Snaring the breeze in a box

In The Notbook of Kabir, the author Anand, who is sharply aware of his own entitlements and privileges, draws readers into a journey of discovering Kabir beyond scholars and school books

- Charumathi Supraja

he Notbook of Kabir cannot be read. It needs to be heard — as music, poetry and protest that, far from raising its fist in the air, playfully sings and laughs its dissent. There is a song playlist at the end of the book that aurally transfers the poetry printed in two languages.

This volume, among other things, becomes a tribute to folk musicians and singers of Kabir bhajans such as Prahlad Singh Tipaniya, Mahesha Ram, Kaluram Bamaniya, Mukhtiyar Ali, Fariduddin Ayaz and Abu Mohammed, in whose voices these poems have been nurtured within public consciousness and memory.

The Notbook of Kabir becomes a side dish in a feast featuring not just music as main course but also questions about caste, God, words, ragas, life, death, place, no-place, poetry, losing voice, finding voice, music, silence, and everything in-between. Anand doesn’t just translate Kabir, the medieval mystic and saint. He interprets him through a triangular lens in which Ambedkar and Buddha are the other two vertices.

It is not Kabir the person one meets through Anand’s explorations but Kabir the consciousness, Kabir “the antigod”, Kabir “the theme, the concept”.

Kabir, then, in this book, becomes a gateway to the work of other poets, philosophers, reformers and warriors for equality. Anand uses him as a diving board from which to plunge deep, and takes his readers along, inviting them to make their meaning.