Poetry: An Indian Perspective

What Is Poetry? The Origin And Development of Poetry, How To Write It Modern Poetry? (An Indian Perspective)

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

                                  

Poetry, what is poetry, how to define it? What it forms the crux of it? How the base? Several things conjure upon the mind’s plane while taking it deeply, deliberating upon the topic under discussion. Poetry is emotions and feelings of the heart presented in a lyrical manner. Poetry is the language of signs and symbols, sounds and melodies, motifs and beliefs. It is a medium of expression and the writers try to express thoughts and ideas. One of the seven arts, poetry has an appeal of own, taking sculpture, architecture, painting, song, dance and drama. But what is not poetry? Where has poetry been not? What there not in poetry? Poetry is inclusive of all, images, pictures, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, motifs, myths, symbols and all. The things have not changed though we like to call it modern, modernist, post-modern and contemporary in the modern times. What to construct, what to deconstruct? What colonial, what post-colonial? Poetry is not restricted to any ism or boundary and the writer can derive from whatever he likes to draw from history, art, culture, life, philosophy, economics, political science, classics, science, technology, theory and politics. Can poems be not tributes to? The topics may relate to Lincoln, Washington, Burke, Gandhi, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Nehru, Bose, Churchill and others; may to Goethe, Tolstoy, Max Muller, Emerson, Whitman, Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer and so on. Gandhi and Gandhism, Bose Studies, Nehru Studies, Tagore Studies, Oriental Studies, Indology, Sanskrit Studies, Peace Studies, Constituent Assembly Debates, these too may form the crux of the write-ups. Martyrs and patriots, nationalists and freedom fighters may also influence the poets as such Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar, Rajguru, Uddham Singh, Khudiram Bose. The lives and biographies of Patel, Azad, Prasad, Radhakrishnan, Kalam to Vajpayee may be topics. India has not been built only by the politicians, but the architects, economists, business magnets and tycoons too have modernized it. If somebody takes up Jamsetji Tata, his biography in poetry, it too can be a subject. Aldous Huxley’s visit to Bose Institute, Calcutta and Benares, Rudyard Kipling’s Hindustani pidgin-English and references to Mowgli and Bagheera, George Orwell’s birth and house in Bihar’s East Champaran, Allen Ginsberg’s recuperation and experiences, George Harrison’s Krishna movement and so on.  A poem can be about the Indian jugglers of William Hazlitt, Orwell’s house, Yeats’ writing of Introduction to Tagore’s Gitanjali.  Homi Jehangir Bhaba’s death in a plane crash too has a story of own shrouded in mystery. Atal Bihari Vajpayee seeing the testing of atomic blasts and the men behind with their brains at Pokhran accelerating the Buddha smiling programme of Raja Ramana is no less dramatic. The story is no less than a drama enacted in the desert. The naming of the missiles, as Prithvi, Agni, Trishul, Akash, BrahMos to Sudarshan Chakra to Rudra to the making of Aryabhata satellite has a relevance and connotation of own.

A poem can about the Indian kings and the cheetahs extinct, the deer parks, hanumans swinging, red-mouthed monkeys loitering in the temple complex, black bears, porcupines, golden jackals, blue birds, owls, woodpeckers, swans, egrets, herons, house sparrows, kites, hawks, vultures, golden orioles, green parrots. A poem can about the showmen, the bandarwallahs, bhaluwallahs, saperas, monkey-men, bear-men, snake-charmers. The washer man’s abandoned ass or the racing horses dying in harness can be the topic. The Indian jugglers juggling with balls and hats, the magicians with their hocus-pocus and the tantricas in sadhna too have drawn our attention over the years. A poem can be about the wayward, shunted and abandoned racing horses of Philip Larkin as well as can about Rana Pratap Singh’s Chetak.

The philosophy of poetry, how to say about? The philosophy of poetry, the poetry of philosophy, how to analyze it? Which came it first, sound or sign? The break of the sound with the creation of the universe, how to narrate it?  The alphabet of poesy, how did it take a shape? Every subject has but a philosophy, the philosophy of physics, the philosophy of chemistry. Where do the theories of physics lead to ultimately, fusions and fissions? Atoms for peace or for dropping bombs? What does chemistry about compounds and reactions? How much pesticides should we use? What the philosophy of philosophy?   The philosophy of economics lies it in planning and management and that of political science in administration. Does physics end up in existentialism, nothingness, a sort of vacuum, jyotirvidya, astrology and astronomy from where has it started? How to divide time into cosmic time and mechanical time? What about the Big Bang Theory, the creation of the universe, what about matter, mass? The philosophy of mathematics lies it in calculation and counting, exactness and appropriation with the calendar to determine and fix through reasoning and fact. The philosophy of medical science is to prescribe medicine and to cure, to serve sick and ailing humanity after diagnosing and prescribing remedies. The philosophy of biology is to study life-cycles and animals. The philosophy of botany is to study plants and woods for ecological and environmental purposes, greenery and existence. The philosophy of geography lies it in cartography and mapping, demography and weather readings, climatology and meteorology, geology and oceanography. The philosophy of information technology lies it in supplying instruments and appliances, sending of messages through technological tools as soon as possible.

What can we do with poetry? Can poetry give at all? Had the cemented houses been not, could we have preserved books? Had the watch, the radio, the cycle, the motorcycle, the bus, the train, the plane been not, could we have been? Had the schools, colleges, offices, hospitals been not? The modern age is an age of science and technology, knowledge and wisdom, fact and fiction, logic and reasoning, information and data, statistics and planning, time and distance, tour and travel. Had the modern things been not, could we have been modern? Had we been superstitions and blind to, could we have been? Modern life and living have changed our life-style and living standards. The impact of science on society we cannot negate it, nor can deny what not has it given.  With the expectancy of life lengthened, hope of living emboldened we have to go a long way diminishing ailment and sickness. The train lines connecting the far ends, the ships with the cargoes, the planes with passengers, what to say about? The world has shrunken. The mountains, seas, deserts and plateaus, woodlands, moorlands and marshes pose no threats. Today’s age is the age of smart phones and selfies, jazz bands and rock music; today’s age is an age of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, Messenger and Google Search. How to save ecology and environment?

In this age of dislocation and displacement, angst and bewilderment, decolonization and de-construction, sick and hurry and divided times, kar lo duniya muthi mei, take the world in the palm when we have reached the frontiers of information technology with global poetry? Vasudheva kutumbakam not, the whole world is a global village. Where do you want go? Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Bulgaria, Poland, Austria, the flights are almost ready take to. You should have just money in the pocket. In this age of the beats and Beatles, what to write about? How to give support to the addicted generation? How to save them from alcohols, narcotics and spirits? Hippie culture and bohemian life cannot give everlasting joys. How to save them from drugs?

A poem can be about the Bamiyan Buddhas, the fall of the Bamiyan Buddhas, Buddhas under threat, the  Talibans to shell and explode, dynamite and break with axes, hammers and rifles; a poem can be about the World Trade Center attacks and it falling like the cards, people running for cover and escape, dark clouds looming large over during the terrorist take over and crash-landing over the complex. A poem can be about Pope John Paul II and his endurance, Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi and his aura of light. A poem can be about the Cambodian Zens. One may take Zhao Ziyang the former premier of the People’s Republic of China who had been sympathetic to the pro-democracy demonstrators of the 1989  Tiananmen Square protests.  The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Bhopal gas tragedy, Iran-Iraq wars, Mars expedition, Florida deluge, etc. too can be the things of our deliberation. The penguins of Antarctica coming closer to the explorers, geologists and scientists on expedition may also entice someone to write on. It depends on mind to mind, heart to heart as to how to scribble and jot down the feelings so different from man to man and so the situations of life. Books too act as memories and reflections to be made. The selling of the wife in a fit of drunkenness in Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge accounts for the fall of the mayor when the news leaks out later for the activity committed earlier in his life. Such a thing keeps it happening all around. The drunkards often do such a thing after being addicted to bottles, mortgaging the things, breaking and setting house on fire, beating his wife and children. King Jong-un the Supreme Leader of North Korea shaking hands with Donald Trump is definitely a meet to be taken if one wants for a better world and better understanding. The death of Savita Halappanavar unable to undergo child related operations in catholic Ireland may be another topic. Religious orthodox all the time does not go in our favour. The world has greatest fears from the fanatics, the conservative people, the most orthodox and conventional people blind to thought and idea. We cannot think that man can be as such, so much madly under. Faith does not teach us to be inhuman and unkind. The modern world needs the charitable, philanthropic people, the virtuous and righteous ones rather than the uncouth men, rugged fellows. A mural of Savita Halappanavar outside the Bernard Shaw Pub in Portobello, Dublin says it all that about medical misadventure and the stricter laws relating to pregnancy terminations. We think how can we be so cruel and callous?

Poems can be written about marigolds, dahlias, poppies, pansies, dahlias, chrysanthemums, calendulas, petunias, asters, salvias, musk roses, daisies, lilies, orchids, carnations, freesias, hyacinths, daffodils, sunflowers. Indian kaminis, gandarajas, seulis, raatranis, juhis, champas and chamelis are no less than. The heavily-scented rajanigandha grassy sticks fragrance the nights. The lotuses white and pink and the lily red, white and bluish are no less. The naked leafless palash trees with the clusters of blooms and the simul trees with the big and bulging red booms strike the hearts. And what more to say about the gulmohars flaming red in the month of May? The beautiful violet-colour jaruls blooming can outwit with its beauty and shine beating the heat. Tecoma stans flower bunches with clusters beautifully decorate a landscape extraordinarily and here beauty lies it in the eye of the beholder. To quote it in the words of Keats, Beauty is truth, truth beauty. So are the poems of D.H.Lawrence about Bavarian gentians, lilies, pansies and bougainvilleas.

The peepul tree under which Siddhartha got his enlightenment, the banyan tree connected with Savitri and Satyavan, the rudraksha with Lord Shiva, the rishi with the trifala churna, haritika, bahra and awla wild herbal fruit paste dry mixture lengthening the elixir of life, how to allude to? India of dhams, ashramas, mathas; India villagerly and religious and what it adds to is this that havanas, holy fires kept the environment clean and free.

If the flowers can be poems, the objects of light, joy and pleasure and sight-seeing so beautiful, so true and so good, so divine, what to say about poetry? Poetry is just a representation of what we see, what we perceive, what we feel and think about. One of the fine arts, it is but satyam sivam sundaram. The terracotta temples, small-small, old-old made centuries ago from lime clay and small baked bricks with the baked plates with figurines, images, myth and mythology and folklore inscribed upon representing Raslila, Krishnalila and Ramlila, episodes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are really stupendous, no less than poetry and this is but mural poetry communicating through pictures, images and figures, symbols and signs and deserve merit side by side poetry.

Poetry lyrical, romantic, religious, spiritual, metaphysical, satiric, humorous, comical, epigrammatic, imagistic, photographic, linguistical, surreal, realistic; poetry modern, modernistic, post-modern, colonial, post-colonial. Poetry white, black, Dalit, non-Dalit; poetry feministic; poetry un-poetical and commonly, conversational, broken stanzas put forward for our reading. The types of poetry, schools and isms of it, aesthetic or didactic are based on taste and time-bars. Though poetry has nothing to do with black and white words, but Black poetry has no doubt a consciousness of own apart from its lacunae and drawback. So is Dalit poetry, of the Dalits, by the Dalits, for the Dalits. Eklavya’s poetry, let Eklavya write and we wonder what sort of teacher was it Dronacharya? Was he biased, prejudiced or not? The pains of Mira we have not felt them; the pains of Radha, Draupadi, Uma, Sati, Savitri. Who were Hidimbi, Surpanakha, Putana? Ethnic or Aryan characters? Was Ravana not a scholar, a Shiva-bhakta? The pain of Kabirdas, the son of a Brahmin widow thrown off, but reared by the Muslim weavers and the great shisya of Guru Ramanand, who has but felt it lying by the bathing ghats of Benaras he got the mantra from, the Ram-nama mantra as the feet of the guru touched his body and automatically the words came out, Rama-nama, oh, Rama! Adi Shanakaracharya saw, got a darshana of Shiva going as a kangal, poor destitute boy with a dog in his tryst with the Divine in a kangal rupa. Bhartrihari’s breaking of infatuation for his Queen Pingla and the infidelity met in turned into a bairagi, a great renouncer. Nagarjuna’s theory of nothingness, nihilism still keeps doing the rounds.

How to write modern poetry, in the modern times? What should be its topics and how to? Where to turn to and what to incorporate in? Should it be about history, art and culture, local and global, national or transgressing national boundaries international? Poetry ethnic, national, tribal, countrified or cosmopolitan, global, international? A poet of the woods, forest tracts, greenery and vegetation or one of rampant urbanization, concretization, deforestation and arid waste lands, of garbage heaps and vats? A scenery bereft of imagery, vegetation and greenery we are living today in a town, a city full so hustle-bustle, humdrum and monotony. The mega cities, metropolitan towns and cities, gala shopping malls, colourful theatres and with bus terminuses, parks, hotels, night clubs, airports, bar-cum-restaurants and routes for drives have engaged us otherwise giving special comforts as well as making so luxurious that often heed we not the basic needs and values of life, the matters related to our existence, what we ought to have and what not? Where are we going to, going to? Have you thought about it? Have we at least? The addicts on the roads roaming unattended and uncared for, without food, without medicine, is the reality to be marked. Where is the young generation going to from cigarette, ganja, bhang, tari (palm juice), handia (stale rice local liqour), tobacco, heroin, opium, brown sugar to wine, pleasureable song and dance in drunkenness? Who to look after the old men? The need to build old man houses is the thing of the day. How to rehabilitate them, the addicts and the old? Poetry aesthetic adding to joy and pleasure or didactic with a moral purpose, how to choose in between, should it be for values and ideals or should it be for pleasure sake?

Poetry as song sung and written by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, poetry as music composed by Beethoven, Mozart, poetry as picture by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Sandro Botticelli, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, poetry as sculpture by Michelangelo, Auguste Rodin, poetry as dance by Michael Jackson, Anna Pavlova, poetry as drama by Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw. Even if we live in India, how can negate the influences and impacts of Goethe, Bertolt Brecht, Emerson, Whitman? Many a thing we know it not. Who built the Howrah Bridge? How was Bombay in the initial stages? Had the schools, colleges, railways, ships, trams, telephones, offices, police stations, hospitals, radios, cinema halls, theatres, cycles, motorcycles, buses, cars, aeroplanes, electric lamp posts, roads, dams, bridges, machines, tools and appliances been not, could we have been modern? Had the televisions, mobile phone handsets with the GPRS facility, over bridges, flyovers, management schools, business establishments, highways been not, could we have been post-modern? The world has developed, progressed with new technology and its application and has shrunken into a globe merely.

During the British period, the Europeans had a tougher time in dealing with cholera, black fever, typhoid, tuberculosis, malaria, small pox and so on which but the dilapidating cholera wards, T.B. sanatoriums tell of themselves what they did, what they did not. We the Indians were but a fatalistic, inactive people believing in karma-dharma, papa-punya unnecessarily. But fate is it not all. Astrologers and palmists are not always the true people, but are thugs of some sort if to feel it sometimes. One can change the lines of fate through one’s karma, action. Even now we cannot tell about the rock-built temples of ours who built them and when the Konark Sun-temple, Jagannath Puri-temple, Khandagiri caves? Regional histories we know them not, just go on believing the historians blindly. What more can we say about the mahouts, elephant trainers? What more can we say about the languages of ours? Nothing lies it written, history of towns, cities, capitals, people, languages, events and happenings. Everything what it has come down to us is folklore and mythology shrouded in mystery. Caste, creed, custom, sect, belief, faith, food, attire, dialect, behavior, norm, nomenclature, geography, climate kept us divided for so long in the absence of proper understanding and reading.

The monstrous Sati system we have not forgotten it, the inhuman treatment and torture subjected to widows, the child marriage unaware of everything happening around the female baby, the immature girl child, the killing of the bride for dowry, the purdah system and is it all that has marauded our self for a long time in the absence of clear reasoning and logic, education and light. Under the ghumta the woman has shied from uttering the name of her husband. Poverty in the midst of plenty, unity in diversity, had been the dicta of our identity.  Today Sabrimala is disturbing us. Poetry is poetry, everything that you write about lyrically, in a poetical mood of your reflection. Can the life of Kadambari Devi be not drawn in words? She was the source of inspiration behind Rabindranath Tagore. Annapurna Devi, Indian surbahar player of Hindustani classical music and the daughter of Allauddin Khan of Maihar Gharana had been more talented than Pandit Ravi Shankar. A poem can be written as a tribute to her commemorating her excellence, musical melodies rippling through the sitar. Let us think of the day when Prince Siddharth would have left Yasodhara and Rahul sleeping, stepping out of the palace as for enlightenment. The pain of Mrinalini Devi, the wife of Sri Aurobindo, who could have known?

India the land of sadhus and fakiras, Rama and Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, the Krishnites and Krishna movements, Krishna consciousness, the Beats and the Beatles coming to; of transcendental meditation even influencing Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau. The Cchou Dance representing Kali, Durga, Laxmi, Saraswati and so on through masks, dialogues, plays, music and dance keeping us spell-bound is really enjoyable. The terracotta temples made from lime clay and small bricks with the terracotta plates really take the canvas from. Where Telang Swami, where the great hatha yogi, O Asi ghat, Dashashwamedh ghat, O Vedavyas Ashrama at Hanuman ghat of Benares, say you, say you about the great saint!

Chanakya the Indian diplomat can be the topic of a poem dealing with polity and diplomacy. One may poetize the biographies or museums of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Mahadev Govind Ranande, Lala Lajpat Rai, Dadabhai Naoroji. The Parsi view of life with the doongar-varis and the vultures sitting sideways of the tops initiate us. Jain Tirthankaras too motivate us with their Jainism and the Jainistic view of life. Buddha and Buddhism with Buddhistic Studies can tempt us for a reading taking to Sikkim, Mizoram, Arunachal to Bhutan, Tibet, Myanmar, China, Mongolia and beyond. How did the Mongolian, Thai, Cambodian, Japanese, Tibetan, Chinese, Siberian Buddhist artisans and artistes make the Buddhas cast in gold, copper, pewter, stone, clay? A poem can be about the great biologist J.B.S.Haldane and his life who domiciled in India, served it and died here. It can about King Ranjitsinhji and his art of playing cricket with English cricketers of his day. A poem can be about Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan Frontier Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. A poem can be about the opening of Gandhian Studies department in foreign by great Gandhian scholars and disciples. It can be about Rajendra Prasad or Satchidananda Sinha. One may take up R.R.Diwakar. R.G.Bhandarkar, what more do we know about? If we turn over the pages of Constituent Assembly Debates, we shall come to find it that the chosen representatives are no less than Pt.Nehru or Rajendra Prasad, really a galaxy of illuminating stars.

We made the rock-built temples but knew it not who built them, who those architects, builders and sculptors were? Can we say it even now? We talk of the elephants of kings, but can we ever say about the mahouts, the great mahouts of India, the horse-trainers, camel-riders? What more do we know about or hagiography, historiography, museumlogy? Everything is but anonymous. We have not preserves our manuscripts too. Say, what have we done? History is silent all about that. What have we done for the cheetahs, lions, tigers, porcupines, stags, yaks and rhinoceros? Oh, India running by Ram-bharose! Just in the name of Rama, by the grace of Rama and we the people of Rama inactive, illogical, superstitious, blind, impractical, unreasonable, fatalistic which kept us held century after century deploring our condition! Only classical punditism cannot take us far if we seem to be pontifical, hypocritical and pragmatic and Machiavellian. Those who crossed over the seven seas were socially boycotted when came they from, but the same Brahmins and the same mentality other Indians  when afflicted with typhoid, black fever and tuberculosis shied not from being treated by European doctors.

In this modern age of global marketing, cosmopolitanism and technological revolution when nothing seems to be impossible, what to say about and how to take to poetry when this materialistic advancement comes seconded with environmental pollution, ecological disaster, global warming and climate change threatening our existence which we are least concerned with waiting to reap the dire consequences for the loot and spoil of our greenery? An earth bereft of greenery, vegetation, hills, rivers, lakes, plateaus, deserts, passes, falls, brooks, ravines, marshes, mountains, glaciers, woods, bushes, how will it, will it look to? Just like a barren land, arid and sterile, a waste land it will turn into devoid of vegetation and fertility if keep we negating the environmental hazards unmindful of moratoriums and obnoxious waste heaps and litters. Save tree, save life; Save life, safe drive; Keep the environment clean; Green earth, green life; The world one big family, the messages to be forwarded.