Modern Traumas
Modern Traumas is a collection of 34 poems
reflecting his thoughts on some of the disturbing
aspects of modern times. As the author writes in
the Foreword -
“We live in increasingly frustrating times
and look set to bequeath to coming generations
a world heaped with tensions. A scan of newspapers,
media or introspection over our own behaviors
and the state of modern living confirms this.
As do the words that seem to dominate our conversations.
Words and phrases such as ‘violence’,
‘terrorism’, ‘fundamentalism’,
‘religious fanaticism’, ‘axis
of evil’, ‘clash of civilizations’,
‘them and us’, ‘illegal aliens’,
‘ghetto mentality’, ‘racism’,
‘hate crimes’, ‘slums’,
‘human rights abuses’, ‘extinction’,
‘deforestation’, ‘greenhouse
effect’, ‘pollution’, ‘consumption’,
‘fakes’, ‘traffic jams’,
‘politics’, ‘bureaucracy’,
‘corruption’, ‘campaign finance’,
‘weapons of mass destruction’, ‘collateral
damage’, ‘AIDS’, ‘bird
flu’, ‘white collar crime’,
‘insider trading’, ‘retrenchment’,
‘litigation’, ‘pre-nuptial contracts’,
‘crimes against women’, ‘paedophilia’,
‘pornography’, ‘obesity’,
‘plastic surgery’, ‘financial
meltdowns’, ‘market volatility’,
‘trade wars’, ‘match fixing’,
‘vote rigging’, ‘human trafficking’,
‘drug abuse’, ‘attention deficit
disorder’ and so on.
These are words that echo in our collective global
conscience. Words and terms that today’s
children are forced to confront at ages earlier
than ever before.
It can be argued that such frustrations have
existed before in varying degrees at the turn
of each preceding century. However, the fact that
these exist in a much more magnified form at the
turn of the twenty first highlights that despite
unprecedented scientific & technological prowess
and the supposed progress of civil societies &
nation states, there remain serious (and perhaps
ultimately fatal) flaws in the state of human
evolution as seen today. They have also gone beyond
being quirky, isolated, characteristic of fringe
groups or symptomatic of a passing phase.
Due to their universal and worryingly unchecked
(despite the brave but fading background appeals
for reform) characteristics I have elevated them
from mere stresses or frustrations to the more
deep seated and serious classification of traumas.”
Stylistically using brevity and a directness of
tone different to the epic sweeps of Darkness
at Bamiyan and A Summit at Jungfraujoch,
Modern Traumas probes the existential
scars of our times. For example in a poem titled
“Modern Coziness” –
“Concretized
warmth
Of nestling urban environs
A comforting plasticity
Molding camaraderie of tastes
The fellowship of consumer herds
Gorging together, forging trends
Unabashedly consumerist
Salivating on the next big sale”
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With a telling usage of irony and sarcasm the overhang
of bureaucracy is exposed in “Bureaucratic
Pervasiveness” –
“Color the
world with fiddling inks
Green for nit-picking audits
Red for scratchy disagreements
Black for reinforcing authority
Blue perpetuating more of the same
Whitening and blackening too
To erase or blot out
Discomforting sparks
Of individuality, creativity or protest”
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The ever increasing incidence of corruption and
its grip on modern sensibilities is captured in
“Legion of the Corruptible” –
“Keeping
up with The Corruptibles
Hoarding up on the “good” lives
Beyond pale of stressful honesties
Heart burn of overrated integrities
Follies of a scoffed at naivety
The tensions of not having arrived
Stuck in slow lane claustrophobia”
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Amol Titus pays tribute in Modern Traumas
to two great personalities that have inspired him
– Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi and South
Africa’s Nelson Mandela. In “The Flickering
Glow of Myanmar” he writes of the former –
“Beaming
a ray of principled solitariness
Through mists of colluding compromise
Raising an echo of dignified silence
Above clang of distracted democracies”
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In “The Lonely Mandela” he bemoans the
acutely felt lack of statesmanship on the world
stage which is contributing to the exacerbation
of our collective worries-
“The unbreakable
resilience holding
His aged, almost broken frame
Indomitable spirit that has endured
The cages of apartheid, rages of racism
Gnawing doubts of prolonged isolation
Weariness of internecine squabbles
That glow of perseverance flickers
In a final spurt of fading light”
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Immigration is another contentious issue and a paradox
of globalization that the more interconnected we
become the more insular and insecure we are also
becoming. In “The Nowhere Immigrant”
he writes –
“The drag
of first generational guilt
Sag of second generational perplexity
Ethnic roots dipped in insecurity
Denial, break from past squalors
Yet shoots of adopted nationality
Stunted in cutthroat scramble
For hard pressed economic pies”
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