STAMMER (satchidanandan)

The poet sees stammer not as a handicap, but an effective mode of communication. Stammer is actually a digestion time for the listener between the words of a speaker or it is the silence between a word and its meaning. Limp or lameness is the silence between word and deed. Here the reference is to the contemporary society where words and deeds are never in consonance. The poet also tries to wound our pious inaction on many burning social issues. We are reminded of an affluent society where words and deeds never contradicted and they lived in perfect harmony. We can only dream of such a society as our people fiddle when the Rome burns. It is often said that language is for communication. Human language is very complex because we can communicate very difficult and complicated ideas with the help of our language. Communication without language is also possible, which may have a fixed meaning and very limited scope for exchange of ideas.

Ambiguity is a very close friend of language. We can conveniently rename it as STAMMER. We stammer when we feel that the language we use is not sufficient to communicate our ideas OR the the language we use is not being properly understood. Therefore we can say that stammer is an attempt for meaningful communication or a megaphone diplomacy, which is an attribute, certainly laudable

Stammer actually opens up a different possibility for communication, which must be properly explored by linguists and poets. A poem can be given different interpretations by different readers and critics, which the poet might not have thought of. When a poet employs his bag of tricks to cherry pick an apt word or phrase for parturition, he stammers numerous times to God. It is actually the prayer of the poet to God to beget the best of his off springs. When we read the same poem we also stammer, trying to attribute different meanings to different words and phrases. Here both the poet and the readers are engaged in oblation. This kind of a brainstorming by the writer and the reader is absolutely necessary for the existence of any literary genre.

It goes without saying that the traits of creator will be reflected in his creation. It is almost an accepted fact that God might have stammered during the creation of man. This stammer is exactly reflected in man as well. (The concept of God itself is different strokes for different folks) Any how the stammer of God during the creation of man has given the language of man its ambiguity and variety. This unusual attribute of language is a boon to poets and literary figures. Their literary outputs are read and interpreted by attributing variety of meanings and connotations by readers and critics. Thus poetry is made bright eyed and bushy tailed, repeatedly asserting the fact that poetry is worth its weight in gold.

Stammer- A contemplation on the Absence of Creative Dialogues

The poem presents different perspectives on stammer . It presents stammer as a

struggle to translate our selves. It also justifies the presence of diversity in our life as

evident in the line "thats why all the words of man carry different meanings ".In that

sense the poem is about the different perceptions we have on life. Life is beautiful.

Even stammer is no handicap. It is a different mode of speech.

Though there is an effort to celebrate stammer as a different mode of speech in the

opening lines,slowly the poem becomes a slight to stammer ,especially in the lines

exploring the history of the word,as evident in "these questions make the linguists

stammer ". There begins a streak of concealed humour in the poem which is

sustained till the end .The references to 'the sacrifice we make to the God of meanings and 'a society with stammer as their mother tongue ' tell us about the the critical approach of the poet. Our response to the burning social issues are not good enough.

The poet then proceeds to remark that God stammered when He created man , that

man stammers and even the poets do. The difference is that we call it poetry when the

poets stammer ! . Even the poets fail in engaging in creative dialogues as and when

humanity is struggling to cope with the challenges like intolerance

,violence,terrorism , globalisation and commercialisation.The ironical shift in the

perspective on stammer is evident here.

Still the crisp ending with the words 'like poetry' brings back a tone of meditation,peace and hope. The poet seems to contemplate a hope that the times will

change and the conversation will be resumed.At the end of all the stammers, we

begin to wonder ,whether the poet has been translating himself or exploring the self

of others. As the poet himself has written once ,the poem conveys an apprehension

about the fate that awaits humanity.A contemplation that begins in stammer may

justly end in suffocation