Shaper Shaped: Harindranath Chattopadhyaya

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

In days gone by I used to be
A potter who would feel
His fingers mould the yielding clay
To patterns on his wheel;
But now, through wisdom lately won,
That pride has gone away,
I have ceased to be the potter
And have learned to be the clay.

In other days I used to be
A poet through whose pen
Innumerable songs would come
To win the hearts of men;
But now, through new-got knowledge
Which I hadn’t had so long,
I have ceased to be the poet
And have learned to be the song.

I was a fashioner of swords,
In days that now are gone,
Which on a hundred battlefields
Glittered and gleamed and shone;
But now I am brimming with
The silence of the Lord,
I have ceased to be sword-maker
And have learned to be the sword.

In by-gone days I used to be
A dreamer who would hurl
On every side an insolence
Of emerald and pearl.
But now I am kneeling
At the feet of the Supreme
I have ceased to be the dreamer
And have learned to be the dream.

Shaper Shaped as a poem is all about how deceptively man thinks of his power and glory and what it turns out to be in essence; how the State of Things and how the ultimate realization of the self, the admission of it by none the else but the persona himself. Our ego, pride and hypocrisy let us not know the truth. The Will of God is behind it all which but we know it not, feel it not. How the Divine Scheme of Things which is but not hidden from anyone! Only the fools pride over their shallow knowledge, Eliot’s The Hollow Men, the wise say it not. But man drunken with power, pelf and position thinks it not. How does hypocrisy get deflated is the thing herein? How does the balloon of self-ego burst it? How the intrigues of man which but he himself is not in the know of! It is ignorance which but lets him not realize in time. But Alexander Pope’s ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing’ works as an eye-opener showing the way to all with, ‘Where angels fear to tread’. In the words of Kabir, where the mart is small put you it not diamonds on display, for purchase, as for that a gemmologist is needed who can recognize the real worth and price of the gem or the jewel under cover. Thomas Gray felt about the streaks of genius in those lying in the country churchyard who could have definitely attained the heights of glory had they got the opportunities. So, there is nothing to be proud of.

A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

      ----Alexander Pope in An Essay on Criticism

Who has genius? Who has not? Who is talented and who not? How to say it? Talent will flower if it is reared, nurtured. Do not think that he or she is not talented, only you are talented. He or she too has the streak of genius which but we know it not. Have we tried to know them? Who is gifted with what capabilities? Who is with what abilities? We have just tried to learn to suppress. Let us quote a stanza from Gray again:

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Are the wild flowers not beautiful? Some are definitely ravishingly beautiful which but we know it not.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

       ----Thomas Gray in Elegy

The poem is a busting of self-ego and hypocrisy; human conceit and deceit. The poet’s use of wit and intellect too can be taken into consideration. Where does self-praise lead to ultimately? How the path of life and the world? Where does it go to? How the time passing? When does wisdom take over to, one cannot say it, when it dawns upon and the counsel comes to.

    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats' feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar

           -----T.S.Eliot in The Hollow Men

Harindranath as a poet is a multi-faceted personality who tries to assimilate and corroborate the assorted things, but the incongruities lead it to nowhere to the finding of the doubt if he is a saint or not, a yogi or a bhogi, a man of practical wisdom or mystical leaning. We appreciate his metaphysics, mysticism, but his wit, conceit displaces us. We do not know it what he is, a mystic or a communist.

How the things have been shaped? How do the things and ideas get shaped? Whose art where lies it in? How the art of the potter? Who the Potter of potters? Here we get reminded of Kabir and his dohas; his artistry taking to the art of weaving and the making of earthen pots. The charkha, the potter wheel, the cotton carder, the images of this sort starts dancing before the eyes.

None can say about the wheel of fortune turning over. None can about the time speeding away. The things of the world are not so as we think about. To be a man is the main thing. Have we ever tried to be a man? It is but in humility, humbleness. While reading the poem, the mythological Irish coat of Yeats so richly embroidered with dances before the eyes.

The poet thinks over the realms of human delving swapping his positions, clutching time into consideration, the dreams he dreams and the roles he plays. How did he use to be a proud potter making the pottery of different shapes and designs? His art was so unique that he used to shape the things artistically and magically with while formatting and cycling, recycling the clay. But there came a time when distaste overrode him and he too distanced himself with the art of pottery-making. Human weakness and frailty took over and desisted from and he realized the futility of doing the same work. Man himself is made from clay then what to pride over as a potter?

Again, when he took to the pen for scribbling his feelings and emotions on paper, jotting down the things of the heart, he felt it within himself that he was but a master of words, a music maker, a word maker. But there came a time when he felt poetry nothing before newly-found knowledge. Fact and reason questioned his sentimentality and emotionalism and he felt the inner crisis, the split between faith and doubt, fact and fiction. What can it poetry give to? Why to write poetry? What does humanity need it most? The poet too a part of poetry.

The poetic dilemma is one of One Day I Wrote Her Name by Edmund Spenser:

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise."
"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew. 

Again he saw himself in the image of a sword-maker whose swords were brandished in wars; many a battle was fought and lost. So many were killed and annihilated. But the victory of the sword last it not long. It neither could win his heart nor could give a life-long glory. Returning from the battlefield, he brooded over the futility of wars and the element of bloodshed, hatred, animosity, brutality and violence it inculcated in unnecessarily at the cost of innocent human blood shed so mercilessly and cruelly. How long can man talk of war and warring rather than peace, the peace of mind which but gives it final consent and repose? But the reality none strove to know it that he was himself but a sword. None has come to feel that the silence of the Lord is all that we seek unto Him.

Again he imagined himself as a dreamer who goes about dreaming, seeing sweet dreams. He went the way the stone-dealer, the diamond merchant went it priding over diamonds, emeralds and pearls, but the dreams remained it dreams and he felt it deceived. Where does it lie in the real joy? What does it last unto the last? He mumbled and fumbled over thinking it, putting upon the roles. What was actually his role of play? Poetry as the theatre of life and he rehearsing a drama is the thing in reality. But the dreamer too knows it not that he too himself but a dream dreamt and the drama may be a good one or a bad one.

The Shaper shaped it and now it is unto the man, upto the self to realize it what it has been shaped and how the things of the world. What a life to lead! What it the truth of life! But the  problem lies it with us that we feel it not. Know thyself, is the thing which the poet means to reveal it through the poetic images.

 

 

 

 

 

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya

Noon by Harindranath Chattopadhyaya

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

The noon a mystic dog with paws of fire

Runs through the sky in ecstasy of drouth

Licking the earth with tongue of golden flame

Set in a burning mouth

It floods the forest with loud barks of light

And chases its own shadow on the plains

Some secret Master-hand hath set it free

Awhile from silver chains

At last towards the cinctured end of day

It drinks cool draughts from sunset-mellowed rills,

Then chained to twilight by the Master's hand

It sleeps among the hills.

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya’s Noon, what noon is it? What Indian noon? Where the earth parching and sizzling and cracked with fissures down into, the sun blazing hot just as a ball of fire, the dogs panting and gasping for breath with the tongue out of and the saliva falling? Man too perspiring, feeling thirsty and the sun scorching, burning it all. It is hot all around and the winds swirling with dust and dry leaves at some nook and corner and the people in the villages talking of goblins and ghosts. This is perhaps the Indian scene of Indian summers as described or intended to be taken by Harindranath and Jayanta Mahapatra. Mahapatra too is scenic of Indian summers with the crocodiles deep into the waters, the hamlets pictured and photographed against the backdrop of hills in the countryside, the rites and rituals going in the Jagannath Puri temple and the worship going on and overheard at noon with Vedic, Upanishdic and Puranic incantation doing the rounds. Tagore’s traveller will like to rest in the forest tract to enjoy the cool shade quenching the thirst and viewing the landscape.

But Harindranath’s dog is not a simple, but a mystic dog, the dog of the Mystic Master, of the Great Sadhaka, Shiva as Kalbhairava going with the Bhairava-vahana, attendant. The image of Adi Shankaracharya seeing Shiva in the kangal rupa and going with the dog reminding him of Daridranarayana dances before the eyes.

To think of his dog is to think about the sadhakas, tantrics of India, to talk of hagiography. To think of his dog is to think of Bama Khepa, Ramkrishna Paramhamsa, Swami Vivekananda,  Maharshi Aurobindo; Tarapith, Pondicherry, Kalighat and so on, occult mystery and mysticism. To talk about him is to talk about Mahapatra’s summer and noon, Tagore’s Chandalika and Ananda and Eliot’s The Waste Land. In Chandalika, the blazing Baisakh and the thirst of Ananda and he drinking water with the hands of Chandalika at a well  and she lying in the hope of meeting him attracts us differently. In the Waste Land, the imagery is one such of a waterless, barren earth and man praying for cloudburst, rains and blessing for vegetation.

A small poem Noon can be the marvel of expression as such in thought and content, idea and imagery is unthinkable. Let us see how the poet takes to. The noon as a mystic dog with the paws of fire runs through the sky in ecstasy of drouth licking the earth with the tongue of golden flame set in a burning mouth. Words fail in explaining the poem as there lies in a hidden meaning going underneath at the psychic level of consciousness and beneath it the unconscious layers of the dark mind and its image and idea moving along the corridors. The dark layers of consciousness, how to delve deep into? Achetan manna, unconscious inner mind and its experimental conjectures about the Divine set-up keep us taking about mystically.  Generally, a dog during the hot noontime pants and gasps for breath is a fact. But here the mystic noon keeps haunting the landscape showing the scenery with the mystic dog going over the far-off territory. The forests are alit with the light, the sunlight falling over and the barks of the mystic dog can be heard echoing into and seems to be chasing its own shadow on the plains. Some secret Master-hand has set it free awhile from silver chains and it running freely, and on taking some short hurried steps, at last it takes a break to drink cool draughts of water from the sunset-mellowed rills. After that, again it is chained to twilight by the Master’s hand and then it sleeps among the hills. Shelley’s ‘If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’, is the case of deliberation here. If it is hot, it will definitely be cold. There is a pleasure of sleeping under the shade of a tree; taking a dip into the cold water bodies of the hilly area.

Whatever be the context of reference, the poet has said it all, about the hot summertime noon, the cold water, quenching of thirst, the mystic dog let loose by the Mystic Master and the scenery changing with the shift of the golden sunlight flashing harsher and softer. But we are not sure of, whose dog is it? Who the Mystic Master? Is it God, the Mystic of the mystics? The Tantric of the tantrics? The Sadhaka of the sadhakas? Whose noon is it? It is but God’s secluded, lonely noon. The noon too is of the sadhaka resting in a cottage attached to the crematorium ghat and the mystic dog panting outside the door. The mystic noontime loneliness is also the tantrical sadhna time.

Only a sadhaka can tell about such an experience. A common Indian too talks about similarly in the villages giving a folklore imagery to the lonely noontime dogged by hot perspiration as for taking a siesta and making the small children sleep with rural lullabies. If these be not then an shramite is he definitely of some sort. The lotus of meditation blooms into the heart and mind of a sadhaka and the petals of which soaked in divine waters letting drip over from it sculpted above and set to the roof of the temple and he feeling all that as an outcome of tranquil meditation.

Outwardly, the poem is a picture of a noon full of light and heat, looking clear in broad day light, but together with is the sun glowing hot and the light falling upon directly. There is no rest from, no respite from heat. The earth appears to be parched and drying. But inwardly it is not only a noon. Under the pretext of a noon, the dog seems to be tracking the Master lost in sadhna during the noontime at some sadhna ghat or in a sadhna cottage. It may be anywhere, in a secluded place like Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey with the hermits or a crematorium ghat away from human haunt and habitation.

It is also a truth sometimes that when the master keeps doing the sadhna during the noontime, the dog remains panting outside his cottage ever watchful, ever on the guard of, ready to bark and resist the entry of any stranger. It even follows the tantrica, the sadhna into footsteps to be to the ghat or the secluded place of his sadhna. Though not a mystic, Harindranath is no less than any, and he has given it a nice twist taking to the pedestal of mysticism. But he has left the auspicious black cow, the black dog and the black cat from clutching along. There is also a pleasure of seeing the mystic dog over the plains with the Mystic Master with the sunrays descending down over the distant landscape and the scenery viewable by the lonely dwellers. Only Blake’s tiger has not been called. Had it been, it would have wreaked havoc for the deer taking water from the rills at twilight. The imagery of a master with the trained or chained dog going does the rounds when we read the poem as the chains, tying the belt, barking, paws, mouth, licking and it all suggest to and present before us to peruse, but the context has been construed otherwise to give it a mystical twist and now it is thick with that, heavily under as one cannot without such a background.

Noon as a poem can be interpreted in both the ways, one may take it for a noontime description as well as a mystical noon directly. Everybody knows it how hot and perspiring, humid and sweating is it to pass the noontime, specially the summer season noontime, longer and scorching. But the dog and the Master hijack it all to clutch it all through the way.

The noon, a mystic dog with paws of fire, in ecstasy of drouth, licking the earth, with tongue of golden flame, set in a burning mouth, floods the forest with loud barks of light, chases its own shadow on the plains, some secret Master-hand hath set it free, from silver chains, towards the cinctured end of day, drinks cool draughts from sunset-mellowed rills, then chained to twilight by the Master's hand, sleeps among the hills, etc. add beauty and depth to the poem aggravating Nature mysticism seconded by transcendental meditation and mystical flashes of sadhna and tantricism.