Frontiers Dividing and Connecting Places: A Study of Poetry by Arundhathi Subramaniam, Anjum Hasan, C.P. Surendran, and Tabish Khair

Abstract

Places are formed and distinctly identified as separate from each other because of the boundaries drawn between them. Places are formed for us when we attribute certain meanings to them, positive or negative. What exists in between two such places is seen as undifferentiated space. Michel Certeau, a twentieth century Marxist theorist in France, argues that frontiers simultaneously connect and link places while dividing them from each other. In this paper, I attempt to analyse the ways in which frontiers do this in the poetry of four contemporary Indian poets writing in English: ArundhathiSubramaniam, AnjumHasan, C.P.Surendran, and TabishKhair. I begin by examining dividers and connectors between places at the micro level, such as doors, windows, curtains, and side gates, and later discuss how larger spaces such as cities and countries are also simultaneously linked and divided by these frontiers. Places are viewed and perceived very differently depending which side of the boundary one is on. The discussion of the poetry shows that spaces are linked to each other temporally as well as spatially, and thus cannot be seen in isolation. Cultures travel from one place to another, so people are not necessarily the inheritors of only one legacy. Frontiers divide as well as connect. Our view of a place is determined by which side of the frontier we are on, depending on whether we are citizens, migrants or tourists. The discussion above has also shown that places are regarded very differently by people who do not have an association with them, and thus see them as amorphous, undifferentiated space.