Hope is a Choice: A Review of Ranjit Hoskote’s Trilogy—Jonahwhale (2018), Hunchprose (2021), Icelight (2023) – Michigan Quarterly Review
Three book covers by Ranjit Hoskote

Hope is a Choice: A Review of Ranjit Hoskote’s Trilogy—Jonahwhale (2018), Hunchprose (2021), Icelight (2023)

“I stand firm
because i stand nowhere”

— Ranjit Hoskote, Apostle, Icelight, 2023

David Graeber and David Wengrow begin the book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021) by stating, “Most of human history is irreparably lost to us.” Early cave paintings around 25,000 and 15,000 BC provide us a glimpse of the drama around human lives but there is no clear path to comprehend why the earth is in such a “mess” today. Why are human beings so unkind, indifferent, and invested in “war”, “greed” and “exploitation?” Were “we always like that”? Or did something go wrong at some point in our history?

Perhaps, the answer lies in Ranjit Hoskote’s trilogy of poems—Jonahwhale (2018), Hunchprose (2021), and Icelight (2023). Hoskote is one of the most revered voices in contemporary Indian poetry in English. Literature, art, culture, and history enrich his imagination. In the trilogy, Hoskote begins (Jonahwhale) by illustrating a world wounded by man-made geological disasters due to the possibilities of sailing and expansion of kingdoms. He concludes (Icelight) by portraying the earth “hurtling” and “rattling” toward its destruction. Hoskote, unlike many artists, refuses to carry the burden of optimism. Having evoked through three books and several theological debates, he believes that “light” will enter the “foggy” planet, but it will be bleak; token acts of repair cannot ensure hope—it is a choice—a consequence of determined severance from human supremacy over everything non-human.

Courage, caution, and honesty are the “marrow and bone”1 of Ranjit Hoskote’s trilogy. It is visceral and intrepid yet laced with beauty, mysticism, and aesthetic cognizance. The books are topical; dazzling discourses on the beginning and possible dissolution of the earth. In times when geopolitical frontiers are soaked with blood, the oceans have swallowed man’s ambition, and death carries the onus of human arrogance—Hoskote’s trilogy arrives as awareness (Jonahwhale), possibilities (Hunchprose), and warning (Icelight).  Jonahwhale churns from fragments of memory, the inevitable disintegration of histories, cultures, and languages by the European Imperialistic Mission—propelled by man’s decision to sail:

Somewhere, reporters are shrieking as elephants rampage
through cities that used to be grasslands, looking for home.
Light can stun you. Light can sting.
Fly away, swim closer.

                                                 (‘Fly Away, Swim Closer’)

British Poet George Szirtes describes Jonahwhale as “brilliant annotations on the giant landmass of history.”2 As Szirtes says, the book is “plenty” with “wisdom” and “erudition.” The book exhibits a “masterly grip on the quiet but lethal drama of verse, Jonahwhale is on any measure, a major achievement.” Jonahwhale dives in and out of three segments; ‘Memoirs of Jonahwhale,’ ‘Poona Traffic Shots,’ and ‘Archipelago.’ Relying on aquatic images and symbolism, the poems adopt the shape of water; from Ganga to Bombay’s Marine Drive. The narratives allude to Biblical tales of prophet Jonah, who escaped death by spending three nights in the belly of the whale, and Melville’s Moby Dick, whose obsessive captain, Ahab, chases the eponymous whale that bit off his leg. The poems are premised on ecological crises due to mercantile, Colonial ocean routes, cultural confluences, and “anamnesia”—the legacies we inherit naturally versus the Imperialistic ones, thrust upon us.3 Jonahwhale is the first book of the trilogy; like man’s beginning in the amniotic fluid, it traces the earth’s breaking by water.

Hunchprose (2021)—the title is a neologism coined by Hoskote. It carries the presence of Quasimodo, the ill-starred bell-ringer in Victor Hugo’s memorable novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, who, despite his deformity, produces the most beautiful carillon of bells at Notre Dame. Pulitzer Prize-Winning poet, Forrest Gander, writes, “History remembers what is sung by poets like Hoskote.”4 Eighteenth Century Enlightenment granted humans the right to assert themselves as rational, progressive, higher than the non-human, and free from divine control. Man appointed himself as the master of the cosmos and the micro-cosmos within him. Prose made knowledge accessible; ‘prose’ made conflict possible. Hoskote’s Hunchprose in deeply lyrical poems, often with a chant-like quality, restore the ‘possibilities’ of ‘poetry’; the necessity of ‘silence’ and ‘murmur’ in a world mesmerised by the noise of new and dangerous discoveries:

Listen: this world is two
one world of spirits
one world of water and earth

                                                            (‘Port of Call’)

Poet Imtiaz Dharker calls Hoskote a “collector of worlds and their vocabularies.” She writes, “Hoskote takes myths, troubled histories, the sound of nature, the call of the market and gathers them all up into one richly resonating space.”5 Hunchprose, unlike Jonahwhale, uses language and experiences to urge readers to look within—to seek clarity, beauty, and comprehend contradictions through inner eyes. Simultaneously, the book inquires how poetry could be considered a prime witness to the world, otherwise dominated by different forms of prose such as the news, fiction and nonfiction. Hoskote explains in an interview the way ‘Hunchprose,’ the title poem, plays the above idea out through a persona that must constantly contend with opposition and misunderstanding.”6

Icelight (2023), the final collection in the trilogy, is sparse, terse, and sharp; as if the poet is resolved not to speak to the world anymore. Icelight enacts the experience of “standing at the edge of a life, a landscape, a world assuming new contours of going up in flames.”7 Yet the protagonists: a boatman, a woman, a professor, children, and soldiers, attain blessed moments of epiphany. Structurally, the book is like a film; cinematic images, inter-textual references, philosophic narrations on inner scapes, cultural scapes, technoscapes, and political scapes—color schemes of pearl-gray haze, night fog, and red velvet together churn an epic tale of environmental fragmentation.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hoskote talks about his fascination with the “accordion-like nature of time, space, and sensory perception” and how each species lives in independent, interdependent, and multiple “frameworks” of life. Yet humans are the only ones who have always asserted themselves as the prime beneficiaries of creation and have legitimized the exploitation of the planet via legacies of the Contractarian philosophy of Enlightenment. Hoskote further explains how ideas of “ultra-nationalism,” and “identity politics” finally benefit only the privileged, while the earth keeps hurtling towards one ecological catastrophe after another. As a writer, Hoskote feels compelled to bring attention to the “abyss” we all are “dancing in.”8

Art, poetry, and music could not stop the wars and the consequent harmful geological epochs—the ‘Anthropocene,’ ‘Capitalocene,’ ‘Chthulucene,’ and the ‘Dithering,’9 among others. Icelight imagines the final collapse of the planet.  The first section of the book creates a haze of “storms” and “eclipse.” We see ourselves as the “valley” we wish to explore through “rappelling,” we are “colors” we see “churning,” we hear “hurried voices,” we lose boats on “shimmering tides,” and “we are/ what we’ve lost.” The narrator’s voice is prophetic and alarming:

About time
this blunted earth opened up and swallowed
its shiftless sons
its reckless daughters
its steeply tilted lighthouses

                                                     (‘Planet’)

Hoskote’s poetry “unseals deep scales of geological time and strata of historical memory—one that is aware of the crises of war and ecocide.”10 Amitav Ghosh writes “Like jewelled windows in a war-torn city, Ranjit Hoskote’s exquisitely crafted poems offer tantalizing glimpses of a disintegrating world.”11 One is filled with tremors while reading poems like ‘Paishachi’—the return of the language of ghosts in a world filled with human babel. One feels the chill as a ‘Professor’ warns students of impending violence—the division of nations. The ‘class’ is dismissed leaving behind nothing but “clouds of chalk dust” later “buried” in the snow. 

I met Ranjit Hoskote when I was a student. He came across as a private, tender soul, often, almost slipping away from the public eye. But this is not Hoskote in his poems; the poet is a bit of a phantom riding on the pronoun ‘I.’ His voice is conversational and often wears the mantle of imaginary characters who guide readers under the oceans into the foggy skies, and make us touch the pain of the elephant-skinned earth. The voices are clear, assertive, prophetic, angry, and wry. They are a collective, nostalgic longing for the earth that was once bright and pure. Hoskote is almost a young P.B. Shelley-like soul; whirling like the ‘West Wind’—raising a storm of conversations and questions. Hoskote’s words attempt to rattle the ignorant, forgetful earthlings submerged in the noise of a capitalist, technocratic society. Hoskote is helplessly in love with the planet. He refuses to stand by and witness the annihilation.

Hoskote’s trilogy is beyond ‘poetry’—not just verses to be read in silence in a sunlit corner but maxims to be painted on walls and distributed as pamphlets—mighty word-sentinels leaping out of the smithy of the poet’s mind to shape the imagination of readers who could halt the earth’s disintegration. Poet, art critic, and cultural theorist, Ranjit Hoskote churns years of knowledge and research into stirring pieces of poetry—rich with a wizardly imagination, cinematic charm, fantastic incantations, neologisms, and other linguistic innovations. Yet always fixed upon the precise and intricate craft of poetry. Each of the books in this trilogy is a country on its own; you may arrive anytime but once you are here, you cannot leave. Hoskote’s words have a lingering haunting effect on the reader. They offer us a prism—refracting intelligence, intuition, and perspective. Hoskote with considerable aesthetic detachment portrays a disintegrated reality; there is belonging in rupture, hope in bestiality, and light in fog-swollen days.

In this saga of civilizations, each nation engineers its ruin.


Notes:

  1. 1. The phrase is inspired by the following lines in the poem ‘Noor’:

‘But that light is both marrow and bone

                 It defeats the gaze

What we’ve lost

                       reclaim us

Who can translate

                 its pulse?

                                 (p.8. Icelight, 2023).

  • 2. Blurb. George Szirtes. Jonahwhale. Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House India, 2018.
  • 3. Cover copy, Jonahwhale. Ranjit Hoskote. Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House India, 2018.
  • 4. Blurb, Forrest Gander. Hunchprose. Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House India, 2021.
  • 5. Cover copy, Hunchprose. Ranjit Hoskote. Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House India, 2021.
  • 6. Interview, “Interview with Ranjit Hoskote, author, Hunchprose”. Chintan Girish Modi. Hindustan Times, April 10, 2021.
  • 7. Cover Copy, Icelight. Ranjit Hoskote. Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House India, 2023.
  • 8. Interview. “To Draw Attention to the Abyss: A Conversation with Ranjit Hoskote.” Robert Wood. Los Angeles Review of Books, August 6, 2019
  • 9. In the article ‘Dithering while the planet burns: Anthropologists’ approaches to the Anthropocene,’ Alf Hornborg, an Anthropologist and Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden, discusses the need for a more interdisciplinary approach to ‘Anthropocene’ studies.
  • 10. Cover Copy, Icelight. Ranjit Hoskote. Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House India, 2023.
  • 11. “Advance Praise.” Amitav Ghosh, Icelight. Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House India, 2023.
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