The Social, Cultural and Spiritual Dimensions of Modern Indian Poetry in English 1443879681, 9781443879682

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The Social, Cultural and Spiritual Dimensions of Modern Indian Poetry in English

The Social, Cultural and Spiritual Dimensions of Modern Indian Poetry in English Edited by

Vijay Kumar Roy

The Social, Cultural and Spiritual Dimensions of Modern Indian Poetry in English Edited by Vijay Kumar Roy This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Vijay Kumar Roy and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7968-1 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7968-2

CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................................... vii Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Devotional Zeal in Modern Poetry Aju Mukhopadhyay Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 14 Cultural Ethos in the Poetry in English from Northeast India Nigamananda Das Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 53 Precepts to People from the Peepal Tree: An Appraisal of K. V. Raghupathi’s Wisdom of The Peepal Tree V. Sunitha Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 62 Reflections on K. V. Raghupati’s Voice of the Valley G. Srilatha Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 71 The Fusion of Social and Spiritual Elements in the Poetry of R. K. Singh Vijay Kumar Roy Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 79 Spiritual and Sociocultural Concerns in the Poetry of Pashupati Jha Kusum Kundu Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 94 Pashupati Jha’s Poetry: A Journey to “Nirvana” amidst “Unrest”, “Realization”, “Truth”, “Acceptance” and “Submission” Ram Kulesh Thakur

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Contents

Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 99 Shujaat Hussain’s Civic Concern: A Critical Appraisal of His Selected Poems V. Sunitha Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 110 K. V. Dominic’s Winged Reason: A Portrait of Social Realism D. C. Chambial Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 123 The Matrix of Cultural Coexistence in the Floral, Faunal and Human Worlds as Presented in K. V. Dominic’s Winged Reason Kavitha Gopalakrishnan Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 130 The Poetry of Sunil Sharma: An Expression of Love and Liberal Humanism Robert Maddox-Harle Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 145 Reconnecting with the Sublime: The Poetry of Vijay Kumar Roy Robert Maddox-Harle Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 154 Spiritual Trends in the Poetry of Vijay Kumar Roy Bhaskar Roy Barman Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 164 Sociopolitical Issues in the Poetry of Meena Kandasamy C. L. Shilaja Contributors ............................................................................................. 172 Select Bibliography ................................................................................. 174 Index ........................................................................................................ 180

PREFACE

Post-independence India has produced many brilliant writers whose works have their own importance in the field of Indian English literature. These writers have brought new themes and new styles of writing that have enriched Indian English literature to a great extent. Besides fiction authors, poets have emerged on a large scale, and poetry is receiving its due attention for studies, research and discussion. This situation is best exemplified in an increasing number of publications of poetry collections and anthologies, along with print and online journals and magazines. William Henry Hudson said that “[e]very writer is a ‘product’ of his time”. Time helps the writer to develop a particular taste or perception and express it in their own words, resulting in literature. It leads them in the direction of creating their own world. This world can be spiritual: a cherished shelter for them, and sometimes an escape from real-life situations and material pleasure. There is a possibility that they might seek to strengthen the social and cultural values that gave them an identity. They might also develop a zeal for bringing change and revolution into the present social and political system for the sake of developing a scientific temperament, ecological awareness, fraternity, equality, justice or global peace and harmony. Modern Indian poetry in English is rich with all these elements. Research on these subjects can prove a precious contribution to the academic as well as literary world, for the further exploration and enrichment of Indian English literature. The book The Social, Cultural and Spiritual Dimensions of Modern Indian Poetry in English examines the work of modern Indian poets, particularly those whose verse is less explored. Aju Mukhopadhyay in his paper, “Devotional Zeal in Modern Poetry”, discusses the themes of spirituality and mystical experiences in the poetry of Dev Ganguly, Syed Ameeruddin, Rudra Narayan Mishra, N. Karthikeyan Osho, O. P. Arora and Anuradha Bhattacharya. Professor Nigamananda Das, in his detailed study of the poetry of Northeastern India, explores eco-cultural and spiritual aspects in the poetry of Mamang Dai, Yumlam Tana, Hem Barua, Maheswar Neog, Lakshahira Das, Dayananda Pathak, Umakanta Sarma, Bhupati Das, Rupanjali Baruah, Robin S. Ngangom, R. K. Madhubir, Easterine Kire, Temsula Ao,

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Rajendra Bhandari, Bhaskar Roy Barman, and also the English rendering of the poetry of Hiren Bhattacharya, Bhupen Hazarika, Nagen Saikia, Megan Kachari and Kathita Hatibaruah. The poetry of K. V. Raghupati has been taken by two authors. V. Sunitha in her paper, “Precepts to People from the Peepal Tree: An Appraisal of K. V. Raghupathi’s Wisdom of the Peepal Tree”, depicts the ideology that nature “uplifts human lives with its unarticulated but explicit philosophies” in a number of ways in order to spread good values from generation to generation. G. Srilatha’s paper, “Reflections on K. V. Raghupati’s Voice of the Valley”, depicts the philosophy of human life and the relationship between human beings and the Almighty through mystical experiences. Vijay Kumar Roy’s paper, “The Fusion of Social and Spiritual Elements in the Poetry of R. K. Singh”, illustrates poetry as social criticism, and the need for liberation from superstitions, ignorance, rituals and evils in order to change materialistic views into spiritual experiences. The poetry of Pashupati Jha has been discussed by two scholars. In the first paper, “Spiritual and Sociocultural Concerns in the Poetry of Pashupati Jha”, Kusum Kundu discusses religious, social, cultural and political aspects of Jha’s poetry and shows that Professor Jha “simply depicts the scene and does not dictate his terms”. He does not impose his own ideas on the readers. Thus, he has all the qualities of a true poet. The second paper, “Pashupati Jha’s Poetry: A Journey to ‘Nirvana’ Amidst ‘Unrest’, ‘Realization’, ‘Truth’, ‘Acceptance’ and ‘Submission’”, by Ram Kulesh Thakur presents Jha’s work as “a departure from the traditional notions of poetry” and as introducing new ideals, evolving new styles and attaining liberation “through the medium of his poetry”. V. Sunitha, in her paper, “Shujaat Hussain’s Civic Concern: A Critical Appraisal of His Selected Poems”, discusses “the ubiquitous spiritual, cultural and political aspects” of Hussain’s poetry. She also highlights the “sense of duty, responsibility, humility, ethics and moral values” reflected in his work. There are two papers on the poetry of K. V. Dominic. The first, by D. C. Chambial, is a thorough analysis of Dominic’s poetry as social criticism. Spiritual and aesthetic grounds also find proper mention in it. Another paper, “The Matrix of Cultural Coexistence in the Floral, Faunal and Human Worlds as Presented in K. V. Dominic’s Winged Reason” by Kavitha Gopalakrishnan, deals with “coexistence and cohesion” between human beings and flora and fauna – and, at the same time, an exposition of the latent pain of speechless animals and plants caused by human beings.

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Robert Maddox-Harle, in his paper, “The Poetry of Sunil Sharma: An Expression of Love and Liberal Humanism”, discusses true “liberal humanism” in the light of love and equality, and compares the poetry of Sunil Sharma with some of the notable stalwarts. He also highlights “divine elements” in Sharma’s poetry that provide a “transcendental experience”. There are two papers on the poetry of Vijay Kumar Roy. In the first paper, “Reconnecting with the Sublime: The Poetry of Vijay Kumar Roy”, Robert Maddox-Harle examines the connection in Roy’s poetry of nature with spirituality, with “shades of mystical experience”, “animistic themes”, “a deep respect for the natural world” and social criticism – all to rise “above our base material existence”. He compares the poetry of Roy with that of John Donne, William Wordsworth and John Keats. In the second paper, “Spiritual Trends in the Poetry of Vijay Kumar Roy”, Bhaskar Roy Barman begins with a historical background of Indian poetry in English and analyses the poetry of Roy in the light of divinizing nature, love, beauty, surrendering to the Almighty and the complexities of life. In the last paper, “Sociopolitical Issues in the Poetry of Meena Kandasamy”, C. L. Shilaja discusses the issues of the dalit (oppressed) class in the poetry of Meena Kandasamy, who is best known for her “inflammatory writing”. Thus, this book covers the social, cultural and spiritual dimensions of modern Indian poetry along with some other relevant themes that can prove useful to students, teachers and all those interested in Indian English poetry for study and research purposes. I am thankful to all the esteemed contributors who helped bring about the book. I am grateful to Ms. Victoria Carruthers and the whole team at Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom for encouraging me and publishing the book in such an attractive format. -Vijay Kumar Roy Arar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 20 September 2016

CHAPTER ONE DEVOTIONAL ZEAL IN MODERN POETRY AJU MUKHOPADHYAY

Devotional Poems: The Indian Tradition The tradition of writing devotional poems began, as per known records, from the time of Tamil Vaishnav and Shaiva poets in the sixth century, like Andal. Among the many, a few such poets over the centuries have become household names in India, like Mirabai, Sant Kabir, Tulsidas, Tukaram, Akka Mahadevi, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Jaydeva Goswami, Narsi Mehta, Ramprasad Sen, Atulprasad Sen, Rajanikanta Sen, Dwijendranath Roy and Kaji Nazrul Islam. The Bauls of Bengal and Sufis of the Islamic faith are also a part of this culture. In modern times, too, there are many poets who write devotional works in regional languages. Sometimes they also become mystic poets, like the women poets from Chittagong, which is now in Bangladesh; and Jyotirmoyee (or Jyotirmala) Choudhury, who lived in Pondicherry after her education in England. Though good volumes of their works have subsequently been translated into English, they were, and are, not Indian English poets. Among those who were Indian English poets, three stalwarts are the most famous: Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Rabindranath Tagore, all of whom wrote devotional and spiritual poems. They were mystics. Other poets belonged to the Sri Aurobindo School of poetry, among them Nolini Kanta Gupta, K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran), Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Dilip Kumar Roy, Tehmi and Nirodbaran. Subramania Bharati, an associate of Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, wrote devotional poems in English and Tamil. Spiritual and devotional poetry is not the monopoly of India, but, owing to its millennia-old tradition of spirituality, India is always ripe with such expressions in poetry. Nonetheless, it is also found in other countries. Discussions here are focused on some modern Indian English poets who

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write devotional poems, but they also cover some of those who are opposed to such work or avoid mention of it.

Dev Ganguly’s Longing for God Dr. Debabrata Ganguly, writing under the short name of Dev Ganguly, is a retired professor. His first book of poems, entitled Moments, was published in 1995; his second, Mother Forgive Me, twenty years later. In his poems, one finds a longing for the Divine and its effect. Mental and intellectual products tinged by the psychic touch, his poems evoke a sweet feeling in the simple heart of a devotee. They are simple songs couched in symbols and imagery. Almost none of the lyrics occupy more than a page; some, half that length. But they are artistic enough to charm the reader. They evoke a similar feeling to that which one has when reading Tagore’s poems in Gitanjali. Tagore’s The Gardener carries the same vibration and rhythm. Gitanjali’s poems evoke immediate response among Western readers and critics for their “songs” evoke memories of the Bible, uttered in charming simplicity – though in fact they resemble, more than any other source, the ideas contained in the Upanishads, as expressed by a young seeker of God. Dev’s poems do not share this quality but they seem to be of the same group, carrying a similar, simple aspiration and faith in God. They have the same old language. Some of Dev Ganguly’s poems repeat Tagore’s ideas in language old enough to catch the biblical rhythm in them. Tagore’s poems are sudden and wondrous, a poet directly addressing God – fulfilling and quenching the song-thirsts of not only the Bengalis but of many other Indians down the years. See the poems below by Dev Ganguly and remember the Gitanjali. The ideas are repeated and the way of presentation too. Thou art allArt thou not my master too? All I call mine is yours Everywhere is your presence felt And I find you In my innermost self, consuming All I have (“Eternity”, Mother Forgive Me 17)

Addressing God as his master, Tagore writes, “I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement” (Gitanjali 3/43). Tagore sings in the first song of Gitanjali, “Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou / emptiest again and again,

Devotional Zeal in Modern Poetry

and fillest it ever with fresh life” (Gitanjali 1/43). In Ganguly, the same feeling is expressed differently: And then comes the moment of fulfillment. i-ness and thou-ness mingle, The entire sky seems to crumble into metal flakes (“Abyss of Affection”, Mother Forgive Me 18)

Dev Ganguly wishes God to beat and hit him (as does Tagore) to bring him into shape. “Crush me, my Master, under thy weight/Hook me to agony . . . / Turn me to dust” (“Crush Me”, Mother Forgive Me 25). In a different way, Tagore finds his sorrow transformed into joy by God’s pressing touch upon his heart with His feet (Gitanjali 45/57). “I will grumble no more” is another such poem, in which the writer feels very humble before God. After all he has done, the poet is quivering in expectation. “Night rolled by and came the dawn / No God came, no manifestation. / I opened the door and saw you / manifest in limitless blue” (“The Devil-song”, Mother Forgive Me 32). Tagore writes, “From dawn till dusk I sit here before my door, and I know that of a sudden the happy moment will arrive when I shall see. / … the air is fulfilling with the perfume of promise” (Gitanjali 44/56). Like Ganguly, Tagore did not find God in a temple bound by rituals, so he gave a call: “Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense!” (Gitanjali 11/46). Tagore introduced the image of the sitar, comparing it with himself, imagining God tuning it properly. Dev evokes the same idea differently – linking it with a pen, waiting for God to use it: My pen lay like a sitar on the floor for years but the player did not turn up: (“Savari”, Mother Forgive Me 13)

But he becomes a sitar too: Last evening I lay inert, supine, as usual. And you came softly down on me, And your fingers that knew the zones And strings Started playing the most efficient

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Chapter One Until melody broke all its shackles (“I am the Instrument”, Mother Forgive Me 44)

The idea of being an instrument of God is neither Tagore’s originally nor that of the recent poet. This is an age-old Indian concept and realization. We also hear it in songs by the worshippers of the Goddess Kali. The idea of the poet becoming the instrument of God recurs in “Will You, Lord?” (Mother Forgive Me 45), in which he asks the Lord if He could come and wash the dirty and dusty instrument for His purpose. In “Excuse me”, the poet repents for having wasted God’s gift to him without any gratitude, and is afraid at the end of having no time to atone for his wrongdoings. “Desert-Walkers Know” (50) is a fine poem, perhaps the best in the collection, recounting the summum bonum of human life as one is cheated by mirages throughout one’s existence on earth: Sunburnt skeletons lie half-hidden in sand And through their hollow sinuses blow the wind to whistle the story of the agony of flesh the story of a conspiracy behind the illusion of a mirage. (“Desert-Walkers Know”, Mother Forgive Me 50)

Personal reference in “I Envy Your Luck” (33) tells us that the poet is aware of the people around him as well as of God. Throughout his childhood and youth he was not allowed to dream, but in the evening of his life his inner being could not keep his promise and dreamt, thereby losing his material wealth but feeling relieved and free. The poem gives a sense of one who seeks God but is not allowed to meet Him. When the time is ripe, he jumps in without paying heed to the idea of forbearance, and feels deliverance when he loses everything to reach the most coveted presence of God. It carries the same sense of longing for God and meeting Him, or getting a chance to be near Him. “The Tides” (58) is a poem of attachment through playing with the waves and tides, reminiscent of past days of love and romance. The idea continues towards the end of Mother Forgive Me, in poems like “Treasure” (60) and “Yesterday, Tomorrow and Today” (61), in which the poet lightly remembers the tales of his teens and youth though they were full of routines told many times and done so often by humans. The charms of these forgotten days live in one’s heart.

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Most of us love Tagore but modern poets do not repeat him, for few are so attached to or anxious for the love of God. When Dev brings in the memory of Tagore through his love for God, it is a breath of fresh air. Through simple poems, the poet has evoked an exalted spirit. The idea and essence of spiritualism, being part and parcel of India, is natural. Such trends in poetry shall continue to embellish Indian English literature, even if they tend to be of lesser amplitude in our modern times.

Syed Ameeruddin’s Spiritual Emotion Crosses the Boundaries of Religion Visioned Summits and Visions of Deliverance by Syed Ameeruddin depict the soul’s journey to the heights through the ascending scales of consciousness, beginning with failure and frustration. They record his physical and psychic journey through countries: At last, my search Has become a quest beyond . . . To unfathom the eerie secrecies And revered revelations . . . . The vibrant divine within me blazes: La Ilaha Illal Lahu! Salam! Salam! Salam! . . . Ekam Eva Advitiyam Brahman! . . . Thus, I visioned Summits of illumined peaks Of benign Nirvana Aham Brahman, Anal Haq, And touched a moment eternal Breathing the divine light of blissThe Sat-Chit-Ananda! (“Summits” Visioned Summits 152–57)

“His Footfall Rings” is a sweet lyric creating a jingling note of music in each footfall of the flute-playing Krishna in the ear of his bride, Radha: Across the sunny Shoals of Time, Athwart the womb Of flowing things His footfall rings! His footfall rings! . . .

Chapter One

6 From mystic sleep Of soul’s chambers, From lovely strings Of chanting Hope His footfall rings! His footfall rings! Beyond the leap Of eternities His footfall rings! His footfall rings!

(“His Footfall Rings”, Visioned Summits 145–47)

A worshipper of heritage and glory, the poet writes in “Turkey”, Turkey! You symbolize the golden moments In Human Destiny! . . . . Divine Radiation everywhere And experience the Bliss of God, The Sat, Chit, Ananda. Turkey! You symbolize the Essence Of Spiritual Beauty! . . . . Man’s life on earth a Visioned March From Darkness to Light: From Untruth to Righteousness: From Death to Immortality. (“Turkey”, Visions of Deliverance 109–12)

Both the books discussed mark the writer’s poetic journey in the spiritual languages of both Hindu and Islamic heritage. To a poet immersed in spiritual bliss, at whatever stage of his life, there is no difference in essence between the two cultures. He freely walks his poetic path using images from both traditions, comparing and relishing them, and thus proving the real spiritual urge in him, finding no narrow division or difference between them. A broad heart, spiritual urge and benevolent feeling permeate Ameeruddin’s works. While the above books fill the reader’s heart with spiritual happiness, Rainbow Rhapsodies fills it with exuberant love between man and woman – but here, this love is polished, having passed through the cultured mind and heart of the poet who has realized his poetic zeal and passion through religious harmony and spiritual bliss. All through this book, his journey of love and the memories of it move in stages, reminiscent of his earlier journeys. Love for God and love for the beloved reach a harmonic resolution through these poems.

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Rudra Narayan Mishra’s Zeal to Teach Rudra Narayan Mishra, a veteran teacher and educator, wrote large numbers of poems in two volumes of Flashes: 151 and 214, respectively. Most of his works are quatrains, in which, with some variations, the second and fourth lines usually rhyme. The first poem of the series takes us to the source of his bhakti: When I utter Thy name, O Lord! When I hail to Thee, My filthy heart gets purified And seems to dance in glee. (“When I Hail to Thee”, Flashes 1)

Most of the poems in these two books are repetitions of the same thoughts and ideas: supplications to God, surrendering to Him, concentrating on Him. Each could be called a book of prayers and meditations, but there are varieties within the genre. It is rare to find such poems in profusion in modern times, and their dictions are somewhat old, biblical, sermon-like and didactic. It is usual for such a poet, who is also a teacher, to write in order to inspire, trying to raise the morale of their students. If we could have such paeans clothed in modern garments, it would be quite another experience. The poet’s eyes are open; he looks at what happens around him. For instance, he takes lessons from the tree, which we have been party to for ages but seldom acknowledge: Let me learn from thee, O Tree! Everything for others to give away Without a sense of possessive pride And so superb happiness enjoy. (“Lesson from the Tree”, Flashes 17)

But for the lesson of humility, he turns to the grass: After the sweep of a terrific cyclone One is surprised to see While the humble grass escapes any harm Affected is the arrogant tree. (“Humility”, Flashes 40)

Does the same tree become arrogant which is elsewhere “[w]ithout a sense of possessive pride”, because the poet wants to glean a different lesson from the plant world? Coming to the “Ganga-water”:

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Chapter One The sacred Ganges flows with all her glory And people collect her water in bottles small Foolishly thinking they’ve Ganges in their grasp While it’s but Ganga water, not Ganga at all. (“Ganga-water”, Flashes 41)

Though the poet has a devotional heart, in respect of Ganga and Gangawater he becomes rigidly materialistic. The God-loving teacher, who writes not for himself but for his students, writes from his heart rather than from his intellect – that is, unless the doctor in him strikes a difference between bhakti and superstition.

N. Karthikeyan Osho’s Biblical Ideas Osho’s poetry comes direct from his heart – full of emotion, devotion and prayer. Sometimes it seems that he is a continuation of another, forgotten generation with its old and biblical language, but after some searching it is found that his words carry the meaning that he intends them to offer. Expressing the same feelings and passions as his forebears, he cannot change them to accommodate modern language. Like a true sadhak in search of God, he pours out his heart: Hail. . . ! I search thee! As a mad . . . inebriate bee! My dear. . . lo! thou in my heart! (“Hallow Holy”, Showers to the Bowers 40)

In this poem he prays, “Let my life’s chalice ne’er taste the malice / E’er fills with those ambrosial divine’s miracle” (“Life is a Wave of Ocean”, Showers to the Bowers 69). His devotion to the Holy Mother flows through several poems: Immortal She! Sheen; Immaculate She! Virgin Queen, .... aye all adore thy Divine feet. (“Immortal Mother”, Showers to the Bowers 19)

And again: Full of purity and treasure, During dusk to thy feet I reach. (“Beach I Reach”, Showers to the Bowers 25)

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He sacrifices himself at the altar of God: Deity I sacrifice my life and time Avast! Almighty restore bliss aye chime. (“Eden Shaken and Broken”, Showers to the Bowers 30)

O. P. Arora’s Spiritual Sense In O. P. Arora’s poetry, we do not find traces of devotion directly but we find strong rationalism and straightforwardness. He does not write hymns or paeans to God but realizes his position as a man, a gyani: one having spiritual frankness and some wisdom who comprehends matters: like a wave flaunt around my identity for a while, passion and intensity and then merge into the eternal ocean lost forever, unknown, unseen. (“Eternal Spectacle”, Whispers in the Wilderness 13)

Not only passion and intensity but, drawing the inference, we find that his identity also merges into the ocean like a bubble, as insignificant as it is. In this poem, a man lived in a closed, dark room for a long time; the poet slunk into his room and, defying all objections, flung every window open. Light and air and views of nature rushed into the room, greeting the occupants, and the hitherto confined man was overwhelmed, “Tears moistening his lashes / he looked at me with grateful eyes . . .” (“When There is Light”, Whispers in the Wilderness 103). Light is Godliness; nature is close to God. In “Death” (105), Arora finds Death entering into life stealthily, through the back door, and robbing it, giving no chance to the victim to face or fight it. This poem aims to tell of the uncertainties of life and death. Resonating with age-old Hindu philosophy and faith, he writes, “Death, inevitable, should be welcomed smiling / it is not the end, in fact another beginning” (“The Last Hour”, Pebbles of the Shore 70). Elsewhere, the poet rightly feels that, “No, there is nothing significant about falling / significant is- rising again after falling . . .” (“The Forked Path”, Whispers in the Wilderness 107). The poet is robust with faith and optimism: What if I have lost the battle! It doesn’t matter- . . . .

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Chapter One And . . . I would, once again Rise like a phoenix, once again. (“Once Again”, Pebbles on the Shore 7)

A man, straightforward, has the quality of a spiritual person. When a guru, in the name of religion and spirituality, cheats an innocent follower, a devotee of God, the poet cannot be silent – and that attitude is right. A guru flaunting immaculate dress instructs his disciples in cultivated tones, Meditate, just meditate. Your eyes should not see the ugliness around they should see the divine beauty in the hound. Renounce the material pleasures Aspire for the “Moksha.” (“Meditation”, Whispers in the Wilderness 58)

The poet, realizing how the guru enjoys keeping his disciples subservient, with closed eyes, urges them, as Swami Vivekananda taught, to arise and awake: Why don’t you ask them to arise, awake and annihilate the unjust system and their persecutors? Why should they, your loyal followers who worship you like God suffer the curse of living like animals? (“Meditation”, Whispers in the Wilderness 59)

The glittering guru realizes the point: came up to me put his hand on my shoulder and said with his bewitching smile: You know too much an enlightened man . . . But then this ashram is not a place for the awakened souls . . . I just wanted to ask: . . . . But before I could open my lips The revered steaming guru Had already walked away . . . (“Meditation”, Whispers in the Wilderness 59–60)

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Anuradha Bhattacharya’s Subtle Steps Apart from Devotion Discussing devotional poems, we now take into our fold poets of the opposite stream in order to complete the whole. Some people, like Nietzsche, are drawn more to death than life. Death attracts them more than life while they live. Some, like Freud, are more concerned about the subconscious than the conscious. Denying God, communists adore materialism; the physical thing that we see before us is the only reality for them. Moving a step further, the existentialist thinks negatively, living on the borderline of boredom and the uselessness of life, in a state akin to nihilism. Every such thing has reality – including metaphysical matters: the existence beyond the concrete reality. If the call of the beyond and the existence of the unseen, not physically felt or sensed, were not true, then the whole of existence would be bereft of romance, imagination and fantasy. It would be barren desert; neither birth nor death would have any meaning; music, art and literature would seem to be concrete structures to be broken down or ruined pathetically in time. Because of the existence of the unseen, life vibrates around the fulcrum of love, hope, romance and spiritual adventure. But people have an inherent attraction for one or the other path. Devotees are drawn towards the unseen God, and some of them meet Him too. It does not matter to them whether someone else believes it or not; the astronaut’s experience may not have been shared by others, but it remains a fact to the astronaut and the scientists who know of it. The question hangs on whether a thing exists beyond my personal experience or not. Leave aside the weakness of faith or denial of faith, if you feel it so. Creation is always possible, with or without faith. Even negative ideas produce beautiful art objects if properly worked on. While O. P. Arora does not mention God, Anuradha Bhattacharya delves deep into the subconscious with Freud. Such ideas are akin to existentialism, and yield more pain than pleasure. But even creation born out of pain gives joy to connoisseurs, as incense gives fragrance at the cost of its life. Beauty is there in both opulence and depravity. There is something in the poetry of Bhattacharya that gives artistic pleasure born out of painful experience expressed truly. To Bhattacharya, night is dark and devoid of light; it conceals everything positive, and that subconscious reality may be the only truth to some:

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The real is in the dark . . . . The life of the night Is beyond love, Beyond compromise, Beyond the word, So I am asleep. (“The Word”, Knots 17)

Survival is a problem. Neither good nor bad, the subject laments not being a father – but she is a mother! Why is being a mother not important? One devoid of positive thought is bored no matter what place she occupies in family or society. Leaving aside other things, this may be a problem of godlessness (“To Survive”, Knots 25). One grieves, feeling oneself ridiculous, scoffed at by the other, being identified as worthless: And suddenly There seems Someone Grinning at you . . . At your face A loud cackle Tearing Your senses Into rags. (“Remorse”, Knots 48)

Below is a very subtle observation of things slipping out of their existence. The word floats in the atmosphere, but does not enter into my memory. It amounts to futility: Something palpable has disappeared, Like a whistle as the whistler Grows out of breath . . . . The word has stuck at the throat. The word was to name it. In its disappearance lies The futility of its appellation. (“Futility”, Knots 32)

The poet moves very subtly, stealthily like the tiptoed movement of history. Actual happenings often do not take place in broad daylight. Many things are hidden. Falsehood reigns behind the written history. Beautifully, she expresses the tale of night and of its depravity:

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A hungry night wails In the new light . . . . A gruesome history Has picked up cues Of tiptoed steps. (“Killjoy”, Knots 56)

“Somewhere down the line in history / We too have been caught mid-air and hauled” (“Discourse”, Knots 28). This poet sometimes suggests volumes in a line, and speaks louder with fewer words. Brevity is the essence of good poetry.

Works Cited Ameeruddin, Syed. Visioned Summits. Madras: International Poets Academy, 2005. Print. —. Visions of Deliverance. Chennai: International Poets Academy, 2006. Print. —. Rainbow Rhapsodies. Chennai: International Poets Academy, 2014. Print. Arora, O. P. Pebbles on the Shore. New Delhi: Sanbun Publishers, 2011. Print. —. Whispers in the Wilderness. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2015. Print. Bhattacharya, Anuradha. Knots. Kolkata: Writers Workshop, 2012. Print. Das, Sisir Kumar, ed. The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore. (reprint.) New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2004. Print. Ganguly, Dev. Mother Forgive Me. Allahabad: Cyberwit.net. 2013. Print. Mishra, Rudra Narayan. Flashes: Books 1 and 2. Dhenkanal, Odisha: Saraswati Pal, 2007. Print. Osho, Nagamuthu Karthikeyan. Showers to the Bowers. Gwalior: Amrit Prakashan, 2006. Print.

CHAPTER TWO CULTURAL ETHOS IN THE POETRY IN ENGLISH FROM NORTHEAST INDIA NIGAMANANDA DAS

This paper explores multiethnic poetry in English from Northeast India since 1960. This includes the poetry written originally in English and also translations from vernacular poetry, both religious and secular, by various translators. Those who have written originally in English are Lakshahira Das, Bhupati Das, Dayananda Pathak, Umakanta Sarma, Mamang Dai, Yumlam Tana, Robin Ngangom, Easterine Kire (Iralu), Temsula Ao and others. The poetry in English by these writers reflects various multiethnic, cultural, spiritual and ecological perspectives pertaining to the region. In this regard, it is different from the English poetry written in other Indian provinces. Multiple impressions are expressed in multiple moods. More than two dozen poets from various provinces of the northeastern part of India have published their poems and poetry collections in English, both in India and abroad. They have been called “ethnic poets” (Guha 2000: 119). They may be called multiethnic poets because they hail from multifarious ethnic groups, which are troubled by various ethnic crises. The themes addressed in their work include hills, valleys, people, myths, legends, communal violence, tribal rites, mystic and profoundly aesthetic sensibilities, ecology, self-alienation and autobiographical exegeses of the self. These poets are proved to be consistently homeward-bound pilgrims. Mamang Dai (1957–), a famous Indian English poet of Arunachal Pradesh, was born in Pasighat, East Siang District. She left the Indian Civil Service in order to pursue a career in journalism and the bettering of the social and eco-cultural standards of her people. A poet from the Adi tribal community, she founded the Arunachal Heritage Society in 1992 and has been its president since then. An accredited journalist to the Government of Arunachal Pradesh, she has been tirelessly devoted to social welfare through this non-governmental organization. She has published poems in

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various Indian journals and has brought out a collection of poetry, entitled River Poems (2004), from the Writers Workshop, Kolkata. Dai is a homeward-bound pilgrim in her quest for identity. In her poetry, life in Arunachal Pradesh, peoples’ faiths and her own, agriculture, mountains, streams, rivers and stones, myths and nature’s magic all reveal the myriad, ecological worlds of Arunachal and its mysterious and glorious heritage. She reflects Arunachalee culture and traditions, and recent or modern transitions in the mosaic of its living conditions. A keen explorer of heritage, she seems to be a sentinel for traditional tribal values. Environment/ecology, profound serenity in nature and an innocent voice regarding the issues of her surroundings have been her important concerns. She voices her emotions and feelings through images and metaphors chosen mostly from nature. Her search for identity has revealed her to be a nature-loving humanist. She reveals her beliefs in a tribal pantheon of Gods and the mystery of ecology: Yes, I believe in gods, in the forest faith of good and evil, spirits of the river and the dream world of the dawn. (“Two Poems” 3)

Dai also ponders the contemporary systems of living in Arunachal, and contrasts them with the ancient ways of life and agriculture. She has been an observer of changes in the state’s tribal society over time: I know / from faces that I meet / in these lives / that have crumbled / that the past lives / in these eyes / that the jungle shows / sometimes ..., the mountain knows / how we pressed our hearts / against its earth / we placed the shadows / where they are / in the leisure of dreams / the sky wind knows, / how we grew flowers / in fields of stone. (“Two Poems” 3)

She has been a close observer of the wide-ranging sociocultural changes in her land. The people, mountains, rivers, trees and harvest have been her primary subjects. In her poem entitled “Sky Song”, she writes, We left the tall trees standing. We left the children playing. We left the women talking, and the men are predicting

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Chapter Two Good harvests, or bad that winged summer we left, racing with the leopards of morning. (“Two Poems” 5)

“Indian English poets are ‘river poets’. Poems on rivers abound” (Sarang 1995: 13). Living near rivers, amidst natural surroundings and varied feelings, experiences and emotions makes the poet remember the transactions of life and the plight of the natural world. The past of her ancient land; the red-robed men; the tribal rituals; tribes living in caves; and, her favourite theme, mysterious ecology all lurk in her mind. Such remembrances make her a mythmaker, a designer of living realities and contemporary myths or the ancient and present life in Arunachal Pradesh: I remember then / the great river / that turned, turning / with the fire / of the first sun / away from the old land / red robed men, / and the poisonous ritual, / ....Remember the flying dust / and the wind, / like a long echo / snapping the flight / of the river beetle, / venomous in the caves / where men and women / dwelt, facing the night, / guarding the hooded poison. (“Four Poems” 64)

The eastern mountains; the flash of summer; intricate nature; divinity in trees; starry skies; the great River Brahmaputra; a landscape full of memories, which the poetess calls “myth and mystery” (Dai, “With the Confidence of Things Impermanent” 154) crowd the lines in her poetry. Hers is the poetry of landscape: Without speech We practised a craft leaving imprints on sky walls, Linking the seasons, coding the trailing mist in silent messages across the vast landscape. (“Four Poems” 66)

Mamang Dai’s River Poems (2004), containing fifty-one poems, legitimizes her voice of homeward-bound ballads. This single collection makes her presence felt when the poet expresses her concerns for both local and global events. She feels the palpitations of the rivers’ hearts and recurrently says, “The river has a soul .... the river knows/ the immortality

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of water” (River Poems 29). Several local concepts of Arunachal have prompted the powerful feelings of the poet – including the Arunachalee tapu dance and the folk-faith, associated with it, that issueless women can conceive a son by joining the dance and putting on male attire (River Poems 42–43). There are also the funeral rites of the Adi tribes (River Poems 46–47), the ponung dance of the Adis during the festival of Solung (River Poems 19–20) and man/tiger brotherhood (River Poems 50–51). Her Korea poems, which express her emotional concern for the effects of a mid-air explosion that killed many of that nation’s top leaders, reveal her profoundly responsible soul. locked in our tears blind storm on this clearest of mornings we feel again the draining of strength when the hills are waiting acrid, sad smoky with autumn and her wild fires in the courtyards the old men sit like stone, remembering (River Poems 66–67)

These tragic images of Korea reflect the Arunachalee countryside in Dai’s description. Her poetic explorations concentrate on the rites of living in Arunachal Pradesh, and are thus a conscious attempt in the quest for identity. Yumlam Tana (1976–), born at Koloriang, Subansiri District of Arunachal Pradesh, teaches English Literature at the Government School, Karsingsa in Papumpare District. He has published a collection of poems in English entitled The Man and the Tiger (2000). In his poetry, we see him constantly clinging to the mores of the quest for identity, a major concern of postcolonial Indian English literature. He belongs to the Nyishi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, and his poems allude to their myths of the brotherhood of man and tiger, Nyishi legends, superstitions, rites and rituals, customs and costumes. He writes about his identity by humanizing his status universally: I write in English which is not my language You see, I am a Nyishi A tribal claiming to be a man. I am all humanity, With no geographical boundary,

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Chapter Two No social restrictions, no biological limitations. ... Nothing to divide me from my fellowmen. (“Three Poems” 13)

He speaks of his brotherhood with the tiger, the jhum fields in his surroundings, his sojourn in the Dibang Valley and life in the bosom of nature: My brother, my mother nestled so fondly on her bosom Singing lullabies in the night and when away to the jhum fields in the mountains We played various games around the house He was my playmate. He was my nurse .... The Tsangpo flowing through the Dibang Valley And the plains of India And Bangladesh ... So the tiger must stalk in the forest To kill and spill blood for blind appetite And the man, a social animal, Search an Ideology to suit his Intellect. (“Three Poems” 14–15)

He expands on tribal animist rituals to propitiate the spirits and the primordial sentiments, and expresses a constant preoccupation with tribal anthropomorphism: In spite of all those talks about rationales And scientific temper A primordial sentiment lurks Somewhere in us begotten in the days of chaos. The Nyibu had read the entrails of The chickens And presaged that six dead monkeys Shall lie beside a stranger in the house And as required six horns of Mithuns to be slaughtered, Besides the fat pigs from grandpa’s sty To appease the hungry spirits from the World of the dead Amidst chantings of prayers in four Sleepless weeks. (“Three Poems” 16)

The power of divination and healing claimed by the Nyibus (the traditional priests of the Nyishi people), traditional Nyishi attire, the Nyishi/tiger

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brotherhood and the formers’ similarity with the physical features of the tiger, the ecology of the Nyishis’ land, their mysterious faiths and ideology are the prime concerns in Tana’s poetry. Mamang Dai and Yumlam Tana have brought acclaim to Arunachal for their contribution to Indian writing in English. They are trying to legitimize their voices by giving expression to the tribal cults, myths, mystery, history and ecology of Arunachal and contemporary transitions. Their future poetry will undoubtedly mirror their quest further in quality and quantity. Assam has made a major contribution to Indian English poetry, and its poets have been writing in English since the 1960s. In 1960, Hem Barua published Modern Assamese Poetry, a select collection of English translations of Assamese verse. Out of the twenty-six Assamese poets in this collection, nine translated their own work. This shows that in 1960 in Assam, there were poets who could have written in English. Assamese poetry, which has yet to renounce romanticism, is quite different from that of the other provinces of India in its emotional effects and aspects. With few exceptions, Assamese poets writing in Assamese are seldom obscure. However, those writing in English do not reflect the essence of Assamese culture to any great degree. In this regard, Assamese poetry also differs from the English poetry written in other Indian provinces. The poetry in English from Assam abounds in translations from folk and religious, vernacular and ethnic literatures. The Bhagavat, Kirtan, Namghosha, Bhaona and other forms of Vaishnavite or ethnic literatures have been translated, enriching the reservoir of poetry in English. Discussion of a few samples will provide us some information about the works in this area. Pradip Acharya, Ajit Barua and some other English teachers of Assam have published commendable works in this field. Mahapurush Sankardeva (1449–1569) – who propagated Ekasarannamdharma, the neo-Vaishnavite faith of surrendering to the single Lord by chanting His holy name – penned a good number of songs that salute the glory of the Almighty. Some of these verses bear the mark of literary excellence and universal appeal: Numbered are the years that measure your life; Half the life slips away in the hours of sleep; A score of years fly in the winds of boyish pranks; Ten years go in counting coins on the finger-tip. Think of the twenty years at the other end of it When life shall grow too heavy to drag on;

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Chapter Two Each hour in the sand-glass shall be an eternity of aches, Each sunrise bringing dullness and disease unknown. And shall melt away the dreams of your eyes and starry hues; Confined in a cabin it shall pile up a welter of woes. (Barua, Prahlad Caritra 27)

The English rendering of Sankardeva’s works by various scholars is mostly prosaic, as it is very difficult to convey the required felicity in translation: Madhava, Rama Hari, O Jadava! Rama Hari. Being Vyasa, son of Satyabati, you saw the people becoming very foolish. Then you spread the teachings of the four Vedas and wrote the epic of ‘Mahabharat’ … You fought with the demons for gods and Indra won the battle at your blessings …. Shri Shankardeva, the disciple of Krishna says such, “All say Hari Hari in order to destroy your vices.” (Tr. and qtd. Punya Hazarika 5–6)

Sankardeva propagated the various modes of bhakti, the teaching of the equity of human beings in a caste-ridden and creedless society and the uplifting of the downtrodden. In his Kirtan Ghosha, he declares from the tongue of Lord Krishna: “If women and sudras cultivate bhakti for me / Impart to them this knowledge, great minded one” (Life and Teachings of Mahapurush Sankardeva 20). He propounded the doctrine of self-surrender to the Almighty Lord, and advised his disciples, “Throw thy body, soul and all at the feet of that vast one / With single minded devotion and thou wilt enjoy the / Bliss of human life” (Life and Teachings of Mahapurush Sankardeva 22). Madhavadeva, the prominent disciple of Sankardeva, propagated in his works the notion of bhakti dharma in order to uplift the downtrodden and to cleanse society from all manner of evils: My obeisance to that devotee Who is indifferent even to salvation. Verily, I crave for ecstatic devotion. My adoration to that Lord Yadupati Who, being the crown-gem of all, Remains enslaved to His worshipper. (Madhavadeva, The Divine Verses 1)

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He also wrote lyrical songs about many aspects of the worldly life, like the sense of apathy or indifference to worldly pursuits: O Hari, how can I be saved, sinful as I am Unless you shower your mercy on me? The sinful mind does not forsake worldly desires: I am deeply plunged in the dreadful world. (Sarma, Madhavadeva 55)

A Sufi saint named Ajan Fakir, who migrated to Assam from Baghdad in the latter part of the sixteenth century, is credited with the composition of 200 jikir songs for the Muslims of Assam. Through his jikirs, he disseminated devotional principles for both the Hindu and Muslim communities of the state. He says, “The Quran and Purans preach the same / If you are a wise man, you will understand” (Malik 31). Ajan Fakir emphasized control of the mind and senses in order to overcome worldly illusions. He said to his disciples: “Keep your wild senses under control / You will be victorious” (Malik 31). These poet-saints were pillars of their society once upon a time, and remain so even now. Their works in English translation have enriched the reservoir of new literatures in the postcolonial era. Besides those from the saints, there have also been ample translations from Assamese-language poetry. Famous writer Hiren Bhattacharya’s poems have been rendered into English in an anthology, Ancient Gongs (1985), in which the profound thoughts of the poet have found deft expression in the other tongue. The following poem speaks of Bhattacharya’s vital concerns: My pen is the hammer in the blacksmith’s hands. I hammer words into shape sharp as the Farmer’s plough-share, the golden Sita on The furrows, ragged like the carpenter’s saw, I extract from the grains of hard timber, Words stained by the blood of experience, Like sure arrows from the Santhal male’s bow, Words become ardent in my blood, flesh and desire, Some of them stand high as mountains, Some lie low like rivers, …. I am a poet of the vast continent Studded with rivers and mountains, the earth is my poem. (Bhattacharya, Ancient Gongs 70)

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A collection of songs of Bhupen Hazarika in English translation, entitled Where Seas Meet (1993), speaks of the great singer’s concerns and patriotism: No room, in my new land For traders of religion Or champions of parochialism I’ll destroy with my own hands The spectre of untouchability And build a new Assam I’ll make love flow Through all races and communities I’ll break all barriers of discrimination And build a heaven Of equality. (Hazarika, Where Seas Meet 3)

Nagen Saikia’s new form of short expressions, called Mita Bhash, translated into English as Aching Void (2005), speaks of mystical expressions about life and living beings’ explorations of its realities: Drops of melody hung upon the rattle of flower has become dry Now only the agony of the petals is floating A little bird is bathing there It is his last bath (Saikia, Aching Void 113)

A collection of poems by Megan Kachari (Mithinga Daimary, the Publicity Secretary of the United Liberation Front of Assam), entitled Melodies and Guns (2006), translated into English by Pradip Acharya and Manjeet Baruah and introduced by Indira Goswami, exposes the ideology of the revolutionary: The quiet sandy beaches, golden in the sun, The cascading waves of the river, across that bank, Our games in the past, from the water to the earth. The pungent smell of the corpse, afloat now And stuck to the mud And this smell of death, … from the river to the bank… But your breasts? .... Naked to my skin I stood watching the new temples, of sand Along the golden bank, to enter The New World of our pledge. (Kachari, Melodies and Guns 35)

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A collection of poems by Kathita Hatibaruah on Mother Earth, entitled Earth Song (1999) and translated by Pradip Acharya, reveals the poet’s love of nature and her festivities: Such a sweet name, life-giving Fertile, loaded with The rich sweetness of creation Rich, abundant, the golden field The primordial mother Of thirst and hunger The panacea …. Fertility is the field The field is fertility The banner of victory At the threshold of the twenty-first century. (Hatibaruah, Earth Song 29)

These translations have proved to be a storehouse of English poems. A large number of collections of translated and original poetry in English are available in the various provinces of Northeast India. Love for nature may be intense in the poets of Assam who are writing in English, yet profuse descriptive passages about ecological awareness are rare in their poetry. Maheswar Neog (1918–1995), in his Under One Sky (1970), writes about the people and landscape of the East European countries that he visited under the Indo-Foreign Cultural Exchange Programme. The Indian landscape finds casual references in these poems. In “Pranams to the Danube”, he writes, Here is no Gangã, no Yamunã, no Sarasvati, No Godavari, no Kaveri, or no Brahmaputra. Yet here am I touching the water of the Danube in my pilgrimage. Here are no Mughal Gardens; Yet here do I look at every strange face, every beautiful face, And it blossoms forth into kindness and grace. (Neog, Under One Sky 1)

Lakshahira Das’s Between Births (1990) contains sixty-nine poems, out of which ten were originally written in English. Others have been translated into English by Pradip Acharya and others. In her original English poems, Das very beautifully expresses her sentiments. But because of the lack of her consciousness as to the growth of poetry in English, which she came too late, she could not compose profusely in English although she is a fine lyric genius. Writing on various themes, she plays on a whole gamut of

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feelings and sensations – love, anxiety, the sense of death, passions, love/hate relations, hopes, frustrations and anger (Sarma 1996: 97). In her later poetry, Das extended her theme of love beyond the personal level to cover the whole of the earth and the human race. The crisis, violence, sorrows and anxieties that ravage the land are vividly depicted. In her flight of poetic passion during this period, she has been the homeward-bound pilgrim and thus has buried her emotions in the soil of her birth. In her few original English poems she has, by acclimatizing the indigenous tradition to the English language, produced Indian English poetry. With innate lyrical and emotional fervour, her work seems to be a lark’s singing of the poetry of the earth at heaven’s gate. Her poems heighten the glory of the soulscape. Thus, Lakshahira Das, the Sangeet Deepika of Assam, may be called the Skylark of Northeastern India (Das, N. 1998: 29). The many issues of her self-expression form intellectual anguishes that unravel her ideology and mild protest against the everlasting suppression of the feminine class as an eternal subaltern. Her protest aims at the redemption of the female sex from its predicament. She constantly envisions the destitution of, and oppression upon, the female class, and depicts it in an extra-human world: Men are lining up like ants bearing on their shoulders, ravished women and naked forms of pallid children. (Between Births 5)

She reflects on the murder of innocence in a male-dominated world in which masculinity is a symbol of cruelty, selfishness and helplessness. The poet also highlights the complexity of woman by exposing her as “as pitiless as merchants, cruel as the assassin” (Between Births 1). She believes in the equality of the man–woman relationship, as she writes, We are not friends nor foes to each other nor allies nor enemies come, let us put an end to the anguished self-searchings that eat into our selves what should have been what could have been what did not come about ad infinitum (Between Births 2)

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She advocates equal rights and participation by men and women in the social commitments “for planting a golden day for history” (Between Births 2). She depicts life as “partnering in the incidental puppet show” (Between Births 1). She feels that life is a lyrical spring of mellifluity. It is meaningful, full of aspirations and enthusiasm: I have taken life in its own terms With easy embraces and kisses I have taken on my lap as I would a child The wealth of each season Warmth and worries, coldness And innocent pleasure. (Between Births 10)

She is intensely conscious of her status, and is prophetic about some significant changes in “the value of man’s life” (Between Births 12). now, steadily, the whole of me is still but stern the alarm somewhere of a storm, the out-cry of bird’s shot somewhere a thousand voices clamour my aged father, my old mother my brother, my child (Between Births 11)

Her heart throbs with the hope of freedom. She lives in the embrace of her “struggling comrades in the challenges of live desire” (Between Births 14). With all our deceptions and our anguishes our hurts, our anger and our hunger keep burning the flame of courage in its bright light throbs the frequent moment hearts throb with the hope of freedom. (Between Births 14)

At the same time, she is concerned about women’s grief and happiness, hopes and hopelessness: Over the pale forehead of a woman in labour In the eager eyes of beloved During many a sweet “Bohag”

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Chapter Two In the wrinkled cheeks of a grandmother In her eighties It may be that I have been the artist Who has painted that image With all the colours of everyday thoughts With the blood dripping from my heart. (Between Births 49)

Her artist’s aesthetic conscience is in search of a concrete picture of reality. Das presents a contrast between her inner and outer, visionary glances: With eyes closed I saw Some wondrously beautiful flower Of some nameless season, Blossoming in my nerves With eyes opened I saw Particles of some eternal song Falling on the ground Drop by drop. (Between Births 55)

Her poetry encompasses her homeward-bound pilgrimage, her quest for traditional values, “hospitality in ancient homes” and her sense of reverence and self-esteem. Sometimes, it speaks of narrow concerns. It is the boundary of our living. It is like a circle from which we gather potentiality and stability for our life: That Circle, that path .... The well-rounded globe: Broken water – pictures in whirlpool Deeds, Life Insurance, Baby food, Household wars, Beds with wives: – How ridiculous .... Hospitality in ancient homes: We ever gather from them new wealth And laugh in a circle. (Between Births 34)

Doubt, misunderstanding, anxiety, subalternity, self-alienation and feelings of acute suppression are the causes of her anguish. She is constantly destined to reach out to them:

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Straining my arms I reach out to the forest Which grows, like love in splendour My hands moist with tears Touch the infinite darkness Of cerebral anguish Of doubt, and misunderstanding Of a feeling of being let down. (Between Births 28)

Universal filial love, compassion for sufferers and rejection of communal violence are her strong, feminine virtues. She expresses deep despair and concerns over the Nellie massacre in central Assam in 1983, which claimed the lives of thousands of people who had relocated in pre-partition British India. In her mourning, she attacks humanity’s immense senselessness and cruelty: Sleep my son / sleep in silence / No weapon of man can pierce you now / Nor any fire burn / only the blood stains / bear testimony to / Man’s immense senselessness and cruelty (Between Births 30)

She looks beyond our petty concerns, and dreams of a high pedestal of existence based on human values – and of a world of mysticism, spiritualism and lyricism: Food and economics keep our fellows busy: There’s a storm over a cup of tea: Pay scales, prices – Heat up the atmosphere Taking advantage of this – The golden bird is out on its wings – Composing waves of music around it. (Between Births 46)

Finally, Lakshahira Das, the disillusioned romantic, the profound visionary, unveils her dreamingly musing soul-scape in the environment: In a lonesome dream world of an unknown mind is the sweet murmur of the mute language of my heart’s voiceless prayer: My deathless heart, bodiless and unshackled Echoes sleepless through the dreaming hours

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Chapter Two Of night, fragrant with the buds of spring. My love, smiling in a thousand hues. My muse, singing in a thousand tongues My tears, flowing in a thousand streams Illumine the earth in a thousand faced glory And stir the endless sky. (Between Births 68)

The poet’s persona dreams of an ideal, peaceful world. She dreams of emancipation, equality and spiritual awareness. Her fine lyric sensibility has been exposed, telling us about her concept of “time” in the poem entitled “The Eternal”: I have taken in my hands A broken piece of time glittering like glass Wherein is woven the threads of all dreams I am prepared this time for enormous nights. (Between Births 31)

Against the decency of traditional social life, the deception of modern life spreads a network of illusion. Das’s Indianness and lyric sensibility have been depicted very lucidly in a poem entitled “The lingering light”: From some hidden source the note of the magic flute fills the air leaving the petals of poesy amidst crushed Rajanigandhas (Between Births 28)

Though the poet has contributed only one collection to the corpus of Indian English poetry, yet her romantic mooring has been made clear in her work – and her later poetry expresses her consciousness of contemporary reality in her surroundings. Dayananda Pathak’s Coral Island (1998) is introduced by Amaresh Datta. About his craft, Datta writes in 1980, “Shri Pathak is a serious and sensitive young man, fully alive to the world about him. What he has seen has made him, more often than not, sad and shaken to the core and like many conscientious young men of his generation he seems to have been disillusioned by the spectacle presented by the modern city life in its various ramifications. But he is in search of something beyond the noise and glitter of this phenomenal world” (Foreword). C. Paul Verghese, introducing the poetry of Pathak, speaks of the flexibility and richness of

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the English language and its historicity, making it an integral part of the cultural and linguistic life of the people of India, mainly as a medium of creative expression. Pathak’s poetry exposes his emotions and experiences; his themes concern the world, life, love, loneliness and the pain of existence. His style and art of versification show his originality of expression and imagery (Introduction iii). As a poet of Assam writing in English, Pathak has not tried to expose the ethos and contemporary situations of Assam which might have made his poetry reveal the authenticity of the Assamese contribution to Indian English poetry. As an Assamese writer, he also contributes to the body of Indian writing in English in a novel way, and, in the context of postmodern Indian writing, this presents a new mode. As in the family poems of Ramanujan and Kamala Das, Pathak also lingers on his nostalgia. About his art and themes, he writes, My grand-father bought me a sword and a pen to play with Besides, I have my own words, the weapon to fight with and to redesign the rickety globe my father bought me in my birth day years past. (Coral Island 14)

His attitude to, and concept of, the modern world in which he lives is made clear in his poems. The agony, anxieties and disturbances in his surroundings have been voiced in his poem entitled “Feed”: Plateful of injustice / my daily feed, / I munch / and digest. / There is none better / in the market complex/ around me / for a fresh relish / cupful of ignominy / my daily drink / I live on them and thrive. (Coral Island 33)

His anthologies, The Golden Deer (2007) and Between Fire and Snow (2010), contain several momentary impressions that add to his colourful imagination. This imagination depicts his views on worldly realities, and the consequent melancholy that stems from his deep reflection on the human conditions and man’s eternal subalternity. The poems in The Golden Deer (2007) are marked by their prominent nuances. Words and silence are the staple ingredients of poetry, and the poet’s persona feels that

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Chapter Two When words fail / Silence speaks / as the flower unfolds itself / With a smile in her petals red / As leaves peep / after autumnal tour / As the sky grins / Though clouds thick / Silence gives them voice / loud and proud (The Golden Deer 3)

In his poems “Hajo Revisited’ and “City of Colour”, history and myths have been blended into contemporary realities. In the former, the persona forces mythical sites to pronounce their realities amidst the current phantasmagoria of futility: I have seen serpentine/ Passage of history, / Its ups and downs / Tears and tribulations / torn and tattered by time / Lord Vishnu resides in me (“Hajo Revisited” 10)

Guwahati city from ancient to current times, amidst all its mythical and historical significance: The ancient Pragjyotishpura / A city of colour / a hub of despair / we spin our dreams ... The great river / Son of the creator sage ... Rise and fall of dynasties / Palaces built on our shattered hopes / Here nights are horrible... We spin our dreams / on the burial ground (“City of Colour” 39–42)

The poems in the anthology Between Fire and Snow (2010) contain many ironies. The twenty-nine works in the collection present, in fact, a mosaic of ironies, depicting a fantastic sea of thoughts surrounding present-day human maladies: In your own garden / All of them are yours now / Yours ever, for ever / You do forget the gem / That excels... You give and forgive / Those who get and forget / You trot for another love / For your piece of bread (Between Fire and Snow 50)

Dayananda Pathak thus uses simple vocabulary, and his images are also comprehensive and thought-provoking. Umakanta Sarma’s Thawing Out (1998) contains ten poems. A prolific writer in Assamese, Sarma was awarded the Assam Valley Literary Award by the Magor Foundation Trust in 1997. A poet of the “old school”, his poems contain the passions of his youth and his use of language seems Aurobindo-like. He is mystic, passionate and grave in disposition. The prologue of the book expresses his depth and themes: “With an agonising

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turbulence / deep inside / I had a fantasy / as though I glimpsed a universe / in its splendour, pillage and wrath” (Thawing Out 9). He also uses Indian myths, and concerns himself with worldly struggles: Long long ago / how long / none can tell, / a silk-cotton tree died. / Uprooted by the storm! / Poisoned by cruelty! / Perished on its own! / A Rama / scanning the sea / A Vasco De Gama / on turbulent waves / A hermit / At Gangotry / bathing in cosmic rays. (“A life floats”, Thawing Out 17)

Sarma’s contribution to Indian English poetry from Assam is important. Even this single collection sufficiently reflects his poetic sensibilities. Bhupati Das is the finest among the poets of Assam writing in English. His first collection, May I (1998), was a unique contribution to Indian English poetry. Writing his introduction to the book in verse, he exposes his romantic and mystic concept of existence as follows: May I / intrude into the / privacy of your heart and soul with a few thoughts and feelings / of mine wrapped affectionately / in words / that you may or may not like / but the emotions are honest and frank / may be some would resonate / with your inner thoughts / quietly tucked away / somewhere in the inner recesses while getting on with life and living / how about / revisiting / those feelings / here. (May I n. pag.)

A fine romantic poet of Northeast India, Das is meticulous in his exploration of worldly reality. His romantic mooring is very evocative and mystic. The following lines show the serene thoughts of the poet: the sky was an honest blue / the stars were bright and the sea was a dancing dream / with the waves echoing / the joys of an expectant night / a poignant moment / in a cascading embrace / with the love waves (May I n. pag.)

A deep sense of frustration pervades his poetry. The despair in his heart after the demise of the beloved has been depicted in his lines. His shortest poem, “My Prison”, exposes his deep mystic sense: “She died / with it / my world / died / and / it stopped living.” The journey of life is very clearly expressed in his words: the lonely road / I walk it / Alone / counting the dead leaves / falling / vibrations / of my thought / ripple thro’ them / and / make the dead

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Chapter Two leaves / alive. / Are you my love / counting your steps / on some other path / some other time / thinking about / you and me. (“My Prison” n.pag.)

The poet is a lyrical wordsmith. His telefilm “Call of the Valley”, based on his poems, was selected as part of India’s entry to the 23rd Japan Festival for Short Films in 1996. In Life and Beyond Life (2004), Das furthers his quest for lyrical mellifluity. The eternal revolution in the human, celestial and spiritual worlds finds voice in the lucid words of the poet: at the lost horizon / the moon was dying / in the arms of the elusive god / the blood-red sun / came out afresh / ambushing the night / and the pregnant dream / undelivered / She cried out / God / why are you silent. (Life and Beyond Life n. pag.)

Amidst his mystery-filled surreal melody, Das was consciously troubled at the events of September 11, 2001 in New York – a manifestation of worldterror. He remains far above narrow, communal concerns, and, as such, is mourning a great tragedy: no matter / whether you’re / a moslem, a hindu or a Christian / .... / cry / cry my conscience / for the death of sanity / for the remaining world of zombies / life itself is taken for ransom. (Life and Beyond Life n. pag.)

Bhupati Das’s contribution to Indian English writing is highly praiseworthy. He is at once a romantic, a realist and a surrealist. Rupanjali Baruah’s All Things Passing & Other Poems (2005) is her maiden attempt at writing poetry in English. Many momentary impressions find a place in this collection. Her definitive poem, “The beginning of poetry”, explains how there is no season or exact time for writing poetry. On the other hand, “poetry has its beginnings / in some other surrounding / when emotions are scattered / here and there / like leaves on a dry autumn field” (24). She says, Poetry begins When words are weighed On palate of upper lip Travel through a psychedelic osmosis When thoughts creep in between Moments of sleep and waking. (Baruah, All Things Passing & Other Poems 24)

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About her craft of writing, she says again, “I cry with diligence / That is one thing I do with passion best / And the rest is a passable waste” (25). Baruah’s is a new voice, and it has a bright future in which to grow and compose many mellifluous forms of verse. Though only a few collections of English verse by Assamese writers have thus far been published, a consciousness has already arisen among the authors to write in English – exploring ethnic aesthetics and realities, and the contemporary phenomena influencing people’s mind-sets. Robin S. Ngangom (1959–), a Meitei from Manipur, is the most representative contemporary Indian English poet of Northeast India. In 1988, the Writers Workshop published Ngangom’s first collection of poems, Words and the Silence. His second collection, Time’s Crossroads (1994), was published by Orient Longman. Since then, Ngangom has been bringing out his poems sporadically in the leading journals of India and abroad. He is probably the foremost poet from Northeast India to be published abroad. His third collection of poetry, entitled The Desire of Roots (2006), was published by the Chandrabhaga Society, Cuttack. The verses published in his Words and the Silence were written between 1984 and 1988. Ngangom believes in “the poetry of feeling which can be shared, as opposed to mere cerebral poetry” (Words and the Silence 4). In 1994, he wrote about his own poems, “Good poetry develops its own feet. The best poems I have read never failed to please, surprise or haunt me. I cannot say that these poems of mine have evoked a similar response within me .... I have been suffering from an extreme poverty of experience and, in order to keep the creative pulse in me going, I have become an incurable filcher” (Time’s Crossroads vii). With clean and fresh images, Ngangom “paints elegiac vignettes of scenes and locales seldom touched upon in Indian poetry, including [those of] Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Imphal and the hills and rivers of the Northeast. He brings alive the little-known legends and myths of this picturesque region, in poems that range from the quietly contemplative to the violently angry” (Time’s Crossroads). The search for roots or quest for identity, introduced into Indian English poetry by Toru Dutt, proliferated in new poetry after 1960. But in Northeast India, it comes to fruition with the work of Robin Ngangom or Easterine Kire. In his poetry, Ngangom confines himself to the world of the myths and legends of Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram. He is greatly concerned about the problems of insurgency in Manipur. In many of his poems, he seems to be a spokesman for the griefs of Imphal. Conscious of his inability to do something worthwhile, he sings out:

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Chapter Two Day after day I’ve done nothing worthwhile Only I’ve chosen to tread the path of a versifier my heart still unknown by many (Words and the Silence 9)

The memory of boyhood days pains him when he hears about problems related to the insurgency. He feels nostalgic for those days, and the sometimes bloodthirsty history of his motherland: How we hunted small game in the rice fields and covered every lane of Imphal on bicycles, making passes at almost every girl! I hear a wicked war is now waged on our soil and gory bodies dragged unceremoniously through our rice-fields. The newly rich are ruling our homes. I hear that freedom comes there, only if escorted by armed men (Words and the Silence 10–11)

The myths of Manipur, freedom fighters of World War II, hills, valleys, rivers, rice fields, tribal ways of life, love, women, and Manipuri and Khasi legends recur in the poems of Words and the Silence. The Khasis call their hills the “Land of Seven Huts”. In his poem entitled “From the Land of the Seven Huts”, Ngangom sounds an ecological warning; prophesying about future days, he writes, We kill more than a hundred trees every month in our region of hills outstretched. Will we not once more sit back in smoke laden long houses sling the birds of technological time and not be ashamed of our tribal ways? (Words and the Silence 19)

About modern life in Manipur, and everywhere, Ngangom writes with an Eliot-like, eco-ethical phrasing: Our necks and hands shake with perverse lust we respect with avarice only the richest new and a pot-belly and a manipulating wife

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are our status symbols (Words and the Silence 20)

The hills of Manipur and Meghalaya haunt him like a passion and he celebrates their ecological glory, blending the traditional pattern of life with contemporary modes of transition: Solitary light on eastern hills, tender rivulet, evening bells, ... Hills with spires of churches hills with rice-fields for siblings hills with genial steps where earth’s tribes intercourse (Words and the Silence 32)

Ngangom’s second verse collection, Time’s Crossroads, is divided into two parts: “Poems of Love and Despair” and “Poems of Time and Tide”. In this anthology, his themes stretch from the local to the international. Poems like “Lament for Russia” and “Myanmar’s Story” express his sociopolitical concerns over events in the international sphere. Besides his old concerns for the hills, landscape, myths and legends of Northeast India, he gives multiple momentary impressions such as “Goan Sketch”, changes in Russian politics and the troubled story of Myanmar. He has also composed prose-poems. The Khasi folk story of star-crossed lovers – that of an orphaned youth conducting an illicit affair with the King, Syiem’s, wife – is recounted in the poem “Spring at Ri Bhoi”: Because life falls like petals and death comes when least expected none remembers the passing of Manik Raitong and how he planted his bamboo flute for earth to play music in spring. (Time’s Crossroads 32)

In the poem “Lament for Russia”, Ngangom observes the sociopolitical and economic changes, and degeneration of literary sensibilities and output, in that bedevilled country:

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Chapter Two Today democracy’s gospel has been heard in Russia’s churches. The West breaks out into beatific smiles. But how terrible that Russia will no more offer great art, will write great poetry which will harass the conscience of the earth. (“Lament for Russia”, Time’s Crossroads 53)

His memory of a visit to Goa moves him, and reminds him of his far-flung geographical location: Amidst palm fronds the sea will be kissed by stars tonight. And we’ve come from faraway hills to carry the sounds of the sea with us (“Lament for Russia”, Time’s Crossroads 67)

His concerns for the changes occurring in Myanmar upset him, and he expresses his love for that land and his nostalgic memories of the past. The moral aspects of Myanmar’s ecological and political changes depress him in particular: I’m telling you the story of Myanmar and its brave daughters deserted by the big brothers of the West .... listen, my love, to Burma’s story, once a pearl of the East, now the base metal of democracy (“Myanmar’s Story”, Time’s Crossroads 72)

The problems of self and surrounding have been voiced in “Poem in Prose”: I speak for myself alone and my voices remain mine what can I tell those young men and women with rapt faces? Can I bequeath a handful of tranquil earth or a fragment of soil untouched by despair? (“Poem in Prose”, Time’s Crossroads 69)

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His recent poems highlight his humanist concerns and eco-humanist aspirations. He yearns for the need for patriotism in order to heal suffering humanity. But, unfortunately, patriotism has been distorted: Patriotism is the need of the hour. Patriotism is preaching secession and mourning our merger with a nation, patriotism is honouring martyrs who died in confusion, patriotism is declaring we should preserve native customs traditions, our literature and performing arts, and inflicting them on hapless peoples, patriotism is admiring the youth who fondles grenades, patriotism is proclaiming all men as brothers and secretly depriving my brother, patriotism is playing the music of guns to the child in the womb. (The Desire of Roots 69)

Ngangom’s poetry abounds in the maladies of humanity in the contemporary era. He is obsessed with the social, moral and ecological miseries suffered by the people who surround him. He chronicles these miseries in his poetry and depicts the wasteland surrounding him and his compatriots. He acknowledges the influence of Jayanta Mahapatra on his themes and techniques. In recent years, however, his poems have been growing independent of any influence. He increasingly seems to be becoming his own, legitimate voice. R. K. Madhubir (1942–2004) of Manipur uses common Hindu Indian and Christian fables in his poetry, which entails a comic vision of the situations and surroundings of modern life. He is constantly worried for Manipur, but the myths, legends, history and folk-faith of the land have not been reflected enough in his works. Specific episodes from mythologies have been applied in his poetry, but without contextual reference. His juxtaposition of Christian and Hindu stories with reference to the loss of ecological serenity reveals an agnostic view of life – but with a deep sense of responsibility: Look in the dark You’ll see Christ daringly running Like a fugitive from enemy’s camp

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Chapter Two To save himself from crucifixion And Krishna you’ll find lying dead As pauper on railway platform covered with numerous flies Yes, you’ll see If you’re an agnost. (The Timebomb and Other Poems 1)

The excessive materialism of modern life has shattered the delicate serenity and grace of nature, and the holiness of the gods and religious faith and deeds has been devastated. As a result, in Madhubir’s vision lies the endless horizon of a shattered world in which the glorious trend of soul-searching has suffered a gross setback: I look in the dark And see A ruined big city Not a single soul at all Thousand plastered pieces of walls I see Falling down from the skyscrapers which reached the blue yesterday I see them falling down dusty. (The Timebomb and Other Poems 2)

His dreams are filled with comic visions in which both myths and history are upturned. He sees the fulfillment of unfulfilled desires in these dreams, in which he envisions, for instance, Jesus emerging from his grave and killing King Herod with an arrow while everybody praises Jesus. In others, he witnesses Kalidas killing Dusyanta and bringing Shakuntala to his old hut, while Kanva dances with joy and laughter; Siddhartha suddenly waking from meditation and scurrying breathlessly towards Kapilabastu while Krishna comes to the kingdom of Kamsa, who embraces him in his warm bosom; Shah Jahan destroying the Taj Mahal and cursing Mumtaz; Alexander the Great arriving in Delhi as an ambassador; Hitler tending to the welfare of Jews; and the Madonna, sitting at the foot of an elm tree with her child on her lap and anxiously waiting for the shepherds, bursting into tears throughout the night (The Timebomb and Other Poems 3–4). Madhubir remembers heroes and events of global history – particularly of the great wars that caused havoc to world civilizations. Ruminating on the past, he envisions the birth or incarnation of a new civilization, wherein we will have new experiences and a new “time”. He welcomes wars and dictators like Hitler and Napoleon, and reveals his contentment at

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their devastations in the sense that these will bring an epoch-making change in the mind-set and habits of mankind. As such, he writes, At the great cities of our desires And torpedoes strike the ships of our selfish cargoes And we are burnt To be reborn (The Timebomb and Other Poems 13)

In every religion, the Almighty God is the Saviour. At the time of the obliteration of the world (in Sanskrit, Pralaya), the deluge, it is the Saviour who rescues the people. Finding ecological devastation in his surroundings, the poet is so much obsessed that he prays to the saviours of various religions and faiths to protect him from the deluge. He finds his existence useless in the context of impending ecological disaster and the pervasive perversion of all spheres of life: In my blood there is water in my breath there is air and in my diet there is protein but everything now useless will no one save me now either Krishna or Jesus or Allah or Shidaba, any one of you be kind and save me from the deluge save me kindly from the deluge. (The Timebomb and Other Poems 14)

He enumerates the contemporary myths that aggravate his obsessions, and thus expresses his sympathy and love for the serenity and pomp of nature and the traditional culture of his land and race: Everybody’s heart tugging by nuclear holocaust everybody’s hair raising by starwar everything now done by computers moving the roads now instead of engines in this age you’re picking sparrow-dung as coins encroaching like Pahom for a few more steps. (The Timebomb and Other Poems 15)

Madhubir uses the myths of Ravana, Sita and the like in the context of abusing the pitiless hunter who kills birds and animals in the forests on a large scale. He advises him to kill the tiger that kills the innocent animals

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rather than hunt down all the deer in the forest, like the Nazis’ killing of innocent men and women: If dogs, hens, ducks and pigeons from yours the tiger had fetched if you think him to catch if you want him to punish Come as transformed Ravana into a golden deer Come in the heart of the forest take him away as Sita from Panchabati to the palace of Lanka take him away I do not worry. (The Timebomb and Other Poems 18)

To give a picture of the transactions of modern life, Madhubir presents the mythic concept of time and life’s transactions by certain reversals of characters and actions. He calls the modern times Balliyuga (i.e., the age of exploitation and mischief, where there is no difference between male and female in their appearances, outlook, customs and behaviours). He has traced the human behaviour of past ages by a deliberate displacement of time and character in order to evoke a sense of satire and fun. As a moralist, he is critical of human behaviour at various points in time: Rama was born in Satyayuga faithful were the people that time Bharata was born in Tretayuga disciplinary ideals were there properly Krishna was born in Dwaparyuga since then the universe had started flattering Bhima was born in Kaliyuga the yuga of might is right and today it is balliyuga fathers and sons, brothers and sisters relatives and friends no one knows no one cares. (The Timebomb and Other Poems 22–23)

These lines contain certain deliberate changes in mythic time – such as the fact that, whereas both Rama and Bharat belonged to Tretayuga, and Krishna and Bhima belonged to Dwaparyuga, he has shown Rama and Bhima as belonging to Satyayuga and Kaliyuga respectively. The poet has made these changes in order to characterize time in accordance with

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human behaviour. He also depicts the contemporary scene in Indian politics, in which deceitful political rogues are exploiting the innocent people of the land: amidst chanting of the names of Mahatma and Panditji by numerous political rogues Chanting and looting many innocent people. (The Timebomb and Other Poems 23)

He is reminded of the glories of his Meitei race in Manipur, and feels pain due to changes in the land: but how ridiculous is my Meitrabak everything everywhere is funny looking towards the natural phenomena no Meitei fruits growing in Meitrabak the sound of oothum couldn’t be heard again the lovely folksongs of Meiteichanu how is it I like to hear I’ve never heard in life when asked to aged ones. (The Timebomb and Other Poems 25)

Madhubir’s vision is recurrently obsessed with the inversion of myths; this is, in fact, his typical method for exploring realities in poetry. He sees in man an old vulture, for whose nature there will be inversions in the course of time: The eastern breeze will stop now The western sea will sink to the bottom And Nataraj will stop now dancing The angels will not come to you now From Heaven to give message from God. (The Timebomb and Other Poems 43)

The contemporary desertification of sweet, healthy ecology and our glorious natural surroundings is reflected in his poem A Deserted Temple, in which he finds dead idols of many gods or incarnations – including Ratnakar (Valmiki), Radha, Krishna, Nityananda and Jagannath – lying smeared with mud on the dirty and dusty floor of a temple (The Timebomb and Other Poems 54–55).

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In the era of biodiversity depletion, human relationships have also been shattered – and all human beings have become the mythical Pandavas and Kauravas in the bosom of nature (The Shadow of Darkness 2). Madhubir addresses Almighty God as the Saviour, and compares him with the pole star. Drawing an instance from the history of the defeat of King Ashoka in the Kalinga War, he addresses his saviour, “but my dear maker, by whom you’ve been defeated?” (The Shadow of Darkness 33). He is disheartened at God’s behaving like a misanthrope, living as He does far from human society and from all human beings (The Shadow of Darkness 33). He employs Greek myths in his imaginary sojourn in that glorious ancient world. He does not know where to end the journey of his life. He sings: Floating so long on such a wide ocean I’ve gone to Greece and met Phidias visited the Parthenon, visited Olympian Zeus offered flowers to Anthena and Zeus fell in love with sweet Aphrodite talked of valour with Antheno the matchless drank fine wine with Dionysus And today here I’m floating on the beautiful transparent breast of Poseidon floating so long on such a wide ocean. (The Shadow of Darkness 43)

A strong sense of satire, aimed at the various modes of modern life, forms an undercurrent in Madhubir’s poetry. He makes direct reference to mythic characters only to provide a generalized notion of them. The ideals of Marx, Lenin and Gandhi have served as “myths” for him. Once upon a time, their ideals brought about revolutionary changes in society. But in the postmodern era, their ideals have become outdated and have lost their significance. Now we have turned gypsies, crying for a sweet home. So the poet questions the locus standi of the Marxism, socialism and Gandhism (Ahimsa) of the past, and writes, What Karl Marx said for economic freedom? What Lenin did for socialism? And what Gandhi fought for liberty? Ought we to adore them? Who cares for the Das Kapital? Who cares for the Utopia? And who cares for the Truth (The Shadow of Darkness 69)

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He sees turmoil everywhere in the inner and outer worlds. The myths have been upset in the world’s turmoil. Madhubir envisions devastating upheavals everywhere in the world. Lord Buddha appearing in the poet’s dream, destroying the Lumbini garden and breaking down the monasteries; Jesus sitting among rogues; and Krishna scurrying with smugglers (The Shadow of Darkness 77) – these scenarios are among the prophetic visions of the poet as to troubletorn present-day society, in which the denizens of this world are engaged in destroying their own habitats and resorting to perverse ways of life such as smuggling, insurgency, robbing and killing. In his poem, Madhubir has used some myths with new interpretations in order to make fun. His sense of satire is remarkable here: “Rama married Sita/ Ravana attacked Rama / Smiled Sati Sita” (The Shadow of Darkness 85). “Buddha’s my Lord / worshipped him always but / He never knows me” (The Shadow of Darkness 88). Madhubir has not delved deeply into these racial myths, memories or history. Rather, he is frivolous in manipulating myths to pierce through to the inner recesses of life and culture, and explore the existential possibilities of his times. The contemporary burning problems of his motherland have not been fully expounded by the use of Manipuri myths. The first poet from Nagaland to write in English was prominent fiction and children’s author Easterine Kire (Iralu) (1959–). She taught English at North Eastern Hill University, Nagaland Campus and at Nagaland University (both in Kohima), and is at present working in Norway. Kire published her first collection of poetry in 1982, when she was twentythree. She mingles her vision of the past with current realities and sincerely reflects the erosion of the environment in her native land. She envisions the decadence of time, and is nostalgic for the glorious heritage that she inherits. The myth of the Naga Utopia (Kelhoukevira) haunts her, and makes her passionate for the glorious world of the past. She writes of Keviselie, her protagonist, Keviselie speaks of a time when her hills were untamed her soil young and virgin and her warriors worthy the earth had felt good and full and rich and kind to his touch. Her daughters were seven, with the mountain air in their breaths

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Chapter Two and hair the colour of soft summer nights every evening they would return Their baskets overflowing with the yield of the land then they would gather round and their songs filled all the earth. (“Genesis” 1/ Nongkynrih and Ngangom 219)

In this work, the poet makes “Plague” a personified malady that is responsible for the ecological devastation that has swept over her glorious land. The patriot in Kire mourns aloud to see her eternally heroic clan turn cold and cowardly: The night of the flame flower, all desire turns Alien around me; and I stand unrequited By waters that no longer move to my name. ... My golden people are grown cold They wound my lips, my hands, my eyes They bleed my poems In the quiet of the afternoon And blind my songs On silent, starless nights, Cry, cry my beloved hills And let me feel no more. (Kelhoukevira 9)

She finds splendor in the virgin land and ecology in the conscience of her iconic hero, Keviselie, and glorifies him: The spirit of the hills have found An answering spirit in thee Thy nature noble, mirrors Their rich heritage And their songs of resistance Echoes in thy pilgrim soul; ... It is thee, Keviselie, it is thee. (Kelhoukevira 6)

Ecological depletion is occurring so rapidly in Nagaland that the persona in the poem feels the need to record an imprint of it. She speaks to her son about this, drawing and painting a glorious vision to at least preserve a picture through which to view and memorize the glorious ecology:

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Before you are born / into an ever changing world / before the green pines / Fall prey to the woodcutter’s axe / and stumps stand, gory / remains / of once beautiful trees; / before the gloriously / setting sun / is veiled in city smog / and all I have viewed / tonight / fade into memories irrevocable / before the changing world / churns itself into ashes / let me imprint (The Wind-hover Collection 111)

Kire also writes on romantic and religious themes. She is a patriot, passionate about the glorious heritage of her motherland, and is very critical of its patriarchal dominance and female suffering. Another prolific Naga poet, Temsula Ao, in her Songs from Here and There (2003) explores the multiethnic culture of her region and the current ecological imbalances and waste prevailing everywhere, which have made the denizens of Nagaland nostalgic for the glorious ecological paradise of their state. She senses how the elements of the natural world protest against humanity’s insensibility, and this shows her sympathetic responses to nature. A monolith, which now stands at a village gate or may have been moved somewhere else, proclaims its dissatisfaction and ignominy. In its prayer, it urges other elements of nature not to tell its beloved about its outcast state: O you elements When you pass by the forest And my beloved queries Just tell her I have gone to my glory But please, please, never Tell her the story Of my ignominy (Songs from Here and There 5)

Ao is a social chronicler and eco-humanist. Women’s suffering, in Nagaland and elsewhere, has troubled her greatly. Hence, she never neglects to reveal women’s responsibility and sincerity in spite of their suffering: She steps nimbly over huddled figures And puts rice into boiling water In careful measures The hut is soon filled with the aroma Of wood smoke and cooking rice (Songs from Here and There 13)

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Her latest collection of poems, entitled Songs from the Other Life (2007), shows her to be another homeward-bound pilgrim. The legends of various clans of the Naga tribes – and, in particular, many of her own Ao-Naga tribe’s myths – are explored in her poems. Through these works, she seeks to explore the identity of her tribe. Many mythical tales express the identity of the Nagas as a ferociously chivalric tribe who are honest and truthful in their attitudes to all. These depict, among other things, the loss of the Ao-Naga tribal script; the “Tiger soul”; the “Soul-bird”; the figure of the boatman in the river, between the land of the living and the land of the dead; the Tiger man/woman; the Sangtam legend of Mamola; and legends of headhunting. The Naga oral tradition is very powerful; their whole system of social, historical, religious and ethical knowledge has been retained in the memory of the people through it. This is because, the story goes, the Naga originally had a script inscribed on a hide and hung on a wall for all to see and learn. Once, a dog pulled it down and ate it up. Since then, their whole system of knowledge has remained alive in the oral tradition. Ao refers to this myth in her poem “The Old Story Teller”: So when memory fails and words falter I am overcome by a bestial craving To wench the thieving guts Out of that Original Dog And consign all my stories To the script in his ancient entrails. (Songs from the Other Life 13)

Temsula Ao’s mystic sensibility has been expressed in some of her poems. Most of them seem to be the intellectual exegesis of our situations and conditions. Lyricism, verbal melody, economy of expression and mellifluous language render her poetry very enjoyable. Her work contains excellent expressions of the stark realities of life. Our lone poet from Sikkim – who writes in English and Nepali, and translates from Nepali – Rajendra Bhandari (1954–), makes landscape a haven for his poetry. Stars, streams, flowers, trees and creatures of the surrounding natural world are the means of exploration of his emotions and feelings: The naked sky is the witness. Sultry sun is the witness. These words, I haven’t coughed out from nowhere. ….

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I haven’t materialised these lines by the sleight of my hand. Reclaiming them from sliding land I’ve lifted them from the forests, the lowlands, the grainfields, the cliffs (“Four Poems” 19 / “Seven Poems” 72)

He is sympathetic to the poor and downtrodden. Depicting the poverty of a girl and her parents, he consoles himself with the step taken up by the girl: In the dark corner of the street, the girl has opened a shop going hungry for many days At last she has learnt a trade, Trembling from the death-bed her father spat at the sky once Shedding many a tear the mother hid her face in her two palms (“Two Poems” 23)

The poet’s persona reacts to loneliness during the rains and a hailstorm, when nature turns violent, isolating the man in shivering and solitude: Hostile is this loneliness to me. The past and present have grabbed me. History has assaulted me brutally, my dear! Wounded all through the body, I’m here (“Four Poems” 21)

The poet, who finds that “[i]n the midst of chaos, chaos itself sits quiet” (“Seven Poems” 71), dissects the reality of his surroundings in order to trace the mystery in our existence: What could be more explosive: The city’s lonely man Or the bomber’s lonely briefcase abandoned at some junction? Memory’s tree, lush branches laden with fruits where are the roots? (“Seven Poems” 75)

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Bhandari’s momentary impressions provide powerful stances for exploring the surreal. In “An Unpoetic Afternoon” – which narrates the persona’s mood during the said afternoon, when sorrow, monotony and laziness overpower his body and mind – we discover a powerful poetry: Hurriedly I peep inside the mirror and find that, / my prehistoric face still nourishes my primeval dreams, / I feel elated / that my face still carries some archaeological value. / I scream– / O come, excavate here, inside the wrinkles of my face / And you will find / that statue of a poem / ditched thousands of years ago. (“Seven Poems” 70)

The extraordinary enshrined in matters that we consider ordinary has been a mysterious area of human concern from time immemorial. Bhandari, in his quest for that extraordinary, enumerates the “ordinary” in worlds personal and impersonal: Suddenly as he walked he remembered his own face Ordinary eyes. Ordinary build Ordinary face. That face vanished again/into an ordinary crowd. …. Ordinary river made of ordinary streams Ordinary sea made of ordinary rivers. Ordinary wave of an Ordinary sea that could wash a village away. An ordinary sea? Ordinary wave? (“Seven Poems” 69)

Rajendra Bhandari’s work is still growing in concepts and techniques. His poems reveal his bond with the place and ethnic group to which he belongs. The tribal ethos of Tripura is best expressed in the poetry of Bhaskar Roy Barman (1950–), particularly when he reflects the cultish designs of that tiny state (N. Das 2000: 2). Images of rivers, streams, mountains, trees, temples, priests, crows, stones and other natural forms recur in many of his poems. Through the image of the river, Barman symbolically expresses the arduous life of the tribes and their happy singing in the midst of all hardships:

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The river knows not how it has come to be called a river, Know though it does where it was born, Since its birth on the mountain top It has been cascading down the mountain Through groups of stones Spread out down the path While treading its way it sings forth into existence (The Fragrance 1)

The sorrow-stricken rural life, the existence of tribes who have been driven away from the plains of Tripura by the influx of Bengali refugees from Bangladesh, the tribal rites and practices, the harvest activities and the surrounding environment find recurring expression in his poetry: I resumed wending my way towards the village, On my ears impinged the sounds That emanate from beating of tomtoms Which generally accompanies a folkdance Danced round heaps of crop gathered on a courtyard. I remembered it was the time farmers brought crops home. (The Fragrance 35)

In his simple poems, Barman finds the death of his friend and a theft in a temple equally mysterious. Once a friend, hinting at a scurrying hare-like animal, told the poet that the creature might have been killed by somebody who would have eaten its flesh. But mysteriously, the next day, the friend died in a road accident (Barman n.d.: 4). In a poem, “The Temple Forlorn”, the gorgeously ornamented deity is stolen away by “the thieves from city” (Barman n.d.: 9). The temple priest went mad in his misery after the theft. Then, in his mysterious faith, he reset a mud lump in the shrine and has been leading a poor life: He deified the mud-lump through his devotion He ate breadcrumbs the crow carried down on its beak and threw down to the priest, The crow was friends with the priest and the stream. (The Fragrance 9)

This work exposes the sorrow-stricken life of the tribes of Tripura who have been driven away from the plains by the terrorist activities of Bangladeshi refugees, and have turned terrorist themselves in order to

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reestablish their right over the soil of their native land. In this poem also, the image of the stream occurs. The temple, after being deprived of its deity, is described as standing forlorn and dilapidated on the bend of a flowing stream. The writer has not only tried to express the various aspects of the tribal ethos in his poetry. All the situations commented upon in Barman’s poetry relate to the practices or traditions of Tripura, where the non-tribal refugees of Bangladesh now dominate society. Life in Tripura is currently affected by terrorism, theft, instability and all manner of antisocial activity. Barman, as a passive observer, is greatly concerned about this situation. In some of his works, even the persona (the narrator-poet) adopts tribal practices: the activities of the tribes, which bring hope and aspiration to their minds. The bards of Northeast India have thus culled many myths and mysteries from various sources, and have spun several webs. In these webs of mystery lies the identity of the Northeast’s worlds of esoteric mysticism. Many of these poets are in search of their legitimate voices. In their future poetry, their voices are expected to be more profound, visionary and refined than hitherto. The bards of India’s Northeast are expected to explore the myths and mysteries of their region ever more profoundly in the years to come.

Works Cited Ao, Temsula. Songs from Here and There. Shillong: NEHU, 2003. Print. —. Songs from the Other Life. Pune: Grasswork Books, 2007. Print. Barman, Bhaskar Roy. The Fragrance (MS). Agartala, n.d. Barua, B. K. History of Assamese Literature. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1978. Print. Baruah, Rupanjali. All Things Passing. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 2005. Print. Bhandari, Rajendra. “Two Poems”, Indian Literature 152 (November– December 1992): 23–24. Ed. K. Satchidanandan. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Print. —. “Four Poems”, Indian Literature 197 (May–June 2000): 19–22. Ed. H. S. Shiva Prakash. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Print. —. “Seven Poems”, Chandrabhaga 8 (2003): 69–75. Ed. Jayanta Mahapatra. Cuttack: Chandrabhaga Society. Print. Bhattacharya, Hiren. Ancient Gongs. Tr. Pradip Acharya. Guwahati: Beaver Books, 1985. Print.

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Dai, Mamang. “Two Poems”, Chandrabhaga 1 (2000): 3–6. Ed. Jayanta Mahapatra. Cuttack: Chandrabhaga Society. Print. —. “Four Poems”, Indian Literature 197 (May–June 2000): 62–66. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Print. —. “With the Confidence of Things Impermanent”, Dialogue 6 (2001): 154–56. Ed. SrutimalaDuara. Guwahati: NEIFES. Print. —. River Poems. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 2004. Print. Das, Bhupati. May I. Guwahati: Sabinay, 1998. Print. —. Life and Beyond Life. Guwahati: Katha Publications, 2004. Print. Das, Nigamananda. “Indian English Poetry from North East India”, Proceedings of North East India Forum for English Studies (NEIFES), Vol. 3, 1998. Tezu Conference. 21–31. Print. —. “Tribal Ethos in the Poetry of North-Eastern India: Poetry from Tripura” (MS), Proceedings of Seminar. Academic Staff College, Banaras Hindu University, 2000. 01–14. —. Mosaic of Redemption. Cuttack: M. G. Publications, 2004. Print. —. “The Idea of Ecotopia and Ecocracy in Precolonial Indian Literature: A Study of Literatures from Southeastern to Northeastern India”, paper presented at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 2009. 1–30. Dev Goswami, Keshabananda. Life and Teachings of Mahapurush Sankardeva. Patiala: Punjab University, 1982. Print. Guha, A. S. “Poetry and the English Writing Scene”, in Trends in Social Sciences and Humanities in North East India. Eds. J. P. Singh, et al. New Delhi: Regency Publications, 2000. 117–25. Print. Hatibaruah, Kathita. Earth Song. Guwahati: Sabinay, 1999. Print. Hazarika, Bhupen. Where Seas Meet. Guwahati: Lawyers Book Stall, 1993. Print. Hazarika, Punya. The Kirtan. Guwahati: Beenapani Das, 2006. Print. Iralu, Easterine. Kelhoukevira. Calcutta: J. B. Lama, 1982. Print. —. The Wind-hover Collection. New Delhi: Steven Herlekar, 2001. Print. —. “Five Poems”, in Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from Northeast. Eds. K. S. Nongkynrih and Robin S. Ngangom. Shillong: NEHU, 2003. 219–23. Print. Iyengar, K. R. S. Indian Writing in English (reprint.) New Delhi: Sterling, 1987. Print. Kachari, Megan. Melodies and Guns. Tr. Pradip Acharya and Manjeet Baruah. Ed. Indira Goswami. New Delhi: UBSPD, 2006. Print. Madhavadeva, Sri Sri. The Divine Verses (Naam Ghosha). Tr. Soroj Kumar Dutta. Tinsukia: Vision Publications, 1997. Print. Madhubir, R. K. The Timebomb and Other Poems. Imphal: Vagya Publication, 1987. Print.

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—. The Shadow of Darkness. Imphal: Vagya Publication, 1998. Print. Malik, Syed Abdul. Ajan Fakir. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1990. Print. Neog, Maheswar. Under One Sky. Gauhati: New Book Stall, 1970. Print. Ngangom Robin S. Words and the Silence. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1988. Print. —. Time’s Crossroads. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1994. Print. —. The Desire of Roots. Cuttack: Chandrabhaga Society, 2006. Print. Pathak, Dayananda. Coral Island. Guwahati: Sabinay, 1998. Print. —. The Golden Deer. Kolkata: Jatiya Sahitya Prakashan, 2007. Print. —. Between Fire and Snow. Kolkata: Jatiya Sahitya Prakashan, 2010. Print. Saikia, Nagen. Aching Void (Mita Bhash). Tr. Gitali Saikia. Dibrugarh: Kaustubh Prakashan, 2005. Print. Sarang, Vilas. Indian English Poetry since 1950. Bombay: Disha Books, 1995. Print. Sarma, Satyendranath. Madhavadeva. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1985. Print. Sarma, Umakanta. Thawing Out. Guwahati: Sabinay, 1998. Print. Sarma, Upendranath. “Review of Lakshahira Das’s Between Births”, Kabita (1996): 96–99. Ed. Shoneet Bijoy Das. Guwahati: Sabinay. Print. Tana, Yumlam. “Three Poems”, in Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from the North East. Eds. K. S. Nongkynrih and Robin S. Ngangom. Shillong: NEHU, 2003. 13–16. Print. Chosen from The Man & the Tiger, Ranchi: Writers Forum, 2000.

CHAPTER THREE PRECEPTS TO PEOPLE FROM THE PEEPAL TREE: AN APPRAISAL OF K. V. RAGHUPATHI’S WISDOM OF THE PEEPAL TREE V. SUNITHA

Dr. K. V. Raghupathi’s adoration for nature knows no bounds. Just as nature is extensive, eternal and potent, so his expositions on nature are also everlasting. His eagerness to imprint the experience of the natural world with his vivid expression has been duly acclaimed. His verse on nature bestows zeal and zest in its most avid readers – many of whom are thrown into panic by their mundane world, inundated by electronic gadgets. It is sensitive, insightful and intimate, as almost every expression brings to the fore myriad philosophies that are shrouded in the world of nature – and, hence, unknown to the contemporary urbanite. Raghupati’s Wisdom of the Peepal Tree is an exploratory and explanatory work. The word “wisdom” is an indication that nature indoctrinates and uplifts human lives with its unarticulated but explicit philosophies. The first word of the canto, “I”, is warm, cherished and dear. The next word, “stroll”, is distinctive. It evokes envy of the poet: he is evidently far from the humdrum existence of the automated world inhabited by modern humanity, to whom even the mere thought of strolling towards the peepal tree is beyond their reach. If they stroll at all, it is only for exercise and to keep obesity at bay – certainly not to behold and wonder at the splendour and magnificence of the peepal tree. In the next line, the poet draws on the words “enigmatic” and “mysterious” in order to depict the peepal itself. Of course, every creation in nature is a mystery that can never be fully unravelled by humankind. The poet’s compassion for the tree gives him the impression that the tree has invited him to come to it.

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The towering statue of Gomateswara in the southern Indian state of Karnataka is a startling man-made creation. Raghupati juxtaposes the tree with Gomateswara in order to relate its gigantic presence, which covers a vast space. The tree’s convoluted limbs and dangling leaves are spread far. Next, by comparing the tree to a dwajasthamba – the sacrosanct and venerated pillar that adorns many south Indian Hindu temples – the poet places it “on a pedestal”. The sthamba stands soaring, with its hanging bells. So, too, does the tree stand lofty and outstretched, as consecrated as the temple bells. However, the poet feels that emptiness has engulfed him. With a wavering mind, he approaches the peepal tree. Amidst the commotion, the poet perceives the sounds of the leaves calling with their exotic voices. The tree enfolds him with a sense of fulfillment. Snowed under by the cacophony of the contemporary world as they are, the quiver of these leaves would be divine not only to the poet but also to his readers. The very notion – that the tree talks – is fictitious, ethereal and beyond human cognizance. The tree is personified in the intensity of words cascading from the bard’s composition. The poet thereby “lends” the tree his verse, in order for it to express itself. The tree vocalizes its identity. Subsequently, it turns its vision on the traveller – i.e., the verse writer – in order to educate and edify him with the priceless precepts of life. It is perpetual and ageless; human equipment may be confined to days and years, but not a venerable peepal tree. It recounts that its primordial flow sustains energy within it. It was an angel, a denizen of Elysium, a celestial city – but is now fallen, and has no remorse at becoming a part of earth. Its suppleness and propensity for growing even in creeks and holes has made it colossal. It feels gratified at its rapid proliferation. Wisdom is sky-high, and is bestowed according to one’s expertise and worldliness. But the canto, “Tree’s leaves are puffed with wisdom” (39) entails its elevated nature and sets a tone of inspiration. “All life begins at the roots / All life ends at the roots” (41–42). It proposes that life’s voyage is insignificant where both the source and end are identical and impossible to tell apart. It also undermines one’s sense of right and wrong, and embraces the moral inscribed in the Bhagavad Gita, a universal scripture that has influenced many great thinkers and is applicable to people of all temperaments, for all times. It proposes, What did you lose that you cry about? What did you bring with you, which you think you have lost? What did you produce, which you think got destroyed? You did not bring anything - whatever you have, you received from here. Whatever you have given, you have given only here.

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Whatever you took, you took from God. Whatever you gave, you gave to him. You came empty handed, you will leave empty handed. What is yours today, belonged to someone else yesterday, and will belong to someone else the day after tomorrow. You are mistakenly enjoying the thought that this is yours. It is this false happiness that is the cause of your sorrows. (Bhagavad Gita Summary)

The tree also delivers a discourse to the effect that realization of this life’s values would make humans shun their greed for acquisitive and earthly things. Only a visionary versifier like Dr. Raghupathi could successfully relay the idea that each falling leaf from the “sage-like-tree” is sanctified with a wisdom that inspires his spirits. The poet, with an earnest yearning to drink the elixir of wisdom from the peepal, makes a plea for it to steer him and land him into its abode. The verse, “My leaves don’t fold up in day and night” (43) drives home the tree’s determination, despite alterations and fluctuations. It stresses the conception that even though life is crammed with ups and downs, light and gloom, persisting in one’s quest to be even-tempered, like the tree’s leaf, would allow one to live happily. The peepal tree, which is also known as “the inverted Buddha” (27), designates the poet as “Restless soul” (47) because of the dithering and fickle tendency of human beings on the whole. Though the traveller is the only one for whom its monologue is voiced, it is universal. The line “o seeker of the unknown” (48) derides the poet’s incessant covetousness and edgy life, in which he is on an arduous expedition to obtain something that he himself is oblivious to. It is a strenuous and painstaking mission with no destination – like seeking a ticket in the railway station stating, “whichever train, wherever it goes give me a ticket” or like a rudderless ship on a tempestuous sea where there is nothing to grip on to. The tree reminds the man of his pointless pursuit; however, the pronoun “you” infers not only the traveller but the all-embracing human race. If a person finds themselves in some vast terrain – or in water, mountains or a gorge – they are all alone. Being not conversant with the very concept of life, all the pains and strains that they suffer are fruitless. It is unfeasible to integrate earth and sky. This is a law of nature. Though a passenger may walk to the rear of a bus, in the reverse direction to that in which the vehicle is moving, they still move along with the bus’s main direction. That one should abide by and uphold nature’s decree, and not be at odds with it, is the virtue ascertained from this poem’s enriching lines. Though sky and earth are two different entities and cannot run into each other, a person’s mind and body can subsist together and be well

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coordinated if that person has emotional intelligence. The poet-cumtraveller draws near to the tree only to still his mind and body, a golden gift of only a few. The phrase “sun-kissed green ground” (73) is a manifestation of fecundity. The words “green” and “sun” allude to illumination and proliferation. It also calls to mind the boundlessness of solar energy and the fact that the earth’s green expanse has dwindled as plots and buildings rule what was once its domain. As a riposte to the tree’s words, the traveller calls for it to grant him the status of “Bodhisattva”. After his lasting penance under the Bodhi tree, the Lord Buddha enlightened the human race with the commanding and cogent concept that desire is the root of our downfall. Akin to this teaching, the poet wishes to intensify his embrace of life’s philosophies through the wisdom of the peepal tree. The next paragraph reveals the medication to heal the poet’s restless mind. Of course, being restive and fidgety is the providence of the current era. The poet compares this state with that of bees, which meander across the bare land without nectar. The healing for this psychic torment lies nowhere but in one’s own thoughts. The poet’s imagination and aesthetic sense come into focus when he adds astuteness and acumen to his narrative style: The healing lies nowhere But in your own tiny palms that hold water Full of your own reflections. (Wisdom of the Peepal Tree 92–94)

The above lines make plain that the panacea for disquiet lies in oneself and not in any external source. If one holds water in one’s palm, it reflects one’s face and signals that the person is their own healer. The following lines are philosophical, and tightly packed with the dogmas of life. The line “Live yourself and die for none” (114) holds validity as it advocates stability and fortitude. It serves as a warning to those who choke and die by committing suicide on account of distresses caused in life. One should also be candid and forthright, and live life to the fullest. No emotional shackle would perturb the undaunted and resolute. In line with this, the verse writer also asserts that aplomb is the means to some degree of adventure. One should not let go of the innate venturing and daring spirit seems to be the message of the lines “What is to be extinct is not ‘you’ / But the ‘not you’ in you” (123–24). The tree is emphatic that as human beings we should know how to “live without dying” and “die without pain” (134). The aforementioned quality would earn us eternal acclaim.

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The next lines stir up thoughts on precariousness, wherein humanity’s identity is built on sand in this vast cosmos. The poet’s assertion is that one’s belonging and identity “remains a riddle till the end” (144). The lines “You are of no importance and consequence / In this vast, boundless cosmos” (139–40) are unambiguous. One should shun the ego and pride that has pervaded almost everyone else like a cancer. For those who are cocooned in their “self”, the poet’s verse comes as a harbinger. He says that these people are bound to be engulfed in the dusk of twilight with no sign of day and “with no doting lights of wisdom” (175). On the other hand, the plain-spoken and open self could fathom great lessons from nature, which is the great don and pundit of this universe. The lessons learnt would certainly ennoble them and single them out from the millions of quotidian men and women, thereby allowing them to be “beyond conceptions and descriptions / Expectations and anticipations” (178–79). The pearls that adorn a string bespeak equanimity and tranquility, the words of a bygone era and the yearning of the current generation. Though soft skills and ethics are given lessons to be worked out and acquired, the issue of how many of our teens are seized by stress and suicidal tendencies is an irrefutable question. To those multitudes, the poet makes a clarion call to “First grow your roots (base) strong in your consciousness” (161). In order to grow these roots, one should learn equanimity and tranquility. Equanimity is stillness despite tribulations, dilemmas and hardships; tranquility suggests serenity. A resolute mind is devoid of irascibility, exasperation, apprehension or tension. If one is unable to keep a tight rein on one’s feelings and sentiments, then, the poet judges, “No good comes out of you” (168) and “No virtue fascinates you” (169). The tree articulates like a sage who has been contemplating for years in order to bring forth an imperishable gospel and ingrain the requisites of life in their students. The peepal is a symbol of hope and a guiding light. Its monologue constitutes an acute verbal attack on the advocates of delectation, who labour under the false conception that glee and gladness is to be bracketed with acquisitiveness and gadgets. The tree draws attention to the required course of action: only by renouncing our proclivity for worldly pleasures can we become possessors of peace. The poet – a judicious, erudite writer – also unveils the path to true liberation. This can become a matter of fact for an individual when they cease to bother about either their demise or deprivation. If they renounce the fear of death, they may savour emancipation as the saying goes: a brave person dies only once, while a coward dies a thousand times.

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Rivalry and combativeness are the monarchs of this scenario. People are quite zealous about life. Being intrigued and spellbound by childhood tales of paradise and the netherworld recounted by our elders, we all hanker after heaven and detest hell. Demarcation between the two is hammered into everyone’s consciousness. Forebodings about hell and a predilection for heaven can never be wiped from our minds. The peepal tree raises the curtain on this situation, and sermonizes that both the abode of the damned and the abode of angels are made for dopes and dolts. It thereby propounds the way to stillness, a life far away from tedious and dismal aspects. If a person grieves and burns for ephemeral and transient things then, beyond any shadow of a doubt, they will lose them. On the other hand, vows the poet, if their mind never succumbs to wants and wishes but remains still with indefatigability, then all the high spirits and transports of delight would be lavished on them. “Empty vessels make much noise” but the tree, an encyclopedia of wisdom, ingrained with substantial attributes, is modest to the core. Though it is “uncared [for], unnoticed and unattended” (699), it is permeated with bounteousness. It refines human minds with the commandments of life. Its magnanimous and unstinting nature speaks volumes. Its deliberateness to show the path and endow primordial wisdom deserves applause and accreditation. Similarly to the “Road not Taken” in Robert Frost’s famous poem, the peepal tree intimates a path that has never been traversed or trodden. The maternal qualities of the munificent tree are also notable. It holds the traveller in a tight embrace in order to “drink together the cup of unpoisoned life” (711). Here, “drinking” and “cup” have many connotations. “Drink” here refers to living and learning. Analogously, “cup” is a metaphorical vessel holding the values and morals that discipline life. A cup is not only a mere receptacle but also an emblem of achievement and kudos of an individual or of a nation as whole. People yearn for a cup in their name – whether by healthy means and hard work or by amoral means and malfeasance. A cup that is filled with righteousness, in order to lead an unpoisoned life, is worth a king’s ransom, and the traveller should be blessed with good luck to receive this esteemed boon from the enlightened tree. The self-sacrificing tree aspires, “yan perra inbam peruga ivvayagam” (verse 85), which means, “Let the world attain the bliss that I am bestowed with”. It is a phrase from Tirumoolar’s Tamil Saiva scripture, Tirumandiram. This is a seminal work, a hallowed treatise and an encyclopedia of philosophical and spiritual wisdom rendered in verse form. It is the first treatise that deals with different aspects of Kundalini

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Yoga, under the name “Siva Yoga”. Tirumandiram deals with how one may lead a divine life in the midst of worldly concerns – not unlike the Raghupathi verse currently under discussion. Like its branches, the tree is subtle and bends down to cater to society; it craves that everyone should attain the welfare and good fortune that it contains. The lyric writer, the peepal tree’s mouthpiece, proclaims that life is a trail – a venture, fraught with danger – and that one should develop the tendency of treating its ups and downs with self-assurance and coolheadedness. Sun and moon, ebb and flow, falling back and coming in are mundane and typical. They are nature’s law. Hence, one should not be horror-stricken or shake in one’s shoes – whether that be at the sight of darkness or dazzling light. Practising quietude and stoicism would equip one to attain this ability. Subramnaya Sathakam, one of the great devout, spiritual books of the Hindus, spreads the gospel: “etti kashtambulaina pettu deva thatukonalena runa badha pettaboku”. This is a devotee’s benign benediction to avoid the anguish of indebtedness. Being in debt is a transgression, and an insolvent is said to shoulder the saddle of the bill for many incarnations. Reiterating the aforesaid concept, Dr. Raghupathi pens the following lines: “Return whatever you receive” (369); “Hence there is no giving and receiving” (371). Like an accountant who draws up a balance sheet, the versifier sets out an ideal balance sheet for life. If one reciprocates love received, then one’s life will be free from hassles and encumbrance. One need not answer anyone or stomach the distress of being liable to a lender, and “[c]an quit this world like an unknown bird / Dying in an unknown forest” (375–76). The line “the reflected moon in the pool” (370) implies tranquility. The moon often embodies imperturbability and repose, its whiteness indicating peace. The moon’s full image is cast back and is visible in the pond only when its water is stock-still. Hence, the feeling that one is in arrears to nobody frees one’s mind from aggravation. The line “The moon was yet to rise from the deep slumber” (727) shows the veracity of the verse maker’s prowess in pronouncing the concept of approaching evening. The procurement of property and goods would give delight but not contentment and fulfillment to the acquisitive man, the occupant of the present-day automated world. But the poet, a nature aficionado and devotee whose body and mind are under his control, feels that he has savoured the elixir of life fed by the tree and hence, with ease and serenity, he “sat on the bed long until my eyelids shut with a sense of deep satisfaction and fulfillment ... and slipped into deep sleep” (742–46). These lyrics, written by the illustrious and eminent Tamil

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lyricist Vairamuthu for the Tamil motion picture Annamalai, are apposite to the present context. The following libretto extracts show a few lines from one of the film’s songs, entitled “Oru pen pura”: “Methai virithum, sutha pannieer thelithum, kannil thookam illaey En dhevaney, thookam kodu”. They put across the plea to God to be blessed with sleep from an affluent man, who can afford an expensive bed with all the amenities but still cannot sleep. However privileged one’s circumstances, they will never bestow the exquisite and inestimable things of life – namely, the feeling of peace, contentment, fulfillment, satisfaction and restful sleep. If the poet publicizes his peaceful slumber, then it is as a denouement – amounting to his real achievement in life: a feeling that remains forever. Hence, the tree – as a bringer of peace; a well-wisher; a true associate, escort and friend with all its charity, selflessness and motherly love – is able, through its profound revelations, to dispense the highly prized and treasured gift that is worth its weight in gold. However, only a few recipients could ever make head or tail of this invaluable, heartening and stirring gift. To those wedded to the perishable life, these are only words in black and white; for those whose perceptions go beyond the run-of-themill choice, who have the necessary forethought to aspire to stillness and eternal peace away from transitory things, the poem is not less than the epics of the Hindu religion, the Quran and the Bible put together. The peepal tree – one of the great marvels of God’s creation, unparalleled in the world of nature – has been contributing its finest and greatest efforts for humanity’s well-being and prosperity. But the imprudent person, overwhelmed by their unprincipled and deceitful minds, cannot perceive the ideals behind the tree. The precepts of the peepal would, if allowed, enter into every reader’s mind and bring about vast change in their thought process. It would certainly trouble the conscience, instruct and show the correct path leading to the right destination. This would, no doubt, bring revolution, by thwarting that section of humanity marching towards destruction and by inculcating positive sentiments in its psyche.

Conclusion In an age in which ethics and values form part of curriculums in which students attempt exams and secure marks, a book full of life’s scruples will become a monument to be passed on for generations.

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Works Cited Bhagavad Gita. Summary in English, http://www.eaglespace.com/spirit/geetaenglish.php (accessed 7 February 2017). Ganapathy, T. N. “Excerpt from the Yoga of Tirumular: Essays on the Tirumandiram”, http://www.thirumandiram.net/intro-to-essays.html (accessed 7 February 2017). Raghupathi, K. V. Wisdom of the Peepal Tree (reprint), New Delhi: Authorspress, 2014. Print. Ramaswamy, Vairamuthu. Lyrics: “Oru Pen Pura”, Annamalai, http://solytr.com/show.php?id=643434&song=Oru%20Pen%20Pura&a lbum=ANNAMALAI (accessed 7 February 2017).

CHAPTER FOUR REFLECTIONS ON K. V. RAGHUPATI’S VOICE OF THE VALLEY G. SRILATHA

K. V. Raghupathi is an Indian English poet and novelist. Mysticism, philosophy and spirituality play a significant role in his poetry. Nature too predominates, and plays an important role in his work. The poet’s attitude towards nature is philosophical. He explores the identity of humanity and the underlying meaning of existence. This paper is an attempt to study reflections on his Voice of the Valley (2014). The work is a long poem that records the poet’s experience of visiting a valley, where, on a moonless night, he stays as a wanderer. In search of truth, he travels deep into the valley and is lost in its wilderness. He observes that the valley is engulfed by darkness and silence. To his surprise, there is a sudden, intense light that makes him fall unconscious. In a few moments, a voice arises in “resplendent glory, wisdom and enlightenment” (25). It speaks to the poet with “spiritual authority and power”, and “deep insight and understanding” (26). The wanderer fails to respond, but his consciousness awakes and looks at the valley. Thus, a conversation arises between the voice from the valley and the wanderer/poet. The voice identifies the wanderer as the “seeker of Truth” and as “longing for Eternity”. Out of curiosity, the wanderer poses several questions to the voice such as “What is this earth?”, “What is beyond this most beautiful earth?”, “What is beyond the sun and the clusters of stars?”, “What is beyond the galaxies?” and “What is beyond the emptiness?” (30). The voice replies to all the questions, and to the last it answers that there is nothing beyond the emptiness. The voice says that it is that “nothing”. The poet seeks to know the true nature of the voice because the voice that speaks “is beyond language, thoughts and pleasures” (30). Thus, the voice

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enlightens the wanderer on the essence of human life by illustrating the stages of nature’s life cycle. It recalls the law of nature, saying, In Autumn when the tree sheds its leaves It asks nothing and receives nothing. In Spring it receives everything Without asking anything. It remains where it is. This is true existence, O, the seeker of Truth (Voice of the Valley 32)

The wanderer is amazed at this logical and philosophical answer. He asks the voice to shower him with supreme knowledge and pour wisdom into his thirsty heart, so that he can move from darkness to light and from temporality to eternity. The wanderer thus seeks to enlighten his mind with cosmic vastness. The ensuing conversation takes place in a more philosophical manner, and helps the seeker of Truth to understand the true meaning of existence. The wanderer learns that although the pathway is clear, humanity fails to tread it because it is as dark as night and is invisible. He wants to plant the seed of enlightenment, and make the seed sprout and grow into a huge tree. The wanderer is given a name by the voice – Bindura: O, Bindura, you are a hungry seeker Like a tiger in search of prey in the wilderness; And you shall find the Object you crave for When you turn your face towards yourself. In you, is the seeker and the sought (39)

The wanderer had led an unsatisfactory life, and is tired of being dishonourable and disgraceful. This made him leave home and the world, and become a wanderer in quest of Truth. He says, “My only desire is to arrive at supreme knowledge”. That is the reason for his wanderings, variously described as “goalless” and “aimless”. The voice assures him of wisdom and enlightenment as the seeker has intense passion about his goal. In the course of conversation, the voice addresses various aspects of life. In terms of religion and God, it says that it is not God, but God is in humanity and it is humanity who represents God: Listen Bindura, there is no Christ, but Christ is in you. There is no Buddha, but Buddha is in you.

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The wanderer is eager to arrive at supreme knowledge. The voice instils confidence in Bindura, and declares that it is none other than the wanderer’s consciousness. Moreover, this consciousness is the consciousness of the whole of existence. The voice extends the argument further, and elaborates on the present condition of humanity’s existence. According to the voice, modern humanity is unable to lead a normal life because it is desirous of many things. Therefore, it leads the life of a neurotic – chaotic and violent. It is crucial that humanity realize that it is one among many things that exist on the earth. This attitude can help it to lead life in a natural way. “Live like a tree, grow like a tree, / Bear leaves and shed leaves, / Bear flowers and fruits and shed them all” (54). Thus, humanity is taught to observe and learn from nature because creation is plentiful and splendid. People should learn to live with nature, as nature is bountiful in all things: Be a tree and grow with it. Be a rock and remain still with it. Be a butterfly and fly with it. Be a flower and emit the sweet fragrance of your life. Be a wild stag and wander in the wilderness. Be a squirrel and scurry here and there. Be a rabbit and jump and skip on the ground. Be a hawk and soar and soar upwards in the limitless sky. Be a heron and watch and seize every moment. Be a peacock, and unfurl the beauty of your existence And dance (56)

The voice has keenly observed nature and understands the integrity of all creatures with one another in a harmonious manner. It senses that there is a balance in nature. Thus, the voice encourages the wanderer to see, touch, feel, smell, taste and experience everything in nature. It says that life is vast and infinite: “In you traverse eternity of which you are not aware” (56). So, humanity must become lost in nature and experience cheerfulness and forget itself. Mankind must learn the essence of living. Whatever it wants to do it can do so immediately, because that is the law of existence. This is how every creature in nature lives and enjoys, and therefore

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humanity too must follow the same path. This is so because tomorrow is always uncertain – hence, people should learn to live like the flow of a stream. What is uncertain is mystery. So, mystery is uncertain. The whole existence is uncertain – hence, a mystery. According to the voice, the movement of humanity’s life is similar to the flow of water in the stream. Life is a replica of that eternal flow. Hence, humanity has to allow itself to flow and move with the flow of water. Mankind must get lost in the wilderness, amidst rugged hills and mountains, and move along to the point of no return. Similarly, “Tree” is referred to as a metaphor: the voice urges humanity to grow like a tree, amidst plenty. The essence of living is to live close to nature and enjoy freedom. The plight of modern humanity is pathetic: it is caught up in a hurry, and lives in illusion. So, it should first relish the reality of life. Humanity should learn to be free from the obstacles of life, and be like a child – embracing a life of ignorance, innocence and gracefulness. To this end, the voice claims that humanity should alter its present condition. It should overcome worry because worry is the mind’s restlessness. Every action is the means of expression of existence. The real knowledge of existence is found in the order of nature. The history of human thought is one of creation and destruction. It is humanity that can make and unmake. Thus, humanity is caught in a whirlpool of activities and is devoid of naturalness: Bindura, happiness and misery Are the two states of disposition of the same mind. Your experience is the wet soil of misery. And your constant remembrance of the experience Is the landscape of all misunderstandings and hatred. Thus you grow deluded within yourself (67)

The voice makes an effort to explain the purpose of existence because humanity has failed to see its true self. It can accrue real knowledge only when it is able to see its true self: The struggle to know the real knowledge of existence Is in the order of Nature. This is the essence of Freedom, O, seeker of Truth. All your struggles ultimately end, In knowing the real Existence (69)

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The voice further extends knowledge to Bindura; this time, on the subject of self-analysis. The much-needed reform for modern humanity must come from within. True harmony can be achieved from one’s inner life, and it must be total and not partial. Nothing can flourish in an atmosphere of moral chaos. Therefore, the voice insists on unlearning the learnt, because life is for living. Whatever is plenty is in nature – hence, one has to imbibe the qualities of existence from nature: Growing is purely individualistic, unique to itself. It is like a tree in the valley, amidst plenty. This is the essence of living. This is Freedom (70)

In terms of religion, the voice says to Bindura, “true religion is selfdiscovery”. It is a voyage of self-transcendence, which is self-fulfillment. It is the merging of the individual life with that of the universal. As the mind is trained to live in illusion, now the mind should be untrained so that mankind can see the infinite nothingness. The most enlightened is the most silent: Bindura, true religion is self-discovery. It is the voyage of self-transcendence which is self-fulfilment. It is your endless pilgrimage into your own inward shrine Where you shall find The confluence and merging of the individual life With that of the universal, Infinite (70)

This excerpt suggests a transcendental philosophy. Transcendentalism emerged as a movement in the United States. The transcendental writers believed in individualism: according to them, an individual was the spiritual centre of the universe. Moreover, in an individual one could find the clue to nature, history and even the cosmos. They accepted the concept of nature as a living mystery. They believed in becoming one with the whole world. Nothing could bring one peace but oneself. Likewise, the voice heard by our wanderer also urges humanity to discover itself. The voice elaborates on the essence of living. The unity of the individual with that of the universal infinite is the order of life. The present condition of human existence is that mankind is drowning in desperation, insecurity and the ambiguity of existence. Humanity’s tendency is to crave happiness and escape from misery and sorrow. In order to overcome this

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imbalance, spiritual rebirth is the only therapy for mankind. Ancients like Sophocles have pondered on the struggle of man, and concluded that life is a mixture of sorrow, misery and joy. The voice focuses next on the issue of birth and death. While birth is blissful, death is sorrowful. The voice realizes that there is harmony in nature. All things in nature are independent, although they are also interdependent: The true artist is one who uplifts and elevates And ennobles himself to the higher levels of consciousness And effectively communicates his feelings to others. Such an artist has a grandiose vision Which he translates not in words but in actual living; He lives within (77)

The true artist uplifts and elevates the higher levels of consciousness, and effectively communicates their feelings to others. Such a person has a grandiose vision, which they translate not into words but into actual living: real exaltation of the soul and real meaning that fulfils life. A life thus fulfilled enjoys an abundant existence, which has rich meaning and significance. The change must come from the depths of one’s roots. The inward is the only reality, while the outward is a mere expression. The voice suggests that reform must come from within. It is only humanity that resists and stagnates. The voice assures the wanderer that mankind is capable of experiencing the spirit within, which is powerful: Bindura, there is no institution inherently good. Every institution begins in you and ends in you. It emerges from you and meets its fulfilment In your own fulfilment. … You are more than that: a spirit that dwells within you. Which is the spirit of all existence. … They lack tremendous imagination, hence err. So, judge not yourself by false rationality, But look at yourself, which is full of rich possibilities For flowering. True harmony can be achieved in your own inner life And it must be total and not partial (83)

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It instils the knowledge to be gained from glorifying the self. By trusting oneself, life bears fruit. Hence, humanity must integrate itself into the whole; this will give life full meaning. The voice says that mankind is gifted with tremendous vision and faith. Nothing can improve in an atmosphere of moral chaos. Ultimately, humanity’s true fulfillment is within itself. The voice highlights the need to change. Only change from the present state can bring hope and peace. Modern mankind views life as meaningless, purposeless – hence, it is unable to produce anything creative. It should integrate itself with the whole; this can give meaning to its life, as such a life is gifted with tremendous vision and faith. The present state of humanity is barren; in nature, plenty is all. Scarcity is an unknown thing to nature, but humanity experiences much scarcity. Mankind’s struggles for the scarce result in violence and bloodshed. The voice tells Bindura to unfold himself and release his original spirit, to float in the empty sky so that he can see nature in its abundance and fullness: Bindura, Nature has no secrets, as long as you understand. Mystery is as long as you do not understand. To master yourself is to master Nature. Because you possess all the powers, forces, energy That operate in Nature. To drink the nectar of the coolness of the full moon You need not paint a picture in your room. It is enough if you have a sense of deep longing And passion in the heart (87)

Bindura is further assured that no external power can harm him because he possesses all power within. He has the power to make and unmake for his own goodness and happiness. The voice suggests that humanity should imbibe qualities such as delicacy, firmness, amiability, love and understanding. The following lines affirm the essential attitude of mankind: He, who strikes hard like a stone cutter, will lose the target. He, who releases the arrow like a swooping hawk, Will strike the point. The realized is complete and full, He neither holds nor releases (98)

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Finally, the voice expounds on true love. True love is universal; hence, humanity should give love to all. The more it gives, the more it receives: Bindura speaks after a long silence O, Voice Real! Your Voice is real, true and pure. I am blessed and fulfilled. Blessed be this Valley, this hour of fulfilment and achievement (106)

The voice tells Bindura that he is now nearer to true knowledge, wisdom and enlightenment. Therefore, Bindura is twice born, or reborn. The voice ceases to speak further, and there is silence in the valley. At the break of dawn, the sky is illumined with bright colours. Dawn brings life and everything breathes afresh. Dawn seems to have brought new vigour and life to the wanderer. The valley is brightened with light and sounds produced by various creatures. The wanderer wakes up with refinement and abundant energy. The sight of the valley fills his heart with eternal happiness. Everything appeared as a mystery, but the wanderer has received the message. The voice has disappeared and will not be heard any more. Enlightenment takes place only once. The wanderer is purified with new energy. His heart is filled with eternal joy and happiness. Thus, the valley has nurtured him with wisdom and knowledge – and he therefore leaves with fulfillment and joy. The message was delivered to the wanderer, and his eyes were filled with blissful tears. To conclude, the voice that spoke to Bindura is none other than the inner consciousness of the poet. The poem is highly philosophical. It begins in darkness and concludes at dawn, symbolically representing the fact that the poet has transcended ignorance in favour of knowledge. Nature has a healing tendency. Thus, humanity can be cured from all ignorance by uniting with nature. The poem draws out philosophical ideas – hence, further research can be conducted along those lines. Right from the ancients, philosophy emerged as an important subject to be analysed and discussed in various genres. Indian writers, over the years, have explored the study of philosophy in order to understand how life can be led. Indian philosophers focused on the concept of natural law for understanding how life on earth should be lived. This poem can also be further studied from an ecophilosophical perspective. Ecophilosophy is a branch of study that sees humanity as one with nature – as an integral part of the process of evolution, which carries

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the universe onward from inanimate matter to life; to consciousness; and, ultimately, to the Divine.

Work Cited Raghupathi, K. V. Voice of the Valley (reprint.) New Delhi: Authorspress, 2014. Print.

CHAPTER FIVE THE FUSION OF SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS IN THE POETRY OF R. K. SINGH VIJAY KUMAR ROY

Introduction R. K. Singh is one of the most remarkable and prolific post-independence Indian English poets; he is credited with more than fifteen collections of poems besides his numerous other publications. Various aspects of his poetry draw the attention of readers, but the most important of them are social and spiritual ones. On the one hand we find his poetry as a social criticism, but on the other hand we find it imbued with a spiritual experience that has not been widely explored. The present study focuses on the fusion of social and spiritual elements in his poetry. Once commenting on “the relative stagnation of all the arts in India” in the mid-sixties, George Woodcock wrote, “India is going through a vast and lengthy social revolution and periods of revolution are usually accompanied by a retreat towards conservatism in the arts …. We may well have to wait until a less socially conscious generation, for India to produce writers who will do justice to the absorbing variety of her land and life” (quoted in Naik 2006: 190). In this context, M. K. Naik writes, “There could not be a more mistaken reading of the literary situation in post-independence India and it is all the more astonishing that it should have come from one who knew his India so well. Actually, the writer in Independent India, whether in English or in the regional languages has, far from dwindling into a ‘recorder’ or an ‘embellisher’, proved ample evidence of increased creative vigour and capacity for experimentation” (Naik 2006: 190). The poetry of R. K. Singh shows the same inclination. He has developed his own style of writing poems, and believes in not giving them titles because “titles tell too much”. (Later his fifteen collections of poems

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were published in a single volume. So, while quoting his work we will use the poem number with the name of the collection.) He stresses, on this point, that poetry is “personal” and “an extension” of his “self” (Poem No. 28, “Memories Unmemoried”). This sentiment is easily comprehensible, along with the “uninhibited frankness” in his poetry.

The Fusion of Social and Spiritual Elements Poetry is social criticism. It echoes the social enigma. Lack of scientific temperament and age-old beliefs consolidate this enigma – a fact that fails to escape the eyes of the poet. It is true to say that multiculturalism is one of the identities of India, and is also her beauty. It is the fragrance of her multiculturalism that makes her unique in the world. Unlike other countries of the world, here, the government has declared holidays for the festivals of all religious groups. But the poet is worried about extravagance and the many other unnecessary things seen in the course of these festivities. For him, “crowding in the name of religion / puja, culture, and tradition” is “all a national wastage” (Poem No. 12, “My Silence”). Sometimes, such celebrations cause an increase in the number of social evils. Police officers have also been seen to be ineffective on these occasions. Instead of providing safety to the people, they are seen indulging in unexpected dealings – losing the trust of the people day by day: while the cowards fear the coming closer of boys and girls in freedom the government deploys criminals actively pushing and pressing to keep the law and order, who bothers their rape and adultery in the crowd? (Poem No. 12, “My Silence”)

Through this poem, Singh tries to convince his readers that evils have spread so densely in society that even the Goddess is unable to eradicate them: “Durga’s eyes are too hazed to see / the dark desires of youth” (Poem No. 12, “My Silence”). The images of stealing light “to illumine puja pandals / and blare non-stop nasty songs / the whole night …” show that this is not a puja in any real sense (Poem No. 40, “I Do Not Question”). The poet satirizes such events and says that, seeing them, “the goddess keeps mum / perhaps self-loathingly / sleeps for demons to write

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histories”, because in daylight demons are not active (Poem No. 40, “I Do Not Question”). What is going on in society in the name of religion is well observed and satirized by the poet again: Banares seems holier at night mating dogs and bitches join pundits in the name of religion (Poem No. 30, “My Silence”)

Here the “dogs” and the “bitches” are those sinful and culpable people who seek opportunities to hide their real faces and show themselves as religious by joining puja with the “pundits”. They believe that in this way their sin and blemish will be washed away. What is the reason that such kinds of people join a puja? The poet writes that “[e]ach one fears / each one is insecure”. The “clouds” of “doubts” in their minds have developed “arrogance” and made much “distance between the hands”, so they sleep “murmuring the bank balance” (Poem No. 32, “Memories Unmemoried”). So, the feeling of insecurity brings them to the doors of temples. This behaviour is aptly criticized by the poet, who writes that “their meditation / adds noise” because this is not real worship. Another fact is that everyone feels themselves to be a true devotee. There is none who “will admit / I am no god”. This hurts the poet, and compels him to say that if worship fails to develop divinity (“the divine rest”) it causes discord and disharmony (Poem No. 30, “My Silence”). Singh does not believe in such worship because he does not “know which psalms to sing / or which church to go to feel / the flame within for a while”. He suggests worshipping when there is “the flame within” and not “to chant when fear overtakes” and makes one suffer (Poem No. 38, “Sexless Solitude”). The poet does not like rituals because these days most of them have lost their sanctity. Rituals have also become a source of making money, and are nourished by ignorance and superstition. The pollution of the Ganges is the most vivid example of this tendency. It is considered a holy river, but superstitions and ignorance have made it poisonous and practically unholy after it leaves contact with the hills and mountains. In the words of the poet, “the rotten state of man” has made it “lifeless” and “impotent to set right” because it “failed to quench / the earthly thirst / or cleanse the human heart / their sinful mind”. The purity that it has from its origin in the Himalayas does not continue, and its “apparent grace” is “missing” (Poem No. 73, “Music Must Sound”).

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Home is the best temple, and right action is true worship. In other words, work is worship. Showing off and rituals do not bring one close to God. In the words of the poet, “I see no saviour come / to rescue me when mired / I seek freedom from myself” (Poem No. 38, “Sexless Solitude”). A true devotee does not boast of their faith, they are not loathsome and their words and actions do not differ in their practical life. It is a firm belief in action, not in rituals, that brings the following expression: my ordeals are mine alone in the valley of self I must learn to clear the clouds soaring high or low (Poem No. 38, “Sexless Solitude”)

The poet does not say that worshipping at holy places is bad, but that worshipping without inner purity and honesty is really no worship at all. It is only playing the role of following a religious tradition. The poet prays in “the same house / the same alcove / ... chanting mantras in fumes” (Poem No. 67, “My Silence”). Through these observations, he brings to light the concept that if one does not find real happiness and peace at home, one cannot find them by visiting religious places and performing certain rituals. Real worship of the Almighty does not demand a particular place, or so many rituals and pomp and show, but only a true heart. Thus, the poet illustrates the hypocrisy of society. In a review of Singh’s book, Sense and Silence: Collected Poems (2010), S. L. Peeran, a famous Indian English poet, writes, “The poet [R. K. Singh] is not ritualistic nor an atheist but he has broken the cocoon of religiosity”. A similar note of criticism is also reflected in some other poems. Numerous pilgrims rush every year to visit age-old temples on the banks of rivers or the very tops of mountains in India. Sometimes, sudden cold waves or heavy rains cause natural calamities and take many lives. On the one hand such incidents make us believe that death is the ultimate reality of life, but on the other hand it shows acute faith resulting in the loss of life. It is true that one who is born has to die – irrespective of high or low, rich or poor – but losing lives this way says more to the poet. Seeing the beauty of mountains and valleys, common people become happy and forget everything. However, even in this situation the poet reminds us of the ultimate reality of life. The same mountains and valleys that give pleasure to the visitors may one day also witness deaths: Swelled by humidity the mountain is a green cemetery

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hiding men and ages people may not believe in the valley everyone is walking I hear death echoing in tunnels dark or grey, black or green itching like a whore whose hand has clutched everything every song is a lament conspiring with rains, winter, summer autumn, storm, wind, sun, moon it’s hardened, cruel, a green stone nourishing the dirge we crown death (Poem No. 27, “My Silence”)

R. K. Singh is worried about the prevailing misconception of religious practices, and he suggests real religious practice that is far away from showing-off and extravagance. It does not require offering huge amounts of money and ostentatious gold or silver ornaments to temples. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says, “Fix your thoughts on Me, submerge yourself as a consciousness into Me – verily, then you will live in Me!” (“Bhakti Yoga”, Bhagavad Gita 12.8, p. 54). This means that without submerging consciousness into God, religious practice is meaningless. Singh means to say much the same (“the flame within”), and quotes the lines of A Return to Love (written by Marianne Williamson in 1996) before the page of the “Prefatory Note” in his book, Sense and Silence: Collected Poems: You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. (Williamson, quoted in Singh 2010)

Singh talks about “liberation”, entering the realm of spirituality. When one is liberated from “fear”, one is liberated from “suffering” too. “The wise devoted to work with the consciousness free themselves from the law of karma and from the necessity to incarnate again. They attain full liberation from suffering!” (“Sankhya Yoga”, Bhagavad Gita 2.51, p. 12). It is

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attachment to one’s action that is the cause of suffering, and on behalf of this suffering one offers empty prayers. “Secular people are enslaved by action if it is not performed as sacrifice. Perform your action as offering to God, staying free from the attachment” (“Karma Yoga”, Bhagavad Gita 3.9, p. 4). Thus, liberation or freedom from attachment engenders true love, devotion and a sense of universal brotherhood. We find echoes of these elements in Singh’s poetry. The poet does not forget to depict the poverty-stricken people whose lives tell many sad stories. Believing in universal values, the poet’s articulation goes beyond a particular place, race and religion, to embrace the uncaredfor and unloved ones: Tonight the icy wind blows and a huge log (of an uprooted tree) barely smoulders to warm up the nameless children of footpaths I am born in freezing December and I know well what warmth means to a ferryman rowing across the river in the silence of twilight (Poem No. 47, “My Silence”)

The same sadness appears when the poet finds poor women with The limy layers on their faces and the fidgeting fingers in ashes not far from the kitchen yard they pick out the used up coal to burn against their poverty cook tomorrow’s food (Poem No. 28, “My Silence”)

These depictions of sadness show Singh’s love for the poor, which is a kind of spiritual experience. It is love that engenders a vision, a beautiful vision that brings one close to this kind of experience. “Love leads to beauty / and vision with perfection” (Poem No. 7, “Flight of Phoenix”). Love and beauty are related. Beauty is the abode of love. In the words of the poet, “love and beauty is nothing / but sabre and sheath” (Poem No. 54, “Flight of Phoenix”). This experience leads to “self-discovery”. After realizing the self, one is far away from the feeling of death. The poet

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writes, “I don’t fear death / nor do I worry about / life-after-death” (Poem No. 2, “I Do Not Question”).

Conclusion There is a blend of social and spiritual elements in the poetry of R. K. Singh. His poetry reflects unwanted rituals, superstitions and ignorance – and also the need of the “flame within” in order to be liberated from them. Love for the uncared-for and unloved is a sign of a fire of wisdom, which is the source of spirituality. He writes that “[l]ove is my prison / and freedom both” (Poem No. 6, “Flight of Phoenix”). This state of mind is a spiritual experience, felt and realized but not seen. This is experienced Not with physical eyes not in sleep or dream nor in madness or in hidden place or peace but in imageless state beyond human self with eyes of the spirit (Poem No. 49, “Flight of Phoenix”)

Thus, the poetry of R. K. Singh is an amalgamation of social and spiritual notes, sometimes apart and sometimes in unison.

Works Cited Bhagvad Gita. Commentaries by Vladimir Antonov and tr. Mikhail Nikolenko. 2002. http://bhagavadgita.swami-center.org/ (accessed 7 February 2017). Naik, M. K. A History of Indian English Literature (reprint.) New Delhi: Sahitya Akademy, 2006. Print. Peeran, S. L. “Review of Sense and Silence: Collected Poems”, https://www.scribd.com/document/50799001/R-K-Singh-and-HisPoetry (accessed 7 February 2017). Singh, R. K. Sense and Silence Collected Poems (1974–2009). Jaipur: Yking Books, 2010. Available at: https://archive.org/details/SenseAndSilenceCollectedPoems (accessed 7 February 2017).

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All quotations from the poems have been taken from this book, having all fifteen collections of poems published combined: My Silence, Music Must Sound, Memories Unmemoried, Flight of Phoenix, I Do Not Question, Sexless Solitude, etc.

CHAPTER SIX SPIRITUAL AND SOCIOCULTURAL CONCERNS IN THE POETRY OF PASHUPATI JHA KUSUM KUNDU

Pashupati Jha is a distinguished professor of English, teaching at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee. He comes from the Madhubani district of Bihar, famous for Mithila culture and Madhubani painting. So, he grew up in an atmosphere of art and culture that was still untouched by the corrupting influence of modernity. These traits are abundantly reflected in his poetry. He has so far published over two hundred poems in leading poetry journals and anthologies. These, and some additional works, are now printed in four widely appreciated poetry collections – Cross and Creation (2003), Mother and Other Poems (2005), All in One (2011) and Awaiting Eden Again (2015). About thirty critical essays on and reviews of his poetry have been published, and many researchers have shown a keen interest in his works for higher university degrees. The first striking quality of his poetry is its varieties of theme and experience. As B. S. Naikar has aptly remarked, “The thematic concern of the poems … ranges from birth to death; from identity/ego to cosmic consciousness … from science to art to religion; from pain to love, and from suffering to acceptance and resignation, thereby capturing the irony and paradox of human experience itself” (Naikar 2003–04: 248). Ramesh K. Srivastava has compared Jha’s poems to those of Frost and Ezekiel for their ability to effectively strike a chord in the minds and hearts of their readers: “What remains embedded in the reader’s mind in most of his poems are the concluding lines, which, like the Urdu couplets, are pithy, poignant, memorable and have a stunning effect, like the stroke of a hammer – a trait one can find in abundance in the poetry of Robert Frost and Nissim Ezekiel” (Srivastava 2003: 75). Out of the variety of themes, this paper has focused on Jha’s poems on God or religion, culture and the prevalent sociopolitical scenario. Jha does not believe in ritualistic, dogmatic religion, but his heart is always in

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favour of religion’s liberal, humanitarian aspect. Rajni Singh remarks that, despite their worldly experience, “deep down” Jha’s poems “maintain a sacred dimension too” (Singh 2013: 348). In his first collection, Cross and Creation, “Reviving Touch” directly deals with God; “Jesus”, “The Flickering Flame”, “Widow’s Woes”, “A Godless Country” and “A Riot Victim” obliquely refer to Him. “Reviving Touch” depicts the symbolic divine help provided to a tired traveller, exhausted by hours of arduous journey through the vast, endless stretches of a desert. He is hungry, thirsty and about to die in a hot, uninhabitable, arid place with no sight of succour anywhere. Suddenly, the grace of God comes to him in the form of a smile from above, and everything changes for the better: Then you touched me with a smile— and, after a long, long while, there was an untimely rain, and I was all poetry again. (“Reviving Touch”, Cross and Creation 14)

The word “poetry” in the last line, above, suggests the happiness that arises from music and harmony in life. However, as in all good poems, it has the possibility of other interpretations too. It may symbolize the “journey” of a poet in search of an apt poem. The poet has to wait and strive until the muse visits and inspires them. Therefore, the touch of a smile in the quoted line may be the benediction of the muse. It may also be the smile of a mother or that of the writer’s beloved, who might have inspired the poem. Thus, Jha’s apparent simplicity is deceptive; lucidity and profundity go hand in hand in his poems. “Jesus” is written in a different thematic turn; here, Jha equates suffering of the poet with the crucifixion of Christ. He sees in the poet’s undeserved pain the repetition of religious history through the excruciating pain suffered by Christ on Mount Golgotha: O Jesus, when unearned wounds are daily inflicted on me, I automatically look to you; do parts of the always continue? (“Jesus”, Cross and Creation 11)

This analogy between the poet’s undeserved agony and that of Christ is presented again in the poem “The Hanging Cross”. Here, the poet first compares himself with a roadside tree, subjected daily to dust and black fumes coming from the passing vehicles. The tree is further exposed to

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pain from the pelting of stones of street urchins wanting to pluck its unripe fruit. So the poet, here symbolized by the tree, concludes that he is ready to pay the price of suffering in order to compose a poem – here symbolized by the tree’s bearing of fruit. His readiness is reflected in these words: “The cross that strings down my neck / touches my heart always / and never hesitates for what it pays” (Cross and Creation 26). In “Flickering Flame”, Jha speaks basically of the opportunist friends who used to humour him when he held good position. But, bereft of power, all of them have left him in the lurch. At such a critical time, the poet turns his faith towards God, who will surely do something for him to lift his dejected spirit. He does not yield to despair, but waits for God: I grope inside to be utterly surprised by a flickering flame of stubborn wish unyielding to outside storm— He will find someday for me too; he will fix sometime for me, true. (“Flickering Flame”, Cross and Creation 22)

While, in the above poems, religion becomes a source of hope and inspiration, in “Widow’s Woes”, “A Godless Country” and “A Riot Victim”, the misuse and misinterpretation of religion is highlighted. The first poem satirizes the situation of a child-widow in a country where the goddesses of power, knowledge and wealth are all women. The childwidow is forced to lead an ascetic life, but when she grows to adolescence, the same people eye her with lust each morning when she takes a dip in the holy temple pond. Desperately, she cries out to those goddesses: Only one prayer comes to me each time I open my mouth O Goddess—Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati— take courage to be born a widow in this country of yours, and then you’d know the difference. (“Widow’s Woes”, Cross and Creation 35)

“A Godless Country” and “A Riot Victim” are written against the backdrop of communal violence in the name of religion, which frequently rips apart civil life in India. In the first work, the poet laments the misguided roles played by priests and other votaries of major religions in the country, encouraging followers to indulge in killing people of other faiths as a sure passport to heaven. This type of inhuman and blatantly

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wrong interpretation of religion is a crime against humanity, perpetuated by priests and pundits because they are sure of the sheer ignorance of the common masses: There is something serious amiss ignorance is now no more a bliss, like serpent, it is bound to hiss and drown all the wounded cries; who says, there are human ties! (“A Godless Country” Cross and Creation 58)

The reference to the serpent in the above stanza intensifies the sinister appeal of misinterpreted religion, because it harks back to Satan in the shape of a serpent coaxing Eve in the Garden of Eden by distorting the wish and order of God. “A Riot Victim”, on the other hand, poignantly depicts the mass rape of a virgin in the name of religion. She belongs to a different faith to that of the rioters, who first butcher her old parents and then ravish her mercilessly, violating her long-cherished chastity of many years’ standing within minutes, leaving her numb and insane: And then, again in the name of God, they did something much more terrible unmindful of my welling tears they mutilated in minutes all the gifts I had preserved for years. Since then, however I try, I fail to utter the name of God, how sad: they leer at me, and call me mad. (“A Riot Victim”, Cross and Creation 59)

It is this gross misuse of religion with nefarious designs that has finally led Jha to talk of universal love and peace in his poems. To him, religion means love and brotherhood. In order to equate religion with love, Jha has presented the mother figure, symbolizing love at the highest level, in his famous work “Mother” in Mother and Other Poems. No one can deny the aspect of pure love and divinity associated with the mother figure in India. Apparently written on the sudden death of his own mother, the poem marks the gradual elevation of the mother from the individual to the eternal, and then to the divine level. At its beginning, the poet tries hard to confront the cruel reality of that great loss, which also means losing the original source of love. Past memories rush to him as haunting nostalgia:

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Squeezed by many child births and suffering our enumerable pneumonia and typhoid I never saw you young my mother. But you were so beautiful all the time, and your smile on me the most charming thing in my life your hands on my head the softest touch I have known your cooked food on the firewood the tastiest I have ever eaten your words to my ears the most musical and the wisest. You, my mother, teacher, angel no word can tell of that utter loss— not even the fraction of it. Would you mother me again in next birth and next and next …? (“Mother”, Mother and Other Poems 12)

But soon, this individual mother is transformed into an eternal entity, the generation of mothers since the creation of this earth: “Mother, you were / therefore we are / and would continue to be / till eternity” (Mother and Other Poems 13). Furthermore, in Indian culture, the mother is not only an eternal creature; she is also a divine deity. This divinity is presented in the last stanza; she is extolled as the goddess of power, wealth and knowledge. And in his concluding lines, the poet asserts that his individual mother has been merged with this divine figure, and thus “No death can make you die / I bow to you and sing your praise” (Mother and Other Poems 13). A recurrent theme in Jha’s poems is that when personal loss is irreparable, he has recourse to religion and divine help. This religious trait, with some variations, is present in many of his poems. For instance, in “Balance Counterbalance”, the poet is greatly disturbed by the storms of life. But, in the nick of time, there is a divine intervention that momentarily checks his downward slide into depression: Then you gesture from above and the dark clouds scatter far away, and behind them appears a smiling moon shaking me off from my deathly swoon. (“Balance Counterbalance”, Mother and Other Poems 23)

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At times, the poet’s wait for the divine one is mysteriously long; yet the soul of the poet seems ready for that eternal wait through birth after birth. This becomes evident in one of Jha’s rare mystic poems, entitled “Eternal Wait”: But I am not tired of the movement I am not bored with the cycle I do not want the final freedom: life is movement from moment to moment, from experience to essence. (“Eternal Wait”, Mother and Other Poems 41)

The expected wait for, or pursuit of, God does not always end in His coming in physical form. This much is more than clear in another mystical poem, “Dream and Reality”, in which God visits Jha in a dream but, when the poet wakes up and madly runs after His footprints to locate Him, he fails to find Him despite endless searching. In Jha’s poetic practice, he mostly presents double meanings in any given situation. The last two lines of the above stanza equate the tension between God and devotee with that between lover and beloved. Furthermore, Jha never misses an opportunity to express Indian tradition and ethos in his poems. So, these quoted lines may also be reminiscent of the eternal love of Radha-Krishna and Mira-Krishna. Awe of God renders the poet speechless when he gets a chance to meet Him, in the poem “Undying Faith”. When God visits him, the poet is stunned into silence because he had never expected such a golden opportunity. It was so sudden that when he wanted to gather his words, his tongue froze because of the overwhelming impact of this unexpected event: Although you came to bless me your brightness baffled me so much that my words of prayer got stuck in my throat; I could only look back at you with yearning eyes the language of which was a little vague and you turned back to another admirer. People say, it happens sometimes when you need to speak most, your tongue gets parched and glued to your mouth and you look helpless waiting for another chance that may never come your way again. (“Undying Faith”, All in One 16)

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If one “reads between the lines” in the above two poems, it becomes quite clear that Jha’s God is not a routine, ritualistic type of figure; there is, rather, a deep, psychological dimension to the whole matter. At times, God in Jha’s poems is related to an inspiring agent of creativity – as in “A Poet’s Desire”, when the poet wants to “create, his keen crafted words”, “[w]ords that may enclose / the ancient music of dance / and drumbeat of Shiva” (“A Poet’s Desire”, All in One 20). In “Poetry”, too, he refers to the third eye of Shiva: … rotating steely wheels within demanding painfully slow digestion; till the assimilated force mounts up and up and up to burst open the third eye. Not to destroy this time but to create a budding blaze– the rising sun with all heat and glow– to enlighten the engulfing depth of darkness, transforming fossilized stones to ooze water– crystal pure, cool and quenching. (“Poetry”, Awaiting Eden Again 11)

There is, in the quoted lines, a subtle reference to the creative process as being akin to penance/sadhna. This leads to activated kundalini, or the generation of a higher consciousness, which symbolically leads to the opening of the third eye of Lord Shiva. This third eye in Hindu mythology is destructive, but in the poetic process referred to above it has been transformed into a creative light that banishes darkness from life. This relationship of creativity with religious faith is quite common in Hindu culture, where, for example, the Goddess Saraswati is the Indian version of the Western muse. So Jha, in “Prayer of a Poet”, seeks her divine help in writing poetry full of humanism: O, the Goddess of words bless me with empowered words in plenty so that when I need them urgently they are ever ready in my mind to be reborn on virgin pages for moving the stony hearts with the milk and tears of human kindness. (“Prayer of a Poet”, Awaiting Eden Again 65)

There are many poems in Jha’s fourth collection, Awaiting Eden Again, in which – disillusioned with the fossilized, corrupt world – the poet prays

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for a new incarnation of God/the Goddess to rejuvenate the universe for a better life. Deeply anguished at the growing levels of crime against women, the poet tells them not to wait for any male rescuer; the days of Krishna salvaging the honour of Draupadi are long gone. Women have to revive and re-collect their own inner strength in order to fight back: Eunuchs would not rescue you in this age, woman! From bovine, you have to become brute you yourself have to turn Kali with sculls and sharp sword in your hand bloodshot eyes demanding vengeance, and red tongue dripping blood of the ravishers dismembered and dead at your feet. (Awaiting Eden Again 68)

In another poem, “The True Tiger”, Jha considers only the tiger used by the Goddess Durga as the true one, and yearns for her next incarnation to finish off tyrants and ravishers from the face of the earth. While the common tigers found in forests are predators, the divine tiger is a rescuer of saints from the terror of monsters. So, the poet points out, As for me, I know of only one true tiger with You as the rider, the one with bloodshot eyes and sharp, blood-dripping teeth tearing off the black heart of the demons and demigods in one effortless strike. Will that incarnation come again and when, o when? (“The True Tiger”, Awaiting Eden Again 79)

Jha is not only captivated by the power of Godhood, he is also wonderstruck by its compassionate aspect. In this respect, he recalls the symbolic presence of Christ, the Saviour. In “The Lion and the Lamb”, the powerful lion initially mauls the lamb almost to death: But then comes the Christ caressing kindly the leaking wound of the lamb enfolding it to His compassionate hug and all is well with the revival of life. (“The Lion and the Lamb”, Awaiting Eden Again 41)

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In the concluding lines of this poem, he refers to the arrogance of the forest fire, feeling that it could finish off both the flora and fauna of an entire area. But the kindness of Christ comes in the form of heavy rains, quickly dousing the conflagration: The raising forest fire proud of its deadly and devastating flame leaping up like the tongue of a dragon forgets the power of the divine downpour ending it all within minutes. (“The Lion and the Lamb”, Awaiting Eden Again 41)

Besides treating religion poetically for love, compassion and the prevalence of justice for all, Jha has also written many poems on cultural and sociopolitical issues. There is a scathing attack on the pleasure principle of modern life, which cares only for lust, in the poem “Civilization, a Progress Report”. In this work, two parents, even in old age, are doing everything to arrest their passing youth while their son and daughter are each mindlessly drifting from one affair to another. The worst part comes at the end of the poem, when both the father and his son sexually exploit their young maidservant by turn: Only the young maid remains waiting behind, to suffer the drunk virility of the Sahib and his son when, late at night, they return. Next morning, with more stitches to her blouse, she mops everything away, except her misfortune. And, somewhere, in the distance Christ bleeds again, and again. (“Civilization, a Progress Report”, Cross and Creation 13)

Two things are to be noted here: first, Jha never tries to titillate his reader with explicit details of the sexual act; second, he suggests that God is deeply touched by such misdeeds of men. He never approves of such exploitation, with the subtle suggestion that there may be divine intervention at an appropriate time. This exploitation of a maid is referred to again in “Night in a City”, in which a young maid is subjected to repeated rape by her master. Finally, she is heavy with a child and people in her slums question her honour, leading to her suicide:

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“Soiled garment” in the stanza above is an apt, poetic expression, for it refers both to the actual garment and also to the soiled virginity of the maid. In Indian culture, love is a pure emotion and not blatantly associated with permissive sex. Jha is, therefore, bitter at the changing definition of love in modern, metropolitan India, where it is not only love for the body but also ever changing. In his poem “Art and the Artifice”, he comments on artificial beauty and love. Decorating lips with colour to look attractive is against the tenets of natural love, in which beauty comes out of purity of love from within, and from nothing else: How do I kiss you when the lipstick has coloured your conscience? Shouldn’t I prefer rather the lips with the fresh smell of raw onion on them? At least they are pure, not perfumed! (“Art and the Artifice”, Cross and Creation 27)

Similarly, he is offended by the habits of youngsters in mega-cities who change their partners in love as quickly as they change their undergarments. The poet flings his critical barb at their habit of frequent change in an oblique but scathing way in “Love, the Latest Definition”: Love is not love that is stagnant; it should be a free flow, even if that of a gutter-at least there’s a movement there along with frog, reptile and aborted foetus. (“Love, the Latest Definition”, Cross and Creation 16)

Linking love with a foul gutter full of dirty things tells us a great deal about the adverse impact of permissiveness prevalent in ultra-modern culture. The betrayal of wedded love is also a sore point in the poetry of

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Jha. For him, an ideal love is eternal love that grows through the years. So, the lack of fidelity in marriage invites vitriolic comments from him. He, thus, writes in “Snapshots”, Grief the eternal baggage of this wife growing old, bewailing in the dark night the torrid affair of her wedded man, who hardly comes to her now; old is not gold anymore. (“Snapshots”, All in One 10)

On an individual level for Jha, love is a lifelong contract between man and woman; in fact, he goes even further than that. He points out, in “Phoenix Love”, that his poetic lines enshrine everything of his beloved, so that he could feel her even after her death: As the ultimate act of love I imprison everything of yours on pages—your eyes, your smiles your words and events— so that whenever I feel utterly alone I may easily go to them and experience you whole … I have loved you more than love and would not let you fade away and die, my dear. (“Phoenix Love”, Mother and Other Poems 54)

The same eternal aspect of love as part of Indian culture and belief is echoed in “Ladies and Gentlemen”. For socialites, the physicality of love is paramount; hence, it is an affair of minutes alone. But for elemental people, passionate about love, it is the deep, everlasting bonding that is of utmost importance: I do not ‘make love’ like you ladies and gentlemen! But when I love it is not for a few minutes or hours, or weeks— not even for months and years; it is not even for entire life.

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Chapter Six When I, the uncouth, love it is guaranteed for a minimum of seven births. (“Ladies and Gentlemen”, All in One 23)

As B. N. Singh has very pertinently remarked of such poems by Jha, “He never westernizes his outlook or expression, as [a] majority of the Indian English writers often do. He believes in Indian tradition and values sans, of course, suppression of women and religious bigotry; yet he never imposes his value system on his readers” (Singh 2007: 297). Jha is a staunch believer in his country’s culture, and so he has trust in the continuance of true love forever – defying the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. For him, mature love is finally spiritual. As he writes in “Absence and Essence”: All through the past decades of my life living with you has become a habit, which may die only with my death. Or not even with my death, for (the) soul survives the body. (“Absence and Essence”, All in One 15)

Jha has a sincere concern for Indian women, as is evident from many of his poems, including “Mother” and “Widow’s Woes”. He is unnerved at the exploitation of women in India, in its various forms and in the name of social norms. In “An Indian Woman”, he laments how, because of the high cost of a dowry, a daughter is married to a “stray dog”, a petty clerk, who vomits all his official anger back on her, which she has to accept as her wifely duty. Similarly, her brother wants her to dance to the tune of his wife, and she has to serve tea and snacks to the smart girlfriends of her son. So, the poet concludes, through the feelings of that exploited woman, “I am a mirror / to this ancient culture, / where woman is always worshipped” (“An Indian Woman”, Cross and Creation 30). The similar, silent exploitation of a docile housewife is depicted in the poem “Milk or Tears”. She has been advised, at the time of marriage, by her mother that “[s]acrifice be your only salvation”. She tries her best to live up to this advice; but, as a consequence, she hardly gets a spare moment for herself. Like the movement of the hands of the wall clock, she has to work all the time. The poet poignantly presents her predicament: After a hurried nap things return to square one, repetition

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of the morning drudgery in the evening and night; when the hour strikes eleven, I grope for my bed for momentary respite, still fearing, he may summon me to his side. They regard me a goddess of milk and multitude I think me a river of flooding tears, banked only by my mother’s platitude and the stigma of social fears. (“Milk or Tears”, Cross and Creation 60)

Jha finds cruelty and callousness much more prevalent in large cities; the Indian countryside has, he feels, an inbuilt compassion. In his poem “God Made the Country” and its sequel, “Man Made the Town”, this dichotomy is quite clear. While a tired traveller is received with a warm welcome, cool water and a few pieces of jaggery in a village, in the town he has to buy everything. This sociocultural scenario is an extension of what is going on in the country’s politics, because politics today affects most things through its influence and the policy of the vote bank. There is hardly any aspect of sociocultural life in which its sinister presence is not felt. Although apolitical in his basic attitude, Jha has to creatively comment on the pervasive political situation because it is a dominant element in contemporary Indian life. In “The Big Man”, he effectively comes out against the opportunistic political culture of today, in which politicians in power visit their constituencies just to cheat the gullible population: The government guest came the government guest went and things returned to square one; we waiting again for another guest in another year to see loud colours coated afresh on buildings and roads to welcome the government with folded hands on both sides of his cavalcade for empty promises repeated again, forgotten again. (“The Big Man”, Mother and Other Poems 44)

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There is a devastating dig at modern politicians, who, when in power, indulge in all manner of luxuries. Guided fully by the pleasure principle, they torture hapless people for their individual enjoyment. For them, service to self is the only motive. But when they are out of power, they become almost extinct from public view; no one likes to recollect them. As Jha writes in “Loss and Gain”, But at the end of it all you were all alone bereft of family and friends, you died a complete death obliterated from the memory of time worse than that of dinosaurs; not even the latest computer would retrieve now your name lost forever. (“Loss and Gain”, All in One 14)

Jha has also movingly presented the political misdeeds of the followers of Gandhi; they fully exploited his sacrifice for their own ends by rising in government and politics. They were Gandhian only in appearance and words, but in action they were rank opportunists who ruled long over the country in order to siphon off its resources for themselves and their families. The poet opines that the real killer of Gandhi was not Nathuram Godse but his own followers, who mutilated his principles and enjoyed the wealth of the nascent nation. So, Jha presents the pathetic plight of India in these lines of the poem “He Was Not Killed by a Bullet”: He was not killed by any enemy’s bullet but by the daily betrayals of his friends and followers ever ready to tighten grabs into stronger grips on the chessboard of power politics. Nothing changes in the country’s hope except the blare of more beautiful slogans different in sound than the earlier ones but not in meaning and intent. (“He Was Not Killed by a Bullet”, Awaiting Eden Again 75)

Jha writes on politics, but never propagates the political ideology of any particular group. Like his poems on religion and sociocultural life, his political works do not impose themselves on his readers – they work with gentle and unobtrusive persuasion. He simply depicts the scene and does

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not dictate his terms. His poems are not direct statements on any religious, sociocultural or political issues – they are graphic and moving presentations of things around him, situations surrounding any common, sensitive man like him. So, Pronab Kumar Majumder is right to point out that Jha’s poems are “neither dragging nor nagging” (Majumder 2012: 237); they move smoothly in the mind and heart of the reader, without creating any strain, but they certainly enhance and intensify the reader’s perception of reality – religious, social, cultural and political. Shiv Kumar Yadav has very effectively summed up the poetic achievement of Jha in this context: After reading the collections of Pashupati Jha, one thing is quite clear. His passionate zeal for rapid refinement in human evolution, not physical but cultural, is intended to complete the journey as soon as possible from sub-human to human, and from human to superhuman, so that another bard never could repeat ‘what man has made of man?’ (Yadav 2005–06: 128)

Works Cited Jha, Pashupati. Cross and Creation. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2003. Print. —. Mother and Other Poems. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2005. Print. —. All in One. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2011. Print. —. Awaiting Eden Again. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2015. Print. Majumder, P. K. English Poetry in India: A Twenty First Century Review. Kolkata: Bridge-in-Making Publication, 2012. Print. Naikar, B. S. “Review of Cross and Creation”, Indian Journal of English Studies, 41 (2003–04). Print. Singh, B. N. “Different Dimensions of Love in the Poetry of Pashupati Jha”, in Rainbow Redemption: New Bearings in Indian English Poetry. Ed. Binod Mishra. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2007. Print. Singh, Rajni. “When Poetry Becomes Prayer: A Study of the Works of Pashupati Jha”, Indian Journal of English Studies, 50 (2013): 348. Print. Srivastava, R. K. “Review of Cross and Creation”, Journal of Indian Writing in English, 31.2 (July 2003): 75. Print. Yadav, Shiv Kumar. “From Pain to Pen: Crisis and Creation in the Poetry of Pashupati Jha”, Indian Journal of English Studies, 43 (2005–06): 128. Print.

CHAPTER SEVEN PASHUPATI JHA’S POETRY: A JOURNEY TO “NIRVANA” AMIDST “UNREST”, “REALIZATION”, “TRUTH”, “ACCEPTANCE” AND “SUBMISSION” RAM KULESH THAKUR

The poet in Pashupati Jha is a keen observer, mature analyst, smart interpreter, witty speaker and an awesome magician with words. Like any skilled craftsman, he chisels his words to fit exactly into the moulds of his poems, which are, most of the time, personal manifestations. His poetry exhibits much depth, richness and diversity of themes. His country being the richest soil of multiculturalism, one finds innumerable cultural topics and themes, besides universal issues, in his poetry. One also finds a merging of the personal with the universal in his work. His poems reflect urban as well as rural issues, nature and environmental concerns, sexism, ageism, ethics, devaluation, ethos, religion, spirituality, love, peace, sex, politics of self, etc. In some of the works, one finds a detour from the abstract to the concrete, from the romantic to the real, from the clichéd to the avant-garde and unconventional – and, in other poems, exactly the opposite. The poetic persona in Jha’s work is very similar to Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, displaying the predicament of the modern individual. It seems that the speaker (in his poems) is living in a wasteland where he loses all his hopes and fidelity. He seems to be an alienated and isolated individual, highly sensible towards the difficulties in society. In other words, the central character is shown to be entangled in a web of complex situations, yearnings, desires, expectations, dreams, actions and dilemmas, unable to find a way out. Jha’s work certainly marks a departure from traditional notions of poetry, and introduces some new ideals. It would be very apt to say that his poetry is a journey – a journey to “Nirvana” amidst “Unrest”,

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“Realization”, “Truth”, “Acceptance” and “Submission”. The persona in Jha’s poetry travels through various stages: in the beginning, one finds it to be in a state of unrest; later, the persona realizes the truth; and finally, it is found that there is no other alternative than accepting what is true and submitting oneself to the divine wish. This is the element that makes Jha’s poetry appealing to readers across all boundaries, as anyone can identify themselves with the speaker in his poems. Poetry serves as a medium of liberation for Pashupati Jha. He seeks “Nirvana” – the state of dissolving (merging) oneself with the “Ultimate” – through his poems. The fact cannot be denied that Nirvana is not easy to achieve, and one has to pass successfully through a number of stages in order to reach that bliss. Jha’s poems may be easily distinguished by the parameters of these different stages: Unrest, Realization, Truth, Acceptance and Submission. One attains the supreme bliss and “Peace” only when one submits to the wish of the “Divine”. Jha’s poems reflect considerable maturity and experience even when he seems to be in a state of unrest: “I am a tree on the wayside / buses tar my entire body / urchins pelt stones at me” (“The Hanging Cross” Cross and Creation 26). These lines clearly manifest the unhappy state of the speaker. The speaker seems to be frustrated with the way in which he has been treated by the people around him. Jha is unable to understand what has gone wrong with a world where “people are rushing to mass prayers / in mosques, gurudwaras and mutts, / to gore another’s god in the guts / with knives, swords and rifle – butts” (“A Godless Country” Cross and Creation 58). The poet realizes in no time the harsh realities of this world, and announces, To all such queries I have this short and simple replyI am like the weeping sky, melting my body to sprout the world with green life; and that too without flooding the river. (“The Poetic Self”, Mother and Other Poems 16)

Again, in the poem entitled “Xerox Copy”, the poet says, Although conceived in His own image, I am not the original

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but His Xerox copy with blotches left here and there. Would you love them too? (“Xerox Copy”, Mother and Other Poems 63)

The poet realizes that although human beings are an embodiment of the Lord Himself, they have allowed themselves to deteriorate to such an extent that it is doubtful whether they would be loved (accepted) by their own race. This cruel world imposes “blotches” on the untarnished creation of God. As soon as the poet realizes this “Truth”, he finds a way, out of sincere conviction, to lessen the sins of generations of men: And mind it, I would be doing it all not for any reward or a script on the screen, but for redeeming my sins as Man (“My Choice”, Mother and Other Poems 48)

The poet in Jha never loses hope despite all the odds: People say, it happens sometimes that when you need to speak most, your tongue gets parched and glued to your mouth and you look helpless waiting for another chance that may never come your way again. (“Undying Faith” All in One 16)

And, finally, he admits, I have to move on, and on keeping my eyes ahead on the sky making movement my only prize, with the sun shining over my head and the moon smiling at my back. (“Undying Faith” All in One 1–2)

The poetic self in Jha learns from the elements of the universe, and the sky and the stars are not only guideposts but also afford him solace and the

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impetus to continue: “I looked at the sky as my final solace / those eternally twinkling stars spurred / my dying urge to keep on going” (“Undying Faith” All in One). A number of Jha’s poems display the revelation of “Truth”. The complex web of human relations is well expressed in the poem “With You” – the sun sustains energy, but it also burns us black: the air gives life, but it storms us too; the rain brings hope, but deluges our homes, yet what is this earth without these elements! So in our years of life we criss-cross each other like the sun, the air, and the rain. (“Undying Faith” All in One 17)

The poet is startled to see the changes all around him. Jha prefers the innocently idyllic past over the materialistically oppressive present. The poet uncovers the truth that technology has changed human lifestyles completely, and it is slowly and gradually taking humans away from the real world (nature): Birds are homeless now where would they sing for whom would they sing for what would they chirp? Their melody has no takers everything is available now at the click of a mouse. (“Undying Faith” All in One 58)

The seed of wisdom sprouts in the poem “Eternal Wait” when the poet finds that “life is a movement from / moment to moment / from experience to essence”. Jha never attempts to stand against the truth, and he readily accepts the ways of the world and the mysteries of life. One can easily trace the tone of submission in his poems, and, unlike all other types of submission, he conquers his confused state of unrest in order to achieve solace and peace through his submission. The poet accepts that he has outlived his existence, and is ready for the journey beyond. He does not give up, however, and prepares himself for yet another journey. The poet has strutted and fretted throughout his life, and is now in a mood to submit to the divine desire:

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Surprisingly, whatever the circumstances, Jha is not ready to yield to his personal trauma; he has to share both the shine and sadness of his society. Exhausted by the tiresome, long journey of life among arid places and people, the poet, as well as his creativity, is suddenly revived by the wonderful impact of a smile: Then you touched me with a smile— and, after a long, long while, there was an untimely rain, and I was all poetry again. (“Reviving Touch”, Cross and Creation 14)

The present analysis of Pashupati Jha’s poetry brings out a new aspect of his creative genius. Poetry is, for Jah, a means of attaining liberation and sublimation. He may be compared to the great Buddha, who achieved ultimate bliss after facing many odds and challenges. Jha seeks to achieve the same Nirvana through the medium of his poetry, with apt command over words and expression. As the well-known literary critic Usha Bande points out, “Pashupati Jha has evolved a style of his own –uncomplicated, direct yet profound. One marvels at his accurate use of language and economy of idiom” (Bande 2013: 457).

Works Cited Bande, Usha. “Review of All in One”, Indian Journal of English Studies, 50 (2013): 457. Print. Jha, Pashupati. Cross and Creation. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2003. Print. —. Mother and Other Poems. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2005. Print. —. All in One. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers and Distributors, 2011. Print.

CHAPTER EIGHT SHUJAAT HUSSAIN’S CIVIC CONCERN: A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF HIS SELECTED POEMS V. SUNITHA

Shujaat Hussain’s poetry is stern, grave and has a mission to air essential grievances. Being a prolific writer, his poems are rich in content, highly didactic and attempt the betterment of life. They emanate the aura of India, and reflect his ardent concern for the fortune and fortification of the country. The poems corroborate not only his adroitness but also his wisdom and discerning gaze into the demonic issues that disrupt peace and harmony in society. The poet’s mind’s eye deserves praise for adding a new dimension to the existing corpus. His poems have almost nothing to relate on the beauty of women or nature – and, even if they do, they carry some elevated moral at the end. They are replete with the ubiquitous spiritual, cultural and political aspects of life and strive for universal peace and harmony. Through his poems, he also regrets the bomb blasts that have taken many lives and yearns for the well-being of humanity. The poet’s sense of duty, responsibility, humility, ethics and moral values can be perceived in every line. They show an intense yearning to shape a shapeless society. Hussain’s poem “On Studies” deserves acclaim as it brings to light the significance of books. It is an outstanding poem that spotlights the habit of reading. If one’s objective is to untie a Gordian knot, revolutionize by tackling a paradoxical issue for attaining excellence, avers the poet, then books are the only solution. Highlighting the impact of books, Norman Cousins pronounces, “The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas – a place where history comes to life.” Books have been called “the eternal lighthouse in the vast sea”. “A book is a garden, orchard, tree, counselor”, adds Charles Baudelaire. According to Dr. Hussain, those who adore books are virtuous and those

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who avoid or condemn them are despicable. The line “Books have pearls, stars and moon” (“On Studies” 7) is comprehensive and all-encompassing. A pearl is an exquisite and dear bead, formed in the sea and tracked down only with the utmost toil and labour. Thus, “Books have pearls” can be interpreted as meaning that they contain vital and constructive information. Uncountable stars sparkle and illuminate the sky; the moon, conversely, eliminates darkness by reflecting light and an appearance of tranquility and coolness. In line with these examples, knowledge acquired through books can eliminate ignorance, illuminate cognizance and enlighten the mind. Thus, the habit of perusing books not only aids sagacity and rationality but also bestows the outstanding features of calmness and illumination. Every book contains a novel and noble thought that endows mature thought and a far-reaching vision – which, in turn, are the requisite attributes of the ideal person. Books lay bare historical, contemporary or future events. “On Studies” ends with an evocative line, which propounds that it is not only exploration, information or innovation that is learnt and inculcated from books but also the ethical values crucial for human life. Thus, the poet puts forth the notion that every person should be a paragon of virtue, and that this can be attainable using books. Knowledge is a captivating power that rules the universe. Hussain’s poem “Knowledge” also has an elevated moral to boost younger minds. To the poet, knowledge is a source of power, peace and awakening. Worldly treasure will wane gradually, and peter out one day. The only truly priceless possession, which augments by giving, is knowledge. The unique feature of knowledge is that it is more than a treasure house or magic bowl that never empties; in fact, it intensifies in proportion to its usage. Hence, the poet advocates further imparting it. His intention becomes apparent when he juxtaposes knowledge to Mount Everest, the flower and the sun – all components of nature. A bud blossoms into flower and attains fulfillment. It is not only a pulchritudinous sight but also gives a mesmerizing fragrance to the nostrils. A holder of knowledge, being a significant person in society, dispenses wit and wisdom, instils humanism and thereby begets wealth and riches. Everest is the highest peak in the world. The fruits of knowledge elevate one beyond Everest – bestowing name, fame, gusto, love and respect. The sun is an icon for illumination. The lines “Blessing wings / Adorn Lives” (“Knowledge” 13–14) are exploratory and carry metaphysical connotations. The wings referred to, blessed by knowledge, are not physical but are metaphorical ones that may enable the knowledge seeker to reach the heights that help them to visualize the world. The metaphor signifies that knowledge provides the freedom to shape one’s thoughts and broaden one’s perception. The

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diction of a knowledgeable person may be laconic but extensive, and immense in interpretation and elucidation. Thus, the poet underscores the exalted and noble aspects of knowledge and spurs on its acquisition in order to uphold people’s well-being. The poem “Lessons in Heroic Fashion” edifies us with fruitful precepts that must be adapted but strictly adhered to for general well-being and peace. These precepts are, in fact, more powerful than the nuclear weapons of arms-manufacturing countries. The poem starts with a dignified note that draws attention to the tradition and cultural heritage of India. It is a land of gods and goddesses, saints and sages and the treasure house of holy scriptures that contain inspiring preaching to be followed by firm and faithful devotees. India’s prominent cultural features – such as festivals, shrines and tombs – promote concord and unison. The poet uses the sea and its rising wave as a symbol to convey the passion of every Indian. Thus, the lessons recounted in heroic fashion permeate deeply into the feelings of nationalism in each citizen, in order to save the nation from the brutality of nuclear weapons. “Tyranny not to be Proud of” is a poem of sublime and lofty notions. The poet’s aversion to tyranny and its practitioners is clear; he adjudicates that ego, arrogance, ferocity and rancour vitiate human values. A tyrant celebrates at the sight of people’s tears, sighs and helplessness. To the poet, a tyrant is very much a wild creature – a beast bereft of human qualities. With rigorous scorn, the poet asks, “Would that weapon protect lives?” (“Tyranny not to be Proud of” 25) and curses the arms of the tyrant, so that they should become impotent and devoured by fire. The poet’s ennobled vision comes to mind when he yearns for a man with a human heart to rise from the ashes. Thus, it can be deciphered that the poet wishes to make void and trample all that is dreadful and inimical to ashes, and he intensely hopes for uprightness and benevolence to rise from the burnt remains. The phoenix is the only bird that has the power to regenerate from ashes. In accordance with this image, the poet foresees tyranny and tyrants being incinerated, and solicitude and altruism thereby spawning from their destruction. “Demonic Diplomatic Webs on Drives” is a verbal assault on mendacity, hypocrisy and the false pride of human beings. Many nations have power over nuclear weapons and arms, which are in no way worthwhile to society. But they brag and puff up with pride regarding their armories. Such arsenals are demonic, but their possession is considered essential for political diplomacy. The effects of these sentiments are malevolence and nastiness in the lives of these nations, establishes the poet. Humanity’s unquenched thirst for material wants and its meanness

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also receive attention in these lines: “Why does darkness prevail in the hearts? / When sea-shore is in their possession? / Reason of this intense thirst gives no clues” (“Demonic Diplomatic Webs on Drives” 3, 5, 6). The very word “sea” here emphasizes the magnitude of mankind’s rapacity. It is a universal fact that three quarters of the earth’s surface are occupied by ocean. The poet is perplexed and left clueless as to what amount of things would satiate human avariciousness. In this respect, Mahatma Gandhi’s quote can be evoked: “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” Thus, the poet pinpoints the fact that the wish for terrestrial things divests life of its quietude and placidity. “Expose Catastrophic Images of 1945” is a heart-rending poem that uncovers the catastrophic images of the 1945 bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – ravaged places that occupy some of the darkest pages of world history. Its effect would surely touch the most ruthless heart and kindle empathy with the myriad victims who either died or became diseased due to the explosions. They imploded people’s well-being and rendered their lives beyond redemption – even many years after the blasts. The poet’s words act like a camera, providing a snapshot of the injuries felt and bringing an agonizing live scene before the readers’ eyes. A dearth of human nature degraded the US Air Force to the point of acting like a devilish human. It was a total annihilation, and its catastrophic images are still alive in our minds. The line “Forget, forgive and strive to thrive” (“Expose Catastrophic Images of 1945” 4) can serve only as lip service because it was an indelible, outrageous and condemnable tragedy. People are ordained to fret and brood well into the future for the catastrophe of 1945. It is impossible to blank out its relentlessness, as the loss incurred cannot be confined to mere words. If something is lost it can be regained, but if everything is lost is there any hope? Yes, says the poet – and hence, he writes, “Strive to thrive”. Of course, forgiveness is a human virtue and weapon-for-weapon is proclaimed neither by most Holy Scriptures nor by our ancestors. In fact, Matthew in the Bible records Jesus instructing, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” The pain should always serve to prevent the future catastrophe. The explosion of a uranium fission bomb and its ensuing human tribulation would infuse tremor and trepidation in even a dauntless individual. “Hell broke loose” (“Expose Catastrophic Images of 1945” 11) is very tactically drafted to convey the infernal sight of warfare. The poet’s description makes one aver that the netherworld would be better than the wretched and dreadful life after such an explosion. The line “Melting iron and vaporizing human bodies”

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(“Expose Catastrophic Images of 1945” 16) makes lucid the forces generated due to the blast in a forensic manner. Iron can be melted only at exceptionally high temperatures. A 4,000-degree temperature would no doubt vaporize human bodies, and cause bloated blisters on human faces. Oh! What an iniquity! What a depravity! Why is the human race racked with pain? Is it life or death? Death is a matter of moments, but the lingering affliction due to the weapons’ detonation is tyrannical, vigorous and ferocious. The catastrophe delineated would be etched in the memory for ever. Would this be considered a conquest by the so-called potent and shrewd US Army? To the boorish, frenzied and injudicious this is triumph, and an indispensable aspect of war. “Almighty’s crop” (“Expose Catastrophic Images of 1945” 23) is a phrase aptly used by the poet. The crop and the food from it is a god’s gift. But this inestimable gift, along with the fecundity of the land, is banished for years due to war – a point that fills the poet with remorse. The poem is a bitter note on the depravity of war, which would make even a stoic wail and bemoan. The reader, too, feels helpless and regrets the impotent state of their fellow human beings. Every deleterious tribulation educates humanity in the vital lessons of life. But, agonizes the poet, this great holocaust did not teach “[t]he world’s political and military Elite any lessons” (“Expose Catastrophic Images of 1945” 34–35). Adding fuel to the fire is the notion that the anniversaries of the two bombings are commemorated as days of peace. The poet considers this to be a hollow pursuit and a matter of pride. Can peace be attained by killing myriads is his query. He yearns, “Let the terror never allow revisit” (“Expose Catastrophic Images of 1945” 38), and aspires to a new life away from baneful and vicious weapons. “Beware of Arms Manufacturer” also runs with the same line of thought as the aforesaid poem, with its catastrophic images. The poet makes earnest efforts to repeatedly condemn the act of arms manufacturing. The line “Poisonous politics of politicians” (“Beware of Arms Manufacturer” 6) is very apt in the contemporary context – albeit that “poisonous” might not fully capture the brutality and uncouth behaviour of today’s politicians. To the poet, the politicians are arms manufacturers and we should be wary of them. In the name of harmony, they deliberately extinguish the light of hope in the life of the blameless masses. A magician performs tricks as a part of his profession, but a politician’s survival is based on the extent of his tricky sense and deceitful nature. The lines “Practice black art like seasoned magicians / Propagate their hidden agenda” (“Beware of Arms Manufacturer” 7–8) prompt us to salute the poet for his undaunted attempt to revitalize society. White

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connotes impeccability and rectitude, but the adjective “black” in the “black art” denotes veto and death. Apart from this, the poem stands august as the poet ends it with an ideal device necessary for humans’ reconciliation and bliss: if criticism and condemnation cease and interaction is continued, then “there will be no war” (“Beware of Arms Manufacturer” 9). Thus, Hussain, through this poem, points towards a war-less earth which emanates an aura of amicability and congeniality, assuring all human beings of a serene life. “Bake their Breads on the Flame of Riots” places its emphasis on unity and solidarity. This poem also brings to light politicians’ iniquitous and egomaniacal nature. Images of prey–predator and victim–victimized are also traced in this poem. Poverty – India’s nemesis, past and present – is afforded a dominant focus. What the poem terms a “bellyful meal” (“Bake their Breads on the Flame of Riots” 6) is rare, like a rainbow to the millions of impoverished Indians, and exacerbates the poet’s angst. Ravenous appetite, starvation and the consequent loss of life are ubiquitous in many people’s everyday life. This poem is a verbal picture that shines a light on the atrocities and dastardly deeds of politicians. Words like “exploitation” and “swindling” alone would not suffice to document politicians’ self-obsessed pursuit. Nonetheless, the poet’s optimism is seen when he writes, “Someone will rise from the hungry and naked / To make motherland holy from the wicked” (“Bake their Breads on the Flame of Riots” 7–8). Here, the “wicked” are none other than our great rulers and potentates. These lines would make any true Indian yearn for a holy and unblemished state for our Mother India – free from its present corrupted and debauched condition. Its readers would also join hands with the poet and give assent to the line “Bake their breads on the flame of riots”, which is the very title of the poem. The line is factual; it suggests one person’s tyranny and devouring of flesh and bones at the cost of the blood sacrifice of many impotent people. As affirmed in the poem “Beware of Arms Manufacturer”, our present politicians are malicious enough to play greater tricks than the most seasoned magicians. By their Machiavellian plans, they fan the flames of strife among ordinary people and thereby “bake their breads on the flame of riots” deliberately created all over the country. “If you are learned or unlearned and fail in decent fields free from tricks you are sure to thrive in politics” (Reddy 2005: 59) is an apt quote coined by T. Vasudeva Reddy in his poetry collection Pensive Memories. The case of the predicament surrounding the recent bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh would serve as an instance of this sentiment in action. Chaos, pandemonium and disruption was the doom imposed on the wretched

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public of this state due to the guile of traitors called politicians. The aim of sadistic politicians, yells the poet, is to devour the peace and harmony of the public and establish their tyranny. India is widely celebrated for its rich culture. But “Politicians are making culture lame” (14) is the mournful note of the poet. If at all they venture into some beneficial activities, the plain intention behind this is to bolster their support and claim votes for the next election. “I” and “My” are the overruling words, and every act of brutality and ferocity is, of course, undertaken in order to shield themselves. The closing lines of the poem carry momentous thoughts, which ought to be strictly adhered to by every civilized citizen. The Indian people should no longer put up with ignominy and indignity, they should become aware that “hatred and inequalities fracture our society” (“Politicians are making culture lame” 17). Hence, they should be more serious about the nation’s constitution – putting it on a pedestal, if necessary. Thus, the poet brings to the fore an uplifting and noble vision: “True spirit in unity will grace prosperity” (“Politicians are making culture lame” 20). Former US President Ronald Reagan once stated, “If we ever forget that we are One Nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under”. Lack of awareness and unity, and the perpetually deceived and entrapped state of the people, encourage politicians to strut and establish their political clout over them. The poem strives to forewarn the ingenuous public by making plain the ingenuity of egocentric politicians, who are devious enough to set ablaze even a wet log and spin a net of detestation and animosity amidst people. It is a clarion call to a naive public to rouse themselves, discern and distinguish. Many words – among them, “society”, “notoriety”, “sobriety”, “propriety”, “me”, “claim” and “shame” – add rhythm to this poem. This also testifies to the fact that words dance in the hands of this poet. It should, however, be noted that Hussain never compromises his meaning or content for the sake of rhythmic words. “Political Theatre” is a poem that photographs and puts on view the political cinema of India. We reap benefits for people by various welfare schemes, is politicians’ interminable blabber. They cash in on people’s sweat and labour. Political benefits and personal defence grow at the expense of the livelihood of guileless dependants. To politicians, every act should reap financial reward and be turned to their advantage. They wallow in an unabated deluge of corruption. Thus, the poet judges, “Nothing so sweet as corruption to them” (“Political Theatre” 1): it is their realm of profit and delight. Anything great has to be acquired only by dint of hard work. But political sleaze is a treasure house containing power;

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honour; and, of course, glamour – all of which can be easily unlocked and stolen with the help of a duplicate key, its wielder becoming Kuber. The line “Causing democratic erosion and cancerous root” (“Political Theatre” 6) requires comprehensive focus. India’s pride rests in its democracy – i.e., government by the people. But it is corroded and left in the lurch by our unscrupulous and amoral representatives. Soil erosion is nature’s calamity, but democratic erosion …? It is a man-made blight. The adjective “cancerous” reflects the intensity of the danger caused. A word like “‘danger” would not be a parallel term to cancerous because the latter is so drastic and dreadful. Hussain’s voice is for the voters, and hence, he worries, “No care for voter’s choice” (“Political Theatre” 8). “They stoop to your bleeding feet to ensure their political power and enslave you for all five years”, adjoins Reddy (2005: 59). Further, claims Hussain, all politicians are of “identical nature” – irrespective of religion, caste, creed or education. They serve with no solemnity: it is commented in the following line that “[t]hey attend legislation as a cafeteria” (“Political Theatre” 14). India’s present-day youth dream of getting rid of them; the country is in dire need of dreamers and doers. The poet’s exclamation “Alas!” (“Political Theatre” 19) conveys his despondent feeling that although the Mughals and the British have long since left the subcontinent, “[o]ur rulers are ruining Indians and India”. Thus become apparent the poet’s feeble state and his pining to stamp out the vice and corrupted system in the country for the sake of its people’s welfare. The poem “Imprisoning Images of India” imparts a picturesque portrayal of India and its lost vigour. It is a rueful comment on the defunct dynamism of our country. It is no more a Garden of Eden. The poet stresses communal harmony, which, of course, could buttress and stand as the pillar of our national ceremony. He further worries about the decay of morality. Politicians’ ruthless deportment has fractured our mother country. He ruminates on the debauchery of a few saints and the sham of many people’s worship. His plea is to expend resources for welfare and thereby put a stop to the opportunity for war due to scant resources. Through their work, poets have a significant role in bringing about an evolution in attitudes and thereby preserving our motherland. They ought to sow the seed of “verve, virtue, vision” and create fellow feeling by practising justice and equality. This will in turn guarantee love, peace and prosperity. Thus, Hussain’s civic concern and aspiration for a life of serenity, love and prosperity is made explicit through his magnificent words. In the poem “Spiritual Spirit”, the poet’s conviction for a new India is traced. According to him, the works of nature contain invaluable lessons

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for life. Even a delicate, sensitive and beautiful petal enlightens one’s sense of duty. The poet’s questioning triggers his readers’ thought processes. His query “Why are you called in the world supreme being?” (“Spiritual Spirit” 11) serves to prick our consciences. He doesn’t stop at the question but gives an apt riposte too. He declares that we are above animals and privileged to be born as human beings. Hence, we should desist from being avaricious and never let nefarious thoughts infect our minds. Contentment is pleasure and gratification. India is renowned for its spiritual nature, enshrined tombs and domes. With the utmost patriotic feeling and passion, the poet prompts everyone to perform duties for our motherland by retaining it in our head as a “brand”. This will be a supreme mission, blessed by millions, and it will affirm a new India. “Our Independence Day” is an outstanding poem containing many precepts and ideals. Initially the pronoun in the title, “our”, itself gives a new vigour, vitality and buzz after being made dolorous by reading of politicians’ lifestyles, in which “I” and “my” are the only known pronouns. The poem unveils the commitment and pledge behind freedom. The nation should pledge egalitarian rights and make available equal education; this would enable everyone to be an “enlightened citizen” and “noble civilian”. The lines “Protection of their lives top priority / Contribute to the nation” (“Our Independence Day” 9–10) give an inkling of the intensity of the poet’s patriotism, and encourage everyone to join hands with him to contribute to the nation’s prosperity. The poet believes that the words “slavery”, “sorrow” and “darkness” are best replaced with “freedom”, “peace” and “happiness”, achieved after the attainment of independence. Great virtues like cooperation and unity are also upheld, glorified and eulogized in this poem. The poet’s plea is to remain united and debar the venom called caste and religion, no matter that we might be Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh or otherwise. Thus, the everlasting and deathless message and the universal language of love leave a touching note at the end of the poem: All are Indians All are human beings India is of all; for all Live together; love all. (“Our Independence Day” 19–22)

This sentiment reminds us of the following lines, which affirm the gospel of love to the world: “There is Ram in Ramzan, Ali in Diwali and Krishna (Chris) in Christ.”

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“Irrigate motherland with sweat” (“Our Independence Day” 17) is another line alluding to loyalty to one’s country. Initially, the adjective “mother-” implies diverse connotations – among them, give birth to, bear, bring forth, look after, take care of, nurture, nurse and protect. All these, however, can be compiled into a single word: “Selfless”. Akin to this concept should be our country and its self-sacrificing pursuit. We all are indebted to Mother Nature. Hence, we should strive to let our country flourish. Hard work, the necessary ingredient for survival and success, has also been implied through the poet’s fruitful words. Usually, land is irrigated by water. But Hussain insists on irrigating the motherland by sweat. He makes plain the feelings of unswerving devotion and loyalty that all need to embrace for the sake of their homeland.

Conclusion Hellen Keller proclaimed, “Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.” Mohandas K. Gandhi claimed, “Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow men.” An erudite person has a vast opportunity to shape their society, eliminate ignorance, illuminate awareness, brighten people’s vision and sharpen their knowledge for a peaceful life. Along with this, the attitude of love and sacrifice for one’s country is the seed that needs to be sown in every child’s mind. “My country has been very good to me; I must be good to my country”, exclaimed US diplomat Walter Annenberg. Shujaat Hussain, as a well-read versifier, adheres to the aforesaid aphorisms. His poems not only mirror the shortcomings of society but also sow the seeds of patriotism, kindle a sense of responsibility and endeavour for the enhancement of life quality, and strive for a peaceful life. Tyranny, nuclear weapons, bomb blasts and political wickedness are all subjected to pungent attacks in his poems. The words of his verse are like arrows that attack the ruthless and egocentric deportment of our politicians. They are potent enough to stir up readers’ loyalty and involvement in the cause of the mother nation. Hussain hopes for a positive change and evolution through his poems. Their rhythm and verse contribute their best to make clear the poet’s civic concern and socioeconomic consciousness. An intense desire to shape the bent and crooked things of society is evident in every line of his poems. This bard envisions a new India through his vociferous words.

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Works Cited Annenberg, Walter. “Walter Annenberg Quotes” (n.d.), https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/walter_annenberg.html. (accessed 10 February 2017). Baudelaire, Charles. “Brainy Quote” (n.d.), https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/charles_baudelaire.html. (accessed 10 February 2017). Cousins, Norman. “Quotations” (n.d.). (accessed 10 February 2017). Gandhi, Mahatma. “Mahatma Gandhi Quotes” (n.d.), http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/30431-earth-provides-enough-tosatisfy-every-man-s-needs-but-not (accessed 10 February 2017). Gandhi, Mohandas K. “Mohandas Gandhi Quotes” (n.d.), http://www.finestquotes.com/quotes/on/Welfare/0 (accessed 12 February 2017). Henry, Matthew. “Matthew 5:39” (n.d.), http://biblehub.com/matthew/539.htm (accessed 10 February 2017). Hussain, Shujaat. Tolerant India. Aligarh: United Spirit of Writers Academy, 2014. Print. Keller, Hellen. “Hellen Keller Quotes” (n.d.), http://www.finestquotes.com/quotes/on/Welfare/0 (accessed 12 February 2017). Reagan, Ronald. “Ronald Reagan Quotes” (n.d.), https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/ronald_reagan.html (accessed 10 February 2017). Reddy, T. Vasudeva. “Haikus”, Pensive Memories: A Collection of Poems. Madras: Poet Press India, 2005. Print.

CHAPTER NINE K. V. DOMINIC’S WINGED REASON: A PORTRAIT OF SOCIAL REALISM D. C. CHAMBIAL

Professor K. V. Dominic – a versatile teacher, editor, poet and critic, all in one – is well known in the field of Indian English literature as the exeditor of the Indian Journal of Post-Colonial Literatures (IJPCL). He is now the Secretary of the Guild of Indian English Writers, Editors and Critics (GIEWEC) and editor of its biannual journal, Writers Editors Critics (WEC). Dominic has also emerged as a practitioner of social realism in his debut volume of poems, Winged Reason. This paper aims to study his works in that volume from the perspective of his social concern. Dominic, like Professor Shiv K. Kumar, is a “late bloomer” in the world of Indian English poetry. In this very first volume of poems, he exhibits his penchant for social themes such as religious harmony, poverty, corruption, suffering, human cruelty and mafia-style crime. He also focuses on the more specific Indian problems of old-age aloofness, misappropriation of public funds, haves and have-nots, handicapped people, female foeticide, the evil of the dowry system, corruption, disparity, unemployment and neglect of intellect. In addition to these themes, he has also dealt with the dignity of labour, service to humanity as service to God, maternity and the issue of beauty.

Human Suffering In “A Nightmare”’ (22–23), Dominic presents a comparison between the haves and have-nots. On the one hand, he pictures those who have things aplenty; on the other, those who don’t have even the bare minimum of things that sustain life. The protagonist of the poem thinks himself “a hawk hovering in the sky”. In his flight, he first of all sees “an obese boy / whose mother was beating him to eat more”, while in a nearby hut lived a

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famished child “crying for a crumb”. Then the hawk moves on to the sight of a “lavish wedding feast” full of “rich delicacies” being enjoyed “by the pompous guests”. Outside “the town hall”, he saw “two ragged girls … / struggling with the dogs in the garbage bin” to find something to eat to keep body and soul together. The poet juxtaposes affluence and dearth. Thereafter, the hawk moves to a “public School” where the teacher has made a poor boy stand on the verandah in “the humid weather of forty degrees” for not wearing a tie. The hawk’s wings then take him to a spectacle where a large number of men, looking like ants, stand outside a wine shop “run by government”. What gave him the greatest surprise was that even the beggars stood there in that line for wine. The poet wants to show how these people squander their money on wine while poor women stand in a long line and wait for their turn for basic food rations. This also shows the gender aspect of men’s wasting money on alcohol and women suffering for their concern for family. The male subjects’ concern is limited to their enjoyment of themselves with wine, while Dominic’s female subjects sacrifice their comforts for the sake of their homes and families. He then describes another scene, in which the “public water tap” flows incessantly, wasting water while other taps remain dry. The protagonist’s heart goes out to the poor people of the neighbourhood, who wait and wait in vain for water for hours on end. In the next stanza, the poet gives a vivid description of rich people living in luxurious buildings in their old age and their wards gone to foreign lands; in the adjoining slum, three generations live together in the same room. This poem starkly depicts opulence and scarcity in order to focus the attention of governments – state and central – that seem to have become blind to the needs of the needy. “Anand’s Lot” (26–27) is about the issue of child-pickers – unscrupulous figures who pick up young children and force them into begging. Anand is one such young boy. The poet begins by telling how jubilant and happy he was while living with his parents. Every day, his mother loved him. He looked smart in his school uniform. One day, while going to school along with his classmates, a car suddenly stops beside him, picks him up and whisks away to some unknown place. Now begins the saga of Anand’s suffering. When he tries to call for help while being taken away, a man with whiskers gags his mouth with a towel. Ultimately, he is taken to “a house and shut in a room”. He is given dry bread to eat and made to sleep on a cold, hard floor. After some time, he is again taken in a car to a strange city and dressed in torn clothes. He is threatened with death should he dare to defy his abductors’ orders. Then, the boy narrates his pitiful tale in these words:

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These lines reveal the abject condition in which such children have to live. Though this may not be a real story, it is a simulation of the real lives of a number of such children lifted by these gangs and forced into begging. Their dream of a life full of modern amenities turns into one of hell. Dry, cold bread and foul-smelling clothes are thrust upon them. Such children often wonder about their parents – whether they still remember them. A host of human atrocities are heaped on them: “Go to the shops and beg or I’ll kill you.” This becomes the fate of these hitherto apples of their parents’ eyes. Their dreams are shattered. They have no choice except begging and living a wretched life. Dominic, by virtue of this poem, seeks the enactment of government measures to stop such evil and unsocial activities and the enforcement of laws to bring such gangs to book. “Gayatri’s Solitude” is about the loneliness of a woman who is already eighty years old. She has five children living in the United States. She now lives in an “old-age home” as there is no one to look after her in the palatial house that her children have built in the town. Her children live under an illusion that “their mother is cozy”. This old lady suffers solitude despite having all the things of this world at her beck and call. She has lost appetite and sleep. Her pathetic condition finds expression in these lines: Dawn to dusk, sitting in an armchair, looking at the far West, longing for her children’s calls, she remains lonely. (“Gayatri’s Solitude” 31)

Her utmost misery, due to estrangement from her children and grandchildren, is described in these lines: “The depth of maternal love, / and the pangs of separation / no child can gauge” (“Gayatri’s Solitude” 32). Certainly, children are never aware of the agony of maternal life until they themselves experience it. This poem throws light on the suffering of aged people living an estranged existence. The poem “Tsunami Camps” deals with the sufferings of people during a tsunami. They are made to live in camps, in shelters built of galvanized iron sheets, in the scorching heat. Despite the fact that people donate large

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sums of money to provide relief during such natural calamities, a huge portion of this “is hoarded in the government exchequer, / or diverted for some other purposes”. In this way, the government misappropriates the money received and plays with the sympathies of the people and their donors. Life in these camps is so miserable that the inhabitants prefer death to life. They lament, “It is better to kill us than to torture like this.” They receive neither sufficient food nor drinking water. The last couplet of the poem sums up the plight of the tsunami victims: “Unending wails and unending sobs; / not even gods listen to their cries”. They feel that neither the government nor God listens to their woeful cries. It is an unending tale of suffering. In this poem, Dominic satirises the government’s apathy towards these sufferers, and the misappropriation of the money received for them. “Old Age” describes the woes of the aged: at this time of life, the body weakens and one becomes dependent on others even for one’s personal needs before death. In one’s old age, even one’s dearest children “turn ungrateful. / They hate and curse / And never care”. Old age is contemptible, but it is a fact of life and cannot be evaded. All those who live to old age have to bear its ignominies. This poem pleads for care from the children whom these old people have brought up by sacrificing their own comforts. “Rahul’s World” depicts the sorrows of a child who is turned out of class by his teacher for not doing his homework. At home, the atmosphere is not congenial. His father is a drunkard, he beats his mother and Rahul, supper is thrown away and often they have to sleep without food. How can one study in such an atmosphere? For Rahul, the whole world seems full of cruelty: “Cruel father, / Cruel teacher, / Cruel world”. While at this age he “longs for love”, he never attains this precious thing. There are a good many little children who are denied the balm of love to ameliorate their sorrows and wipe their tears. The poet shows his concern for such children. “What a Birth” is the story of a woman who has just returned from hard work in her fields under a hot sun. She pines for some rest from this heat in her house: “A thatched hut / cardboard walls / boltless door”. Inside lies her ailing and hungry mother. Additionally, her daughter has returned from school and is hungry. Whatever was left in their lunch pot has been devoured by stray dogs. In the evening or night, her “[d]runkard husband / will come … / to resume beats and kicks” – the fate of a poor woman! The poet wonders at such a birth and the store of sufferings in her lot. By exposing the abject condition of the poor, he hopes that the

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government will help such poor people with the bare minimum of food, clothes and shelter – roti, kapraa and makaan (bread, cloth and home). “Helen and Her World” is about a visually challenged girl. She is brilliant, and takes notes in her class very quickly; she knows the answers to each and every question. But what a tragedy that in her exam she cannot write her answers for want of the facility of braille script. The poet deplores this fact: Had her scribe known spellings of all words, she could have won a rank in her degree examinations. (“Helen and Her World” 39)

The amanuensis, provided to her for writing her answers was not as intelligent as her. He, while writing answers on her dictation, misspells some words that she knows well. For his deficient knowledge, she lost her rank in the examination: She is the light of the class, light of the family, light of the village, but alas the light never sees itself (“Helen and Her World” 39)

It is the greatest paradox of her life. In spite of her lights (intelligence), she is unable to see the world. She remains in perpetual darkness. The poet has used the word “light” as a pun, to denote her intelligence and eyesight. “Vrinda” narrates the tale of a physically handicapped girl of “twelve or thirteen” years old in a TV show. She has lost one leg but she is never sad. She dances to the tunes of Hindi film songs and entertains a large number of people. She has “turned her challenge / to strength and success. / A loud message to the world!” She is not deterred by her handicap but meets this challenge boldly; she becomes a source of encouragement, and sets an example to those who feel disheartened at their physical handicaps. Both poems teach the world a lesson: such handicaps can only be overcome with courage and will.

The Dignity of Labour “Harvest Feast” embraces the theme of cooperative farming, as practised in communist countries. The Indian state of Kerala was also ruled for

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many years by a communist government. Students are taken to the fields for harvesting crops. Little hands, which elsewhere run after butterflies and enjoy their childhood, have to work in farms and toil hard in both sun and shade: moved through the rough fields; ploughed the land; sowed the seeds; plucked the weed; reaped the corn; carried sheaves on their tender heads; threshed, husked, cooked. (“Harvest Feast” 35)

It is all taught to them by their teachers: education and vocation simultaneously. There is no shame in doing one’s duty; instead, it teaches the “dignity of labour”, which can “solve the food crisis” and save millions of lives around the world where people die of hunger. After the crop is harvested, they cook the food with their own hands and enjoy the feast: Those little pupils from Kozhikode, avidly feasting rice and payasam; The harvest banquet of their sweated labour. Nothing can be tastier than this. (“Harvest Feast” 35)

It also brings to mind the lesson: the outcome of hard work is always sweet. However, Dominic feels that the young hands should not be taxed with such tiring tasks. Lessons in practical learning and dignity of labour are good, but not labour. Care should be taken that such lessons in the dignity of labour do not turn into exploitation.

Economic Disparity The poem “Haves and Have-nots” asserts that these two categories are created by mankind and not by God. For Him, all are equal. The protagonist protests: What right has the mortal man to divide and own this immortal planet? What justice is there for the minority to starve the majority? (“Haves and Have-nots” 37)

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In the present democratic set-up, it is capitalism that rules. The dreams of “Have-nots” for “health and happiness” are shattered. They do not find hope from any quarter. They are born in misery and die in misery.

Ecology and the Gifts of Nature The poem, entitled “I am Just a Mango Tree” narrates the endless uses of the tree for humanity. A mango tree gives everything: wood to burn, leaves for animals and juicy fruit for human beings to relish besides oxygen for all living beings to survive. But, what does it get in return? Only an axe. For humanity’s vile acts of destruction, the mango tree asks God, “God, why is your man so selfish and cruel?” To this, God replies, … I created him in My own Image but he’s gone astray; My agony is endless. That’s the fate of Father everywhere. I shouldn’t have created this human species; But how can a father kill his sons? (“I am Just a Mango Tree” 41)

Because of such destructive human acts, God Himself feels hurt and ashamed for having created mankind. Through this poem, the writer warns humanity about its ruthless ecological destruction and seeks to create an awareness of such among the masses.

Women “International Women’s Day” (42–43) recounts how, despite the world celebrating Women’s Day, women are discriminated against all over the world. They have been considered everywhere “an instrument of lust / and hot-selling sex!”. Even in their childhood homes, “Mum and dad love him; / she gets only reproaches”, and they are “[s]eldom educated; / hence no employment, / and always dependent”. When grown to motherhood, the woman tries her best to do her best for the welfare of her family and home, but “[h]er love and sacrifices / remain unrewarded”. The poet, as a reformer, holds up a mirror to society and demands woman’s rightful place. He writes,

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Venerable is woman, for she is your mother; she is your sister; she is your wife; she is your guide; she is your teacher; she is your nurse; and above all, she is your angel. (“International Women’s Day” 43)

How pitiable that she serves man in every phase and age of his life, yet she is considered inferior and is always marginalized in society. A question arises: Is humanity possible without her? The answer is always in the negative. Why, then, this discrimination against woman? It is a question that still demands an answer. Women must receive their equitable right to live as honoured and respected individuals in society.

Workers “Lal Salaam to Labour” celebrates the dignity of labour. It is “the backbone of country”. Without labour, nothing is possible. It is needed in fields, factories, construction sites – almost everywhere. The labourers “nurse bubbles of dreams; / but reality pricks them oft, / and make heaven of tavern” (“Lal Salaam to Labour” 44–45). When they fail to get even enough food, they seek solace in wine. Perhaps that is the reason the majority of manual labourers can be seen drunk after their working hours. In order to show our respect for them, the poet writes, Let us not be unjust when we pay them wages, for we can’t do what they do. Give them at least their due; the more we give, the more we get; Put charity in humanity a spiritual bliss that never dies. (“Lal Salaam to Labour” 45)

The poet is thus realistic in his approach: we require labour simply to do the things that we cannot do. Then, why disparage and hate the labourers? They deserve our love, respect, and praise. It is the demand of humanity to

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be humane to them. The poem’s title seems to display his penchant for humanitarianism.

Social Evils “Laxmi’s Plea” concerns the menace of the dowry system. It tells the tale of a poor girl, named Laxmi, who lost her father at a very young age. She somehow educated herself, and earns a little to feed herself and her bedridden mother. Her “meagre salary … / hardly meets … food and medicine” costs (“Laxmi’s Plea” 47). But society is so cruel that it never sympathizes with anyone in such a plight. Laxmi has to bear insensitive remarks, like “when is your wedding?” (“Laxmi’s Plea” 46). The poet – along with all right-thinking Indian people – considers the dowry system a menace. Many a gem among girls lays down her life at the altar of this demon, but society as a whole remains blind to the demand of ending this devil/menace. Each and every girl should be able to realize her ambitions and not have her “bubble of dreams” pricked like Laxmi. Ultimately, for want of money and thereby being unable to arrange for a dowry, she decides to remain single. This is also a bold step on the part of Laxmi; but if a boy can remain single, why can’t a girl? Unless such girls are bold enough, this menace will not be wiped out.

Animals and Birds “A Sheep’s Wail” (24–25) is a very significant poem that casts humanity as “the cruellest” and “the most ungrateful / of all God’s creations”. The animal tells man that he is vested with certain “special powers” that they (sheep) do not possess. Man is considered the most intelligent creature; so, he domesticated animals. Man deprives the sheep of its wool, which God has given to its kind, for his own benefit and comfort. Man not only takes the milk of animals for his use but also kills them for his food. The poem becomes satirical in noting that man has invented some “false philosophies” to prove that he is “His [God’s] choicest” creation. The poet posits that, in fact, all creatures are His children and creations. It seems most absurd to call only man His child. Heaven must be reserved for the animals that serve throughout their lives this “choicest” being, and not for the one who kills and exploits them: “If a heaven is there / we will reach there first / and pray god to shut you out”. Dominic debunks man of all his moral claims to own a place in heaven – if, indeed, such exists. “Cuckoo Singing” is based on the truth that the beings of nature, like a cuckoo, enjoy life in singing and loving without worrying about existential

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needs. On the other hand, humans toil throughout their lives and remain unsatisfied due their unending desires, which only make them more miserable. The more they get, the more they yearn. The more they toil, the more they complain. The cuckoo calls its mate, in song, for love: “Wake up mate, / let’s start love”. Its song, on the other hand, then exhorts man, as his habit, for toil: “Wake up man and / sweat for your bread”. The poet affirms: Yes, cuckoo lives singing and loving, while man exists sweating and moaning. (“Cuckoo Singing” 30)

This poem juxtaposes carefree nature and ever-worried mankind. While those living in harmony with nature are always happy, those severed from it lead a troubled life. Will humanity ever learn to contain its desires and live a happy life? “Sleepless Nights” is a comparative narration of the cuckoo’s natural home and the carefree freedom it enjoys juxtaposed with humans living in a concrete “cell” and trying, unsuccessfully, to get cold air on a hot and humid night from an electric fan. The comparison is readily apparent in the poet’s narration: The cuckoo lies on his God-given bed; the gentle breeze always caresses him; the nocturnal music lulls him throughout, and his sleep is sound free from cares and worries. I lie in my concrete house, fighting against the man-made heat, and the dreary sound of the hot-wave fan. The late and heavy supper in stomach, and all such unnatural ways of life take away that God’s own gift. (“Sleepless Nights” 56)

While the cuckoo enjoys sound sleep in its natural environment, the man is unable to sleep in his artificial environment – ironically, created by him for his safety and comfort. “My Teenage Hobby” tells of “angling” as the persona’s pastime. Once, he caught a fish and saw it struggling for freedom; his conscience

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pricked him and he “unhooked the fish”. Since then “Reflections on life / became my [his] pastime” (“My Teenage Hobby” 48). This work shows the poet’s concern for all living beings, and manifests his humanitarian attitude towards them.

Politics and Politicians “Indian Democracy” is a satirical poem on the country’s political system and the vices that it nurtures. The poet remarks that elections in India are a “several billion business”, in the course of which “secularism is butchered”. During elections, against the principles of democracy, politicians bank on caste, religion, regionalism and parochialism. Nobody cares for true “nationalism and patriotism”. The demon of communalism is nourished on the altar of democracy. He lists the prevalent vices of Indian democracy: … democracy reigns drinking tears of thousands! Criminal MPs, brought from jails to prove majority on floor; horse-trade of billions! (“Indian Democracy” 60)

The governments that are elected are corrupt. People vote for the same politicians “again and again”, for they have “no other options”. In this manner, Indian democracy, the largest such system in the world, continues to live and rule without caring for the people who actually vote. Once these politicians are elected, they become sovereign masters and lords over the poor people who have voted them into power.

Religious Discrimination The poem “Om” is also a satire – this time on the Hindu Brahministic philosophy that considers one caste superior to another. It begins with the notion that its title chant is the sound that emanated from the creation of the cosmos, and that it embodies the Hindu Trinity: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. The poet writes that even the chanting of “Om” was “Once the monopoly of the high caste; / low-caste people were denied / it’s [sic.] listening and muttering” (“Om” 66). He writes that low-caste people were, instead, forced to pronounce it as “On”. It is “the holiest mantra of mantras; key to all problems of the world”. It serves as “a tonic to mind

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and body”. It is the source of everyday “peace and happiness”. It should not be the privilege and prerogative only “of the high caste” but of all. When it, the sound or naada of “Om”, was created with the birth of the cosmos, God did not reserve it for any one class or creed. He gave it to all human beings for their well-being and mental peace in moments of crises and repose alike. Why, then, should men divide humanity according to the recitation of this mantra or sound? One caste of people can recite it while others can’t. It indirectly voices the protest and anger of the deprived castes and class against the one that lorded over them. God has created all equal. All extant social distinctions and disparities should be banished from society in order to end all caste-based discrimination between people – to evolve a healthy and harmonious society.

Festivals and Social Harmony Onam is Keralites’ favourite harvest festival. It continues for ten days with various celebrations: it comes after the monsoon, and people celebrate it by “feasting with new rice”, with flower decorations, such as pookalams, in front of every house. The atmosphere is rife with “Onam songs, / Onam plays and Onam dances”. There are many competitions in “sports, games and arts” to allow people to forget their worries for these ten days. The poet also tells the legend behind this festival. It celebrates the golden rule of a Keralan king named Maveli. He was a very just ruler, and equality prevailed in his kingdom. Vishnu could not brook this happiness, and out of envy hurled him into the underworld and “granted him a boon / to visit his people once a year” (“Onam” 54). It is believed that Maveli visits the people and land during Onam to find everyone happy. But he goes back at the end of the Onam celebrations as one very sad: “he returns in tears”. Festivals are the backbone of Indian culture and social harmony, and they strengthen the country’s unity in diversity. P. C. K. Prem very pertinently comments that “Dominic’s social concerns are genuine, and that he is forthright in his unequivocal condemnation of the rich. This is possible only for a person who is committed to an ideology. … he believes that words sublime and true, sincere and forthright cannot provide happiness to the downtrodden but definite and positive efforts are needed so that they get all the essential things of life necessary to live .…” (Prem 2011: 110). I. K. Sharma, a prominent contemporary critic, writes: “In most of the poems the poet is in and around his state. Through portraits of known and not so well known characters he attempts to showcase his contemporary Kerala. Certainly, it

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is significant that he has not lost touch with his local roots” (Poetcrit 156). It is sufficient to label him as a regional poet. Dominic’s poetry projects him as a social realist and champion of the down-trodden concentrating particularly on his own state, and obliquely on humanity in general. As a new entrant in the field, he needs extra care with his creations to make his place authentic and permanent in the arena of Indian English poetry.

Works Cited Dominic, K. V. Winged Reason. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2010. Print. Prem, P. C. K. “K. V. Dominic’s Winged Reason: Poems of Man’s Earthly Life and Painful Realities”, Labyrinth 2.2 (April 2011): 104–10. Print. Sharma, I. K. “A Big Bunny in the Field”, review of Winged Reason, Poetcrit 24.2 (July 2011): 155–57. Print.

CHAPTER TEN THE MATRIX OF CULTURAL COEXISTENCE IN THE FLORAL, FAUNAL AND HUMAN WORLDS AS PRESENTED IN K. V. DOMINIC’S WINGED REASON KAVITHA GOPALAKRISHNAN

Omnia vivunt; Omnia inter se conexa. (Everything is alive; everything is interconnected.) Cicero (quoted in Business Insider)

Multiculturalism is the latest key term used in practically all critical discourses, as it is a broad, fair and tolerant system that adapts to and accommodates the sentiments of diverse cultures. It appreciates, accepts and promotes multiplicity and the diversity of people. But in this research article, I wish to seek another basic outlook: the coexistence and cohesion between Homo sapiens, flora and fauna. Such an outlook would profoundly change our thinking and influence our attitudes. K. V. Dominic’s Winged Reason tries to highlight the interconnectivity between the plant, animal and human worlds. The poet envisions the world as a whole, with mutually reinforcing or mutually destructive interdependencies. Michel de Montaigne, a sixteenth-century essayist, rightly says, “There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants. We owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity to other creatures ... there is a certain commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and us” (Montaigne 2011: n.p.). Hence, the umbrella term “multiculturalism” ideally should include the sensibilities, sensations, fears and pains of not only the diverse human community but also the plant and animal communities. In the collection Winged Reason, Dominic seems to be in total communion with the whole world, inclusive of plants and animals. He is

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able to read the minds of speechless beings, and records their heartrending cries. Pained at their predicament, he writes on behalf of them: If a heaven is there we will reach there first and pray to God to shut you out. (“A Sheep’s Wail” 25)

We are filled with pain and remorse when we read “A Sheep’s Wail”: The fur God gave me, mercilessly you shear to make you cosy. The milk for my lamb you suck and drain and grow fat and cruel ... Man, you are the cruelest, you are the most ungrateful of all God’s creations. (“A Sheep’s Wail” 24–25)

In “Ammini’s Demise”, he forces us to spare a thought for these mute beings: Thousands of fiends inhabit this planet, turning the earth to a big slaughter house, as if man alone has the right to live here. God, make them humane and turn them into angels. (“Ammini’s Demise” 65)

The poet further relates how he was blessed with an all-encompassing compassion for other beings: Once when I pulled a fish, Flashed a horrible vision: I am pulled from the sky; death struggle on the line. Awestruck and repentant,

The Matrix of Cultural Coexistence in K. V. Dominic’s Winged Reason 125 I unhooked the fish and dropped in the water. (“My Teenage Hobby” 48)

He shows what he realized later in his life by words and spirit: lived non-veg life; believed in the teachings that man is the centre of universe ... my eyes are opened at last and I have become a pure vegetarian. (“How I Became a Vegetarian” 76)

The poet is equally moved at the plight of plants and trees, and effectively conveys this in his work. We are moved to tears when we read, “I am Just a Mango Tree.” We wonder how humans can act so mercilessly: Dear, why should they cut this tree, a cool shelter to countless? They plan to build a waiting shed here. ... Can’t they spare me and build it somewhere else? (“I am Just a Mango Tree” 41)

In “Nature’s Bounties”, the poet salutes the beauty of harmonious existence: The birth of morn Temples and mosques chanting hymns Heaven on earth The sun kisses The eye opens Lotus blooms ... Jasmine’s hand Caressing touch on my neck Utter dilemma. (“Nature’s Bounties” 49)

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He also portrays the cultural disharmony between the rich and the poor, the blessed and the challenged, the elite and the proletariat, men and women, city dwellers and village inhabitants, the West and the East. In the poem “Onam”, Dominic recounts the legend of that Keralan festival and brings to light the essence of it. He strikes a chord when he shows how ostensible affluence fails to impress the banished ruler, Maveli: the golden rule of Maveli an icon of the just king. Equality prevailed in society; no lies, no crimes, no deceit, ... All were happy; ... But granted him a boon to visit his people once in a year. Maveli visits on Onam; Fed up he returns in tears. (“Onam” 53–54)

The poet is pained to see the divided world – and in “Haves and Havenots”, he writes, Haves and Have-nots: man-made categories; never in creator’s dream, ... When millions die of hunger, thousands compete for delicacies, Minority always luxuriates at the cost of majorities’ necessities. Plants and animals never divide the earth among themselves; What right has the mortal man to divide and own this immortal planet? What justice is there for the minority to starve the majority? (“Haves and Have-nots” 36–37)

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It is in this manner that the poet’s collection is truly multicultural. He includes the pain and aspirations of the less privileged. In “Lal Salaam to Labour”, he empathizes with the labouring class: They sow the seed; reap the corn; and we eat and sleep. ... They build houses where they never rest, and there we live and snore. ... They clean roads and markets; are shunned by us very often; and we make them filthier and filthier. (“Lal Salaam to Labour” 44)

In “City versus Village”, he gives an apt description of urban and rural cultures: How hard it is— the city dwellers— Busy and selfish, devoid of humanity Each one lost in his own island. A crow friendly to community; A dog there is friendly to other dogs. How innocent and malice-free is village life! where all live in harmony and love. (“City versus Village” 71–72)

In “Gayatri’s Solitude”, the poet hits out at the Western-style culture and affluence that makes us oblivious of the aged at home: Gayatri aged eighty-two, widowed at thirty-five mother of five children: ... all in the States

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Through poems like “Vrinda” and “Cry of my Child”, Dominic effects portrayals that seem to showcase how people inch forward despite physical handicaps and troubles. He sends a strong message that people should be more tolerant and accommodating. They should, in fact, derive strength from each other: God, only one leg! Skipping like a kangaroo ... She turned her challenge to strength and success. A loud message for the world! (“Vrinda” 57)

The poet, thus effectively encourages us to see ourselves as part of the fundamental unity of all beings. The poems in this collection help us to see our connection with all other human beings, and with other living creatures beyond the human realm. Only when we can identify ourselves as part of an interconnected system, only when we can feel at one with the biotic community, can we consider ourselves to be truly multicultural. K. V. Dominic’s collection Winged Reason has indeed highlighted the need for cultural cohesion and interaction between floral, faunal and human worlds for a complete and fulfilling life on this planet.

Works Cited Dominic, K. V. Winged Reason. Delhi: Authorspress, 2010. Print. Matai, D. K. “We are all One”, Business Insider (11 March 2011), http://www.businessinsider.com/we-are-all-one-2011-3 (accessed 8 February 2017).

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Montaigne, Michel de. “Of Cruelty”, in The Essays of Montaigne. Tr. Charles Cotton (n.d.), http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Essays_of_Montaigne/Book_II/Cha pter_XI (accessed 8 February 2017).

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE POETRY OF SUNIL SHARMA: AN EXPRESSION OF LOVE AND LIBERAL HUMANISM ROBERT MADDOX-HARLE

Some poets are concerned with their own personal relationships – their poetry speaks of loves, fears, their children and so on from a self-centred position. Others are concerned with cultural, spiritual and mystical themes, carrying themselves and their readers to ethereal worlds. Still others are orientated towards hard-hitting politically activist themes in an attempt to help fix a fractured world. Sunil Sharma’s poems are informed by a liberal humanism, which at times encapsulates all of the above themes – albeit in subtle and gentle ways. As an example, consider the following emotionally charged lines from “The Children of the Indian Flower-sellers”: The eldest one tends The dark tiny shack That juts out On the huge garbage heap, On the borders of the teeming ugly metro … And babysits the sick sibling, That constantly cries The pitiable bundle of bones and brown skin In the stifling summer heat, Both awaiting a tired mother Who will come home very late. (Golden Cacti 29–39)

Humanism as a philosophical doctrine has various interpretations. One of these is that humans are the pinnacle of creation and that the world should

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be expected to support and nurture them at all costs. The practice of believing and “living” this interpretation has been largely responsible for the global environmental destruction and alienation from nature that we are currently witnessing. This is absolutely not the meaning of liberal humanism. Liberal humanism recognizes that all humans – regardless of class, race, gender, age, religious beliefs or position in society – are equally important. It is an ethical system that recognizes human dignity as of vital importance – not over and above nature, but together with and part of the totality of existence. Clearly the above excerpt shows Sharma’s powerful though gentle “warning” for greater consideration for those less fortunate than ourselves. The poem alludes to the children as unwanted rubbish, like that in the garbage heap that is their home! This introduces the notion of “existential authenticity” and the idea that without respect for each other, and the world of nature that supports us, we cannot embrace that authenticity. Further discussion of this philosophical position is beyond the scope of this essay; suffice it to say that Sharma – in his life, his fiction writing and in his poetry – embraces existential authenticity in his practice and articulation of liberal humanism. In his own words, referring to the India of the 1970–80s: “That liberal-humanism and commitment for the downtrodden still forms my inner vision and overall outlook on life and informs my writing” (Harle 2014). Sharma is a prolific writer, with his wide-ranging work being published in anthologies, newspapers, academic journals, online and in books. These works have a global reach, and have received critical acclaim not only in his native India but also in the United Kingdom, the US, Europe, South Africa and Australia. In addition to his own creative writing, he has edited and coedited numerous anthologies and literary journals. Though this essay focuses on his poetry, it is worth mentioning his important fiction and non-fiction publications. The Structuralist Philosophy of The Novel: A Marxist Perspective has generated favourable critical response. The Minotaur, his debut novel published in India, was also released in 2009 in South Africa. Six short stories and The Minotaur were prescribed for Post-colonial Studies at Clayton University, Georgia, USA, and have recently been reintroduced for undergraduate students. A PhD student is currently using this novel as part of her thesis along with two other political novels in English from India. Delightful Dickens, a recent anthology was published in India, and Acerbic Anthology by Createspace, USA. Luncheon on the Grass, his latest fiction short-story collection, was recently published in India. In addition to poetry anthologies, he is represented in and has just coedited the Indo-Australian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. This

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major publication, running to nearly 400 pages, features some of the best poets in both India and Australia and will surely become a classic for its side-by-side comparison of contemporary poetry from these two countries. Sharma has three published collections of his own poetry: Golden Cacti; Poems on Highway; and, most recently, Mundane, My Muse! It is within the covers of these three books that we will find the glistening gems examined in this essay. Sharma has been honoured in many ways, but his award as International Community of Poets, Poet of The Year 2012 (Destiny Poets, UK) was especially deserved and appreciated. Salman Rushdie has suggested that one function of poetry is “to stop the world going to sleep”. I agree with this, and believe that it should be a primary function of all poetry. Nowhere can we find this sentiment better exemplified than in the poetry of Sunil Sharma. In a sense, the following poem, “Lunch”, which I am going to quote in full, encapsulates much of Sharma's poetic insight, and his ability to use simple language and situations to produce a powerful emotional impact on the reader – and to help them wake up! She eats lunch Spread out on a table of rough stones This frail stone-breaker. The lunch consists of dried chapattis And mango-pickle Carefully wrapped in Yesterday's daily paper. The dust Of breaking stones blows and mixes With her thin wheat-chapattis dear. Unmindful of the din, Under the frugal shadow of a dusty Tamarind tree, She sits, holds lunch in her thin hands And eats slowly, Surrounded by hard stones everywhere. Morsels swallowed hard Washed down with Polluted water From a plastic crumpled bottle. Rest of the meal she carefully folds, In the old newspaper, For her sweating sinewy husband, Working along with the other stonebreakers,

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While my obese teenage son, Plugged into his iPod Complains again of less variety On a well-laid Rosewood, Shining Dining table. (“Lunch”, Golden Cacti 1–31)

In this poem, we witness the “lowly” job of stone breaking in India, the juxtaposition of a peasant’s lunch with the brutal, unforgiving hardness of stone is heart-rending. Part of Sharma’s poetic brilliance lies in his capturing the emotional impact of a situation without actually “thumping the table”, so to speak, to help bring about social change. The quiet, nonaggressive “observation” of this activity has a more powerful influence on the reader than making aggressive demands for change perhaps would. The juxtaposition of the poor, sinewy stone breakers with the wealthy, obese, spoilt son is quite clear but nonetheless powerful for all that. Not so obvious is the counterpoint of “a table of rough stones” with the “shining Rosewood table” and “chapatti lunch” with “well-laid table” (abundance); morsels swallowed “hard” next to “hard stones”. This poem is a masterpiece in the use of imagery, subtle counterpoint and emotional impact. In ancient times, poetry was thought to be divinely inspired from either God, the gods or the muses. In the West, modern science – including neurophysiology, psychology, chemistry and physics – would have us believe that poetry, like other expressions of the brain-mind, comes from inner neurochemical processes (Aitchison 2013). We must be careful not to jump to embrace these conclusions, supplied as they are by reductionist scientific materialism, too easily and uncritically. There are still many traditions and millions of people who believe that the universe is a conscious entity, as it were, and that our brain-minds simply act as a tuner/receiver, then modifier of this universal conscious. Advaita Vedanta is but one example of this. Sharma often talks of the muses, and feels that it is his destiny, and that of other poets, to serve the Divine Muses faithfully in the service of humanity. His poem “On Words Divine” expresses the beauty of divinely inspired words. A short excerpt reads, It is the words Define beloved Shakespeare From lesser mortals,

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like

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(“On Words Divine”, Golden Cacti 17–27)

These words are bestowed by a divine source, much as in the Christian belief of God bestowing grace. In the work “Poetry Calling”, we witness both a divine element and the poet in the service of the community, not just performing a solipsistic exercise. Again, a short excerpt: Poetry be notMere self-contemplation, Self-reflexive, Self-absorbed. It be notRomancing with neurotic self, Drug-induced journeys, Or, Pains narcissistic, self-inflected And obsessions private. But It beA transcendental experience (“Poetry Calling”, Golden Cacti 11–24)

With this poem, Sharma leaves us in no doubt that a poet's responsibility is far greater than massaging a self-absorbed individual ego: “It be a transcendental experience”. In the poem “On Basho”, we notice yet another subject dear to Sharma’s heart – nature. Here, he combines his love of nature with that of the celebrated Japanese haiku master Matsuo Basho. The poet’s inspiration comes directly from nature, not solely from his brain. The second half of the poem reads, And travelled alone in settings natural. The wind, The pond, The frog, The pine

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The road spoke directly to The kind man Who could directly hear Messages delivered by Nature’s creatures, (“On Basho”, Golden Cacti 10–18)

Sharma has a deep respect for all great writers and poets; he is extremely well read and often cites his favourite writers in fiction, poetry and personal correspondence. Those who have influenced him include Dickens, Tolstoy, Chekov, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Sartre, Camus, Mann, Marquez, Kafka and Prem Chand. However, it is Maxim Gorky who inspires him the most. The following quotation is taken from personal correspondence, and shows clearly exactly the values that Sharma holds – many of them obviously held by Gorky also: My love for the downtrodden, workers, toiling women and the underprivileged kids; the brutalization of girl-children and devaluation of women; breaking of the family; cheapening of culture; etc. These issues do not figure prominently in Indian Poetry in English. I call them the Unseen, through empathy we can articulate their pains and joys and express their miserable social conditions. Gorky is my inspiring model, although I am no match to him in any way. My master! (Sharma–Harle 2014)

Humility together with an aversion to self-promotion and self-aggrandizement are notable features of Sharma’s personality, and I think we should leave it to history to show whether he is Gorky’s equal in both vision and literary output. Fortunately, his native India is far more tolerant of political and social criticism – and poetic activists – than was Gorky’s Russia under Stalin! James Aitchison, in his recently published book New Guide to Poetry & Poetics (Aitchison 2013: 263), discusses, in Chapter Eighteen (“Poetry and Reality”), how concepts of reality – and, especially reality relating to poetry – change over time. He quotes A. C. Bradley’s Oxford Lectures on Poetry, and then goes on to state, “Bradley is saying that poetry exists in areas of mind and modes of thought that are separate from everyday life. He is also saying that poetry is to some extent an escape from the world of external physical reality, an attitude that remains attractive to some poets, critics and readers today.” Aitchison then goes on to explain how the British war poets Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg and others “had made external physical realities – the intimacies and monstrosities of war – the main subjects of their poems”. Bradley’s statement is clearly absurd: the fact that some poets write about cold, hard

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reality does not, in my mind, contradict the notion that poetic inspiration may come from divine sources. Clearly, in Sharma’s poetry we experience a deep connection and empathy with the muses and then an absolute, firm grip on, and intimate understanding of, day-to-day reality. Sharma has both feet firmly planted in the global present. The works in his collection Poems on Highway reflect the dichotomy in contemporary life between past/present, poverty/wealth, freedom/oppression, starvation/gluttony and nature/urban development, with some gentle love poems to balance the offering. His poems always seek to show these tensions, which empower them with great emotional impact. India is undergoing massive change on many levels; the poems both in Sharma’s books and those published in online and print journals document many of these changes. They also show that, regardless of the difficulties we encounter, we are still able to celebrate the human spirit unconditionally. Further, they demonstrate that despite one’s dharma, love is still possible in any situation. Sharma is passionate about the power of literature and art to provide an antidote to the poison of excessive greed and crass, mindless consumption; many of his poems expose the underbelly of such greed. The disparity of wealth and poverty is evident in many countries, but probably nowhere as blatantly as in India. As Sharma says, For me poetry is about giving voice to the mute. It is a celebration of life of those denied a share in the social development by design or apathy of the ruling elites for decades. Every Indian city is a paradox of wealth and poverty. Our job as a writer is to articulate artistically the social condition of the deprived and marginalized. Victor Hugo did that earlier in France. Dickens did that in industrial England and Turgenev did that in Tsarist Russia. (Sharma–Harle 2014)

In the poem “Fest of Colours”, he shows the plight of poverty-stricken families and the pressures that young children are under to simply survive: The child waits eagerly, For indifferent clients; If the big-eyed boy, In a torn shirt, Does not sell The assorted colours off, And brings some cash for the Starving family, He will Not be able to

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Play this Holi. (“Fest of Colours”, Poems on Highway 12–22)

Again, in the following poem – “Same Road” – (Sharma, MMM) we witness Sharma commenting on the stark disparity of worldly possessions, the “haves” and the “have-nots”: Three kids In coarse clothes, Bare feet Carrying head-loads, Patiently walking down Hot tarred road; Three kids Rich clothes, Whizzing by In a pricey car, Same road! (“Same Road”, Mundane, My Muse! 1–11)

Many of the works in Poems on Highway either directly or indirectly refer to nature and how mindless, careless, greedy development destroys it. In the poem “Dust Devil”, about a tornado-style storm, we experience the greed that developers have in arrogantly denuding the natural habitat, land that should be kept for growing food or for wildlife: Dust devil A big dust cloud, Rising amid the bare-brown fields, Bereft of vegetation, Laid waste by the developers By ceaseless quarrying For sand to be used For newer homes to be made soon, (“Dust Devil”, Poems on Highway 1–8)

Further on in this poem, Sharma evokes devils in the dust storm that scares the children as they run for shelter – into an already broken, thatched home. Witness the subtle contrast with the “newer homes to be made soon” earlier in the poem; this further implies that these obviously poor people will soon be displaced. And again, there is the subtle association of “the developers” with “swirling devils”. These subtle connections or allegorical relationships are an essential and special feature of Sharma’s

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poetry. Careful close reading of his work is essential in order to yield all these subtle yet powerful connections. The simple use of descriptive words and the subject matter of day-to-day situations tends to belie the importance and deep meaning contained within his poems: The semi-clad kid stares At the dust-devil, And runs inside A thatched Broken home, Fearful of all the Swirling devils – Lurking Both the Outside, Inside, A dark home. (“Dust Devil”, Poems on Highway 29–40)

Even in the delightful poem, of which the first part is quoted below, “The Spring”, which celebrates the arrival of spring – normally a joyous, positive time – Sharma uses stark contrasts. “Fragrance”, “fresh-faced” and “shy smile” are juxtaposed with “congested”, “angry” and “full of smog” in order to create the maximum emotional impact concerning the ways of urban greed and overpopulation compared with the age-old hope and creation of new life that spring brings with it: Multi-hued Fragrant Spring Finally Comes Late, A bit Tentatively In the Congested Angry Screaming Asian city Full of smog, Blaring horns Dusty roads Dark hovels

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Gleaming apartments – Like a fresh-faced Child, Arriving With a Shy smile, On tender Unsteady feet, (“The Spring”, Poems on Highway 1–25)

Similarly, in “Bountiful Nature”, (Sharma, POH, 129) Sharma contrasts the bounty of nature with the destruction wrought upon her by developers, building yet another urban concrete high-rise. At the beginning, the poem talks about the cool breeze, then later the contrasts. The final part runs as follows: Nature bountiful, A great relief in the Urban desolation, To the rampaging man, Raiding Destroying nature For making upscale High-rises, By destroying The trees and the Precious … groves. (“Bountiful Nature”, Poems on Highway 19–30)

Referring to much of the currently published Indian writing in English, Sharma has this to say: Even nature, being plundered by the mafia, does not figure in such writing. My poetry essentially raises these issues and records alienation with lower classes and nature, and through this act of recording, tries to establish a re-connect with these “lowly” creatures, human and natural. And get saved by this curative restoration, to become truly human in an inhuman society. (Personal correspondence: Sharma–Harle 2014)

Like all great writers, Sharma says what needs to be said. I reiterate the aforementioned lived philosophy of existential authenticity regardless of the consequences; no wonder Sharma feels empathy with and great respect

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for Maxim Gorky. Sometimes this approach “treads on toes” and makes enemies of those who greedily protect the status quo, in which they have invested their miserable, myopic, petty lives. However, every so often Sharma clearly needs to forget the burden that all truly sensitive poets carry and write a more light-hearted love poem. Below is one such wonderful, gentle poem in its entirety: The pigeon With red feet, Sits majestically, On the cable, Warmly kissed by the Warm wind, Ruffling feathers Tingling graceful neck, The red gleaming in the sun: A painful Reminder of The cherry red Of your lipstick And nail polish Of your tender White feet, Encased softly In red shoes. (“Red Feet”, Poems on Highway 1–18)

Again, in a long poem, “To My Valentine Dear” (Poems on Highway 36), Sharma expresses the deepest feelings of love and respect for his “valentine”. A few caring, very flattering lines: “Black eye-lashes, / That tenderly cover a pair, / Of pure almond-eyes, / Reminding you of the young doe” (“To My Valentine Dear”, Poems on Highway 39–42). Sometimes we can do no better than let a poet or writer speak for themselves. The extensive quote below is part of a longer piece of personal correspondence from Sharma, and is coincidentally contained in the preface of his third volume of poetry with its unusual title, Mundane, My Muse! This personal statement reinforces the truism that many serious, committed poets see almost all things as poetry – or, at least, in a poetic way. From the Preface to Mundane, My Muse!: Poetry can be discovered in most unlikely places. For example, sitting in the atrium of a big mall, facing a gushing fountain on a hot humid Mayend Mumbai evening, you say to your companion, surrounded by all the twinkling fairy lights and fir potted trees placed strategically on the white

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marble floor, “How poetic!” The crystalline water jet shooting up in a column against a darkening sky in the middle of a soulless glass-nconcrete and sanitized property can be a great diversion for a tired shopper left poorer by few thousands by that sexy and seductive commercial space: The vertical movement of pure drops of H2O can be a big visual relief in a place that registers the maximum footfalls these days in Mumbai or Madrid, Delhi or Peshawar. Malls are the new temples and churches for the post-modern Odysseus hunting for treasures and exotic fare and the urban tribes in Dubai or Kenya find time there to congregate. After gleefully splurging more than you have ever planned and secretly planning to go ascetic for a whole year in your personal expenditure, you, the tired Ulysses, decide to sit down on an empty bench and then---suddenly discover the solitary fountain singing merrily on the hot and humid evening. For the other adjacent happy chatterers on the Blueberry, it is a fixture, a prop; for you, it is sheer poetry in a pricey impersonal place, a symbol of purity and eternity. Poetry in slow motion. Water that priceless thing triggers a primeval response in a subterranean crevice of your overtaxed brain and connects you immediately with the first spontaneous priests of raw nature that wandered the earth, at the dawn of the civilization. You feel transported to a dim age when your distant ancestors conversed eagerly with early gods and twinkling stars and swaying trees and murmuring rivers, finding everything in the universe living and sacred. They talked with the gods and gods with them under starry nights and on fresh dawns, near crystalline rivers full of marine life. All this harmony was recorded in delightful and sublime verses, in epic poetry by the all-seeing ancient minds. There were few facilities then but poetry was a presiding deity of their immediate life; today, there are facilities galore but poetry, that musicality, that harmony, is sadly absent. Or, almost. The poetic spirit has started disappearing in prosaic times. Poetry is like the Golden Barrel Cacti -- critically endangered, rare species in the Mexican wild, yet surviving the tough conditions. Poetry is a surviving link with our heroic past, with our mythological memory, with a unique moment when man and god were not yet cruelly split but were real for the other and having a continual dialogue. Like this plant, it is endangered and becoming exotic. But it is a great survivor that adapts to most arid conditions and challenging habitats and grows in most inhospitable climes and times. It is vital to a polluting age like an oxygen mask. It can detoxify your body filled with an overdose of pills, caffeine and nicotine and other drugs, and raked with a toxic desire for more. Poetry is like the first rains over a smoggy town: It washes away all the grime and revives the dormant seedlings and revitalizes the corroded cores of your inner-life. It is a strong anti-dote to a frightening spiral of mad chasing of the deadly deadlines on daily basis, mechanically performing all the time in office and home and suffering indifferent colleagues, public venues and neighbourhoods that define social

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I must say I have never read a better description of what poetry really is than in the second part (paragraph) of the above description by Sharma – “washes away all the grime and revives the dormant seedlings” is exquisitely stated. Poetry, for Sharma, is similar to a baptismal font in that it cleanses the soul regardless of how deeply it is embedded in the mud of the world. Poetry is like the lotus flower growing to perfection out of this mud. Dr. Sunil Sharma is a voice to be reckoned with, his poetry and fiction writing increasingly sought after for anthologies and quality journals. These works are also gaining positive critical appraisal and, as previously mentioned, are being included in various university study programmes. Sharma often pays tribute to other great writers and artists in his poetry. Therefore, it is only fitting that I finish this necessarily brief essay on his prolific creative writing output, and the philosophy that drives him, with a recent work that he composed for one of Australia’s greatest living poets, Les Murray. Murray is a living poetic treasure in his homeland, in a similar way to Jayanta Mahapatra in India. This work is from Poems on Highway, and is entitled “Reclaiming a Home in Bunyah”: Les Murray returns from Sydney To reclaim a personal heritage – His childhood home Full of memories of Time spent on A dairy farm; Of a woodcutter father Working hard there, Mother who died, And a feud silent Between a grandfather And a dad, Unable to forget and forgive, The trees full of white ants, That killed one of the siblings. The promised farm never materialized,

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And his dad went back to the treecutting, In order to survive; The return from Sydney Was reclaiming his regional Australian roots, And finding again there The continent’s true face! Among the aboriginals, farmers and authors, The great Murray, The Bard of Australia, Discovered the Soul of his Culture that was missing In the glittering cities. Urban centers are Alike these days Everywhere but the way Farmers in rural Australia Work hard against the odds, Gets mirrored in poets and writers, And like aboriginals, These communities carry nature Within their selves as sacred, And that act of getting connected With nature in a sublime way, Makes Murray the great voice, Booming, Coming down from Outback/steppes/deserts You hear often, On lonely nights, On the desolate highways, Echoing loudly – In the fevered, Rational, Calculating, Profit-seeking, Stock-exchange-fixed Minds and hearts. (“Reclaiming a Home in Bunyah”, Poems on Highway 1–54)

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Works Cited Aitchison, J. New Guide to Poetry and Poetics. Amsterdam and New York: Rodophi, 2013. Print. Harle, R. “In Conversation with Prof. Dr. Sunil Sharma”, In boloji.com October 9, 2013. http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleI D=15062 (accessed 9 February 2017). Sharma, S. The Structuralist Philosophy of the Novel: A Marxist Perspective. New Delhi: S. S. Publishers, 1999. Print. —. The Minotaur. Jaipur: Book Enclave, 2009. Print. —. Golden Cacti. New Delhi: Gnosis - Authorspress, 2012. Print. —. Indo-Australian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry: Vibrant Voices. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2013. Print. —. Luncheon on the Grass. New Delhi: Authorspress. 2013. Print. —. Poems on Highway. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2013. Print. —. Mundane, My Muse! New Delhi: Authorspress, 2014. Print. Sharma, S. and Olawuyi, M., eds. Acerbic Anthology. USA: Createspace, 2013. Print. Sharma, S. and Sangeeta Sharma, eds. Delightful Dickens: Some Tributes. Jaipur: Yking Books, 2013. Print. Wrixon, B. Rhyme with Reason, Poets with Voices Strong. Burlington, Ontario: Brian Wrixon Books, 2013. Print.

CHAPTER TWELVE RECONNECTING WITH THE SUBLIME: THE POETRY OF VIJAY KUMAR ROY ROBERT MADDOX-HARLE

This paper is a critical discussion of the poetry of Vijay Kumar Roy – particularly that presented in his recent book, Realm of Beauty and Truth: A Collection of Poems (Roy 2016). These poems are like a cry from the wilderness, or perhaps the wasteland – that is, the decadent, secular, consumerist-orientated global village in which we live at the start of the twenty-first century. One main feature of Roy’s poetry is that he does not just complain about or describe how bad and unhappy the contemporary world is; in a rather gentle way, he juxtaposes opposites. For example, he may alert us to an aspect of environmental destruction but in the same poem might celebrate the beauty and delicate balance of nature as it once was. The first poem in this book is a good example: The old oaks, banyans and pines Stretch their hands and surround me To tell ancient stories of sages and saints. The innocent foothills along with trees Wounded by machines and mortals Pave serpentine ways And lament the development at the cost of environment. (“In the Lap of My Mother” 6–12)

Roy is not, strictly speaking, only a nature poet. However, he recognises and celebrates through his poetry the spiritual connectedness we all have, or at least once had, with nature. A convenient way in which to classify his work would be to call it spiritual and humanitarian poetry. He sees modern humans, in all their greed and avarice, as commodifying everything and

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having lost touch with the spiritual aspects of existence, aspects that it is essential to nurture for a balanced and fulfilling life. Many of Roy’s poems, especially those that are immersed in the beauty of nature, are reminiscent of Rabindranath Tagore’s verse. That is, they not only describe nature but bring it to life on the page so to speak. Poems that express animistic themes have a deep respect for the natural world and see it as having a bona fide life of its own – not just existing to be used and exploited by humans. In the above-quoted poem (“In the Lap of My Mother”), shades of mystical experience are present “as the trees reach out and surround the poet”. Roy honours the trees’ animistic nature when they “lament” and are “wounded” just like feeling, sensitive, sentient creatures. Further, we see how old trees (implying wisdom) “tell ancient stories of sages and saints”. It is important to note that prior to the rise to dominance of the Christian religion, most societies had a deep respect for nature and lived harmoniously with it. The deliberate, pernicious misinterpretation of the Christian doctrine that God put the animals and plants here for human exploitation instead of “giving us stewardship over the earth”, a very different approach indeed, is partly responsible for the present state of global environmental exploitation and destruction. The irony here is that many of Roy’s poems are highly spiritual and talk of the Divine and His sovereignty – “A Pious Pursuit”, for example. It is the misinterpretation of various scriptures that has caused the problems with nature that Roy writes about in a visionary attempt to correct them. I am not suggesting that Roy’s poems are underpinned by Christianity – far from it: his religious and spiritual references stem very much from Indian mythology, Hinduism and very ancient belief systems. However, India, like almost all other countries, has been caught up in the insidious Western global capitalist approach to the commodification of everything – and, as mentioned above, this is arguably connected with the misinterpretation of Christian scripture. Consequently, India is experiencing pollution and environmental destruction on a huge scale – a concern of many other Indian English-language poets as well. Roy’s almost devotional poem “A Pious Pursuit”, which I quote in full below, is a wonderful example of how he combines the subtle importance of nature with the mystical reunion with the Divine: The blowing of winds, trembling of leaves, Waves of water, chirping of birds, Movements of innocent babes and beasts, Beauty of flowers and moonlit nights, and Existence of the living and non-living entities

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Are eternal educators And the messengers of Eternity. They lead us to the pious pursuit Of the mysteries of Nature And divine knowledge. That kingdom of Delight Entails our surrender To His lotus feet Without attaching to our acts And approaching our Master Who keeps on waiting To welcome us in His sovereignty Where successful entry Can reserve an eternal seat Close to His splendid throne And liberate us from the bond of rebirth. (“A Pious Pursuit” 1–21)

Although there are similarities in Roy’s poetry with that of the mystical poets, such as John Donne, and the nature-romantic poets, such as Wordsworth and Keats, Roy is very much a contemporary writer. This is especially clear in his poems lamenting the destruction of the environment, the vulgar unbridled greed of unregulated capitalism and the loss of spiritual values. Wordsworth, for example, did not have to contend with, or write about, the wholesale destruction of nature because it was not a monumental contemporary issue for him as it is for us. I think here of famous Australian poets such as Dorothea Mackellar and Banjo Patterson, how they describe the beauty of the vast and varied continent of Australia, warts and all, but largely the way in which the Divine or the Ancestor Spirits intended it. However, things have changed; many contemporary poets are becoming more and more orientated towards activism as global environmental destruction accelerates at an alarming rate. These poets, such as Roy, no longer have the luxury of simply honouring nature in their verse; their mission is urgent and essential. Extraordinary indigenous Australian poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) was an early activist poet. Below are some lines from her poem “We Are Going” from 1964 – an ocean and continent apart, but similar feelings to those expressed by Roy: The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter. The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place. The bora ring is gone.

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I believe one of the highest ideals or services that poetry can offer to the general population, which most poets hope will read their work, lies in its tackling the “big questions”, articulating that which the non-poet would like to say themselves – and, through this, helping to make a positive difference to the quality of life of all people. Most of Roy’s poems express these ideals. A few works towards the middle of the book are of a very personal nature; these contrast considerably with the more visionary, “bigpicture” poems of the rest of the volume. Having said this, even these personal poems still express gratitude to the Divine and an appreciation of genuine love – of another human being or God. As mentioned, Roy’s poetry is imbued with both spirituality and humanitarianism. We see this in the poem “The Garden”: Reaching a garden in memoriam I feel as a blessed in Elysium Not less than a mythological deity Forgetting all except this reality. (“The Garden” 1–4)

And then, with the poem “My Eldest Sister”, we experience the love and care of another human. It is a beautiful poem, so I will quote it in full: The abandoned well behind my courtyard Reminds me my caught hold hand, Pouring of cold water and rubbing Lifebuoy And begetting childhood sob every morning; Receiving chapattis and milk With a chide, to eat the whole, Making me ready to school Handing over books, notebooks, pen and a gunny-sack; Kindling lantern every evening Making me recite Sanskrit couplets, Hindi poems And English word-meanings Ensued from her stringency. Being so much loved and Often accompanied to her in-law’s home Enlivens those days of cheers

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Unrepeatable in life. Her sudden demise shook my conscience And the flood of tears ruined all crops of affection But those unforgettable moments of motherly love And caring hands will edify the essence of my life forever. (“My Eldest Sister” 1–20)

Roy’s poems are characterized by the use of simple language; we do not need to consult a dictionary to understand what he means. This suits the themes and subject matter of his poems very well. There is one exception, and that is when he uses the specifically Indian names of deities, places and temples. Fortunately, in most cases he provides footnotes (some quite extensive), which explain such terms – an important inclusion and consideration for non-Indian readers, who may not be familiar with, for example, the Ramayana (the great Hindu epic) or Vrindavan (an Indian village). Roy creates vivid imagery within his poems – for example, in “Eternal Game”: That garden of bliss Has only flowers Of all hues and pleasant odours To welcome those Whose lives are lived Not for themselves But for those Whose arms do not work Legs do not walk. (“Eternal Game” 4–12)

He does not often use metaphor or simile in his poems, preferring the direct, clear approach – although he quite often uses repetition of words to create a more powerful insistent impression. I regard this as an important feature of good poetry, and it can often add to the poem’s cadence – as in the final line of “The Consequences”, for example: “And the bell tolls, tolls and tolls in her ears” (Line 20). And then, in the following lines from the same poem, we experience a sweet cadence that rolls off the tongue easily: “Pleasing and pleasure have become the ultimate goal / And His paved path been misused and abused” (“The Consequences” 15– 16).

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Vijay Kumar Roy is a well-established academic, writer and educator. He teaches English Language and Literature, supervises doctoral students and is editor-in-chief of Ars Artium, an international research journal of the humanities and social sciences. He is a member of numerous scholarly organizations and has published seventeen books, including several of poetry and English-language teaching. He has also published a large number of book reviews and research papers in international journals. I have included the above, very brief, précis of Dr. Roy’s professional activities not only to give background but also to indicate that Roy is a very serious and committed teacher, and is deeply connected with the Indian tertiary-education system. Why is this important? As we shall see, if I may paraphrase Shakespeare, “Something is rotten in the state of India”. Realm of Beauty and Truth: A Collection of Poems contains at least five poems specifically concerned with education: “Learning”, “Education is a Mission”, “Modern Education”, “Modern Temples of Learning” and “Dreamy Factories”. The first two aforementioned poems rejoice in the opportunities that education offers: Learning engenders an innovative spirit And directs us to swallow and digest The great epics and the World’s Classics To see the world through the eyes Of spiritual masters both ancient and modern. (“Learning” 1–5)

Roy, I think we can safely say, has a dedicated passion for good education; further on in this poem, we read “To sit and drink / The milk of all mystery”. Then, in “Education is a Mission”, we experience similar feelings: Education has to pave the way to attain self-realization To embrace the Light and eliminate the Darkness To strengthen the perpetual divine perception And enlighten the hungry souls on the path of truth, (“Education is a Mission” 10–13)

Clearly in these poems, as in his nature and humanitarian verse, spirituality and rising above our base material existence is of the utmost importance. This is the reason that the three following poems needed to be written. Roy came to realize that in some institutions greed and avarice, and teachers “engaged in wrong deeds”, were far more prevalent than he thought possible. In a footnote to “Modern Education”, he expresses his

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dislike of “the academic evils prevailing in modern society”. This poem says, But they did not conquer the evils Where fraternity lacks love Prosperity lacks peace Knowledge lacks wisdom; (“Modern Education” 9–12)

Things get much worse in “Modern Temples of Learning” and “Dreamy Factories”. These poems are of such importance, in my opinion, that I will quote the former in full: Enthralled by lust of money and power Unique bids arise day by day To create new degree mills And offer degrees and diplomas With attractive nomenclatures. Sale and purchase Alluring and cheating And entangling in a lasting mesh Strengthen the fervour of this profession. The business of extracting fee and capitation And converting the amassed black money into white Have become a passion and pride. Wealth and influences get victory over the latent talents, The initiatives of white kurta and pyjamas Merge in decent coat and tie To flourish the modern temples of learning. (“Modern Temples of Learning” 1–16)

This is what I mean when I say that great poetry goes way beyond personal concerns. This poem hints at the situation in many countries, not just India, and concerns the global importance of good, honest education. The background footnote to this poem is as powerful as the verse itself. It expresses how deeply this “rottenness” upsets Roy, and why it is important to, in a sense, put his reputation and career on the line: because he is an “existentially authentic” human being. I stated earlier that Roy is not totally a nature poet – that is, he does not only write poems about the natural world – nor is he totally a mystical poet. Having said this, quite a number of his works are very close to being

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“mystical nature poems” in the traditional sense. For Roy, nature cleanses the soul of a person from the build-up of man-made, psychological toxins; opens the gateway to the Divine; and allows the genuinely sensitive observer to experience the Infinite. In the poem “Ethiopia”, we feel an odd tension between “the distressed immigrant” and the uplifting that nature brings: Over ridden by beautiful hills, trees and bushes; Cascades, chirping of colourful tiny birds and Roaming of clouds close to trees charm one’s soul And imagination wanders to enter the realm of Infinite. Scattered cottages amid the attributes of nature, The sunshine and drizzling on dancing thickets Console the distressed immigrant And open the gate of gaiety. (“Ethiopia” 5–12)

In a poem written on a celebrated Indian English poet, Keki N. Daruwalla (“On First Looking at Keki N. Daruwalla”), Roy explores beauty, as Keki is “lost in Keats’s fancy”. The first section of the poem sets the scene, so to speak, for this adulation of nature and the Divine: God creates one for another Songs and myths teach us so; It happened with Daruwalla Who served India as a cop and became a poet I saw him on the dais, as a blithe spirit Lost in Keats’s Fancy. His speech made all soar On the wings of verse And to descend in the world of ecstasy. An aspiring poet questioned him: “Why is affection the mother of verses?” “There’s nothing except this.” Quoth he. Lads and lasses and the masses Began dreaming of a Utopian world Prattling ecstatically hand in hand. Age cannot wither beauteous hearts Once it is housed, it never parts. Beauty is their Alma Mater For beauty their every part. (“On First Looking at Keki N. Daruwalla” 1–19)

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I find it fitting to end this paper with this amazing poem, as it in a sense combines the three main elements of Roy’s work: spiritual (re)connection with the Divine; nature; and mystical (re)union with nature and the Divine. These three elements are fast disappearing from our global society, which, without them, is becoming a soulless, commercial, commodified wasteland. At least some individuals are concerned about this disintegration, and in their own way, such as with Roy’s poetic offerings, have consciously set out to help make changes for the better, and for all human beings.

Works Cited Noonuccal, Oodgeroo. We Are Going. Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1964. Print. Roy, Vijay Kumar. Realm of Beauty and Truth: A Collection of Poems. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2016. Print.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN SPIRITUAL TRENDS IN THE POETRY OF VIJAY KUMAR ROY BHASKAR ROY BARMAN

Before proceeding with this paper, we must take a glance at the history of the writing of English-language poetry in India, because we cannot consider Vijay Kumar Roy in isolation from his precursors and contemporaries. Besides, the legacy of English-language poetry handed down to Roy and his contemporaries has embellished and enriched their poetries. “Modern Indian English-language poetry is one of the many ‘new literatures’”, writes Bruce King in his introduction to the revised paperback edition of Modern Indian Poetry (King 2006: 1), “which began to emerge at the end of the Second World War after the end of colonialism.” In contrast to the creative writing of Africa and the Caribbean, Indian poetry written in English has been neglected by most critics, foreign readers and intellectuals because it has no relationship with the cultural movement that prompted the British to quit India, leaving Indians to rule themselves in 1947. But soon the situation drastically changed, and to cope with the altered circumstances the new poets who have started writing since 1947 concerned themselves with their relationship with, and alienation from, the realities of their societies. In so doing, they found themselves facing a challenge from older, nationalist intellectuals who still held out for a renaissance of the culture of precolonial languages of India. The challenge flung down to the new poets writing in English, the language in which they had been educated, was to write poetry as good as that of British, American and Irish poets: poetry about Indian lives and conditions. The conflict still persists, since conservatives – that is, nationalists and political radicals – insisted on a literature about traditional culture or the poor, particularly about the rural masses. This challenge seemed difficult for the poets to face because most, if not all, of them were well-educated, middle-class and more or less influenced by the Westernized

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culture of cities and universities. They had imbibed a love for English as they had been raised in families where it was one of the languages spoken, and attended English-language schools. In fact, they had been brought up in a cultured environment that nourished their love for the English language and literature. In the course of time, they grew disillusioned with this tradition. Despite continuing attacks on them, Indian English poets succeeded in having their place recognized in modern Indian culture by making their poetry a part of the progress of modernization, which encompassed urbanization, industrialization, mobility, independence and social change. Until a new, radical change takes place, Indian social and economic progress will remain, as it does now, linked to the same processes of modernization that have, for historical and political reasons, been wedded to the spread of the English language and the evolution of the Englishlanguage culture alongside Hindi, Bengali and other regional languages (notwithstanding the fact that English is spoken and written by a little over 4 per cent of the population, and remains the language of those who govern, communicate and make decisions at the national level). On account of its being the language of upward mobility and modern consumer tastes, English has spread further and is subject to a gradual process of Indianization. In the course of time, the English written and spoken in India has taken on the name “Indian English”. This signifies a change in mentality; consequently, it is no longer regarded as the language of colonial rulers but is a language of modern India, with no small number of typically Indian words and expressions intruding into it. These words and expressions allude to local realities, traditions and ways of feeling. These poets, as a group, are apt to be marginal to traditional society, not only because of their being alienated by their English-language education but also because of being rebels from Hinduism and Islam, and particularly owing to their having lived abroad. The rapidity with which Indian English poetry has become a selfsustaining tradition embroidered with recognizable models, periods and influences is more significant than the achievements of individual poets. There are identifiable periods when Indian poetry took on new directions by focusing on the actuality of personal and family life, as is evident in the poetry of Kamala Das and Nissim Ezekiel in the early 1960s or in the experimentalism in the poetry of Arvind Krishna Melhotra, Arun Kolatkar, Pritish Nandy, Dilip Chitre and Jayanta Mahapatra spanning the later 1960s and early 1970s. Though Indian English poetry written in the pre-independence period smacked of British and European influences, it began, close on the heels of

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the achievement of independence, reforming itself as a modern literature by having recourse to the techniques and themes of such major twentiethcentury modernists as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. The great body of French experimental poetry came a long way from nineteenth-century Arthur Rimbaud and Lautréamont to the twentieth-century Dadaists and surrealists. The political poetry of Pablo Neruda and others exercised its influence on Indian English poetry. Indian English poets have played an active role in popularizing and developing regional-language poetry in a new direction and, in addition to playing this role, have been active in translating regional-language poetry into English. There is a crop of English translations made by A. K. Ramanujan from classical and medieval Tamil and modern Kannada; Jayanta Mahapatra from modern Oriya; Arun Kolatkar from Marathi; Dilip Chitre from modern and medieval Marathi; Gieve Patel from Gujarati; Arvind Krishna Mehrotra from Hindi; P. Lal from Sanskrit; and Pritish Nandy from Bengali, Urdu and other languages. The last-named two, besides translating regional-language poetry into English, have also promoted their translations by publishing them. Indian English poets took an interest in writing devotional verses. During the period spanning the 1950s and early 1960s, they confined themselves to writing personal lyrics, mostly confessional and argumentative; in the mid-sixties, they discovered new modes of expression. Poets like A. K. Ramanujan and Nissim Ezekiel were already acquainted with American poetry, and, partly through them, American influence permeated the Indian English poetry written in the mid-sixties, when Keki N. Daruwalla, Shiv K. Kumar and others stressed formal, direct, personal voices and distinctions in their poetry and located their ordinary experiences in recognizable locations. “The man-alone-in-a-hostile-world attitude,” writes Bruce King, “with its sense of opposition, cynicism and the ironies of life, found in the poetry of Daruwalla, has its affinities in American literature, as does Daruwalla’s trust in the speaking voice” (King 2006: 6). Now let us concern ourselves with locating the spiritual trends in the poetry of Vijay Kumar Roy. We shall limit our discussion to the poems featured in Roy’s collection, Realm of Beauty and Truth: A Collection of Poems (2016). Since this paper aims to locate the spiritual trends in a selection of the poems, it is worthwhile elaborating on what is generally understood by “spiritual”. We often tend to consider it as synonymous with “religious”. Though scholars concerned with spiritualism may object to this association, we cannot isolate spiritualism from our discussion of religion and vice versa. The conception of the divine, or of something that lies beyond our direct knowledge, dominates both terms – and romanticism

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“rules the roost” in the interpretation of either of them. Romanticism is the attempt to achieve, retain and justify the emotional experience that results from “an interfusion of real and ideal, natural and supernatural, finite and infinite, man and God” (Fairchild 1949: 3). It can be interpreted as meaning in art what pantheism means in theology. The term “pantheism” appears somewhat slippery in relation to our interpretation of romanticism. We can, for the sake of clarity, reduce pantheism to a definition such as the ascription of numinousness, of a feeling of unity and interfusion. In this definition, pantheism is essentially a religious or spiritual feeling. The definition of romanticism given above is, I think, essential for religious or spiritual trends envisaged in poetry which lay their main thrust on religious or spiritual experiences. While talking about the contribution of romanticism to poets who infuse their work with religious experiences, Hoxie Neale Fairchild says that the “interfusion-experience is the flower of romanticism but not its root. It is the culminating exploit of that imaginative power which Coleridge describes as ‘a repletion within the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM’” (Fairchild 1949: 3). Fairchild takes Coleridge’s comment on the “infusionexperience” from Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (I, 202). The romantic faith clinging to this power emanates from the deeper and broader faith that the natural goodness, strength and creativity of all human energies command. “The taproot of romanticism, then, is an eternal, universal and primary fact of consciousness. Man’s desire for self-trust, self-expression, self-expansion” (Fairchild 1949: 3). Many major romantic poets want to write the “poetry of life”, which means that, essentially, they want to write about religion. Religion entails intervention by the romantic God. He certainly intervenes, but he does not do so in order not to transform a weak or sinful creature into a being to attain salvation but to support the natural goodness of humanity and divinely encourage the cultivation of its expansive impulses. No poet can write the poetry of life without being romantic. I shall try to discuss the selection of poems in Realm of Beauty and Truth: A Collection of Poems in the light of the “interfusion-experience”. First of all, let us hear what the poet Vijay Kumar Roy says about poetry in his preface. Poetry that resides in the heart emerges “out of churning of the spontaneous feelings”, which are interfused with the experience that the poet is undergoing in the milieu that surrounds them. The poet speaks of the intervention by the romantic God, symbolized by Eternity, who sends His agents down to help the poet to soar in the realm of “deep-rooted vision where he finds a way to poetic expression” (Roy

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2016: 7). In the preface, Roy tells his readers what the poems incorporated into this collection deal with. In the prologue, which precedes the first poem, “In the Lap of My Mother”, Roy strives to substantiate the “interfusion-experience” by saying that the poetry that emerges from the depth of the heart is interfused with the wonders and complexities proffered by the life that the poet lives. The poet regrets that “we” (the poets) cease to believe in the truth of life, and that the complexities of life that we cannot explain bewilder us because we do not know from where they arise. Such complexities do not arise from what we have already experienced but from what is far beyond our knowledge. Roy says, “Life should be made worth living” (Roy 2016: 15). Certainly, life is worth living. But it should be made worth living by probing the nature of its complexities. What we see around us will not help us; we must consider how things happen. It is not always scientifically easy to probe them. Many complexities of life need to be interpreted from a religious point of view. In the opening poem, “In the Lap of My Mother”, the poet universalizes the Mother, a concept that we hold so dear in our heart of hearts, and fleshes out its hills and forests, trees and everything else that cradles mankind, animals and birds. The Mother evokes a romantic and religious feeling, which is captured in the first four lines: Wandering amid hills and forests I’m captured by Her beatific smiles Every gaze creates an Elysium And rouses the powers of penance of Vishwamitra. (“In the Lap of My Mother” 1-4)

By using the word “Elysium”, the poet emphasizes the intensity of the motherhood exuded by the hills, forests and trees, which the fleshy mother cannot give. “Elysium” in Greek mythology is the abode of the blessed after death; but here in the poem, it is the forest and the hill which give the poet the ideal state of happiness. Let us imagine the poet abandoning himself to the manifestation of the scenic beauty in “Her beatific smiles”. These smiles have roused in the poet, as they do in every poet, a romantic bent of mind or feeling. The fourth line alludes to “the powers” and Vishwamitra in order to stress the effect of these “beatific smiles” on the poet wandering amidst the hills and forests. The sensation that “beatific smiles” creates in the poet’s mind incites him to undertake a penance in order to lose himself in the feeling. The tranquil atmosphere, steeped in silence, reminds him of the story of Vishwamitra.

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Popularly referred to as Brahmarshi Vishwamitra, this is one of the most venerated of all rishis or sages of ancient times in India. He is said to have authored the Gayatri Mantra. Another school of thought contradicts this theory, saying that it was not written down but rather revealed to him. However, the story that surrounds him tells of how Vishwamitra, though born a Kshatriya, became a Brahmin through penance: The unseen infrequent trees and terrains, The old oaks, banyans and pines Stretch their hands and surround me To tell the ancient stories of sages and saints. The innocent foothills along with trees Wounded by machines and mortals Pave serpentine ways And lament the development at the cost of environment. (“In the Lap of My Mother” 5–12)

The next seven lines show the poet jolted out of his trance and back to reality. The first two lines, in the expression “unseen and infrequent trees and terrains”, give one the impression that the forests have now succumbed to the greed of mankind, and the poet imagines himself standing in the midst of the trees and listening to “the ancient stories of sages and saints”. Roy continues the feeling expressed here into the second poem, “The Consequences”. Its first four lines are as follows: The divine spark And the mortal image of the Immortal Being poured all reason Is the Crown and glory of Creation! (“The Consequences” 1–4)

They speak of the endowing by the “Immortal Being” of His “Creation” with His divine spark, because His creation – that is, humanity – is created in His own image. It is mankind that unshackles itself from the “[c]rown and glory” because “[p]leasing and pleasure have become the ultimate goal / And His paved path been misused and abused” (“The Consequences” 19). In these two poems, as the lines quoted suggest, the poet stresses the motherliness of nature and the “Immortal Being”. Humanity disentangles itself from this knot, pursuing the pleasures of life and material happiness.

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The motherliness of nature is also carried into the poem “Nurtured by Nature”. As is evident in the work, nature has mothered the poem into life. I reproduce it in full below: Nurtured by Nature, I learnt to bear the scorching of summer, harshness of winter and swimming in the face of the current. Engrossed in the task of Truth, I see different forms of Goddess Durga in some women, and the smile of Lord Vishnu in every leaf of the peepal tree. They all make Beauty – my guardian and Love – my inmate whose company bridges the delight of celestial and terrestrial. (“Nurtured by Nature” 1–12)

In the first four lines, the poet admits to being inspired – nay, emboldened – by nature into enduring the scorching heat of summer and the wintry harshness, and swimming against the current. In fact, he has completely abandoned himself to mothering by nature. The last eight lines speak of the poet visualizing, “[e]ngrossed in the task of Truth”. The Goddess Durga, imaged in “some women”, and “the smile of Lord Vishnu”, visualized “in every leaf of the peepal tree”, present to the poet a beatific manifestation of the divine, and seem to him to “bridge” the “celestial and the terrestrial”. In the poem entitled “A Unique Land”, Roy waxes lyrical about India: “A land of the origin of four religions: / Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism” (“A Unique Land” 1–2), which, known for the “Indus Valley Civilization”, epitomizes the much-quoted concept of unity in diversity. The Vedas, regarded as the “origin of all knowledge” – along with the Ramayana, Mahabharata, the Purana and the Upanishads – “[t]each eternal lessons to humankind / And reflect the sages’ vision of the past, present and future” (“A Unique Land”). The poet goes on to say: King Harishchandra’s vow for truth, Raghu’s race’s rule of “plighted word must be redeemed even at the cost of one’s life,” And Shravan’s inimitable devotion to parents Originate the sublime social values. (“A Unique Land” 9–13)

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The poet heaps eulogies on India in the concluding four lines, and the words and expressions chosen are so simple that any attempt to interpret them will tax the reader’s patience: A ‘golden bird’ and the mother of republic, Imparted the world her ancient wisdom of vasudhaiva kutumbakam And even after coming out of the clutches of several invaders She allures the world-philosophers to sing her glory. (“A Unique Land” 14–17)

In the poem entitled “A Truth”, Roy philosophizes on the divine presence around us. Everything that we see, every occurrence and our movement, is from the Supreme Spirit: the Hindu Trinity. The poet says, Entire things in the universe Some worth to see, worth to move Worth to speak or are adverse. They’re controlled by One Supreme Spirit, the Lord Generator, Operator and Destroyer. (“A Truth” 1-6)

In the following lines, the poet is talking about the relationship of humanity with the Supreme Spirit. Though they look separate, they are united by the bond of love. If mankind “knows the worth of love”, it will light the path that leads it to perfection: Human being is His model Modus operandi, modus vivendi Being separate, but living with ease. If one knows the worth of love He is called on the path of perfection Rest is weight in vain. (“A Truth” 7–12)

In the concluding three lines, the poet divinizes love – which, like perfection – is impossible to achieve. “The rarest quality of love” spoken of in the poem is a striving for perfection, never to be attained. It is only that this striving thrusts humanity upwards: “Love is the rarest wealth / That neither can men praise / Nor muses too much, nor epic” (“A Truth” 13–15).

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In the above work, the poet divinizes love, and, in the poem “Beauty is the Essence of Life”, he sets out to divinize beauty: Beauty is the essence of life It dwells in imagination, leaves shadows in perception and strengthens my dedication for the welfare of earthly creatures whose company is not less than divine caress attained by our ancient sages living in the caves of the Himalayas and craving to achieve it by the penance of decades. (“Beauty is the Essence of Life” 1–10) The poem “My Guide” shows the poet surrendering himself to God. In his dreamy state, he feels himself hearing someone telling him, “You are alone, you are alone. / No one is yours, you are alone” (“My Guide” 2-3). On waking up, still drowsy, he sees no one around him. In his drowsy perplexity, he prays to the “Invisible” to explain what he has heard in his dream. The “Invisible” says, “Be not a slave to worldliness / Get rid of such illusive mesh / Here none is yours, except Me” (“My Guide” 10–12). As did Arjuna to Shri Krishna in the Mahabharata, the poet surrenders himself to his Lord – body and soul. As is evident in the poem, the poet adheres to the Hindu philosophy of surrendering oneself to God. Many more of Roy’s poems deal with the theme of surrendering the poet’s self to the Almighty, to love, beauty and nature. There are also many other poems dealing with diverse topics relevant to life, society and education. I have picked on a few of the works that convey Vijay Kumar Roy’s religious – or, rather, spiritual – thought and vision.

Works Cited Ashcroft, Bill, Garen Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts (special Indian edition). London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Print. Fairchild, Hoxie Neale. Religious Trends in English Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949. Print. King, Bruce. Modern Indian Poetry. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.

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Roy, Vijay Kumar. Realm of Beauty and Truth: A Collection of Poems. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2016. Print.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN SOCIOPOLITICAL ISSUES IN THE POETRY OF MEENA KANDASAMY C. L. SHILAJA

While novels, short stories and plays have occupied an important place in the literary landscape, poetry as a genre has played a more prominent role. Meena Kandasamy – a contemporary poet best known for a collection of poems, Touch – addresses a wide range of issues such as caste, untouchability, and the affirmation of new identities and politics. A dalit (“untouchable”) writer, she combines healthy criticism with humour and wordplay and she distinguishes herself not only in poetry but also in fiction, translation and political writings. Kandasamy’s poetry addresses social and political issues, challenging the validity of traditional Indian values and myths. She believes that writing political poetry helps to identify with her people, and to keep alive their social culture. Her poetry is a peculiar combination of anger, sadness, love, passion, acceptance and history – all wrapped up in one. By redefining the term “Dalit” and eulogizing the self-identified dalit people, Kandasamy encourages dalits to embrace their own cultural heritage and affirm their identity. Following the tradition of Palanimuthu Sivakami and Bama Faustina Susairaj, who have created a new Tamil dalit identity by redefining the sense of self in their works, Kandasamy’s poems are genuine expressions of her experiences of casteism. She is also a writer who aims to redefine caste, history and ethnicity, and thereby seeks to reevaluate human relationships through her creative work. Kandasamy’s poetry, expressive as it is of dalit society and its casteist formulations, is a creation of the new millennium – one that surpasses the accepted, canonical structures of literature. In today’s consumer-driven society, literature per se is no longer a serious affair, and creative artists need to build innovations into their

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works either to politicize issues or to depict the depravity of our current lifestyles. It is, therefore, difficult to find writers who weave creativity with gravitas in an endeavour to depict much larger realities, which address a global audience. Among such writers is Meena Kandasamy, one notable artist who plays on the form and content of the poetic genre in order to unravel the complexities of being a dalit. Kandasamy began her literary career as the editor of a dalit magazine for the Dalit Panthers of India (a militant, activist dalit organization). She published her first collection of poems, Touch, in 2006. Two of her pieces have won prizes in all-India poetry competitions. Her work has been published in various journals, including the Little Magazine; Kavya Bharati; Indian Horizons; Muse India and the Quarterly Literary Review, Singapore. Her early poems deal with people’s self-consciousness and pain in being dalits. She poignantly makes great efforts to redefine “Dalitness”. Through her works, Kandasamy links her poems to life and advocates the distinctiveness of dalit history; all the same, she creates an identity for her people and fulfils the task of a cultural poet. Her poetry constitutes not only a representation of the anger and anguish of dalits’ cultural past but also a canonical structure that challenges the common frameworks of literary paradigms and theoretical structures. The analysis for this essay concentrates on Kandasamy’s work Touch, which expresses the (to outsiders) unfathomable, bitter experiences and feelings of the dalit community. Recorded history reveals that a hierarchy was practised in India like that of most European countries of the time. It involved slavery, division of class and race, and represented the dark side of humanity. Though the status of its victims (in the case of India, the dalit community) has risen considerably in the recent past, the social reality is still appalling considering the persistence of the country’s crude caste system. Historically, the upper classes never entertained the idea of enhancing the rights of their oppressed compatriots. They treated their fellow human beings as inferior creatures – lower than animals. Today, a number of laws have been passed for the uplifting of India’s suppressed people, yet the entitlement of their class to equal rights remains an open question. Though the life of the dalit community is undergoing constant development, they still suffer caste discrimination – in either a direct or an indirect manner. The right to fully establish their own cultural identity and practices is a far-off dream for most dalits. This is evident in village festivals and social functions. A division between the upper and lower castes continues in rural communities, where dalits are still prohibited from entering temples in some areas. In the present scenario, many writers have emerged from

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this oppressed situation to express their own cultural identity through their writings. Meena Kandasamy is such a poet, who has been successful in her writings when she addresses the voices of the margins and upper-caste hypocrisies. Poetry acts as a useful means to show the inner conflicts of the suppressed – i.e., the so-called “others”, their emotions and feelings. As she is an emerging poet, fiction writer, translator and activist, Kandasamy’s contribution to dalit literature is immense in contemporary Indian society. Five of her poems – “Another Paradise Lost: The Hindu Way”, “Advaita: The Ultimate Question”, “Aggression”, “Becoming a Brahmin: Algorithm for converting a Shudra into a Brahmin” and “Maariamma” – have been chosen for analysis here. The poet is successful in presenting people on the margins of society as victims of caste discrimination and persecution. The poems in her first collection narrate her rich and varied experience, which explores age-old cultural hegemonies. “Another Paradise Lost” gives vent to the emotional conflict of the dalit through the voice of a modern serpent. The poems “Advaita: The Ultimate Question” and “Maariamma” are expressions of very strong resentment against the Creator and “man” as His image. “Becoming a Brahmin” is a political poem that suggests several levels of meaning. “Aggression”, however, is an exploration of discrimination and social inequality, filled with the emotional outburst of the dalit. Through her poems, Kandasamy expresses dalit identity as she never fails to speak out against the oppressions present in contemporary society. “Another Paradise Lost: The Hindu Way” is a satirical poem that reflects the poet’s in-depth knowledge of mythology. She creates the serpent as a central image that envisages the voice of a dalit who used to live in society as an “exile”. In the poem, the poet encounters this snake curled under the fridge; on seeing it she tries to attack it with a bottle of acid, intending to kill it. However, to her astonishment, the cobra starts to speak and shows its condition as an exile lacking space and territory. The poet portrays the real attitude of upper-class humans, who consider the suppressed as simply outcasts. As the privileged classes never gave an opportunity for dalits to express their point of view, the poem also articulates the serpent’s frustration and anger in exile. With the abrupt expression “Stop it”, it begins its narrative. Due to the domination of India’s social hierarchy, dalits were forced to live in isolation – like the snake. Kandasamy’s poetry reveals the extent to which they yearn for their rights and self-identity. This is clearly seen in the lines: Acid bottle in hand, I heard the snake preach to me about living in detachment.

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The perfection of life is when you do not know the difference between yielding and resisting. (“Another Paradise Lost: The Hindu Way” Touch 39)

Kandasamy does not believe in the idea that the karma of a past life determines the state of the birth of a human being, or that their caste remains the same. She satirizes this idea, prevalent in ancient Hindu mythology, that a human being is reborn into a particular caste on the merits of their previous life, calling it “bunkum”. She also tries to convey the idea that the stratification of society purely on the basis of caste wounds the social psyche and encourages social conflict. The sharp movements of the red-tongued snake represent the voice of the dalit who did not have a chance to express his views for years. The poet’s conversation with the serpent shows the ever-dominant intent of so-called high-class people, who try to crush the lower class by subjugating and dominating them with their ideology, not understanding their pain and agony. The idea of questioning the inequality among human beings and the dalits’ struggle to establish their own identity and withheld rights are clearly represented in the voice of the serpent. The dalit’s complaint is not actually to create trouble in society but is simply a protest on behalf of their denied rights. The poem, while representing the emotional conflicts of the dalits, raises the stakes by questioning the ideology of orthodox, higher-class society: I wanted to know why caste was there, why people suffered because of their karmas. I questioned the Gods, and the learned sages there. I asked them what would happen if a high-born did manual work just like the low-born. I worried about the division of labour, this disparity in dreams and destinies. You could say I was a rebel pleading for liberty-equality-fraternity. I had a riotous history of revolution (“Another Paradise Lost: The Hindu Way” 41)

The poet, in introducing dalit resistance through the very structure of her poetry in the image of the snake, forces her readers to understand the ultimate aim of the dalit movement. She foregrounds the fact that their resistance and the assertion of their identity is not only for their own

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development but also serves as a protest against the ideology of the upper castes, thus making them “challengers of hierarchy”. Many of Kandasamy’s poems display serious concerns about issues such as sexuality, gender, caste and untouchability. Moreover, she uses innovative techniques with apt structural forms and choices of words, which become expressive and reflective of the poems’ titles. In “Advaita: The Ultimate Question”, the poet puts forth the ideology of the soul as a god. Hindu mythology states that the soul in the body is equal to God (Brahma). Kandasamy introduces the idea that dalits, too, have their souls, which exhibit their own identity and creativity. She asks superior society whether it would accept the truth: that the outcast also has a soul, which is equal to God? The poet shows her anger towards the higher castes, who always believe in past doctrines. It is an attempt to reconcile contradictory worldviews, and also proposes that human existence is structured by a systemic dualism. The poem opens a Pandora’s box of revelations – carrying forward a postmodern worldview, in which the central notions of our culture are decentred in poststructuralist fashion. Kandasamy is also very much concerned with language, knowing that it is a tool that could empower dalits. She acknowledges as much in one of her interviews with Ujjwal Jana: Though I have dabbled in various literary genres, I think I choose poetry very consciously. First, because poetry is intricately connected with language, and since language is the site of all subjugation and oppression, I think poetry alone has the power of being extremely subversive. (Jana 2008)

She is conscious of her own identity as a dalit and a feminist, and uses her skills in relation to subjectivity or as a source of self. She believes that writing is a tool of empowerment. The poem “Maariamma” was first published in the Little Magazine. In it, the poet reveals humans’ ability to divide even gods and goddesses. The poem depicts the voices of dalits who have been barred from visiting temples or other places of worship. The offences inflicted include mental harassment: with their varna (caste) mind-set, the perpetrators forced the dalits to think that there is a deviation in the creative force. Dalits were thus prohibited from worshipping for many years – and when they were not able to express their pain at such discrimination, their only choice was to pray to God within their own minds by expressing their sorrows. Kandasamy has taken this idea and created poetry out of it. In Hindu society, rustic gods like Maariamma, Iyyanar and Muniswara were

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worshipped with sacrificial offerings of roosters, goats, pigs and other animals. This divulges their cultural identity, and the belief of a particular sect of people. In some villages, Hindu gods such as Vishnu, Shiva, Ganapaty, Muruga, Lakshmi and Parvati were worshipped only by the privileged few. Moreover, the way of worshipping these gods and goddesses was totally different from that of the dalits’ worship. Being oppressed by the social hierarchy, the dalits began worshiping their rustic gods with their own customs and habits. Slowly, upper-class society started joining in the rituals of these rustic deities too. Meena Kandasamy’s poems reflect dalit agony at having been excluded from worship of the higher-order gods by upper-caste representatives who do not even enter their slums due to social restrictions. The result of this sanction is that the dalits themselves begin to question whether even their rustic gods have joined hands with those of the oppressor. This poem also portrays the loss of dalit hope in the belief of a universal God due to social divisions. The poem “Becoming a Brahmin: Algorithm for converting a Shudra into a Brahmin” satirically portrays the easiest route for changing from a dalit to an upper-class individual. It presents the conversion of a Shudra into a Brahmin by using computer-programming commands. The texture of the poem is peculiar, with symbols of these commands being included and the entire work appearing in the form of a computer program. The human mind, it seems to say, should be able to grasp the notion of considering other humans as their own fellow beings, but some fail to do that. The poet, by using the form of a computer program, satirizes the nature of human beings. All humans are equal in the eyes of God, who has created them as a single species; however, they divide themselves up as people of different castes. Kandasamy ironically offers a way to eradicate caste discrimination by providing a suitable formula: the Shudra girl should be married to the Brahmin man – giving birth to a female child, which eventually marries a Brahmin man, repeating the process for five to six generations; this would create a higher-caste society. Kandasamy, through her programming steps, tries to emphasize that the Brahmins who suppress “the outcast” are merely a product of the system – but, in so doing, they fail to follow human values. Besides, she argues, her ideas were already visualized by Periyar E. V. Ramasamy in 1947. What is amazing is that she does not stop with glorifying the vision of this social activist, who fought for the rights of dalits, but expresses her wish for another political leader like him to arise, as seen in her lines: Algorithm advocated by Father of the Nation at Tirupur. Documented by Periyar on 20.09.1947.

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Kandasamy is known for her inflammatory writing, as most of her themes and her choices of words convey more than one meaning. She, however, draws her readers’ attention to the essentially paradoxical nature of highcaste people who suppress the “other”. Her anger against the suppresser and the emergence of the dalit in a new form against social oppression is seen clearly in the poem “Aggression”: Ours is a silence that waits. Endlessly waits. And then, unable to bear it any further, it breaks into wails. (“Aggression” 38)

Her poems are genuine expressions of her experiences, coupled with an inherent creativeness. Most of them deal with the problems of dalit women – from their childhoods onwards. Dalits in general are exploited because of their poverty and caste. If they are women, they are further exploited because of their gender. The voice of the dalit was silenced for generations, and the poet calls for moves to put an end to this tragic situation. Through her poetic voice, she attempts to liberate dalits to fight for their deprived rights and identities. Kandasamy, by her simple style and energetic writing, stands among few young Indian poets writing in English today. Moreover, dalit literature can no longer be at the margin of other literatures; it addresses a wider audience. Meena Kandasamy represents the echoes of dalit women in her writings, which have become a prominent voice in Indian literature.

Works Cited Das, K. et al. “let-there-be-light: Praise for Touch” (n.d.), http://www.meenakandasamy.com/mk/praise.html (accessed 10 February 2017). Jana, Ujjwal. “The Struggle to Annihilate Caste will be Victorious”, Meena Kandasamy in Conversation with Ujjwal Jana (2008),

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http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/909/883 (accessed 10 February 2017). Kandasamy, Meena. Touch. Mumbai: Peacock, 2006. Print. —. Blog (n.d.), http://meenu.wordpress.com/ (accessed 10 February 2017). Rangan, Baradwaj. “The Politics of Poetry”, Hindu, Metroplus (28 April 2011). Print.

CONTRIBUTORS

Bhaskar Roy Barman, PhD, is an internationally published and anthologized poet, novelist, short-story writer, critic, editor, book reviewer, translator and folklorist. He lives in Agartala, Tripura, India. D. C. Chambial, PhD, is Associate Professor of English (Retired) at the Government Degree College Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, India and editor of Poetcrit, an international biannual journal. Nigamananda Das, PhD, is Professor and Head of the Department of English, Nagaland University, Kohima Campus, Nagaland, India. Kavitha Gopalakrishnan is Assistant Professor of English at Baselius College, Kottayam, Kerala, India. She is the review editor of Writers Editors Critics (WEC) and the International Journal on Multicultural Literatures (IJML). Kusum Kundu, PhD, from IIT Roorkee, Uttarakhand, has taught at Deeksha Institute of Technology, Fatehabad and Sanskar Bharti Group of Institutions, Mahendragarh, Haryana, India. Robert Maddox-Harle is a writer, artist and academic reviewer. He has published two volumes of poetry – Scratches & Deeper Wounds (1996) and Mechanisms of Desire (2012). His main concern has been to explore and document the radical changes that technology is bringing about. He coined the term technoMetamorphosis in order to describe this. This past concern is now moving towards helping to restore our abandoned metaphysical and spiritual modes of being through literature – especially poetry. He lives at Nimbin, northern New South Wales, Australia. Aju Mukhopadhyay is a poet, author and critic. He has authored more than thirty books and received several poetry awards, besides other honours. Many of his works have been translated into other languages and anthologized. He is a regular contributor to various magazines and e-zines,

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in India and abroad. The conservation of nature and the environment is the watchword of his life. He lives in Puducherry, India. Vijay Kumar Roy, PhD, is Assistant Professor of English at the Northern Border University, Arar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He has also taught at SRM University, NCR Campus, Modinagar, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. He is editor-in-chief of Ars Artium, a research journal of the humanities and social sciences published from New Delhi. C. L. Shilaja, PhD, is Associate Professor of English at Sathyabama University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. G. Srilatha, PhD, is Associate Professor of English and Head of the Department of English at the P. G. Centre, P. B. Siddhartha College of Arts and Science, Vijaywada, Andhra Pradesh, India. She is widely published and has also worked at the Aborigine Women’s Rehab Centre in Melbourne, Australia. V. Sunitha, PhD, is Assistant Professor of English at the School of Social Science and Languages, VIT University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. Ram Kulesh Thakur, PhD, from ISM Dhanbad (now called IIT Dhanbad), Jharkhand, is Assistant Professor of English at the National Institute of Science and Technology, Berhampur, Odisha, India.

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Saikia, Nagen. Aching Void (Mita Bhash). Tr. Gitali Saikia. Dibrugarh: Kaustubh Prakashan, 2005. Print. Sarang, Vilas. Indian English Poetry since 1950. Bombay: Disha Books, 1995. Print. Sarma, Satyendranath. Madhavadeva. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1985. Print. Sarma, Umakanta. Thawing Out. Guwahati: Sabinay, 1998. Print. Sharma, S. The Structuralist Philosophy of the Novel: A Marxist Perspective. New Delhi: S. S. Publishers, 1999. Print. —. The Minotaur. Jaipur: Book Enclave, 2009. Print. —. Golden Cacti. New Delhi: Gnosis - Authorspress, 2012. Print. —. Indo-Australian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry: Vibrant Voices. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2013. Print. —. Luncheon on the Grass. New Delhi: Authorspress. 2013. Print. —. Poems on Highway. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2013. Print. —. Mundane, My Muse! New Delhi: Authorspress, 2014. Print. Sharma, S. and M. Olawuyi, eds. Acerbic Anthology. USA: Createspace, 2013. Print. Sharma, S. and Sangeeta Sharma. Delightful Dickens: Some Tributes. Jaipur: Yking Books, 2013. Print. Wrixon, B. Rhyme with Reason, Poets with Voices Strong. Burlington, Ontario: Brian Wrixon Books, 2013. Print.

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INDEX

A Return to Love, 75 Acerbic Anthology, 131 Acharya, Pradip, 19, 22, 23 Aching Void, 22 Alexander the Great, 38 Ali in Diwali, 107 All in One, 79, 85, 89, 96 All Things Passing & Other Poems, 32 Ameeruddin, Syed, 5 Ancient Gongs, 21 Andal, 1 Annamalai, 60 anthropomorphism, 18 Ao, Temsula, 14, 45, 46 Arora, O. P., 9, 11 Ars Artium, 150 Arunachal Pradesh, 15, 16 Ashoka, 42 Assam, 29 Aurobindo, Sri, 1 School of poetry, 1 Awaiting Eden Again, 79, 85, 87 Barman, Bhaskar Roy, 48 Barua, Ajit, 19 Barua, Hem, 19 Baruah, Manjeet, 22 Baruah, Rupanjali, 32 Beauty, 11 Between Births, 23 Between Fire and Snow, 29, 30 Bhagavad Gita, 76 Bhagavat, 19 bhakti, 7 Bhakti Yoga, 75 Bhaona, 19 Bhandari, Rajendra, 46, 48 Bharat, 40

Bhattacharya, Anuradha, 11 Bhattacharya, Hiren, 21 Biographia Literaria, 157 Brahministic philosophy, 120 British India, 27 Chitre, Dilip, 155, 156 Christ, 80, 86, 87, 107 communal violence, 27 Coral Island, 28 Cross and Creation, 79, 80, 81, 87, 90 culture, 1, 15, 85, 105, 154 dalit, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170 Dai, Mamang, 14, 16, 19 Daruwalla, Keki N., 152, 156 Das, Bhupati, 14, 31, 32 Das, Kamala, 29, 155 Das, Lakshahira, 14, 23, 24, 27 Datta, Amaresh, 28 Delightful Dickens, 131 devotional poems, 1 dogmatic religion, 79 Dominic, K. V., 110, 123 Donne, John, 147 Draupadi, 86 Durga, 72, 86, 160 Dusyanta, 38 Dwaparyuga, 40 Earth Song, 23 eco-humanist, 45 ecological glory, 35 ecology, 44 Ecophilosophy, 69 Ekasarannamdharma, 19 ethnic poets, 14

The Social, Cultural and Spiritual Dimensions of Modern Indian Poetry in English Ezekiel, Nissim, 79, 155 Fakir, Ajan, 21 filial love, 27 Gandhi, 42 Gandhian, 92 Ganguly, Dev, 2 Gayatri Mantra, 159 Gitanjali, 2, 3 Goddess Saraswati, 85 Godse, Nathuram, 92 Gomateswara, 54 Goswami, Indira, 22 Goswami, Jaydeva, 1 gyani, 9 Hazarika, Bhupen, 22 Hindu Trinity: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, 120 Hussain, Shujaat, 99, 108 ideology, 22, 24 Imphal, 33 Indian English poet, 1, 16, 62 English poetry, 31, 122, 154, 155, 156 politics, 41 Indianness, 28 Islam, Kaji Nazrul, 1 Jews, 38 Jha, Pashupati, 79, 94, 95, 98 jikirs, 21 Jyotirmoyee, 1 Kalidas, 38 Kalinga War, 42 Kaliyuga, 40 Kamsa, 38 Kandasamy, Meena, 164, 166, 169 Kanva, 38 Kapilabastu, 38 Karma Yoga, 76 Karnataka, 54

181

Kauravas, 42 Keats, 147 Keller, Hellen, 108 Kerala, 122 Khasi, 34 Khasi folk story, 35 Kire, Easterine 14, 43 Kirtan, 19 Knots, 12, 13 Kolatkar, Arun, 155, 156 Krishna, 40, 41, 43, 75, 107, 162 Kumar, Shiv K., 110, 156 kundalini, 85 Kundalini Yoga, 59 Lal, P., 156 Lal Salaam, 117, 127 Lenin, 42 liberal humanism, 130, 131 Life and Beyond Life, 32 Lord Buddha, 43 Lord Shiva, 85 Luncheon on the Grass, 131 Madhubir, R. K., 37 Madhubani, 79 Madonna, 38 Mahadevi, Akka, 1 Mahapatra, Jayanta, 37, 155, 156 Mahaprabhu, Chaitanya, 1 Manipur, 33, 34, 35 Marx, 42 May I, 31 Meghalaya, 33, 35 Mehrotra, Arvind Krishna, 156 Mehta, Narsi, 1 Melodies and Guns, 22 Mirabai, 1 Mishra, Rudra Narayan, 7 Mithila, 79 Mizoram, 33 Modern Assamese Poetry, 19 Mother and Other Poems, 79, 82, 83, 89, 96 Mother Forgive Me, 2, 3, 4 Multiculturalism, 123

182 Mumtaz, 38 Myanmar, 35, 36 mystic, 30 mystic poets, 1 mysticism, 27, 62 Nagaland, 43, 44 Naik, M. K., 71 Namghosha, 19 Nandy, Pritish, 155, 156 nature-romantic poets, 147 Neog, Maheswar, 23 Ngangom, Robin S, 14, 33, 34, 35, 37 Northeast India, 14, 24, 31, 35, 50 Nyibus, 19 Nyishi, 17 Nyishi people, 19 Om, 120 Onam, 121, 126 Osho, 8 Patel, Gieve, 156 Pathak, Dayananda, 14, 28, 30 Pandavas, 42 Pebbles on the Shore, 10 Poems on Highway, 136, 137 political poetry, 156 postcolonial Indian English literature, 17 Pralaya, 39 Prem, P. C. K., 121 Raghupathi, K. V., 53, 62 Ramanujan, A. K., 29, 156 Radha, 41 Rainbow Rhapsodies, 6 Ram in Ramzan, 107 Rama, 40 Ravana, 39 Reagan, Ronald, 105 Realm of Beauty and Truth, 145, 150, 156, 157 River Poems, 15, 16, 17 Romanticism, 156, 157

Index roti, kapraa and makaan, 114 Roy, Dwijendranath, 1 Roy, Vijay Kumar, 145, 150, 154 sadhak, 8 sadhna, 85 Saikia, Nagen, 22 Sankardeva, 19, 20 Sankhya Yoga, 75 Sant Kabir, 1 Sarma, Umakanta, 14, 30 Satyayuga, 40 Sen, Atulprasad, 1 Sen, Rajanikanta, 1 Sen, Ramprasad, 1 Sense and Silence: Collected Poems, 74, 75 Shah Jahan, 38 Shaiva, 1 Shakuntala, 38 Sharma, Sunil, 130 Showers to the Bowers, 8 Sikkim, 46 Singh, R. K., 71, 75 Sita, 39, 43 Songs from Here and There, 45 Songs from the Other Life, 46 spiritual, 145, 146 spiritual awareness, 28 spiritual poems, 1 spiritual rebirth, 67 spiritualism, 27, 156 spirituality, 62, 75, 148 subalternity, 27, 29 Sufi, 21 Sufis, 1 Tagore, Rabindranath, 1, 146 Taj Mahal, 38 Tana, Yumlam, 14, 17, 19 Thawing Out, 31 the Bhagavad Gita, 54, 75 The Gardener, 2 The Golden Deer, 29 the Mahabharata, 162

The Social, Cultural and Spiritual Dimensions of Modern Indian Poetry in English The Man and the Tiger, 17 the peepal tree, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60 The Timebomb and Other Poems, 38, 41 Tirumandiram, 58, 59 tradition, 1, 15, 24, 28, 46, 72, 74, 84, 90, 101, 155, 164 Transcendentalism, 66 Tretayuga, 40 Tripura, 48, 49, 50 true religion, 66 Tukaram, 1 Tulsidas, 1 Under One Sky, 23 universal values, 76

183

Vaishnav, 1 Vaishnavite, 19 Valmiki, 41 Verghese, C. Paul, 29 Vishwamitra, 158, 159 Visioned Summits, 5 Visions of Deliverance, 5 Vivekananda, Swami, 1, 10 Voice of the Valley, 62 Where Seas Meet, 22 Whispers in the Wilderness, 9, 10 Williamson, Marianne, 75 Winged Reason, 123 Wisdom of the Peepal Tree, 53 Words and the Silence, 33, 34 Wordsworth, William, 147 World War II, 34