank you for taking time out to talk with The Wise Owl.

 

Shikhandin: Thank you, Rachna! On behalf of all of us, I would like to say we enjoyed your insightful questions and this conversation with The Wise Owl.