By Mohammad Shafi Rather
The raqs or dance of a believer in Shiva who has never resisted the influence of Islamic culture around with the whisperings of faithlessness screens the within of the poet Satish Vimal in the pages of his soul-awakening masterpiece titled Siyah Var (Dark Twists). The book Siyah Var oscillates between hope and hopelessness; faith and faithlessness and it is utter ecstasy that a soul encounters with while walking with the poet. On the one side the poet reconciles the impressions of Islam with Shaivism and thus transcends the barriers of denomination but on the other hand he proves himself a devote disciple of Jean Paul Sartre and his school of Existentialism. The eponymous poem Siyah Var describes the darkness and chaos that canopies the path of the people who have renounced all the worldly joys and have dedicated themselves to Him. Yogis and Sanyasis are the denizens of a vast void where nothing stands certain and mere absurdity reigns. As Pirandello, an Italian poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer and dramatist said: “I am the son of chaos”,the Poet finds the man shifting from nothingness to nothingness. Why should someone disappear after blowing out the candles!
Aner miyuon samkheou Siyah rachen kunzon…
Anegate yougen hend safar roode jaaree
Na gashuk breme oos, na deedun hunde chal
“ My blindness met the dark nights all alone!
…..
Darkened Yogis continued their journey,
No hope of light; no illusion to eyes.”
However, the poem communicates the entire message of the book when the poet discerns Life making rounds all clear and clean:
Kathun draav khur
Tae watun zindagi fog
“Mystries demystified,
And Life surfaced every path”
The universe he is forced to live in, has no interest in him. Man seems purposeless and drifts aimlessly. As T.S.Eliot in Sweeney Agonistes has drawn a grim picture of this absurd life:
Birth, and copulation, and death
That’s all, that’s all, that’s all, that’s all
Birth, and copulation, and death
so does Satish Vimal uncover the gloom and pessimism. Why should yogis be not certain of the Light. It seems the poet laments the delinquency that has crept into the modern age. The poet experiences a complete denial of age-old human values. His existence is at stake. He feels breathlessness and suffocation. He writes:
miyani mool chi dhada dhad pratene yiwaam
mechi dheer chu henaan te thadaan. ( Satish Vimal te Ba)
I am being uprooted
Mound of soil is swelling up
The poem “ Who Am I” serves a seminal question viz a viz the reality of Man. The poet is in search of his Reality. Can he demystify his identification in the universe where large stars fail to identify with comparisons to the universe? Is he like some planet revolving round some sun through a predestined and preordained orbit? When there is no lowest and no highest integer, the poet incorporates the whole matrix of being in his own self:
I am before the Beginning,
I am after the End,
Who am I?
Absurdity surfaces again and again and the fabric of faith is weaning away. The poem Well offers no relief. The poet plunges into it with a hope of finding solace and quenching the thirst of his Inner. He feels like a moon-struck man when his cup is deprived of the nectar of hope. Thus pessimism, frustration and a sense of alienation pervades everywhere:
Sire saave keri kis preth pheris manz oos
Miyaani baapath nawomeze hund akh akh sader
In each drop of mysterious well,
There was an ocean of hopelessness.
He was left with insurmountable grief in the unfathomable well. The deeper he delved into the darker it was.
Nevertheless, optimism does not prove itself an extinct entity. The poet is not so hopeless and faithless that he cannot find a way out. Like Allama Iqbal who says:
Kabi ay haqeeqat e muntazar nazar aa libaasay majaaz mai;
Ki hazaroon sajday tadap rahay hain mere jabeenay niyaaz mai.
For once, O awaited Reality, reveal yourself in a form material,
For a thousand prostrations are quivering eagerly in my submissive brow.
The poet looks for the path that will lead him to the Ultimate Reality. He looks for the marriage of the Unit with the Whole :
yi chey miyaani pach
te su prezlevun taarukh chu wanan
zi su niye me asmano ti apoor.( Safar te Tarukh)
I am hopeful,
And the glittering star is telling
He shall take me beyond the skies.
The poet hopes that the Darkness and Uncertainty shall perish and the Light shall soar up. The sun will crept out with zest and zeal and will out- do the clouds of gloom and faithlessness:
The thin light shall labour forth a day itself,
Every hour of the day shall unravel the mysteries itself.
Satish Vimal hardly becomes a sloganeer of a particular way of life. He is a disciple of Lala and a devotee of Ahad Zarger. He speaks to soul and inner of a man.
The dazzling manifestations hardly attract him. He is silently but vehemently sure of the revival of the soul. To him every single ray shall change into a sun. Exhibiting the age-old sufi traditions he seats himself in the line of great sufi poets of the Kashmiri Literature. Amrita Preetam sums up this must qalander in the following words:
“ I have read some of Satish Vimal’s poems and met the lost Yogi of Abenu Gupta’s era who carried the bowel of self-realisation…”
He like a Lala-incarnate writes:
He would lift me one by one each step
I would picturise His each expression
In the diary of my eyes.
The book is filled with poems which appeal to the universal reader as the poet ceases to be associated with a particular human or geographical boundary. The book is food for soul for the people who want a recess from the present day gloom that is ruling every latitude and every longitude of a large area of this nuclear world. The Poet wants his reader forget the scheme of colours that divides the human society into mean and base compartments. The Poet , while dismembering all these divisive thoughts, emerges as a ‘ super-man’ capable of defeating all the anti-forces of human development. He is not Darwanian. Like Mansoor bin Hilaaj, Satish Vimal proclaims his immortality in his poem Who Am I? ( Be Kus ):
Be chus azle brunh ti
Te abde pate ti
Be kus?
I am before the Beginning
And also after the End
Who am I?
While making his deep philosophical thoughts come on the screen, the Poet does it fantastically with artistic excellence. It is not just his pregnant lines that arrest the eye but also his enchanting pictures that one comes across the book. The titles like Kiyour (Well), Noot (Pitcher), Nachun(Dance),Malange (Hermit),Gallery(Gallery),Aene( Mirror), Rung (Colour), Nachengor (Dancer) etc. make one feel as if he is discerning a well-established art gallery of some M F Hussain. They not only contribute to the aesthetic side of the book but also run parallel to the mysticism that the book presents us. The symbols, metaphors and other poetic devices employed by the Poet are rarely found in our contemporary literature. The poem Heer(Ladder) is an illustration of symbolism and the treatment speaks volumes about the poets understanding of life and absurdity that is trying its best to dismember it:
Akh wariyah pave daar heer aase khada
Bone peth aesa heur khasan
Kine heri pethe boon aees was an
Ti aos ne noun…
A vertical ladder with many rounds there was
Was it descending down
Or ascending up
Not known
Precisely all the 71 poems of the book need individual attention and the reader and the critic of our literature is bound to make deep dives into the Amazon of Satish Vimal and resurface with the pearls that the ‘river’ promises:
Kemtaam yale me woun:
“ be chus chani qalme ada sapdun yechaan”
Miyaani mane kis te zehne kis wachus wouth
Manewaad dood
Su chus baagraan
Te gingraavaan:
“doode hareke piyaale baryoo…….” ( Miyoun Qalam)
When Someone did tell me:
“ I want to be carved by your pen”
The bosom of my head and heart
Laboured -forth buckets of milk
That I am dispensing
And humming
“For Thee I will fill my cups with cream…….
Mohammad Shafi Rather , Lecturer in English at Govt Higher Secondary School at
e-mail: rathershafi121@gmail.com
