In an age that has perfected the art of communication while steadily eroding the possibility of genuine encounter, poetry becomes something more than aesthetic exercise—it becomes a moral and existential necessity. The irony of modern times is unmistakable: despite unprecedented connectivity, human beings have grown more lonely, more spiritually fragmented, more incapable of true dialogue than ever before. Voices have multiplied; listening has declined. Presences have grown; real presence has blurred.
It is precisely this crisis that Arun Kamal addresses in one of the most haunting utterances in contemporary Hindi literature. From his collection "Rangasaja ki Rasoi", the poem arrives with deceptive simplicity:
"When my voice seems to be drowning, coming as if from afar,
then understand that I have been surrounded.
Wandering far inside the forest, having strayed from my own youth,
or some wave, offering temptation, has carried me far away into its own lap.
Day and night this suffocating, writhing body
grinding its final breath calls out to you—
do not stay silent, do not close the door,
speak, you too, step outside—even if I hear or do not hear!"
Here, the voice is not merely an instrument of expression—it is existence itself: fragile, submerging, yet stubbornly reaching outward. The forest is not external but the dense interiority of modern consciousness. The wave is the seductive current of consumerist desire and ideological illusion that swallows the self. And the body—that "suffocating, writhing body"—becomes the site where social, political, and existential violence converge.
Yet even at the edge of dissolution, the poem refuses despair. In its final, luminous imperative—bolana tuma bhi (speak, you too)—it transforms personal suffocation into a moral command: the ethical duty to speak, to keep the door open, even when reciprocity seems impossible.
The Many Layers of a Drowning Voice
What makes Kamal's poem extraordinary is its multi-dimensional resonance. Read existentially, it captures Heidegger's "being-toward-death" and Camus's absurd heroism—the individual confronting meaninglessness yet choosing to call out. The line "then understand that I have been surrounded" expresses that distinctly modern experience of invisible encirclement: by systems, by expectations, by the sheer weight of a world that no longer listens.
Read politically, the poem becomes a critique of consumerist culture and hegemonic power. The "tempting wave" that carries one away "into its own lap" is the market's mesmerising force, the spectacle that Guy Debord described, the manufactured desire that Jean Baudrillard analysed. The "suffocating, writhing body" is not just one body—it is the collective body of exploited labour, of silenced margins, of all those whom power renders invisible.
Read psychologically, the poem documents the slow fragmentation of the modern self. The voice that seems to come "from afar" is the experience of depersonalisation, of self-alienation. Wandering "far inside the forest, having strayed from my own youth" speaks to that loss of vitality and identity that Erik Erikson and Carl Jung located at the heart of modern mental crisis. Yet even here, the poem insists: the final breath still "calls out to you." Relationship remains the last horizon.
Read from the perspective of communication, the poem exposes the great paradox of our time. We have more mediums than ever, yet less real dialogue. Information floods; intimacy evaporates. The "door" that Kamal begs not to be closed is the door of sensitivity, of presence, of the willingness to be affected by another's suffering.
Kamal's insistence on the moral necessity of dialogue finds powerful echoes in two other twentieth-century poetic voices. Wisława Szymborska, with her characteristic quiet irony, writes in "Conversation with a Stone":
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in."
"You shall not enter," says the stone,
"You lack the sense of taking part."
Here, the stone represents that closed, impenetrable otherness that separates human beings. Where Szymborska dramatises the impossibility of entry, Kamal appeals for the door to remain open—a difference of tone, perhaps, but a shared recognition of the crisis.
John Ashbery, meanwhile, maps the shimmering, unstable surfaces of modern consciousness. In Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, the very surface of perception distorts and distances: "the distance increases." Kamal's voice "coming as if from afar" belongs to the same spiritual geography—the experience of absence within presence, of the self slipping away from itself.
Yet Kamal distinguishes himself through his folk-inflected intimacy. Words like terati (calls out) carry the warmth of rural trust, the concreteness of lived relationship. His resistance is not sloganeering but the quieter, more enduring insistence of those who continue to speak even when the voice on the other side seems to be drowning.
The Open Door as Moral Imperative
Ultimately, "Do not stay silent, do not close the door" is not merely a personal entreaty—it is the foundational call of our time. Silence, in the face of another's suffocation, becomes complicity. Closing the door—retreating into personal comfort while the world grinds its final breath—is the signature sin of modern bourgeois existence.
The poem's final line—"Speak, you too, step outside—even if I hear or do not hear!"—separates dialogue from its outcome. Speaking is not valuable because it will be heard; it is valuable because it is the act of remaining human. This is the profound moral stubbornness that Camus located in Sisyphus: the struggle itself is enough.
In the music of these drowning voices—Kamal's compassionate address, Szymborska's ironic restraint, Ashbery's fragmentary shimmer—we may yet discover the faint but unmistakable melody of hope. For as long as there are voices willing to drown while still reaching toward another, and doors that remain open despite every reason to close, humanity retains its most precious inheritance: the capacity for genuine encounter.
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*Professor and former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original paper
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