Vrishchik, Year 1. No.2

VRISHCHIK

There There J list there set Me down.

Life has crawled out of my Eyes Like a long thin line of ants Looking for a new borne.

Ravji Patel

Life Against Death: The Poetry of Ravji Patel Suresh Joshi >I< As Against tbe seismic background of any mass struggle, creative writing in Gujarat during the stormy days of the freedom strug~le, while giviog a seDse of homogeneity to literary aspirations, managed to neutralize the individual voice. In addition to this, Gaodhian idealism appears to have held such sway over the collective imagination of the period that it is impossible not to notice its dominant presence in any significant work produced during that period.

Attempts made by writers like B. K. Tnakore aocr others who were influenced by the imagists speak of a geouine desire to break fresh ground.

However, the almost totalpreoccupa• ·tion of the intellectuals with such standard revolutionary material as provided by tbe trinity of the Russian revolution, Gaodbian idealism and tbe freedom struggle itself. made them dole out the same message over and over in

different forms and styles, rendering it stale simply by over-exposure.

This revolutionary fervor, while lending a certain intenSIty to their work, proved detrimental to the evolution of fresh and socially relevant mytbs. And, as in the case of any literature of committment, their verses were Dot

too infrequently tinged with romantic lyricisDl. But, once the spell was broken, the romantics themselves retreated to the other extremo of the literary spectrum, drawing bleak pictures of life with stark, sordid details.

Often their dissent was recorded in a voice vibrant witb colloquial reproof. However, the colloquial speech, thougb colorful in parts, did not lend itself easily to the expression of righteous indi!!n.tion whether simulated or genuine. Reluctantly therofore they reverted to tbeir Sanskritized speech.

The generation whicb matured during the Second World War and

lived through the agonizing experience of the partition of the country following independence, looked askance at the romantic naivete oftbeir forebearers and disgustedly wrapped themselves up in the then-fashionable suburban despair. proclaiming their disillusion ment with tbe consumer society. What saves their work from morbid cynicism however is their innate regard for human dignity. Impelled by Gandhian bumanism, they denounced tbe growing power of technocracy whicb they said was

reducing

mao

to

a

mere

automation.

Often they appear less immediately concerned with the social crisis. Sometimes they seem to be mere onlookers, the nocturnal ramblers in the dark alleys of life, sometimes unexpectedly lighting upon the soul of the city in the mud-filled ditches and tbe wrinkled faces of vagrancy-sbades of Baudelaire's Paris and Eliot's London. Gone are the jingling rhymes and the duket tones Instead, we have words forced into shape, and sounds which reserilble the hard contours of life itself. figures of speech cease to be mere decorative appurtenances and acqui-re new saU·

ence tbruugh an unconventional syntactical arrangement. Tbe ironic tone. apart from lending distance and objectivity, becomes a characteristic and objective force, giving a

new

muscular quality to the words, animating the Whole poetic vision.

This was followed by a brief period of stagnation during wbicb only ininor poets strained to make their voices heard. HOWeVl!f, the new sensibi)ity was already struggling for

expression. Younger poet. like Guiam Mohammed Sheikh and others struck out in new directions, discarding old

meters and sloven!y habits of composition which the earlier poets had adhered to in tbe name of decorum.

The stage was set for emer~'ence of a poet who, by his sheer vitality and

zest for life, transformed Gujarati poetry into a living art. Paradoxically, he did this by sighing rapturously about his own death, which wag fast approaching.

Ravji Patel, who one day discovered that he was condemned by destiny to live under the shadow of death for the rest of his swiftly fading life, after tbe initial shock had worn off, sang in a full-throated manner about death.

Death could establish no dominion on RavJi's territory, but became instead

his handmaiden whom he teased, cajoled, and played with like a child with a kitten. Death held no sting' for Ravji.

There was no acrimony, no rancor in bis attitude to deat". Witb death Ravji carried on a lover's quarrel while he lived. It was a perfectly clandestine affair. When Ravji died; death itself was orphaned.

Untrammeled by any restrictive background, Ravji made his art serve his will. He was firmly rooted in his culiural milieu, yet be never allowed himself to set bog~ed down by traditional norms. One can say tbat in Ravji's poetry is found a happy union of modern sensibility and native idiom. By dynamic juxtaposition he invested the colloquial idiom with a new force. Often he employed folk rhythms and forms which he handled _with COilsummat~ artistry. In a poem entitled "In Memory of Humh;!al", for instance, be adapted a death song popularly known as the Marashia.

The MarilslJia is a unique from: its

prototype is nowhere to be found.

Perhaps it can be be.t described as a cross between the elegiac Sp~nish songs of Lorca and the more voiatile

of the Greek choruses, sung with tremendous gusto against tbe back· ground of WaJpurgis Night. For it is decidedly dramatic in jts actual rendering, and is sung in a frenzicd manner by semi-professional mourners to the beating of breasts. Ravji works

on various levels at the same time and. though an element of parody tinged with satire enters almost inevitably, the poem never actually lapses into pure satire. It is the use of the esoteric terminology derived from Hathayoga which sustains the balance between the highly spiritual and the most trivial.

His sensibility is remarkably refined for a person who had missed what is called higher education. And though he is never given to prudery, one never finds a lack of taste in his expression or diction. Sometimes he sings about death in the devotional manner of Kabir, the medieval saintly po~t. The marriage and the funeral processions, both musically oriented and both involving general participation from the members of tbe social community. never cease to fascinate

him, and he sings with a gay abandon about death, in the manner

of a

minstrel supervising a popular wedding.

Ra\ji is most at home with colloquial style of expression and tends to get a trifle vapid when he assumes the posture of a world-weRry and sophisticated gentleman. Fortunately, this conscious pOt:tiziog soon tires him and he bursts out singing spontaneously with his char3cleristic joie de vivre,

and then every event, sad and gay alike, becomes a fil occasion for celebration.

It would be great mistake if one failed to perceive the complexity of his poelic lexture. Without straining the folk rhythms and unJuly freighling the colloqUIal idiom, Ravji creates vivid and sembOUS images of life and death ..

For inslance in the poem titled "[n Memory of Hunshilal". referred to eadier, every line registering the

vemeot of the speaker

berea~

elliptically

conveys a ser.se of sardonic amusement

on the part of the prolagonist. -, he dead man has u\\eSuD1e attributes conferred upon him in the precediL1g

IiLles only to be I)ulverized inlo bathos io the following ones.

At the death of Humhilal, the whole universe seems to totter iJelplessly:

A monumental cave capsized The sky The Stars ill a schizophrenic Dim jlash, A mere brick with illstant erosion The Sun. After describing this cosmic catastrophe, he goes on to devalue the man at once, leaving the bewilde路 red reader gasping for breath.

You were a boil on the arse when alive Like a hid,ous deJormity J'OU lVere irJlicted on us.

This is followed hy a few lines of quite disturbing obliquity: A one-home one-hearth lad you never were

your Jace leers down Jrom the walls oj Reekillf! bogs, ubiquitous like God. Here the first line embodies the Upanishadic idea that lhe whole ",orld is man's home. The last line reiterates the same thought. At tbe superficial level, however, both lines empbasize tbe phil.ndering nature of Hunsbila\.

Tbe easy shift from the first line to the grotesque vision of the "reelting bo 'and the final rounding up with its double entendre, most cleverly underlines the poet's ambivalent attitude toward the dead man. Tbe whole psychodrama of bereavement takes three different forms. Beoeath the two voices of the mourner, whose love-hute relationship with tbe dead man is dramatized by letting the voices alternately extol and debunk the dead man, there is a third voice which is exqui,itely controll<ld and which, while blending with either voice so as to remain barely audible, runs like a single thread through the entire po:m, holding it together. This third voice is essentially ironic and it never resorts to outright acclamation or denunciation. It ralher informs the general tone of the poem and helps "place" the 9ther two voices, one of which is tbe buffoon's and the other the satirist's.

It is from this third voice that one catcbes the metaph)sical overtones.

However, upon closer examination tbe metaphysical imagery appears to bave been incorporated merely for tbe sake of parodying the death.

You are alaceless Brahma Separating sin Jrom sanctity Like the ancient mythical swan These tributes of dubious intent follow a longish section wbere, in a slowly rising crescendo replete with tbe most damaging innuendoes, Hunshilal's life is revealed retrospectively, whimsically: The air is damp with your spittle The ganga oj your spittle gurgles Through our ears Your spillie drew a loud applause From the avidly listening tOlVn Rupees in thousands did Your spillle draw Estranged Jriends patched up Their quarrel wich your spilll.

Your spill Ie was medicinal Your spittle was an elixir.

The symmeterical structure of tbese lines with their more or less uniform syntax and the ehantlike rhythm emphasizes the ritual of mourning. However, the mock apotheosis of the dead man's spittle clashes with the ritual tone adopted by t he poet and produces a sense of iocongruity wbich seems in: keeping witb idiosyncratic tone assumed from the very starti Tbis deliberate attempt to coarsen our response is mear:.t to

reinforce the saturnalian vision of social realities. It is also intended perhaps to make the poet's relationship with the dead man as inclusive as possible, for to a large extent the poet seems to see Huoshilal as an all-inclusive human consiousness.

This precisely is lhe function of the metaphysical imagery. Though this imagery is meaot to parody the dead man, what the poem parodies is not any particuiar character, but a particular epoch whieh Hunshilal epitom ;zes.

Oflen Ravji presents the experience of deatb in terms of erotic imagery. However, there is nothing rr.orbid in 路 Ravji'S psyche. There are no lines extolling death with Ihe maso-

cbistic intensity whicb gives a sense of unwarranted violence to the poetry of his contemporaries and imitators. The erotic-element in Ravji's poetry divests

•

death of its frightening featllres. His feeling for deatb is extraordinarily complex and his poetry about death is cbaracterized by a delicacy of toucb and a sense of harmony. In one of his most baunting lyrics, death is imagined as an escort who, like a close relative of a bridegroom Come to fetch the bride, would cond uet the poet across the threshold of life. The form of this lyric is adapted from a popular farewell song in Gujarati sung by the bride while leaving ber parents' home for the first time.

The tbougbts of death are intertwined inextricably with the mixture of joy and sadness experienced by the bride at the time of her departure. The traditional imagery and the familiar gestures acquire tantalizingly new significance: Kumkum Suns wenl down my eyes today Siring my lillie cart, My friends, with blossoms sweet.

Raise Ihe tiny lamp. o look I There they stand My breaths, dressed Gorgeously in daylight.

Down they wellt today my Kumkum Suns.

It is impossible to convey the symbolic power of a word like Kumkum, whicb bas a tremendous hold over the collective imagination.

It is tbe kind of word whicb, to borrow a phrase from T. S. Eliot, bas "tentacular roots" reaching down to tbe deepest level of our cultural consciousness. Kumkum is the round vermilion mark worn by a Hind u woman on ber forehead as a sym bol of ber marital state. The moment her husband is dead she is expected to wipe it off and, if sbe inadvertently forgets to do so in ber grief, a near relative would do it for her,

sometimes

with

seeming

callousness. The breaths .. dressed in daylight" are escorts. The folklor~ motif lends the poem a poignant charm. The poet makes use of many onomatopoeic

expressions from the traditional farewell song which are impossible to translate.

Though tbe words are familiar, they are invested with a new fresl!ness, and the colloquial idiom itself seem to express a refined sensibility.

Ravji knows how to draw upon the hidden and balf·forgotten resources of Gujarati 10 build an image of life jIeeing tbrough a twilight zone between dream and reality. In a poem dealing with love, he imagines himself installed clandestinely in his mistress' "southern

courtyard" from which like a guest he watches the unsuspecting inmates come

and go. Sometimes shivering with anticipation, he hears her voice from deep within. Perbaps she is giving instructions to her servants. It's high time somebody brought him his daily quota of afim (opinm). But no one comes, and soon: The day turn'; to a nail, And the horses of dawn come galloping across the night.

The mahogany cot grows wings, The sparrow carved on Ihe Wooden door takes off From her ancient perch

Flapping her wings as in a dream.

And oh look, the Moon comes s'fowly Up this way, sniffing the courtyard.

In a confessional vein Ravji declares in another poem: "I, like a fish

dart through words", and be goes on to say that he is "every day catapulted into this world".

In this poem, called "Sambandh" meaning relationship, we find a terrifying evocation of the adulterous relationship of a w011lan belonging to a proud and ancient family. Her corruption according to Ravji reveals the depth of the general moral degradation in the society. Even when read in isolation, the passage quoted here conveys a sense of imminent catastrophe threatening the so-far unruffled rural life which Wa& so dear to Ravji and which he thought was gradually losing its goodness and characler under tbe onslaught of commercialism. The woman in this poem belongs to an impoverished and decadent aristocracy.

Tbe chieftain, locally known as tbe Garacia, though fallen on evil days, still exerts enough influence to make The ene/osed locality sway like a hooded cobra.

But there is a deadlier snake, lolling on the camphor's flame like cool words of the Garacian.

The Garacian bas secret lover and her snake's

Sting is felt in every pore of Ihe Garacia.

After witnessing such iniquity, the poet is utterly lost. All the norms of social "relationship" (sambandh) have been openly flouted. The poet would withdraw from this world which he once loved dearly.

All around me [feel fleshy softness [/I my veins glide away silent serpents From the vagina of my mind Spew forlh bodiless children. because Love is Uk. half-eaten berries Some one has left over.

But despite this momentary bout of sadness, an incessant stream of

poetry continued to issue from Ravji's mind. Unfortunately he had become too weak to write down these lines and they must

remain unheard and unread,

quite lost before they were born , like their creator. A few of them. taken down by friends. have survived. They were uttered by Ravji when be had already given up the fight for survival and had no time nor inclination to work on them.

Besides poetry, Ravji also wrote several short stories and a few novels, dealing mainly with tbe theme of death, but there is not space to discuss tbem here. Suffice it to say that, like his poetry,

Ravji's

stdries

and

novels

reveal a mind that ' had engaged itself in the human struggle with great courage against heavy odds. He bad unflinchingly drunk the bitter brew of life to its dregs until, in his own words, life bad "crawled out of my eyes like a long thin line of ants lOOking for a new home."

Courtesy I Books Abroad.

University of oklo homa.

• I am highly indebted to Dr. Birje-Patil for his active assistance in preparing this article.

Three Poems of Ravji Patel Translated by J. Birje - Patil with Suresb Joshi

The Mahogany Cot Incognito in residence -Strangers by mutual decree Your bustling house shields my slouching form: -watching,Invidious, reptilian -watching the rustling Routine as the Inmates step by indifferently.

In the SQuthern Courtyard The mahogany cot.

Cranelike, attent I pick up your darting voice From the glistening stream Of household chatter.

As the eyelids drop Thudless A door opens unscreeching To your chamber KUll1kUll1

You and I

Suns

Kumkum Suns went down my eyes today String my little cart My friends, with blossoms sweet Raise the tiny lamp o look, there they stand My breaths, dressed In daylight. gorgeously, As down they went my Kumkum Suns.

Green green the horses Sank in the yellow carnage of leaves Slipped away the elfin realms Rolled away the lapping waves of mirth Rattled with neighing flavours As down they went my Kumkum Suns.

By a shadow detered in the courtyard At half utterence dangled Pulled by the anklet For a pas;ing moment Was held At life's tinsel pains As down they went my Kumkum Suns.

Ravji Patel

droned to a sway.

Is it legitimate to ask Who will replenish the Cup? And push the redclening Fuse through the drooping poppy Of el:stasy.

The day turns to a nail And the horses of the dawn Come galloping across the night The mahogany cqt grows wings The sparrow carved on the Wooden door takes off From her ancient perch Flapping its wings as in a dream And oh look, slowly The moon comes this way Sniffing up the courtyard.

My bloodstream in spate Knocks against the fingernails.

Let me then eclipse Like a thronging Sun In the frgrance of Your tumescent soil.

Ravji Patel

,

â&#x20AC;˘

VRISHCHIK December 10, 1969.

Year: 1. Number: 2.

,

Editors: Gulam Sheikh Bbupeo Kbakhar 4 Residency Bungalow University office compound Baroda-2 India

VRISHCIDK has no nxed rates of Subscription. Advertisements are accepted in the form of donation of spacc.

VRISHCHlK. is designed by Jaymica Designers, Baroda.

Lino-cuts in the first issue were made by Vinod Ray Patel.

Published by Gulam Sheikh and BhupeD Kbakhar from 4 Residency Bungalow, Baroda and printed by Azim Palejwala at Meeraz Printery, Baroda.

VRISHCHIK devotes this number to the memory of Gujarati poet Ravji Patel with an article on his poetry (we express our gratitude to Books Abroad, published by the University of Oklahoma) and translations of three of his poems. We hope to publish more of Ravji Patel and other poets writing in Indian languages. Also, a scheme of publishing small books of Indian poetry in translation is on the way. VRISHCHIK is raising a fund for this; contributions of all friends and weJl wishers are welcome.