Memory as a mood-map: review of Naveen Kishore’s  Mother Muse Quintet

The verses in Naveen Kishore’s Mother Muse Quintet circle back to the poet’s relationship with his mother and to the intimate and ordinary magic of the memories they share. There is no attempt at embellishing the snapshot nature of memory. It is what it is, even in its fallibility. The poems draw us into a timeless space where we can rest in an awareness of the moment, even as we understand the terrible truth that the door to the past is closed to us. There is no going back and yet the human mind dwells in the past, continues to paint a picture of it, yearns to make sense of it and to communicate it to the world. 

Naveen Kishore’s  Mother Muse Quintet is a moving ode to the inevitable passage of time, to individual memory as it attempts to mark this passage, to the love that is careful remembering and to the loss that is forgetting. 

Organised as quintets that serve as a mood-map, the verses circle back to the poet’s relationship with his mother and to the intimate and ordinary magic of the memories they share. There is a certain crispness to the edges of these memories that defy fuzziness. Describing his mother, the speaker says:  In my mind, the sari she wore is always a pale pink. Almost ivory. And a chiffon.

There is no attempt at embellishing the snapshot nature of memory. It is what it is, even in its fallibility:  It is the seamlessness of remembering that amazes me. Memories. Yours and mine. The ones you enthralled me with on our long walks. And much later, my retelling of the ‘tales’ you told me. ‘Making up’ what had slipped past me.

But, of course, memory fails at some point, as it does for the poet’s mother. There is that fog that comes unannounced and the mother’s face is “no longer the home” the speaker used to come back to. Our breath catches at the lines:

You gifted me my memory. 

We did not know then 

that one day you would lose yours.