Issue 44 Vol II, July 31, 2007

L I T E R A T U R E

Poet’s Quest for the Beyond
Dr. Jaspal Singh

Baldev Singh Cheema, the newly appointed head of the Punjabi Department, Punjabi University, Patiala is known for his contribution to Punjabi grammar and lexicography. But of late he is grappling with his poetic ruminations and has composed scores of poems which are brimming with existential alienation and anguish of the human soul. In one of his poems the poet says, “Kadi rakhde han dil, te kadi dil te pathar/Uljh jande rah te mukk jande akhar/Turde han tan rarhkde ne akkhan ch pathar/Chupp karde han tan dig painde ne chhati te/Wali hunde tan rorh dinde sati hunde tan rok lainde/Pathar da ki vajuud hai kadi edhar kadi odhar.” (Sometimes we console the other and at other times suppress our desires. We get lost on the way and our words fail us. As we move on the road, the tiny stones in the eyes blur the vision. If we keep mum, the stones hit against the chest. Had we been Wali we would have rolled the stones downhill. Had we been pure and pious, we would have stopped them. Stones have no stable existent. They keep on rolling this way or that way).

The poet further comments on the human nature of monopolising knowledge and to go beyond one’s dreams. “When we halt we snap relations and then try to shackle the huge banyan trees with fragile threads.” The human predicament is further intensified as the poet keeps on feeling in the same vein. When you are overwhelmed by the ubiquitous falsehood only then you realise the value of truth. You watch the play of the pots of the Persian wheel while sitting on the parapet of the well and only then you suddenly think of the yoke on your shoulders.”  There are subtle references from the romances of Punjab when the poet brings forth the paradoxes ingrained therein. He asks, “Should I feel proud of my arrows or of my flute. Or should I swim across the river riding the unbaked pitchers or should I punch holes in the ears for the heavy ear rings.”

The life journey of the poet ends up in the self. The poet and his self are standing poles apart. That is why he has an intense longing to meet his schizoid self standing at the other end. But the self becomes more elusive as the poet makes advances towards it. He avers that he has been waiting for centuries to passionately embrace the self. But all is in vain. The riddle of the self haunts the poet. He does not understand whether he is body or being; vice or virtue. He is torn in shreds of time – in moments, minutes and instants. The body has put on the garb of time and is dissolving in it. This existential realisation torments the poets, throwing him into a bottomless abyss. In fact the enigma of life, being and becoming is beyond one’s understanding. It is a quest for something unattainable and this precisely is the predicament of the poet.

Baldev Singh Cheema is capable of doing some good existential poetry which is full of paradoxes of the self and the being. To achieve this he needs more writerly solitude and has to get rid of the trifling knick-knack of daily life.

BACK