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Overview of a Modern Indian Poet in English: Jernail Singh Anand’s Dramatic Texts - Prof. Basudeb Chakraborti

 


OVERVIEW OF A MODERN INDIAN POET IN ENGLISH: JERNAIL SINGH ANAND’S DRAMATIC TEXTS

 

Prof.  Basudeb Chakraborti

Former Professor

The University of Kalyani

West Bengal, India

Abstract:

Dr. Jernail Singh Anand has authored 175 books of which 11 are epic poems. He won the Seneca Award (Italy), the Charter of Morava (Serbia), Franz Kafka (Ukraine, Germany, Check Rep.) and Maxim Gorky Award (Russia). His name adorns the Poets Rock in Serbia. This article aims at exploring Anand as a poet in some poems and his Mahakaal Trilogy of three dramatic poems and one more dramatic poem, The Sinned Against (Oedipus and Puran), which may be an extension to his Mahakaal Trilogy. While reading Lustus written by Jernail S. Anand, at the very outset, what spontaneously comes to our mind is that it is a tetralogy instead of a trilogy. 

 

Keywords: Jernail Singh Anand, Mahakaal Trilogy, The Sinned Against (Oedipus and Puran), Modern Indian Poet, Indian Dramatic Poems

 

Introduction:

The article introduces first Plato’s conjecture of Mimesis.  What Mimesis really means. It is imitation. According to Plato, poetry or any literary genre of life is a reflection of our life in this world. No reflection of anything real is true. Therefore, life is not real.  It is false. Thus, a thinker may derive that poetry or any literary genre is further a reflection of life. The only real is the Ultimate reality. Plato wrote in his Discourse VI. A quote from a poem of Shelley may be relevant to this context:


The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar 
From the sphere of our sorrow?

                                     (From: One Word Is Too Often Profaned)


This is what the philosopher Plato believes about literature. It is Platonic. This view is not ethical; it helps Man grow unwanted passions like sensuousness, vulgarity, obscenity etc.  Man should uphold reason over emotion. This cannot be the Man’s attitude to life. In a direct way, Plato’s philosophy denounces literature that delivers man no holistic knowledge about the life and the world. 

Aristotle supports Plato but he says that a man of literature is an imitator.  Anything inspired by aesthetic consciousness and creative art in any form is an imitation. Aristotle was Plato’s student. One particular phrase Creative art perhaps may hint at something oblique or a tacit compromising attitude to Aristotle’s teacher Plato. Nobody can deny the presence of pleasure in simulation or imitation. Simulation or imitation is joyous. Even language learning process is instinctive and spontaneously emotive. A baby when he starts learning his mother tongue, imitating his parents, becomes elated with joy. Unlike Plato, Aristotle thinks that all good poetry (except sham poets) strengthens Man’s Cognitivism and empowers Man with his Emotional Intelligence. Indeed, Lascelles Abercrombie, an English poet and a literary critic says, “Tragedy satisfies us even in the moment of our distress.”  Let me refer to the last line of King Lear, which is highly moral and philosophical in its meaning and pragmatics. This is ‘purgation’ which Aristotle coins as Catharsis. In fine comes one tricky point. Does any literary text instruct morality, ethics and any philosophical doctrine? Is the function of a poem or any creative art an attempt to indoctrinate readers to follow certain beliefs blindly? Readers here find two opposite views. The first one is of Walter Pater and the second one is of Henrik Ibsen. This is highly debatable. This article aims at exploring Anand as a poet in some poems and his Mahakaal Trilogy of three dramatic poems and one more dramatic poem, The Sinned Against (Oedipus and Puran), which may be an extension to his Mahakaal Trilogy

While reading Lustus written by Jernail S. Anandat the very outset, what spontaneously comes to my mind is that it is a tetralogy instead of a trilogyAnyhow, this is a separate discussion.

Anand’s Mahakaal Trilogy/Tetralogy:

The first book of Anand’s Mahakaal Trilogy is Lustus.  It is a satirically epic-like war between Lustus, a symbol of devil and gods.  Readers find Devi Durga destroys Lustus. However, Lustus remains in animated suspension even today. Lustus is not dead yet.  After reading Anand’s Lustus, the first part of Mahakaal Trilogy, readers will observe that it is neither a satire nor a mock epic nor an epic following any norm of either classical epic, including epic of art or epic of growth. Only some epic qualities present in this book are epic invocation, epic grandeur involving cosmic war in this dramatic text. Readers cannot classify this text in any literary genre. Readers can construct any text and its form following ‘The Reader Response theory, propounded by Hans Robert Juass (1921-1997) . The reception theory describes this way, “a work of literature may not be considered objective. It stands by itself and it offers the same face to each reader in each period”.

The Netherworld is the second book of Anand’s trilogy. Lustus carries out his operations to kill innocence and human joy even in The Netherworld. Anand ironically talks of Lustus University in which courses like Uncivil Engineering and Bachelor of Arts in Floor Crossing are taught.  Nevertheless, readers confidently smell contemporary patterns of Indian or some other countries having the modern Democracies. Readers may find an extension of his earlier Lustus so far as The Netherland is concerned. Let me refer to another example: Lustus participates in the election fight.  In The Netherworld, Lustus looks immensely happy when he says to Tobo (A Tribal Youth):

 And, in Westia, I see that spark of disintegration 
And breaking up of the civilization
Carry on this propaganda against the countries
Where they talk of souls and spirits,
And preach the false doctrine.

‘Westia’ is Anand’s imaginary name which perhaps denotes the West. Perhaps Anand does contemporize the mythological form of the trilogy into the modern context. Finally, God meets defeat but then Lord Shiva makes a vehement attack on Lustus and he finds Lustus seated in the royal seat of the hearts of people. Lord Shiva then exterminates half of the people of the world. When asked why he has killed so many people among whom there were some good souls also, Lord Shiva says, “I don’t want good men who cannot fight evil’. Finally, Lustusis forced into exile for one thousand years. Thus, Kaliyuga ends. Anand’s last dramatic text, The Ultronic Age ends with an Epilogue where Anand says: God empowers women to run the world with good governance.


God have also restored to the people
The sense also of Equipoise and balance 
By granting, them full freedom
Under the Laws.
 
No citizen of the land goes to sleep unfed,
No constituent of the city great
Unsatisfied, unhappy, and despaired. 

The Fall of Ethics & Shift in Divine Preference:

Individual consciousness is definitely a reality and that is at the micro level of human life; but that reality affects the collective consciousness. In this context, Immanuel Kant’s concept of Human autonomy and theory of ethical duty may be relevant. Anand here envisions a happy and ethical order of the world. This is Anand robust optimism.

Today ethical values are in a decaying process, they are deteriorating very fast globally. Desire to  grab the  neighbouring countries intensifies man’s want of possessing internationally negotiated land and sea areas among countries , threats of Nuclear Bombs and other deadly cluster Bombs, Napalm Bombs and unprecedented growth.  Weapon Industries in considerable number of countries result in deforestation and Global Warming. Man’s greed for the more and more creates an impending destruction of the world. These are the syndromes of Man’s declining values. The end of the Kaliyuga is imminent. Man prepares himself to welcome the Satya Yugo. Behind all these nefarious worldwide phenomena, the most heinous force is man’s Greed and the European Renaissance created Masquerade and Marlovian Overreachers. The end of this Kali Yuga is inevitable.

Queen Ultronia takes over from Men:

God now considers during the earlier periods dominated by men have experienced gruesome bloodshed. Dwapar and Treta Yuga suffered untold greed and indescribable corruptions. The Kali Yugo reached the zenith point of the evil. The Kal Yuga culminates into the kingdoms of beasts. Readers find all these cosmic wars in Classical texts, The Helen of Troy, The Mahabharata and the Ramayana. God decides to empower woman in establishing peace and harmony in the new world. That empowered woman is the Queen Ultronia who will be subordinate to play her role under the supervision of Goddess Saraswati, the goddess of Knowledge and Art. Here again, Anand introduces gender issues related to modern concept of woman empowerment. 

The Mahakaal Trilogy and The Sinned Against:

After Anand’s Mahakaal Trilogy, Anand writes The Sinned Against.  Anand thinks that this dramatic text is a summit of similarity and dissimilarity between Oedipus, a Greek tragedy and Puran, a Punjabi folk story and this text communicates one point of relationship of the identical architectural designs between the three civilizations, Dwapar, Treta and Kali, revealed through their art and literatures, and traditions and war mongering attitudes. The Satya Yugo does not belong to those three Yugos. A river links the past and the present. Here the poet hints at the beginning of a new era, i.e. Satya Yuge that aims at establishing the reign of millennium.

Anand at the beginning of this text introduces an epic like quality Invocation to the Muse and some epic similes. To the poet, life is holy. He intently envisions the happy tributaries of the welfare and happiness to our world, which is in the form of prayer. This is Anand’s attitude to life. This is his philosophy, his way of envisioning the life and the world.  We find this in the Rigveda. Here the poet perceives the Aristotelian Prime Mover, which ordinarily means ‘fate’. Both Oedipus and Puran suffered a lot at the hands of ‘Fate’. Oedipus suffered and blinded himself following the dictates of the “Immanent Will” as Thomas Hardy calls it and Hardy’s central characters meet a catastrophic end in his novels. But Puran suffered and finally won the mercy of his fate with his humility. Here lie the point of similarity and dissimilarity. Puran is a successful warrior as he changes his attitude to life as a result of his surrender to the Divine. Oedipus meets catastrophic end in his life while Puran suffered but finally in return, Puran won the laurel of victory.

A difference between two shades of opinion about Greek tragedy is that Greek tragic hero has no fault in his character. It is the fate that makes the hero suffer without any rhyme or reason. There are no flaws in the pivotal characters in Greek tragedy.  In one sentence, fate is responsible for their sufferings. Another school of critics believes that a king is responsible for the ignorance of his past identity. According to the Greek mythology, ignorance is a sin on the part of a king. King Oedipus was ignorant of his past. Tiresias foresees and tells this to Oedipus’s father. According to the prophecy, Oedipus when he grows young, will kill his father and marry his wife who is also his mother. This is incest. Feeling angry and fearful, the king banishes his own child, Oedipus in a forest. However, a couple of forest denizens somehow save Oedipus. At last, he comes to know his horrible past but the situation goes out of his grip. After this dreadful knowledge, Oedipus suffers a lot and fate destroys him. The heroes of Shakespearean tragedies hold high position in a society; they are extraordinarily great in their mental and physical merits. However, they have certain tragic flaws that bring about their downfall. Othello, King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth are the examples. Anand is a diehard theist. The spiritualist, Anand may think that humility and the whole-hearted surrender to the Divine is the only way to regain God’s blessings. Puran has done it by his heart.  Here, lies the difference between Oedipus and Puran. The former, Oedipus belongs to the West and the latter, Puran, belongs the East. He has done the expiation for his past unethical way of life of which he was unaware.  In classical period of ancient Greece, the concept of ‘annihilation of self ‘, ‘self-surrender’ and unflinching devotion to the divine might be alien. Perhaps Anand is afraid of the venom of unethical corporate life of modern times. The poet is scared of the impending doomsday of the world where we live now.

The Contrast in Tragic Sensibility:

Anand here contests Aristotle’s concept of tragedy with reference to the Indian context of a Punjabi folk story, Puran.  Anand in this text interrogates the classical Greek concept of tragedy. Oedipus is more sinned against than his sinning, which Anand shows in this fourth book of the Tetralogy.   A careful reading of this text, The Sinned against (Oedipus and Puran) shows the fundamental difference between western attitudes to life and those of Indian philosophy that underlies that Soul is immortal. This is the cardinal spirit of the Indian Vedanta Philosophy that is Immortality of Soul. Soul transforms from one form to another. Death is the transit moment of transformation. “Heaven lies in our infancy”. The concept of pre- natal or anti-natal existence hints at this truth. Therefore, the end of life is not tragic. The concept of tragedy is foreign to the Indian philosophy. Death is a transit to this cyclic journey. The western philosophy pinpoints the conclusion of the life in this world only. Indian philosophy discards Hedonism, and Charvak Darshan, one of the branches of Indian philosophy which, however, does not belong to the mainstream of Indian philosophy and Hindu religion. Charvak philosophy is grossly materialistic.  The death of a man in this world is a simple event that pushes Man’s soul to reach the celestial domain or the Divinity. 

One obvious feature of Indian philosophy in all parts of the world is that philosophy and Hindu religion are intermingled. Another important aspect of Indian philosophy is that Indian view of life generally highlights that joy and suffering move in a cyclic order. According to Indian philosophy, man is neither ‘a pleasure seeking nor a pain avoiding creature’. The western philosophy underscores that for Oedipus, physical end is final of his life and soul. A derivative of a contrastive discourse between Oedipus and Puran is Anand’s text. Here Anand is unique and thought provoking. In this way, the Classical text does not exonerate Oedipus for what he has done; because, he has done everything unaware of it, which is a sin for a King to be ignorant of such things.   

Let me here construct an image of Puran based on the text: Puranis considered as a source of evil at the time of his birth. He miserably languishes in hell. The angry fate punishes him. He suffers indescribably in an underground cell. Owing to this expiation, he expects himself to be free from the sin he might have committed earlier. Puran is a hero of a folk story in erstwhile Punjab. This story seems to be true, though some of its episodes are fictional. When he comes out from his Hellish confinement, his stepmother, Luna, ventures to entice him. Puran resists from an unethical involvement. The woman wrongly reports to her husband, who sends his men to kill him and throw him in a deserted well. After this undesirable event, a Jogi saves him. Puran becomes a Jogi under that Gorakh Nath’s benign influence. Then, he meets Sundran, a queen, who falls in love with him. She goes to his Guru (a spiritual advisor) for celestial solace, and Puran gets divine grace as a gift from the saint. Here lies one of the fundamental differences between the western and the Indian philosophy of life. From Indian perspective, Anand perhaps contests Aristotle’s concept of the function of tragedy. Puran is finally redeemed while Oedipus is drowned perennially in the fire of Hell. The East and the West cannot meet together. This is also one of the derivatives from Anand’s Text.

Poetry and Philosophy:

Two more points need careful examination about interrelationship between poetry and philosophy in these four dramatic texts. Let me refer to Wordsworth’s Intimations Ode.  The poem presents two parts. The first part begins (First to three stanzas):


 There was a time when meadow, grove and streams,
The earth and every common sight,
                                                          To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It  is not now as it hath been of your:
Turn wheresoever I may,
By night or day,
The Things which I have seen I now can see no more.,

This same part ends with:


 Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where it is now, the glory and dream?


The first part is uniquely poetic. The accentuated language of this part is the language of the reality of the poet’s artistic sensibilities. Readers do not feel disturbed by the philosophy of anti-natal or pre-natal existence of life or any attempt of the poet’s indoctrination. The second part of the poem begins:


Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: :
The Soul that rises with us ,our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
Not in our utter forgetfulness,
And not in our nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God ,who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy.


 The last four lines of this second part of this poem end as follows:


Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joy and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears


In these lines, there is a tacit and subtle indoctrination or direct teaching in the poet’s observation of life. Wordsworth here preaches something. And this follows Wordsworth’s structured arguments.

The first two lines of the poem ‘The Retreat,’ written by Henry Vaughan (1621- 1695), one of the Metaphysical poets are as follows:


Happy those early days! 

WhenI shined in my angel infancy:


Is there no philosophical overtone revealed in the phrase “angel infancy”? Shelley’s poem, To a Skylark is a metaphysical poem. I am not going to comment on some characteristic features of Shelley’s Metaphysical poem like To a Skylark here. When Shelley wrote a verse drama Cinci, he sent a published copy of it to John Keats for his opinion. Keats, a worshipper of Beauty, replied to Shelley, “An artist must serve Mammon”.  This was Keats’ response to art and literature. This debate continues even today.  Difference of opinion is natural. J. S. Anand has difference of opinion with Aristotle or Walter Pater or Oscar Wilde or anybody else. What is important here is the Tolerance. Anand believes that every art has some moral tone. Poetry and philosophy is not hostile to each other. They may or may not be complementary. Anand is a modern Indian poet in English. He is not even a postmodernist. A true poet like Anand has not sacrificed his poetic sensibilities along with his ethical values of life in his poetry and Dramatic texts, which are satiric. Satiric text is also one of the effective tools to express what a poet thinks. This is what Anand’s philosophy is.

References

1. Anand, Jernail S. Lustus: The Prince of Darkness. The Poetry Society of India, 2022.

 

2. Anand, Jernail S. Dominion of the Netherworld. The Poetry Society of India, 2022.

 

3. Anand, Jernail S. “The Ultronic Age: The Celestial Reign”. The Mahakaal Trilogy. Asian Press Books, 2022.

 

4. Anand, Jernail S. The Sinned Against (Oedipus and Puran). The Poetry Society of India, 2025.