 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
“Sanjaya” and “Dhrutrashtra” Reconstructed
In The Capsule Poems of R.K.Singh
- Dr.G.D.Barche
After going through R.K.Singh’s new collection Sexless Solitude And Other Poems (2009), Gwilym Williams says :
What’s really behind R.K.Singh’s unceasing output of verse? Is a question I have asked myself more than once. Why does he strive so long and hard? Or is it simply anger at the way the world, or India is ?
Now the questions that arise are : Does a poet carry something at the back of his mind, while writing poetry? Does he deliberately strive so long and hard, while writing? Does he Try to give Vent to his hidden anger, hatred, etc., through his poetry? And surely the answer to any of these and similar questions won’t be straight this or that.
As a matter of fact ‘to think this way’ is misreading a poet and his poetry. The fact is that broadly a poet, like all others, lives a two tier life, viz., private & personal & social and scriptural. Now the common people simply live and keep living, but a poet being gifted with more lively sensibility, wider knowledge and esemplastic imagination, he sees and feels more and even reconstructs what he sees and feels. So when a creative artist writes, may be a novel, a drama or a poem, he creates a mini world with very many characters representing different facts of life. Therefore, it is not just to associate protagonist or characters of a poem with the poet. As a matter of fact a genuine creative artist transmutes his personal and private agonies into something impersonal and universal. When we go through the poetry of R.K.Singh, we see this very fact executed.
While going through the capsule poems, i.e. short poems with cognitive content in his recent collection Sexless Solitude And Other Poems, it is noticed that he has tried to project two categories of people in two sets of poems, viz., (i) Sanjaya type people in set-I, i.e., those who remain detached and can see things as they are. Sanjaya is a well known character in the great epic The Mahabharata written by Maharshi Vedvyasa. He was blessed with special vision by Lord Krishna. As a result of that he could see what was what on the Kurukshetra, the battle field, the place of the great Mahabharata war; (ii) Dhrutrashtra type people
in set-II, i.e., those who get attached to the things and fail to see their real nature. Consequently they suffer. Dhrutrashtra, in the epic, suffers and makes people also suffer simply because he fails to see truth as truth. Here the protagonists of two sets of poems can be looked upon as two different persons or the same person with twin facets.
Now first we take up those poems which have Sanjaya type characters : the first poem to be taken up in this context is : “Awareness Matters”. The poem runs as follows :
Each death has a passage
To surprise the dead
Awareness matters
No solace the cow’s tail
In the river’s midst
Heaven, far, too far
Here the pointed eye of the protagonists in the poem is quite evident. He sees two types of persons, viz., one dying and the other dead who receives the news of the former’s death. That is, a man dies. The news of this man’s death fills another man, living dead, with surprise. The point is that here everybody is dead in the sense that every moment he is in the fear of death. Therefore, Shakespeare has already said, “Cowards die many a time before their death …”, (Julius Caesar). The very idea of death fills dread & depression in every body. He is surprised and shocked by the deaths like ‘untimely death’, ‘unnatural death’, ‘unkind death’, and so on. But then the protagonist could see, the cause of this dread and surprise to be ‘the ignorance’ or ‘the absence of knowledge’ about death. The Cycle of life and death is eternal as it is said in The Bhagvad Geeta “Jatasya hidhruvo mrityu, druvam janma mritsyacha”, i.e., if birth is there, then death definitely follows it. So according to him instead of surprise and fear, one should develop ‘awareness’, ‘awakening’ regarding the incident of death. He also refers to the orthodox religious faith according to which after death one goes to hell, then there he comes across a river which he has to cross to go to heaven. And for crossing this river cow’s tail can help that person. But then the protagonist pooh-poohs this idea. He is sure about the idea of heaven to be an illusion and hence ‘far, too far’ and that ‘awakening’ alone matters.
In another poem ‘Death’ the protagonist traces out another tendency rampant among people in our country or rather everywhere, viz.,, ‘Without living/life lost in existing’. That is, people do not know ‘how to live life’. They simply continue existing by ‘evading the fact/of living in fear/and manipulations’. Their all endeavours ‘for thoughtless peace‘ are directed ‘to fight off death’. Again instead of ‘living life’ properly, they waste their time and energy in rationalizing their follies and failures and resting faith in ‘re information or resurrection’ of some noble soul to right the wrongs. On the contrary, the truth is that man is the architect of his fate which is rooted in ‘living life’ properly with well planned things and rightly directed actions. The main idea of the poem ‘without living life’ can be explained thus : when our country got freedom, its population was roughly thirty six crores. Then in succeeding years more efforts were made in promoting hospitals and doctors to fight off death, but nothing was done to check the growth of the population. Then the growth of the population was allowed, but the relevant resources and moral values were not taken care of. And now people are resting their hope in the faith of ‘re-incarnation or resurrection’ of someone to face and find out solution for the present explosive situation pertaining to peace and population.
The way T.S. Eliot has projected modern man’s life in a long poem like ‘The Waste Land’, the protagonist of “Is This All?” has done that here in a short space of two triplets. In the first triplet he unveils the life style of modern man which is characterized by three acts, viz., (i) propitiating gods through the cocktail of prayers; (ii) living animal life, i.e. confined to food, sleep, fear and sex; and (iii) boasting and advertising the worldly achievements. And hence he raises the question whether this three tier life is all. Then he very vividly highlights the mind of the modern man in the second triplet. That is, his mind is dominated by negative and narrow thinking, ‘fungus of illusions’ and ‘toad-stools of damned tracts’. The answer to the yes/no question – Is this all? seems to be that such a negative and narrow thought based life is not worth. Perhaps he wants to point to Vivekanand’s message that each soul is potentially divine and the goal of life should be to manifest that divine as against to simply ‘live animal existence’.
The protagonist in the poem “Journey” is equally very minute and mature observer of the usual phenomenon of ‘journey’ very often undertaken by the people. He is of the view that a meaningful journey should have proper direction, definite destination and duly discerned destiny. But then the fact is that most of the people don’t bother about any of these corporate considerations. And that whosoever sets out on journey, they have either flickers or flashes, i.e., ever changing scales of brightness on their faces. And the protagonist firmly states that he doesn’t give any credit to such shifting shades of joys. To him the joy that oozes from proper understanding of the goal is steady and non shifting. He also observes the fact that the journeying people inside the train and distantly drifting hills, houses, trees, etc., outside ‘bear the same indifference’. That is, he sees no life, no sense of sharing, relating or love among the people inside and the natural phenomena outside the train.
Then, a very common but crucial observation is noticed in the poem “Arriving Early”. The scene is of ‘a Waiting Hall’, may be at the Railway station or Cinema theatre. It is full of men and women. The protagonist here observes that men are happily engrossed in chatting and commenting on the topics ranging from love affairs to Shariat (marriage contract) without any fear or care, while women and particularly wives find themselves uneasy and chained as their range in all respects is bound and binding. And hence a man’s wife ‘murmurs about arriving early”, while the hubby of that wife ‘looks for some poetically active faces’ in the waiting hall. This, in a very poignant way, points to the position of women in our society. All taboos and defined tracks are for women and none for men. This inequality and partiality have vitiated men-women relationships and created distance and distaste in social life.
The protagonist’s subtle eye also notices the newly growing tendency of arrogance and unashamedness of the new generation in the “Barbed Wire Fence”. Here he has tried to show how the garage guards make water in the open and even show ‘their dick’ to the maid in the adjoining house. Similarly, boys and girls ‘make love in the bush’ unmindful of the children’s park, on one side, and the residential house, on the other. The protagonist is concerned about this fast growing phenomenon of young boys and girls chatting for hours together and even at times resorting to the forbidden acts least brothering about the time, the place and the public opinion.
The protagonist who is so perceptive like Sanjaya about the world around is blind like Dhrutrshtra with regard to his personal inner world. For instance just see his pain and suffering in the poem “Overload”. Here we see that he doesn’t get normal sleep. So he drinks to have sleep. In that drugged state ‘the electric circuit in the brain’ goes awry and he starts muttering unwanted things in unparliamentary language unmindful of the concerned victims. His mind is so much overloaded with deep discontent that its unloading alone seems the way out. He finds himself helpless regarding this process of loading-unloading that has set in and continued unchecked. Now the point is that the protagonist considers this problem to be chronic and incurable, but the fact is quite the opposite. There are ways out, only one needs the eye and the will which he doesn’t have. For instance, here is a way suggested by Maharshi Vashistha to calm down the mind : “Manah Prashamanopayah Yogah”, i.e., the yogic practices calm down the mind.
Protagonist’s pitiable condition is seen in the poem- “Again And Again”. He cannot relax, meditate or even dream on his so called sacred bed. Further, now he fails to have the unusual ‘naked company’ of his beloved ‘with tingling laugh’ and ‘slurred with passion’. Above all he fails to have successful love making. Now here we easily see his ignorance about the basic facts, e.g., one cannot have the same experience again and again ad infinitum; change is the law of nature, and that one can have meditation, relaxation, happy company of any one and successful sex, only if ‘mind’ is in proper order. Milton has rightly said “The mind is its own place and in itself can make / A heaven of hell and a hell of heaven” (P.L. 254-55). So what is needed is to explore the right way to set the mind right.
We see the protagonist in a slough of despair in “The Dead too Are Restless”. He is of the opinion that his one time ‘misplaced dreams’ have now “turned nightmares’ causing havoc in him. Those ‘nightmares’ have become highly chronic and gone beyond cure. To him even the paths of meditation, gods, yoga or any other’ Psychic mumbo-jumbo’ do not seem to be of any help. They are like beasts, the outcome of years’ nourishment, and can now die only with his own death. But then he doesn’t see peace and panacea even in death as ‘the dead too are restless’. This fact has to be understood in two ways : (i) there are dead bodies that don’t burn easily on the funeral pyre, in the sense that either their tongues came out or certain organs fall apart, etc., while getting burnt. And this fact can be seen as their restlessness; (ii) there are people who leave their houses and retire into the forest as sanyasis. Now such people are as good as dead for the society. And the fact remains that even these so called sanyasis no longer remain at ease within and without. But again the truth is that the protagonist is wrong. He doesn’t have the ‘Vision Proper’. The channels like meditation, prayers, yogic practices, etc., are competent enough to restore any chaotic person to his sole self, to his blissful self provided he practices them under proper care and training.
Intense miserable condition of the protagonist is evident in “I Want To Sleep”. Now the sleep is the Nature’s gift to the human as well as non-human creatures. The sleep comes to anyone in the same way as light enters the house the moment the windows and doors are opened. But here we see the protagonist complaining for not getting sleep. His argument for not getting the sleep is ‘the sick and the sickening’ people around him from whom he has carried ‘germs and allergens’ which keep him ‘tossing and turning’ the whole night. He also believes that right from the time of his birth he has ‘never slept well’. He now wishes to sleep without the help of ‘pills, drinks, magazines or sex’. And the type of sleep, that he wishes to have, should be’ thoughtless prayerless in peace’. This whole account simply shows the protagonist’s blindness to the natural phenomenon of sleep. The sleep snatching factors highlightened by him are groundless. I have seen people sleeping in the hospitals beside the serious patients and even beside the dead. When the body and mind are free from all sort of traffic jams, then the sleep comes to the person the same way as the beloved goes to the lover of her choice. Huxley has rightly said “rolling in the muck is not the way of getting clean”. Instead of lamenting over the loss of the sleep, one should explore and expel the sleep breaking basic factors.
The protagonist is seen in the inferno in the poem “Passion”. He suffers from the worldly worries and anxieties, on the one hand, and from the strong sexual urges, on the other. Then the growing age comes in the way of the sexual gratification. So he turns to the drugs which ‘hardly help reach climax any more’ and his quest for ‘ecstasy’ remains ‘a far cry ‘. During the day he keeps working the whole day without any rest and respite as he says :
I smell hell all day
Suffer shrinking passions
In the hollow of my mind
Here again we see his blindness to the fact that senses can never be gratified. Maharshi Vedvyas has very firmly put it as “na jatu Kaam Kaamanam upbhoge na samyate’, that is, the sensual desires can never be satisfied. Even Bhagvan Buddha has said “trushna doospur hai”, i.e., desires can never be gratified.
The short sightedness or even the blindness of the protagonist is quite visible in the poem “Conclusion”. Here he wishes to “Clean the cobwebs of legends’ because they ‘veil the vision’ and offer moral lessons for the future generation ‘with doubtful glories’ and they, instead of pushing people forward, make them ‘move backward’. Now the fact is that everything of the past or present cannot be held out for ‘forward’ or ‘backward’ movement. The stream of life goes on flowing with its own built-in mechanism. Further he sees the whole country and particularly the mega cities like Delhi and Bombay in the jaws of ‘empty slogans’, cheating and lust. Particularly he is more concerned there about the ceremony of ‘midnight lust’ concluding like ‘a tragic poem’. In brief, the hero of the poem feels hurt to see the present tragic state of things. He wishes to do something, but being weak and confused, he simply gets excited and poetic, like Bahadur Shah Zaffar, the last emperor of our country.
The protagonist is seen devoid of any hope of salvation in “Nirvan-I’. The word ‘nirvana’ is made of two units : ‘nir-vana’ of which ‘nir’ means without , and ‘Vana’ means burning, i.e. without burning or suffering, Unfortunately he sees no chances of ‘nirvana’ in the present set up of life. Generally ‘lightning’ and ‘rain’ are life givers but to him ‘lightning’ ‘frightens’ and raises no fire, and ‘rain’ doesn’t quench ‘the earth’. He sees no creativity in his daily work and no joy in ‘a kiss’ of the parting partner. Finally, at night he is ‘sulking with a glass’ in the dark and the idea of ‘nirvan’ seems ‘stupid’ to him. Now this can be called a defective, flawed or mono-directional thinking of the person. There is solution, salvation, nirvana, the only needed requirement is the proper training and growth of the mind.
Thus , here over a dozen poems have been discussed concerning two opposite aspects of human mind. The attempt is here made to show as to how the poet has very pointedly projected two visions, viz., that of Sanjay and Dhrutrashtra through very short but well knit poems. Very novel and creative use of language which is the poet’s forte has not been here even touched upon. The present article helps us mark the eagle eye that the poet has regarding sweet-sour aspects of the human behavior, human life as a whole. Before closing this talk, a humble suggestion is that the poet should show a ray of light, a way out, even while projecting the darker or negative aspects of life through the protagonist of his capsule poems. For instance, instead of saying ‘I smell hell all day’, cannot the protagonist say, ‘Hell I smell’, though heaven is not far to seek”?
Copyright:
Dr.G.D.Barche
1, Atharv Aptt. Satsang Colony,
Deopur, Dhule-424005
India
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FORM AND FLOW OF R.K.SINGH’S TANKA AND HAIKU IN THE RIVER RETURNS
By :ASHA VISWAS
R. K. Singh’s first collection of poems My Silence was published in 1985. Since then he has published eleven more books of poems. His latest is Sexless Solitude and Other Poems published from Bareilly in 2009. This means one collection every two years. The River Returns (Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 2009) is a collection of Tanka and Haiku. It would be relevant here to write briefly about these two forms in which Singh usually writes.
The Art of Tanka Composition
Born in Japan, Tanka is as old as 1300 years. From Japan it traveled to the West and has many lovers in English speaking countries. Tanka is much older than Haiku but younger to Waka. It was first practised in feudal Japan (Heian period) where it was a prerequisite for every courtier to write and appreciate aesthetically beautiful poems. Thus classical tanka reflected the refined tone of Japan’s courts and its courtesans. The traditional classical tanka was used to exchange love notes between the lovers. The courtly lover, after spending a night with his lady love, sent a “thank you” note to her in the form of a tanka. The feeling and experience of the previous night was artistically written on a fan or on a stem of a blossom. A messenger delivered these love messages. While this “go between” waited, a tanka, in reply to the love note received, was composed and sent back. The tanka, sent as a relply, was not easy to be composed but the Japanese courtesans had learnt this art to please their lovers. The messages were written in a language which could be understood and appreciated only by the lover.
These morning love note became so famous that contests were held for reading and writing of the tanka, and Japanese emperors ordered the collection of these short love notes.
This traditional expression of passion has undergone great change in the present times. What has not changed is its number of syllables. In Japan it is still written in 31 syllabic units, 5-7-5-7-7. Tanka written in English does not follow this syllabic pattern and often uses less than 31 syllables. As far as the subject matter of modern tanka, specially the tanka written in English, is concerned, it can now be any human emotion expressed in simple language. Images are used to express human emotion. In his article “ From Haiku to Tanka : Reversing Poetical History” Gerald St. Maur writes :
"In going beyond the experience of the moment, the tanka
takes us from delight to fulfillment, from insight to
comprehension, and psycho-organism to love; in general,
from the spontaneous to the measured. To achieve this
requires a fundamental shift in emphasis : from glimpse
to gaze , from first sight to exploration, … from
awareness to perspective… to compose a tanka is to
articulate reflectively… it takes us from the simple to the
complex. More pointedly, it moves us from the poetry of the
noun to the poetry of the verb; in weaving terms, from the
thread to the tapestry; in botanical terms, from seed to
plant, in chemical terms, from element to compound ; in
painting terms, from sketch to picture; and in musical terms
from chord to melody."1
Tanka, as a lyrical form, uses figurative language and is autobiographical in tone. It creates a balance between the self and the outside world. The outward phenomenon is used as a backdrop to express the inner world. Tanka is not rhymed, its one is elevated and it never becomes vulgar in themes.
Contents and Structure of Haiku
Haiku, in its present form, is only 300 years old but Hokku, the original form, is as old as the Mahayana Buddhism. Buddhism accepts the limitations of language owing to its human origin. Nagarjuna believed that language can refer only to those objects that are mortal. It fails to reach the truth of things. This conviction that metaphysical assertions cannot be made through ordinary language is accepted by Ch‘an Buddhism. It was for this reason that Ch’an tradition invented new ways to use language that could help the seeker in his search for liberation.
One of the Ch’an masters Yun-men wen-yen(862-949) was known for his one word answers to questions. These short answers revealed his spontaneous reactions to questions, rather than well thought out, premeditated answers. In spite of their limitations, words are not completely useless. Language becomes transmuted by the attainment of realization. Dogen calls such enlightened words “dotoku”. Yet another important thing in Ch’an Buddhism was the way they looked at nature. Dogen believed that mountains and rivers are ’sutras’ or texts.2 The entire world is a sacred text and nonsentient objects of nature can act as preachers of these sacred texts. This wordless preaching of nature cannot be heard with one’s ears but with one’s eyes.
Hokku retains both there features – the spirituality and deep understanding of nature. It focuses on the essence of an object or an event in nature without the intrusion of the poet that would distort the reality. The perception in hokku is an intuitive one and not an ‘I’/‘other’, subject/object kind of process. Being rooted in Zen, Hokku is nonintellectual, has no faith in reason and words. It emphasizes all that is natural and concrete, It is also a pure experience of enlightenment (Satori).
From Hokku lto Haiku has been a long journey. The early translators of haiku into English were R.H. Blyth and Harold G. Henderson. Blyth’s four volumes of haiku were published in 1949 and Henderson’s in 1959. Both these translators differ in their views about haiku. While Blyth believed that Zen is at the center of haiku, Henderson stated :
"Primarily, it (haiku) is a poem; and being a poem it
is intended to express and to evoke emotion … it
may be noted in passing that the use of ‘ki’(season)
is probably at the base of a charge that has been
advanced that haiku are more concerned with nature
than with human affairs. Such a statement is ridiculous.
Haiku are more concerned with human emotions than
with human acts, and natural phenomena are used
to reflect human emotions…" 3
While Henderson believes that subjective human emotions are the most important part of a haiku, Blyth rules out subjectivity. In contemporary haiku even technology is accepted as a form of nature. Thus the meaning of nature is completely changed. While Blyth believes in the spiritual effect of nature, Pizzarelli plays with the word ‘nature’ and completely disassociates it from the outward phenomenon :
"To say that nature is all and all is nature,
that the substance of this planet, the universe is of
one nature is also to conclude that nothing is unnatural
or artificial."4
Apart from their contradictory views about the content of a haiku, the modern practitioners of this form differ in their use of punctuation also. While some use minimal punctuation, others, imitating Ezra Pound and Company, use no punctuation at all. Thus each practitioner of haiku has become the arbiter of content and structure of his verse. There is no prescriptive critic now who can say this is/not a haiku because it does not use/uses spirituality, has / has not nature, does not use/ uses punctuation.
R. K. Singh’s Sensuous Tanka
In the light of this discussion of traditional and contemporary tanka and haiku, we can study R. K. Singh’s collection of poems The River Returns. The title of the collection is taken from his haiku No. 347 – “Dancing/ a few muddied crocs:/the river returns”. In his preface Singh confesses that he seeks to be “visual or sensuous” and has tried to express :
natural concrete action or object or
experiences from one’s whole being , and
does not’fake’ poetic feelings or render
fictitious or imaginative experience …
I have tried to evoke the essence of the
moment in its sensory details as selflessly
as possible. Even as I appear to speak
directly, the subjective and the objective
tend to mix up.5
The first section of the collection consists of 144 tanka. This section begins with spring season and ends with summer and dust storms. The poet is left “awaiting the wave/that will wash away empty hours/and endless longing.” With spring comes love. Love (kama) is predominantly associated with the renewal of the world, the spring. The voluptuous spring time brings in the biological rite of the amorous play. Love is presented in its dual aspect – separation and union. The anonymous woman of the first few pages is seen waiting for the love tryst. Each of these early tanka is a visual of her different emotions. Her yearning for the lover is augmented by the song of the Koel (the basic emotion of love is aroused in tanka 1) . The promise of a love tryst makes her face glow with passion. ( The basic emotion changes into passion in tanka 2 ). Tanka 3 presents her as a teasing wanton waxing and waning like the moon ( the pleasure of feeling). From tanka 4 to tanka 10 her loneliness and sadness ( the basic emotion of grief in separation) is depicted. The season of spring is simultaneously a source of misery and delight. Separated from her lover, the woman is presented as a conventional “Virahini” . She is delpressed, she weeps, she is afraid of going to bed alone and wants to die. In tanka 10 her loneliness is presented through an apt visual :
At the river
she folds her arms and legs
resting her head
upon the knees and sits
as an island
This love in separation ends by the 12th tanka. From tanka 15 love in union is presented in all its boldness. Singh revisits his favourite trope.
In tanka 13 we move from separation to union, “after three decades love waves/tense the flesh and rock the night”. Singh surpasses others in the description of fragmented female anatomy. The reader is brought to the key hole to peep at the “erect nipples” (tanka 15 ), “foamy water… sting her vulva/a jelly fish passed/ through the crotch making her shy”, ( tanka 16 ), “nude dance…/ to match upstanding/ nipples under the blouse” ( tanka 18 ).
As in conventional love-in-union, Singh’s woman, too, is bashful :
When I wanted to change
seats my friend said she can
only if the door is locked
the light out and her mom
in another city ( tanka 20 )
She is also presented as a wanton who takes delight in the love play and the
amatory art. In tanka 102 she “loves the etching on skin/to enhance nudity”.
The traditional tanka expressed the emotions of the lovers, specially their grief resulting from their separation, their desire for reunion, sadness caused by old age, unhappy present and absence of the lover. Singh’s collection of tanka too presents this basic contrariety between pleasure and grief. Intense love fills the lover with fear. First, there is fear of rejection:
Roses await
sun and wind to clear
the baleful fog :
I fear she’ll say no
to my love again ( tanka 72 )
A number of tanka depict night and nightmare. Darkness and light are archetypal symbols and denote the duality of flesh and spirit, female and male, unconscious and conscious, evil and good, tamas and rajas etc. In Singh there is only one tanka ( No. 15 ) which shows the lovers together at night- “You and I alive/in cold winter night feeling/ warmth of your body…” In the rest of these short poems, night is the backdrop of fear, grief, loneliness, physical pain etc. In tanka 39 it is night that turns his dreams “to nightmare/again fear grips my soul/ I sense her presence around”. In tanka 49 the lover’s loneliness during night is vividly described. Thus :
My hand held out
in the dark remained empty:
no one reached it
to give joy of
the meeting hands
In the absence of the loved one, the lover is haunted by her memories. Each object of nature, specially the flowers and their fragrance, brings back her memories. In tanka 69 it is the “little petals to the ground/ echoing our first embrace”. In tanka 138 “ her letter smells/ the lotus she wore each time/meeting in the dark”. The lotus image here is brought from Indian erotics where it was a representative of the force and energy inherent in the waters. Water was also regarded as a female substance and the lotus was associated with similar creative female principle. The lotus image in Singh does not have a tensive quality. It suggests only the erotic and sensuous and hence the smell of lotus causes the separated lover to grieve. Memories of the past (happy days ) rise like ghosts and turn the heart into stone :
Ghosts rise to mate
in moonlight tear the tombs
frighten with fingers
rhino horns rock the center
granite sensation ( tanka 39 )
This reminds us of Shelley’s lines :
Forget the dead, the past
Oh yet there are ghosts,
the memories that make
the heart a tomb.
Besides this grief and pain that result from separation, we also find sadness in Singh on account of old age, asthma and insomnia. Tanka 58 shows him as “ an insomniac/ weak with desires” while in No. 89 “wrinkles on the skin” remind him “ of time’s passage”. In No 108 “ asthmatic bouts haunt” him. In 119 he is again “ down with stroke”. Tanka 120 presents him as an old man thinking of death
Aging he thinks of
the ashes and the long trip
ahead in spirit
feels the earth he would
become celebrating life
“Allergic asthma” recurs in No. 134. In No. 142 “dust storm and rain shatter/all hopes hanging by snapped wire”.
Amid this scenario of separation and union of lovers hyphenated by hope for reunion and depression at separation, a few visuals of conjugal love come as a jarring note. The lover, who was heard singing the “body’s song”(54), finds his voice “brown like autumn/crushed in noisesI can’t /understand…” (95 ). There is no love between them and they sleep with their “backs to each other” (87). In spite of being together, there is no understanding between them :
One thousand miles
travelling together
in tense silence
he and she contemplate
the next round of duel (tanka 111 )
To escape the boredom of these scenes, one can come to such intense sensuous visuals as :
A cloud - eagle
curves to the haze
in the west
skimming the sail
on soundless sea (tanka 45 )
Singh is capable of creating pure poetry where nature is left to itself but observed from a close angle. It is not a glance but a gaze.
R. K. Singh’s Haiku for All seasons
The second section of The River Returns consists of 372 haiku. The collection begins with a dash of bright colours -- hibiscus, oleanders, rose, chrysanthemum, and ends with three visuals of rainbow. Here Singh gives us sequences and each sequence is related to a season. It is reminiscent of Bhojpuri cycles of seasons called “ Barahmasa”, the traditional folk poetry from eastern India that celebrates seasonal changes and diverse moods of nature. In Singh’s haiku too this cycle begins with spring. In the vernal symbol there is a translucence of primary principles. Hibiscus, in the very first haiku, becomes a description of the male element : “ Love tickles/with erect pistil/hibiscus,” while oleander stands for the female element. This vernal union of male and female elements at the natural level reconciles union at human level. This depiction of flora also gives life to an interior landscape – there is a whole gamut of human emotions.
Even the winter season is not presented in its negative shade. We have a crystal pure visual of the snow covered hill :
Veiling her breasts
with the seasons first snows
the hill blushes
Singh tries to strike a balance between the personal and social concerns yet most of the times it is the personal that is privileged over the public. In this section also there is recurrence of old motifs – monotony of married life (49, 180, 181), shadow of old age (61), his loneliness and asthma ( 74, 90, 97, 114, 207, 208, 209). From haiku 150 to 200 there is love play and female body, sometimes covered :
Her shapely figure
in orange blouse and blue jeans
strained at the hips (22 )
and sometimes bare :
Rain-soaked sun
sheds its sultry light :
her bare back
In his Preface Singh clearly says that he does not make any difference between haiku and senryu, so we cannot criticize his miniature poems for the absence of the ‘satori’ state of consciousness.
As an old practitioner of haiku, Singh no longer adheres to the 5-7-5 syllabic structure and makes minimal use of punctuation.
All lovers of tanka and haiku would love to read this collection.
References
1. Maur. Gerald St. “From Haiku to Tanka : Reversing Poetical
History” , (TSA Newsletter, II : I , Spring 2001. )
2. Dogen Zenji, Shobagenzo (The Eye and Treasury of the True Law)
4 Vols. Trans. Kosen Nishiyama (Tokyo: Nakayama Shobo,1986),
Vol. I, p. 105.
3. Henderson, Harold G. An Introduction to Haiku (New York :
Doubleday, 1958), pp. 2, 5.
4. Pizzarelli, Alan. A Haiku Path (New York : Haiku Society of
America, 1994), p. 116.
5. Singh, R.K. The River Returns (Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot,
2006), pp. 1-2.
--Dr Asha Viswas, (Retd) Professor of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221005, India
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Acharya Mahaprajna: THE SUN WILL RISE AGAIN. Translated by Sudhamahi Regunathan. New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2008, pages xiii+97. Price Rs. 250/-. ISBN 978 0 670 08251 3 Poet-philosopher monk Acharya Mahaprajna is the tenth spiritual head of the Swetambar Terapanth Jain community. He has been an eminent promoter of peace and non-violence, leading Ahimsa Yatra (2001-2009) through the length and breadth of India. Long associated with Acharya Tulsi’s Anuvrat Movement, he is also a true scholar of Jain Agamas, discoverer of Preksha Meditation, and well-versed in modern Physics, biosciences, ayurveda, western philosophy, politics, and economics. He has written more than 200 books in Hindi, Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Rajasthani languages. Acharya Mahaprajna’s meditative verses, brief and intense, bear the stamp of his faith and consciousness. As he declares elsewhere: “Soul is my God. Renunciation is my prayer. Amity is my devotion. Self-restraint is my strength. Non-violence is my religion.” In keeping with the virtues of Jain monks, Acharya Mahaprajna’s short, lyrical, and at times epigrammatic and anecdotal poems in The Sun will Rise Again reflect his experiences and insight, with deeper understanding of human nature and his own characteristic straightforwardness, modesty, self-restraint, and concentrated wisdom. The poems also reinforce his religion of tolerance, righteousness and non-violence, peaceful coexistence, equanimity, and positive outlook. Drawing on his samyak vision, the monk-poet beautifully articulates his world-view thus: “’Someone bear the burden Of bringing infinity to light,’ Said the lamp, ‘The burden I can take Is to bring light to this hut.’” In other poems, he encourages spiritual development through the pursuit of a rational view of life and living: “Those who live/a life of comfort,/Forgetting the present/Drift into the delusion of the past”, and “The one who lives in the present,/the future belongs to him.” He insists on pursuing higher goals, dreaming big, striving hard to excel the already achieved: “The world belongs to him/who has a dream in his heart”, and “The one who searches, finds his quest./His feet stumble whose goal is small” , and “Fire is that which burns./Man is he who moves.” Acharya Mahaprajna’s poems manifest how he perceives self through the self and how he seeks to wipe away darkness, -- “Eyes closed/A lamp in my hands,/I roam” --, instead of philosophizing about truth or reality. Aware of the deep-rooted negativities (which, interestingly, his Preksha dhyan seeks to root out by harnessing body, mind and spirit), he reminds his audience to pursue dharma, the right conduct, and self-control: “Water desires that no one restrain it The grain desires that no one grind it The wind desires that no one stop it The mind desires that no one correct it, But water gives light when restrained The grain gives taste when ground The wind turns electric when stopped The mind becomes edified by bowing.” The sage-poet understands the essential nature of mind and distils poetry from very minute observations of quotidian life and events that reveal human behavior and attitude. He partakes of deeper knowledge, perception and bliss, blending delight and wisdom, with subtle allusions from ancient Hindu scriptures, philosophies, and Jainism. In simple, everyday language, he explores and enlightens the inner self, even as he seeks peace and harmony in all, with awareness of the inner enemies that obstruct one’s spiritual progress. He makes us see that “truth is not in the dark/But hidden in the brilliance of the sun.” Originally composed in Hindi, the Acharya’s visionary poems have been superbly translated by Sudhamahi Regunathan, who is herself well-versed in Jainism with immense experience in translation. She effectively proves that the poet’s poems have a “natural flow”. Dr A P J Abdul Kalam’s ‘Foreword’ adds to the “contributing spirit” that the world very much needs now. --Dr. R.K. SINGH, Professor & Head, Dept of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian School of Mines University, DHANBAD 826004. Tags: apj abdul kalam, jainsim, non-violence, peace, regunathan, swetambar
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
M. Prabha. The Waffle of the Toffs: A Sociocultural Critique of Indian Writing in English. New Delhi. Oxford University Press. 2000. xiv + 271 pages. Rs250/$19.95. ISBN 81-204-1359-8. Calling her book "an example of socio-literary criticism," M. Prabha asserts in The Waffle of the Toffs that most of the "marginalized writers" or writers from the fringes of society in India have not been given their due despite their immense qualitative literary output because a handful of academics and writers with elitist backgrounds (university dons, Oxbridge gentry, bureaucrats) have been monopolizing the scene. Her book is a significant document, a revision of socio-literary inequities in Indian English writing. In chapter 1, Prabha seeks to interpret nineteenth-century Indian writing in English (IWE) with a sense of the present, which seems to her as flaunting "westernised airs" and an "elitist mode." In chapter 2 she stresses the fact that IWE in the 1920s and 1930s was shaped by political events centered on the freedom movement. She particularly mentions the good works produced by regional writers such as Sharat Chandra, Khandekar, and Premchand and their Indian English counterparts K. S. Venkataramani, Krishnaswamy Nagarajan, Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, and Raja Rao, who all had humble beginnings and no elite connections. She praises Anand, Narayan, and Rao for being inspired by the social conditions prevailing around them; they do not sing of the West, and unlike Dom Moraes of G. V. Desani or Nirad C. Chaudhury, they evince a distinctly Indian sensibility. By comparing desi-trained writers with their Oxbridge or St. Stephen's-educated counterparts, Prabha tries to demonstrate that "the sociocultural milieu a writer comes from is almost inversely related to his quality of writing. That is, the more affluent a writer, the less significant his writing." In chapter 3 she refers to various ancient, Bhakti, and Sufi poets and to several recent Dalit (Untouchable) writers, noting that they all come from the lowliest of homes and yet make meaningful literature. I appreciate her positive comments about the excellence of Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chugtai, Bhisham Sahani, Mahasveta Devi, Ram Jivan, et alia vis-a-vis their poor economic background, iconoclastic and progressive views, concern for sociopolitical issues, and commitment to literature in their mother tongues, yet I wish she had sounded less ideologically motivated in her critical estimations of so many individual writers. In chapter 4 the critic examines scores of major European, British, and American authors to reinforce her thesis that qualitative literary output from poets and novelists of lowly origin has been immense. The focus of her argument in chapter 5 shifts to the "essential extrinsic factors" that have contributed to and decided a writer or artist's claim to "greatness." She is very serious: "So bad is the situation in my country that simply talking in generalities will not do. One can hardly make an impartial appraisal of any litterateur or artist today without a biographical approach." She mentions the biographical details of a Shovna Narayan and a Sonal Mansingh to drive home the fact that state honor or corporate patronage in India comes through contacts; there is no cultural or literary space for persons who lack such connections. She also alleges a deep-rooted corruption in bodies like the Lalit Kala Akademi, the Sahitya Akademi, various art galleries, and the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage and suggests that the politician-bureaucrat-artist nexus needs to be broken, that individual and private organizations need to be allowed to manage the promotion of culture and arts. Maybe she is right. There is some weight in her assertion that "the governing elite is the cultural elite." In chapter 6 Prabha reflects on the rise of contemporary women novelists, offering pointed critiques of e.g. Kamala Markandaya (an expatriate, married to an Englishman and settled in London), Santha Rama Rau (daughter of a UN official and married to an American), Nayantara Sahgal (daughter of Vijayalakshmi Pandit and niece of Jawaharlal Nehru), and Anita Desai (born to a German mother and a Bengali father, educated in Miranda House, and married to a prosperous Gujarati industrialist); the latter two "show a more colonized mind than many other IWE novelists." Prabha also points out the elite backgrounds of such contemporary women novelists as Gita Mehta, Bharati Mukherjee, Ruth Prawer Jhabwala, Gita Hariharan, and Arundhati Roy, claiming that genuine creativity and originality are largely absent in these authors. Turning to male novelists in chapter 7, Prabha finds many of them "blue-blooded, anglicized, Doon School-St. Stephen's-Oxbridge educated, pro-market, over-confident, bordering on arrogance, self-centered, metro-type, globally inclined" and unable to educate or regenerate their readers. Among her specific targets are Khushwant Singh, Shashi Tharoor (a UN official), Vijay Singh (based in Paris), Dom Moraes (UN connections), Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Anil Chandra, and many others, mostly civil servants. She wonders whether these writers are not "silencing authentic voices by usurping the cultural space of the nation themselves." In chapter 8 Prabha divides the poets of the second half of the twentieth century into two groups: the Metro set, which includes Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, Shiv K. Kumar, R. Parthasarathy, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Adil Jussawalla, Agha Shahid Ali, and Eunice de Souza; and the Mofussil set, which includes a substantial number of teacher-versifiers and others "ignored by the publishers, the media, the critics and the readers." Her sympathies lie with the latter group, and she charges that the Metro poets' claim to literary merit and fame rests more on connections than on talent. She even questions the right of expat teacher-poets like Agha Shahid Ali, Meena Alexander, and Sujata Bhatt to be called Indian English poets, since they are textually severed from India, do not live in India, and have become NRIs. (She considers A. K. Ramanujan an exception, as he left India to teach Tamil and to recreate Dravidian and Sanskrit classics.) The Waffle of the Toffs is a well-argued, racy read. It is provocative, and written with a subversive intent. M. Prabha's harsh, taunting, aggressive pen forces one to rethink the discipline of Indian writing in English vis-a-vis the socioculrural background of its makers. Her book is a major event of 2000, a step forward to undo the "conspiracy of silence" that has muffled all fresh voices. I recommend it as a must read for every Indian English poet, writer, reviewer, student, and, most important, for every teacher of Indian writing in English. R. K. Singh, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad The review first appeared in WORLD LITERATURE TODAY, Summer, 2000. Copyright.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
rksingh's journal
Previous
