Kala Ramesh

Two Favorite Haibun: Through the Zoom Lens

How a film technique can be applied to haibun

Video by Mikhail Nilov courtesy of Pexels

I’ve always been fascinated with using the zoom technique—and I’m not alone. Basho used it four hundred years ago.

In the twilight of dawn
A whitefish, with an inch

Of whiteness1

Basho zooms in until we are left wondering, What could that “inch of whiteness” be? The fish? How big is it? (Anbody’s guess!) These twelve words show movement – zoka, the creative force of nature. I see a whitefish diving into the water, with only a tip of its tail or a part of its fins visible, or maybe emerging from the ocean, with only an inch of its nose visible. Basho zooms in and has frozen a moment, and the action was there before and will be there even after this poem.

Now for Michael McClintock’s poppies:

a poppy...
a field of poppies!

the hills blowing with poppies!2

What a beauty this is! In all my workshops since 2005, I have never failed to showcase this poem and discuss how a genius can step outside the box, that creativity has no limits. Again, the poet has shown movement. In only ten words, I can see the single poppy right under my nose, then the field of poppies, and finally the grand movement where poppies cover the hills! One image leads to the other, zooming out.

These two haiku are apt examples of how, even in a minimalist way, we can use the zoom technique. It can also be used in haibun. “A Thousand Thens”³ by Clare Everett zooms in, asking readers to pay close attention to every breath and to look at the minutest details of the protagonists’ family, to see how each breath kindles a memory.

A Thousand Thens

wind-shimmered wheat
the kestrel’s belly
uplit

A solitary walk through the fragrance of all that’s green and golden, and suddenly, I am not alone.

Breathing in, I am my dead-too-young father whom I thought invincible, secretly afraid of thunder, and the sea that took a cousin. Breathing out, I am the song of the blackbird he loved the best.

Breathing in, I am my mother, wound by worry, in her rocking chair to nowhere. Breathing out, I am the light of a wagtail across the river stones, and a memory of being taught how to skip with a rope.

Breathing in, I am my grandfather, bitterly disappointed by the lie my father told. Breathing out, I am the drowsy lap, the delight of pencil on paper.

Breathing in, I am my grandmother, straight and stern as the poker on the hearth. Breathing out, I am the crispness of freshly baked pastries made by cool hands and a warm heart.

Breathing in, I am not just born of love, but of pain and joy, triumph and loss. Breathing out, I am so many hopes, dashed and dared, so many dreams, burnished and broken. All are here, on this rung of the twisted ladder, this one moment on the double helix that unravelled me between a thousand thens and now.

endless sky . . .
two kestrels hunt
as one

Throughout this haibun, Claire takes her readers through images that become entrenched in one’s mind, as they did in mine. The poet says she was “not just born of love, but of pain and joy, triumph and loss.” Through her breathing, Claire imaginatively weaves a story. In each line, she has drawn character sketches of one member of her family—father, mother, grandfather and grandmother—bringing them to life.

Like Michael McClintock’s poppies, my haibun “Free Rein”⁴ zooms out. I never intended that, but it happened anyway!

Free Rein

My granddaughter’s dance class is over, and the kids sit on the floor to remove  the tinkling salangai from their ankles. This little girl loves to dance through malls and parks, oblivious to the people around her.

My mother, living in Madras, as it was called in her teenage years, loved to dance, too, but she says that girls were not taught classical Bharatanatyam dance in her day because it was something a girl from a respectable family wouldn’t do. Shouldn’t do. 

My thoughts go back to the bronze dancing girl of Mohenjo-daro. Wearing twenty- five bangles on her left arm and four on her right, the girl stands with her head tilted and one hand on her hip.

a patter of rain—
                    peacocks
spread their feathers

*salangai – the ankle bells worn by Bharatanatyam dancers.

Here is a child of this generation—a life centered on her activities, specifically tying the ankle bells that dancers wear in any Indian classical dance. We see a child fascinated by dance. The prose then shifts to a great-grandmom—my mother—who loved dancing but lived in a stricter atmosphere where dance was not considered respectable. She is ninety-six years old now. The canvas opens wider, spanning generations from almost a century ago to the present day.

The canvas then opens even wider to depict the Dancing Girl sculpture unearthed in 1926 from the ruins of Mohenjo-daro. a famous city of the Indus Valley Civilisation that flourished some 5,000 years ago. Currently in the National Museum, New Delhi, the bronze was described by one archaeologist as a girl “perfectly confident of herself and the world.”⁵

The final zoom-out is the haiku about peacocks, the national bird of India, which evolved millions of years ago in South Africa and has a recorded history dating back to the 10th century BCE.

This haibun first appeared in cattails, and the journal’s editor in chief, Sonam Chhoki, noted its “undercurrent theme of the freedom of movement and form”—an undercurrent that’s only enhanced by the zoom technique.

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Notes

1. From Matsuo Basho by Makoto Ueda (Twayne Publishers, 1970), p. 46. Haiku translated by Makoto Ueda
2. Originally published in Haiku Magazine 5.1, 1971.
3. Originally published in MacQueen’s Quinterly 19 (August 2023). This haibun won a Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun from The Haiku Foundation. The judges noted: “This poem evokes qualities of all great haibun. Its originality of form contributes to and expands the canon, with song-like anaphora and an almost mystical embodiment reminiscent of the lyrics of a chant by the revered Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. The compelling title, well-written poetic prose, evocative haiku, and satisfactory ending coalesce into a whole that is significantly greater than its parts. The universality and emotional tenor of the poem resonate again and again, deepening on each re-reading. A well-deserved winner in this year’s contest.”
4. Originally published in cattails, April 2025, and selected as an Editor’s Choice. Editor in chief Sonam Chhoki’s commentary on the haibun concludes: “The dance is eternal, Kala implies. Then, in a delightful connection of imagery and thought, the dancer is linked in the haiku to a dance of peacocks in the rain. “Rain” puns on “Rein” in the poem’s title, enhancing the undercurrent theme of the freedom of movement and form. I found this haibun enchanting and memorable.”
5. For more about the Dancing Girl, click here.

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About the Author

Kala Ramesh is a renowned pioneer in the field of haikai literature in India. She is the founder/director of Triveni Haikai India and the founder/managing editor of the journal haikuKATHA. Her book of haiku and haibun Beyond the Horizon Beyond (Vishwakarma Publications, 2017) was shortlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize in 2019.

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