ASHVAMEGH...
The
Literary Flight! Journal of English Literature
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BOOK
REVIEWS FOR JULY 2015 ISSUE
Title:
“Children of Lost gods”
Poet: Tribhawan Kaul-India
Reviewer: Shahzia Batool Naqvi-Lahore, Pakistan
The
scents of blossoms, the flowing brooks, and the exotic scenes of the elysian
Kashmir gave birth and brought up to the potent poetic voice of Tribhawan Kaul,
a poet who is the carrier of values, the inheritor of traditions, whose poems
evidence the flow of norms in his sensitive veins. His poems speak of beauty in
all those poetic forms which are directly but unnoticingly taught to him by the
Mother Nature. He is the one who spent his childhood watching the mauve plants
and colored stones seen under the flowing clear waters of the lovely lakes, and
the one whose nights meant to him a moonlit reality which unfolded itself beam
by beam like the slowly blown zephyrs without interrupting the silent
conversations of the moon and the stars, studded on the sky above; and when
this soul that was nurtured on the beauty and bounty of the native soil of
Kashmir, started getting attached to the literary genius of Shakespeare and the
sensuous souls of the great Romantics, he started writing his poems in English
too, as an addition to the poems of Hindi. So the fun and frolic in the company
of nature developed into the sittings in the poetry meetings of the renowned
poets made him a poet himself.
The
volume “Children of the Lost God “keeps the magazine touch of the poems of
multiple themes concerning human life—the poems of senses, of tenderness, of
love and beauty, and especially of humanitarian impulse. The volume is studded
with a variety of touches like the strong pulse of society with its evils
affecting the precious lives of individuals, the romance as an essential
bonding of the souls, and the dominating political effects as well. Instead of
occupying a single label, Mr. Kaul is simultaneously the poet of society, of
nature, and the poet of sense and sensibility. This is almost the fact that
lends him a touch of a modern poet whose soul directly takes upon it all the
effects that affect, stir and strengthen him and his pen pours out all what his
soul receives.
In
his celebrated book,”Muqadma Sher-o-Shairi Per”Moulana Altaf Hussain Hali
divides poetry into two kinds: aamad i.e intuitive poetry, and aaward i.e. the
made poetry by the tools of learnt poetic trade. In the light of this classic
division, Tribhawan Kaul stands different as a blend of both while asserting his
own individuality, as he exclaims that he is not a poet left with poetic
legacy, honed in workshops, dissected in Seminars but he says fervently:
“I
write poems, as I feel like expressing
In
verses,
My
emotions and my feelings
Rhythmical
or Free, I worry not
To
the poesy tenets, I stick not my fault,
Being
sensitive to ongoing happenings,
Forth
comes creativity in my writings.”
In
this book, the poet expresses his feelings while exhibiting an unrivalled
command on various topics ranging from God to devotee, social ills, , romantic
themes, all passions including love. He sees love as the main-spring of all
virtuous passions. It is a passion that has always been, and will always be the
focal point of all poetic thought encompassing the real essence of human
bonding; to this treasury, the contribution of Tribhawan Kaul adds a substance.
His poem “Love, Love, Love” talks about the vastness of this universal passion,
so vast, so refined, as he says:
“Love
knows no frontiers
Love
knows no religion
Love
has no caste
Love
has no religion.”
The
poem is so complete in encompassing every shade of love that renders a
remarkable touch to the work for its content and structural completeness. Such
is the experience of poetry that truly deepens and fortifies itself with a
general endorsement.
When
the innate goodness and the skill in the art of versification gets blended
together we see, then, the social issues panic him, and he bursts out in an
apostrophe to God, claiming a right on Him, he prays to him:
“Oh
God, Oh Ishwar, Oh Allah!
Spare
all human beings
From
untold miseries
From
pain, anguish and agonies”.
The
way God is addressed in this poem reminds the celebrated passage in James
Joyce:
“But,
though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the
world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different
languages, still God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God.”
The
title poem, “Children of the Lost God” records the complaints of one speaks for
all in revolt with all grievances and restraints in this contemporary world of
anguish and anxiety. The poem portrays the condition of man in these lines:
“Extended
poems, seeking alms
Sunken
eyes, skeleton arms
Jaundiced
skin, frail frames…”
Though
the term “lost” sounds alien & harsh to the ears attached to The
Omnipresent Almighty, here the speaker’s state of mind is not unlike Angel
Clare’s thinking in Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Hardy, when he says in
anguish:
“God
is not in His heavens
All
is wrong with the world.”
The
same picture of the unsettled mind is found in what Hume says:
“The
whole world presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature pouring forth from
her lap without discernment of parental care her maimed and abortive
children.”The objective interpretation of the state of mind of the devotee
suggests the bleakness and barrenness of the faith lost in such circumstances
in the world of bondage and struggle. This state of grievance is a looking
glass for the masters of the society to keep a check on the social state of
individuals so that faiths can be restored and saved, and instead of falling
prey to the hands of despair, the faith should be kept awakened as for sure God
is always there. The mind presented here is not of an angel but a sufferer who
thinks accordingly; and the poet knows it very well that’s why he says :
“Hope,
don’t raise expectations
Set
backs, I can’t endure.”
The
volume comprises the poems advocating woman as an active character of the society
having equal rights of a respectable life. The plight of women affects his
sensitive soul. He shuns the unwelcoming general attitude at the birth of a
baby-girl. “Trauma” is a sad case about the suffering of a woman in a
male-dominated society. This poem mirrors the day-to-day affair of woman abuse,
of she is hunted and molested before the crowds, and raped in the moving cars.
This is the picture of the trauma felt by such victims. Many other poems are
included in the book which advocate woman as a treasured being.
The
nature poem, “A Morning in an Indian Village” gives a pleasant and pleasurable
touch of an idyll with its photographic vision of the sun rising, birds
chirping in symphony and the tillers working in the fields. In the end he
concludes as:
“Temple,
Mosque, Gurduwara and a Church
Inviting
everyone with open arms
So
many faiths
Truthful
and straight
Mornings
in a village has its own charm.”
Talking
about the versification, there’s a variety as the poet has used according to
the demand and nature of the theme he handles in the poems, sometimes we have
Nanno poetry with the quality of compression with completeness as the
substantial contribution of Mr. Kaul and sometimes we see the exhaustive long
poems. He makes use of both the bound and the free verse, in couplets and
stanza form both. This gives him a space to say what he wants to say.
The
volume is a rich experience of emotions as it comprises the poems of variety of
nature and themes giving him a touch of an insightful poet, though
interpretations depend on the perception of the reader as the rainfall is
always pure, now it depends on the nature of the soil if it is of marshy nature
it doubles the mud, if it is of fertile nature increases the bounteous
vegetation, but the rainfall stays the same rainfall, blessed and pure. Happy
reading the good poems of life by Tribhawan Kaul.
===========================
Book
Title : Children of Lost Gods (Paperback edition)
Year
of publication : 2013
ISBN
978-81-8253-402-5
