Chakraborty 1

Kanika Chakraborty
MA in English (3rd Semester)
North-Eastern Hill University
Abstract

The term Fourth World Literature has brought new hope for all the world's marginalised

and exploited sections. The fourth world refers to the most poverty-stricken and economically

troubled parts of countries in the third world. These neglected parts of the third world also have

their unique traditions and cultures that reflect their daily lives. Their rich traditions are a

precious element of world literature, and a group of writers have used this element as a tool to

present the voice of the neglected section to the modern world. Anjum Hasan is one of them. In

her poems, the life of the people of Shillong has repeatedly come to the fore. Anjum Hasan, as a

writer, has invented a new idiom for Indian poetry in English, unruffled exterior, carrying

convoluted gestures that shift abruptly and jump across the landscapes of urban, small-town

existence. Her poems are like a kaleidoscope; readers will find numerous colours and essences of

the Northeast. One image shifts rapidly into another in her writings, but one image is constant,

the true essence of Shillong and the voice of marginalised people. This paper is an effort to shed

light on her use of discourses to represent Shillong as an element of fourth world literature in her

poetry collection Street on the Hill. Also, this article will explore the discourses of middle-class

lives in a small town like Shillong. Overall, this paper attempts to find representation of

Shillong's essence in Hasan's words as an element of literature.

Key Words: Fourth World Literature, Street on the Hill, North-East, Shillong, Small Town,

Middle-class, Marginalised Society, Discourse, Indian Literature.

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Street on the Hill: Essence of Shillong in Anjum Hasan's Words

According to Reshmy. R, "[t]he Fourth World contributes to the understanding of

structures of subjectivity about thinking and feeling that allow for deeper and thorough

excavations central to the analyses of postcolonial studies" (17). It is true in the case of Hasan.

Anjum Hasan's book of poetry, Street on the Hill, has a total of 36 poems which are divided into

five sections with different titles. The first section is "Time of My Childhood", second

"Families", then "Small Town", fourth is "Where I Now Live", and the last one is "A Place Like

Water".

Street on the Hill is an anthology of poems about middle-class lives, childhood

memories, and concealments in a small town. However, even in these themes, the image of her

hill town has emerged. The reader will get a touch of the hills in every word of her poem. The

first part of this book of poems, called "Memory of My Childhood", which is basically a

reminiscence of the poet's childhood, also contains emotions and memories of Shillong. What is

beautiful to look at is not always beautiful. The beauty of the hills no doubt moves the poet's

mind and gives joy to the tourists, but no one has time to watch the tears of the hills. Hasan's

collection of poems has blossomed into the proper form of Shillong, the life of the people here,

and the sufferings of the people. Hasan has spent her youth in Shillong. What she observed has

been portrayed in her words,

whiskey and rice, smoked cigarettes,

onions in vinegar, words whispered,
shouted, unsaid, and schemes that thrash
about in the chest and efface their makers.
It does not smell nice in the night
 Chakraborty 3

the kitchen of a middle-class home. (Hasan, lines 13-18)

This is the reality of small hill town middle-class homes. Dreams of young girls and the dull and

humdrum life of a middle-class home of a small town like Shillong on a summer night is nothing

but a reality beyond its natural beauties. The lifelessness of the young girls of the middle-class

families of a small town is seen with diaries that burn with "[…] dread / and impatience" (Hasan,

lines 21-22). The boredom of life is seen in bedrooms with "[…] medicines / and shelves of

yellow-paged novels" (lines 3-4), the girls who have lost their dreams, children who grew up

impatiently, and in kitchens with a bad smell (Hasan 3). The only two things in the house that are

growing and alive are the buds of potato and zinnia.

In his Poetics of Space, the 20th-century French philosopher Gaston Bachelard writes

that the cram-full city is stifling and does not have many possibilities of providing one a sense of

space (3-29). One must abscond into vast, open spaces of wilderness to find space and liberation.

In the opinion of Bachelard, people living in cramped houses tend to dream of open spaces and

wilderness, which signify a sense of liberty (3-29). According to him, verticality gives one a

sense of space and allows one to dream (3-29). Bachelard uses the term "intimate immensity" to

show how the enormity and the sublimity of vast, open spaces, for instance, the forest and the

sea, can provide one with the space for dreaming and taking into intimate corners of ourselves

(3-29). He writes that when apartments are crowded together, and there is only horizontality,

they give rise to the hut dream (3-29). However, the poem "June Night in a Middle-class Home"

presents the reality that it is not necessary that a city will annihilate dreams and that one must go

to the countryside in search of space (Hasan 3-4). The realities of the small towns of the

Northeast are not always beautiful like its nature.

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The first section, "Time of My Childhood", is mainly about Hasan's childhood memories.

Her "Dark Room" is a poem that symbolises the adolescents' anxiety about becoming adults who

"speak in tired vowels and practice deceit" (5). Although the poem may seem like a reminiscence

of childhood, the description of Shillong, the city of the poet, is apparent in this poem as well,

"Or Dark Room. Switching off lights, folding ourselves / into leftover spaces, watching the night

spread its cloth / over sofas and vases, hearts knocking against the quiet" (Hasan, lines 10-12).

The night seems to come a little early in Shillong. After the sun sets, the darkness of the night

slowly engulfs all nature, just as the darkness covers the house after turning off the lights. The

image of the darkroom reminds the readers of the city of Hasan, which is Shillong.

Her poem "Time of My Childhood" is purely associated with childhood memories. In this

particular poem, the poet is haunted by nostalgia with the memories of "monkey trainer", "knife

grinder", "women who led wordless lives", "men who ran sweet- shops in faded black ties" of

her small town,

on days when the gravel was dark under rain;

time touched by the grace of such women who led
wordless lives, and such men who ran sweet-shops
in faded black ties. (Hasan, lines 6-9)

Who does not know that Shillong is a city of rain? Men and women working on such rainy days

are always seen in Shillong. In this poem, the poet has uniquely used known images to depict the

life of the people of Shillong, her birthplace, while presenting her childhood memories.

"Christopher Robin", "Alice", "Captain Nemo", "Nautilus" are fictional (Hasan 6). The presence

of intertextuality is found in almost every poem of Hasan, which makes her subjects universal.
 Chakraborty 5

Children of the small town are also aware of global shows, which has been presented in this

poem.

In Hasan's "Mister Language", readers will find a melancholic tone. The poet also

describes her city in this poem in a melancholic tone. Readers will be able to see pictures of the

football field, the purple hills, the open sky in this city, infused with her melancholy, "That is

how I grew: / jumping on evenings to make them stay longer / in my hill-fortified city of cars,

and waiting" (Hasan, lines 17-19). Loneliness in this poem receives an apt description with these

lines. However, Hasan's "Coming of Age in a Convent School" is unique from other poems in its

form, but one thing is constant: her town, Shillong. Again, in this poem, the poet has painted the

school of her town. Her childhood memories and her city are inseparable. Intertextuality is

presented here also with "George Michael's stubble", "Stevie Wonder jokes" (8). Although

surrounded by hills, the city of the poet is undoubtedly modern. In her following poem, "Learnt",

the poetic personae feel betrayed because of their affection for unreal things (10). In her poem

"Neighbourhood", readers will see the use of a telegraphic form of verse that presents the

persona's excitement at finding a Bihari pakoriwallah kissing to an unknown woman in front of

her house (12). What is taboo to adults was a sacred emotion in the eyes of the poet. The

simplicity of childhood is revealed in these two poems. This simplicity is like the simplicity of

the hilly nature. This simplicity reminds readers of William Blake's "Songs of Innocence". The

simplicity of childhood is global. There is no difference between the simplicity of hilly

childhood and urban childhood.

According to Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development, the adolescent stage of

individual identity development is essential when ego and role stability are established (Mcleod).

An individual adolescent will focus most on the adult culture worthy of his/her interest and
 Chakraborty 6

respect, an adult culture that is accessible communicatively and composed of desirable role

models. As a poet, Hasan's perception is honest, and she presents unadulterated truths of the

nature of childhood and adolescence. Hasan was born and brought up in Shillong. Her memories

and experiences of childhood and adolescence present a vivid picture of every child and

adolescent of Shillong. An instance of such poetic voice is "In My Mother's Clothes", which

traces the adult female persona's thoughts on wearing her mother's clothes (13).

The second section, "Families", consists of eight poems. In "My Folks", the poet has

specified uncharacteristic qualities of her small-town people, "We have hills in our blood / but

end up smelling fat cars on city streets / and garbage strewn under rain" (Hasan, lines 1-3).

Though her small-town people carry "hills in [their] blood" (17), they seem to be moving out of

the hills. This scene shows us the reality of the hill town people. Although they live in the lap of

nature, if they get a chance for a comfortable life, they leave their familiar town for an unfamiliar

city. Comfort beats the beauty of the hills. In the poem "England", there is a diasporic touch in

the poet's nostalgia for England. In this poem, the poet leaves her modern country England and

tries to adjust to a small hill town.

England is mixed in her memory. She does not want to keep the memories of England,

nor does she want to forget. Poetic persona does not know what she would do with these

memories in her new town, "This idiotic recollecting, this tender ache just below our / Breathing-

what should we do with England?" (Hasan, lines 43-44). This dilemma of double existence

between England and the small hill town essentially generates a third space in the psyche of the

poem's characters. In The Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha speculates that this third space,

or the "outside event", might be the "unacknowledged liminality or 'margin' of a discourse, the

point where it contingently touches the 'others' discourse as itself" (Bhabha 206). In "England",
 Chakraborty 7

the characters attempt to incorporate the cultural discourse of England into that of Northeast

India. As a result, they fail to feel or celebrate the true essence of the two diverse cultures and

waste their time and effort behind an unending conundrum of cultural ambivalence.

In "Shy", Hasan's inspection of shyness is substantial, and the poem presents shyness as a

"quivering emotion" associated with:

[…] quiet bedrooms on winter afternoons

in near-forgotten, hill-encircled towns
where children lisped tentative answers
to the question of some serene matriarch,
and ate, anguished by undistinguishable crunching,
the brittle butter biscuits from her tins. (Hasan, lines 9-16)

Attitude about shyness is the theme of this poem, but the images of this poem remind the readers

of Shillong, its matriarchic hill culture. Anjum Hasan's style of highlighting common issues is

again seen in "Ordinary Days": "We are the sum of our ordinary days;" (Hasan, line 10), and a

large part of the poet's life was spent in Shillong. So, are not the ordinary days spent here in

Shillong a big part of the poet's life?

The anthology contains refreshing memories of Shillong, where Hasan spent much of her

life as a student. "To the Chinese Restaurant" is a reminiscence of the time spent by youth in a

Chinese restaurant to reduce the boredom of their small township (Hasan 23). "November

Haiku" is another poem about a hill town's winter, with "early dark tumbling from leaf to cherry

leaf" (Hasan, line 2). "Boats" is a poem that depicts subconscious dreams with images of the hill

(26). In "Families", readers will see a comparison of families with "things" and the "thingless

families" (27-28).
 Chakraborty 8

"Small Town" is the third part of Anjum Hasan's collection. People's idiosyncrasies, life

in a small town and nature are the main themes in this part. The first poem of this collection,

"The Pregnant Woman", traces the bitter experiences of a pregnant woman of a small town rather

than the happiness of pregnancy (31). "Afternoon in the Beauty Parlour" presents a scene of a

beauty parlour of a small town (33-34). Beauty parlour is a great place to practice sisterhood. It

is not less critical than a Covent or a maternity ward. The two poems "Small Town" and "Hills"

reflect the characteristics of small towns with the brevity of the people and their indifferent

attitude. "Small Town" portrays a sporting goods store owner who has an opinion about a knifed

and left to die man but who, however, ''shuts his door and sleeps'' (35). The dark side of human

nature is vividly presented in this poem. The poem "Hills" contrasts the attitude of the hill people

with the solemnity and grandeur of the hills. It presents the characteristics of the hills from a

different point of view – as "home", as "rabid, / the small people fighting their toy fights / but

drawing real blood", "the tomfoolery of the houses", and at night time revealing the "romance of

lights" (37).

"March" and "Songs of the Fruit" present imaginative descriptions of the seasons. March

has been seen as a transitional month from winter to spring, and autumn breaks into winter. The

poems present the essence of hill seasons. Shillong's weather is unpredictable. For this reason,

the poetic persona says in "March", "cold fills one window / A sort of spring the other" (Hasan,

lines 21-22). In the last poem of this section titled "Mawlai", the reader will find a nostalgic tone

for an area called Mawlai in Shillong, which the poet had to cross daily on the way to the North-

Eastern Hill University (NEHU). The poem presents an unchanged view one sees from the

NEHU bus while crossing Mawlai, for instance, "mauve beef hanging in its pockets of fat" or
 Chakraborty 9

"the new houses and old houses where the same sort of people lived" (41). This poem depicts a

beautiful nostalgic memory of Shillong,

[...] We'll keep quiet

then
and try to ignore that sense which is not pain but has pain's
cloudliness
and its regret and its way of going and returning. (Hasan, lines 36-40)

The fourth part, "Where I Now Live", starts with reflecting the persona's alienation and her

desire to be a part of the life around. A third space in the narrator's psyche is also presented in the

first two poems, "Home?" and "Where I Now Live", like her earlier poem "England". The

dilemma of double existence can be seen in the poetic persona's voice. Identity crisis is apparent

in the lines of "Home?": "And when I return, that room will be a museum / Of the past, where

things that once were loved" (Hasan, lines 17-18). Here, the poetic persona is going to another

city. She does not know if the new city would be her home at all. She does not know if she

would be able to leave one city and survive in another. Her city of Shillong is floating in her

memory again and again, "for the boredom of days picked fishbone clean / By Shillong's

unhurried winters" (lines 23-24).

It is hard to adjust to a new city. The memory of the old city, on the one hand, new life in

a new city creates a kind of identity crisis in people. People try to be a part of a new city, but at

the same time, they feel lonely. This crisis is evident in the poetic persona of the poem "Where I

Now Live": "I long to be part of the sweat and the sunshine, / the vinegar and blood of people

together anywhere" (Hasan, lines 5-6). The persona is "ill at ease" and "like a parachute on fire"

or "this cloud somebody tore up" (46). In other words, she feels lonely. The poem "Kitchen" is a

description of the traditional Indian kitchen. This kitchen is not only the picture of Northeast
 Chakraborty 10

kitchen but also the whole of India, as the poet writes, "To fashion life into a thing eaten,

worked, / slept away, to meet despair with tea, / to be like your mother" (lines 23-25). Here,

readers will find the life of an ordinary woman, which is valid for all states, not only for the

Northeast. Women are the same in all places; it does not matter whether east or west, north or

south. Women are always marginalised.

Hasan's "Holiday" presents the reality that people from big cities always select "[…] a

dirty town at the base of a hill" (52) with its "white-haired waterfalls" (53) for their holidays.

This poem has a pinch of irony in its tone. Again, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard's

"intimate immensity" can be remembered (4-6). The reality of small-town is not always as

beautiful as its nature. The beauty of a small town attracts people, as they ironically remark,

"Good, says everyone. Excellent" (Hasan, lines 4, 26). However, people avoid the ugly reality of

the same city: "The city is untidy, complex, full of lies / and defeat. My friend will disappear into

it" (lines 36-37).

The final part of the anthology is "A Place Like Water". This part can be seen as a quiet

finale to the whole book, with clear ruminations on the "real sea" (Hasan 57), the "wet city" (59),

"Food of Love" (61), "Yellow Curtains" (64) and so on. Each of the poems of this part provides a

feeling, a sensation, and a way of associations that turn the readers away from the orthodox

process of thinking. For example, in "Beach Town: Off Season", the reader will find that the sea

has become unreal and artificial because of its commercial attraction (57). Shillong is also a

place for commercial tourism. For the poetic persona, all commercial attractions are now

artificial. Similarly, curtains in the poem "Yellow Curtains" presents an "act of selfishness"

which "turn the house neat, guileless, middle-class" and so makes it appear like iron curtains that

create a divide between the haves and have-nots (64).

 Chakraborty 11

Just as Hasan's style of using images in poetry is reminiscent of Ginsberg's, her

intertextuality makes the subject matter of poetry universal. Shillong's proper form is revealed in

her prosaic style. She has used her prosaic style and intertextualities to globalise the locals.

Anjum Hasan is the poet of 'ordinary days' (also the title of one of the poems in this book). A

sensitive exploration of the middle-class life of Shillong can be seen in Hasan's words.
 Chakraborty 12

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Mcleod, Saul. "Erik Erikson | Psychosocial Stages | Simply Psychology." Study Guides for

Psychology Students - Simply Psychology, 5 Feb. 2007,

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R, Reshmy. "Fourth World Literature: Voice Of The Marginalised." Journal of Research in

Humanities and Social Science, vol. 6, no. 6, 2018, pp. 16-17.

Sareen, Shruti. "Street on the Hill – Sangat Book Review." Sangat Book Review – South Asian

Literature, 5 June 2016.

Sarkar, Ivy R., and Rashmi Gaur. "Postcolonial Aesthetics and Sensuous Geographies in Aruni

Kashyap's The House with a Thousand Stories." Postcolonial Aesthetics and Sensuous

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