'No Enemy': A poetics of coexistence, silence, and feminine selfhood

By Ravi Ranjan* 

Savita Singh's poem "No Enemy" (Satru Nahin) represents a distinctive intervention in contemporary Hindi poetry, weaving together feminist consciousness and ecological ethics into a unified vision. The poem transcends conventional nature poetry by imagining relationships among human beings, rivers, trees, birds, forests, and silence founded upon mutual respect rather than dominion. At a historical moment when feminist and environmental discourses converge, Singh's work demonstrates that the liberation of women and nature cannot be understood independently of one another.

The poem opens with a transformative experience: "It is there that I become complete, where the river writes songs upon the stones, where music offers words a place of refuge." Here, "becoming complete" signifies existential fulfilment rather than social achievement. The image of the river writing songs upon stones suggests that life's fluidity can inscribe meaning even upon the hardest forms of existence. Nature is not merely an object of beauty but a creative force capable of animating what appears lifeless. 

The poem's emotional centre emerges in the second section: "Here I become whole, as a woman." This line signifies not conformity to social roles but the experience of an autonomous self. A woman's completeness rests upon her own inner consciousness rather than external approval. The forest's love reaches her "through a single silence," and "the affection of the trees rains gently upon me." This silence is not emptiness but a form of communication beyond language's limits.

The poem develops an alternative ethical framework governing relationships between humanity and nature. When the poet writes, "The countless creatures there accept me as one of their own," she extends belonging beyond the human world. This recalls the Indian cultural ideal of sarvabhutahita—the welfare of all living beings—while resonating with contemporary ecological thought. The lines "I depend upon no one else, and no one else depends upon me" carefully distinguish dependence from intimacy. There are relationships, love, and belonging, but no ownership. This acquires fresh significance within feminist thought: a woman's freedom is expressed neither through revenge nor domination but as an ethical condition where independence and intimacy coexist. 

The concluding lines—"Each follows their own path. I find myself thinking: perhaps no one is an enemy any longer"—gather the poem's vision. Following one's own path suggests every living being lives according to its nature. Once the desire to dominate disappears, hostility vanishes with it. The word "perhaps" lends the poem humility; it presents a possibility born of lived experience rather than absolute truth.

Reading Singh alongside Kalidasa's Abhijnanasakuntalam reveals an enduring cultural thread. Sakuntala's relationship with the forest is founded not upon possession but affection. Sage Kanva's farewell to the trees demonstrates this intimacy: Sakuntala would not drink water until the trees had been watered, would not pluck their leaves for adornment, and celebrated their blossoming as a cause for joy. Singh revives this consciousness within a feminist context. If Sakuntala regards the trees as her own, Singh goes further: the "countless creatures" themselves recognise the woman as one of their own. Intimacy becomes reciprocal. 

Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" shares a similar vision: nature accepts humanity despite its imperfections. Oliver's famous lines—"You do not have to be good"—affirm that relationship rests not upon achievement but presence. Singh's poem similarly presents nature as a place free from moral examination, where the forest receives the woman with natural ease. The Malayalam poet Sugathakumari likewise establishes that violence against trees becomes indistinguishable from violence against humanity itself. Both poets establish that protecting the environment is not merely an ecological obligation but the preservation of human sensibility.

Through a phenomenological lens, the poem reveals the structure of human experience in relation to nature. The heroine experiences herself within nature's presence; seeing here is not observation but participation. Nature is not an external landscape but a living extension of consciousness within which the woman discovers herself as more complete.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty's insight that human beings experience the world through the body illuminates the poem's recurring presence of nature's touch, the nearness of silence, and the affection of trees. Nature addresses both body and consciousness simultaneously. The forest's love becomes experience through atmosphere, proximity, and silence.

Silence in the poem signifies not absence but presence. The love of the forest never speaks aloud, yet it is experienced with overwhelming intensity. Maurice Blanchot understood silence not as the opposite of language but as its innermost limit. Relationships whose depth exceeds linguistic expression attain their fullest reality only through silence. 

Within patriarchal society, a woman's silence has often been interpreted as oppression. In this poem, silence possesses an entirely different character: it arises from self-confidence. The heroine has no need to speak constantly to justify herself. Her silence signifies not defeat but self-reliance. Where trust exists, words become fewer; where relationships are free from possession, explanations become unnecessary.

Karen Barad's theory of Agential Realism illuminates the poem's understanding of reality as continuously produced through relationships. The river, stones, and music are not isolated entities; they come into being through one another. Meaning resides not in any object individually but in this field of reciprocal activity. The forest is not a backdrop against which the woman's experience unfolds; it is an active creator of that experience. 

Through its presence, the forest transforms the heroine's consciousness, reshapes her self-awareness, and awakens completeness no social order could provide. Trees are neither providers of shade nor decorative features; their affection reshapes her emotional world. Animals and birds appear in the fullness of their independent existence, actively shaping human life.

Raymond Williams's concept of "structure of feeling" describes the poem as expressing a new human sensibility gradually taking shape. The poem does not articulate an established ideology but gives language to subtle experiences and ethical aspirations not yet crystallised into institutional forms. The poem envisions relationships formed not through power but through shared presence; identity develops not through competition but coexistence. 

This transformation signals the emergence of a changing cultural sensibility. The equality between humanity and nature, the woman's self-reliant yet intimate presence, and a vision of existence liberated from hostility are not poetic fantasies but signs of a new sensibility emerging within contemporary civilisation.

"No Enemy" constructs a world where human selfhood moves beyond conflict into coexistence, self-reliance, and profound emotional affinity with nature. The poem carries feminine consciousness beyond conventional resistance discourse, embodying an ethical consciousness in which human beings and the more-than-human world possess equal dignity. 

The poem reminds us that humanity's true liberation lies not in establishing mastery over nature but in rediscovering itself within nature's own rhythm. It revives that cultural memory in which the earth, the sky, the waters, the trees, the birds, and humanity together constitute a single ethical and emotional family. In doing so, it offers an alternative cultural vision amidst the environmental and human crises of our age—a world in which no one's freedom depends upon another's subjugation, but upon the equal dignity of every form of existence.

---

*Professor and former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original paper