Every poet lets us listen to his
heartthrobs for our heart-responses. It is his primary goal and bounden
responsibility to describe events, incidents, experiences, dilemmas, problems,
etc that he glimpses and witnesses in life. Poetry is his medium and spectrum
he expresses through, and weapon and organ he fights with for the aimed reforms
and desired solutions. It rises from the reality and the actuality of life in
the way the plant rises from the ground of truths to bloom the flowers of
facts. Prof. Susheel Kumar Sharma employs it with dexterity and perfection to
mirror his feelings, ideas and observations in life.
Prof. Sharma starts his collection
of poems, “The Door Is Half Open” with
the crest-like poem, ‘Ganga Mata- A prayer.’ The poem marks epic-like statures
and characteristics. Its central and pivotal character, the river Ganges is prayed and portrayed in the manner of
invocation:
O Ganges!
The dweller in Lord Brahma’s kamandala
The abider in Lord
Vishnu’s feet
The resider of Lord
Shiva’s locks
… … … …
The mother of brave
Bhishma
O Ganga
Maiya!
Homage to thee.
Accept my obeisance
O Punyakirti!
… … … …
I want to sing your praise
Like a tortoise in your
water
I want to play in your lap
Like a dolphin in your floods
… … … …
In an island created by
you.
The invocation
is so elaborate that it echoes his ardent adoration and deep devotion to the
sacred and holy river Ganges:
I am told
On the confluence, though
vast,
No bathing ghat can be had
You keep changing your
appearance—
Thousands you have in a
day.
The character of Ganga Mata is a
deity to be visited and the Almighty to be worshipped by Mainaka who ‘comes
daily to have/Your darshana and a holy dip’. The poet identifies with the
deity, ‘I just want to live and die by you’. He glimpses her by his heart:
When I stand here
To have your darshana
I see only white and green
waves
Piercing into each other.
In the praise of the divine features
and heroic stature of the deity with infinite synonyms and epithets: ‘Adhvaga’,
‘Alakananda’, Amar Sarita’, ‘Gayatri’,
‘Nandini’,‘Jahnavi’, ‘Purna’, ‘Punya kirti’, ‘Punya’, Mandakini, ‘Pavani’, etc.
He extols highly about her long heroic journey ‘annual pilgrimage’ which is
‘Like light into darkness/ In a cloudy sky’.
He further recognizes and reveres
the Ganges for her free flow and gay dance:
Flow freely again
Over flow again
Dance rhythmically again
Be not bound by embarkments
and dams.
For him, the Ganges
is Ganga Mata, the Almighty and the Benefactor and she is mighty in flow and
benevolent in actions. He addresses her:
You silently
Crush stones and push sand
under
Your gorgeous feet
To help man raise
Buildings to touch the sky.
The river on its annual pilgrimage
flows in its own pace and course and helps flora and fauna as described by
Tagore in his poem, ‘Thy Gifts’. Prof. Sharma portrays the action of the river
in ‘Rivers’: ‘A river cools/The Scorched earth/ By laying her arms around it.’
The poem is full of Sanskrit expressions and quotations; synonyms and epithets
to mark the grand style of Latin expressions of the epic. The similes he uses
are very apt for vivid descriptions:
I want to sing your
praise
Like a tortoise in your
water
I want to play in your
lap
Like a dolphin in your
floods.
Prof. Sharma enriches his poem to be
a poem par excellence by describing rituals like Havan, a purifying ritual and
fire ceremony; Holi, a spring festival; Magha, a festival for the saints to
participate in from various parts in the month of Magha; ‘langar’, a community
meal for all to dine together irrespective of any social barrier and reflect
the sense of humanity for oneness of mankind.
The poem ‘Ganga Mata, A prayer’
stands flawless, for it entails moralistic approaches to redeem the woes and
throes of mankind with the sacred waves of the Ganges
by insisting on Shantih in the realm
of humanity:
I want the world
To be rid of corruption
I want the world
To be rid of pollution
I want the world
To be rid of
degeneration.
I want the world
To be a home for all
I want the world
To be a
wonder for all.
The poet feels agony at the
degradation of virtues and degeneration of values: ‘The wonder that was India’
with ‘freedom’, ‘humanity’, ‘prosperity’, ‘liberty’, ‘equality’, ‘fraternity’,
etc. Now they are obviously absent and conspicuously missing against the wishes
of the poet. He shares his feelings with the deity, Gang Mata in the form of
questions in infinite:
Are you testing the patience of man?
Are you displaying your
displeasure,
O Kirati?
How can a mother be so
cruel
O Adrija?
As stated by Jawaharlal Nehru in his Discovery of India, ‘The Ganges… has
held India’s
heart captive...’ As a poet of conviction and man of patriotism, Prof.
expresses his poignant desire for the revival of the past glory, ‘to be wonder
for all’. He firmly believes that Ganga Mata is not just the Ganges
but the symbol and the incarnation of Bharat Mata:
I just want my Ganga
To be my Ganga.
… …
…
Yes, India is one!
United we stand,
Divided we fall.
Prof. Sharma is a humanist in
general and a patriot in particular. He wants to ‘see the world/ To be a home
for all’. The poem, ‘Shattered Dreams’ (12) reflects that he nourishes aims and
cherishes dreams to be fulfilled but does not want them shattered or crumbled
down:
My imagination came
falling down
Like the World Trade
Centre”
As an adorer of Ganga Mata with her
course, he wishes her not to change her splendor and wonder; power and bower;
flow and glow, name and fame, etc. He finds changes against his wishes and
addresses her with his deep feelings:
O Adhvaga
I find you feeble like
a spine.
… …
… …
Your curing power seems
to have failed
Your life giving force
seems to have dried.
He further puts forth his unbearable
anguish before her a long series of questions on the lapses against his wishes:
Where is your ravine?
Where have the rabbits gone?
… …
…
Have you tolerated it
all, O Saritamvara?
As a poet and man, he wants to see
his homeland in the unrivalled position and unmatched glory. He cannot think of
any decline and downfall of values and virtues but he witnesses blemishes like
corruption, pollution and degeneration. His earnest wish is to see his mother
land free form such evils. In ‘A Poem for My Country’, he has clear-cut
reflections about India:
‘The land offers you a sight of your choice--’; and Indians: ‘Believers of
Various faiths/ Users of so many tongues… But a mantra/ practiced by one and
all.’ Another poem entitled ‘Democracy: Old and New’ presents the real picture
of democracy in the mood of displeasure of the poet as it fails to bring about
progress in terms of liberty, equality and fraternity and goes contrary to the
concept of democracy:
‘Fraternity’ is a
foul word.
Dreams become day-dreams.
Promises sound
hollow.
Future evaporates
into skies.
Apart from the themes of devotion to
humanity and adoration of Ganga Mata and Bharat Mata, Prof. Sharma further
delineates a rich variety of themes: divinity, life, time, love, nature,
autobiographical element, the life around and so on. His poetry is at once
universal and individual for his themes are varied.
Prof. Sharma firmly believes in God
for His miracles and wonders and deeply loves flora and fauna, His beautiful
creations. He admits that God is the Creator and is responsible for the wonders
in nature:
Leaves are varied
They have different
hues
And shapes and sizes
Like men they reveal
God’s plenty. ‘Colours’
… … … …
If I love you
I love you for God’s sake
He is your creator
And a perennial
source of eternal love. ‘O
Beloved’
For poets, life is the theme of
themes and the nucleus subject of their poetry. Time, in its incessant
movement, turns life mortal. Life passes form birth through the stage of growth
to culminate ultimately in death which is the most inevitable fact of life:
The living ones too
behave
Like the dead
‘From Left to Right’
In the wake of birth, life goes
ahead as ‘A toddler in a mother’s lap’ and grows to youth, adulthood, manhood
and to old age but realizes, ‘It’s a joy to be young’ but ‘It’s is a joy for
the old’. Life in reality is for—
No rewinding, no
fast forward
No playing the fool
around.
‘Tiny Tot’
What turns grey
Cannot turn
black.
‘Passing By’
The poet describes in ‘Granny’ the
old age of his granny, ‘who lost her eye sight’ and suffered from arthritis. In
time, what is young and charming will definitely become old and surely fade,
carving wrinkles on the face and graying the black hair:
They will vanish one
day
One by one and will
also turn silvery white.
… … …
…
They will dry with
passing time
And lose their
luster with a changed emotion. ‘O
Beloved’
Time in its constant flux,
represented by the sun and the moon, turns man old making many changes against
his wishes:
The scorching sun has
turned my
Hair grey;
It attacked the head
first
Now the entire body
is its target.
‘Passing By’
Life turns not only ephemeral but
also futile in the disruptive forces of time and it is an undeniable fact, open
truth and bare reality. Dreams in the realm of facts shatter and make man rise
to realize the futility of life:
I had built castles
of my dreams
On the sand dunes of
a desert.
‘Shattered Dreams’
Man resorts to the futile exercises
to evade the futility of life and find remedies:
I got out to the
dream of down stream
Where I throw in eternal
sleep
To awake floating on a
fresh dream. ‘Dwellings’
Prof. Sharma loves humanity as a
humanist. He observes the sufferings of his fellow beings and makes the readers
share those feelings. He records the incidents and the happenings in society as
he has commitment towards poetry. He wishes the due punishment given to wrong
doers and sinners and feels sorry for the helplessness of invisible gods in
this regard:
Like a helpless woman
Gang raped
unconsciously again and again
Loses her natural
vision
Just stares into the
black sky above—
Perhaps praying to
the invisible gods
To send some bolt
(Which never comes)
To identify and punish
The guilty.
‘Agony’
As a man of humanity, he feels pity
on a pretty, gay butterfly when it was found crushed on a table:
O butterfly
Reminded me of the
beauty of the innocent girls
Going to school on the reopening day
The enchanted
patterns of design on your body.
… …
… …
Alas, the laughter
has gone
The spark has gone
The chance of
another Adam
Being tempted has
withered. ‘Agony’
Like Wordsworth, Prof. Sharma is a
lover of nature. His nature descriptions are so graphic and vivid that his
readers share his sheer joys on his visit to nature. The poem, ‘In The Lap of
Nature’ reflects his love for nature and expresses how he gets engrossed into
the beauty of ‘starry night’ that draws ‘the craving moon’ into the drawing
room for his bliss:
I hold on—
Stretch my arms
To bring you to my
folds.
… ...
… …
I remain absent
I have to defy the
law of gravity
To kiss you on
your forehead
And make you sit
in my pearls before you
I have to cast my
pearls before you
And weave my dreams
around you
To be away from
the frigid earth.
To have bliss, he goes to the realm
of fancy with the contact of nature:
Suddenly, I
entered a cloud,
My joy knew no
bounds;
I was enveloped
by purest of vapours
Soon I was seen
rushing towards the sky
Eager to touch
the Sun.
In ‘Mirage’, he
expresses his special attraction and liking for the moon. He wants to go to its
beauty to quench his thirst:
The heaven is not
to be polluted
With your odours.
Your dust
Doesn’t match the
dust there.
… …
… … …
You’ve to be taken
to the moon
To quench your
thirst
In the heavenly
abode.
Prof. Sharma reads the cyclic
pattern of wearing leaves by trees in spring and studies animal and plant
nature in terms of human nature in a satirical way. The ant, the tree, the cow,
the grain, etc serve mankind and prove to be far superior to man:
The ant—
A small one,
black in colour,
A microgram in
weight
Runs at a speed
High than that of
a jet,
… …
… …
The tree—
Huge in size,
that
Sheds its leaves
Sprouts again
this spring
To provide
shelter to the
Homeless birds,
The cow—
Indian in size, Red
in colour
Heavy in white
udders
The grain—
Minor in size,
unimportant in colour
Less than a gram or two in
weight
Sprouts to make a
field green
To feed the
hungry.
‘Gifts’
Natural objects like flowers,
butterflies, the sun, the moon and the cloud leave the poet attracted to their
beauties in bounty: The dancing of ‘yellow leaves’ on the trees fills his heart
with joy:
The sight was
captivating
As your colours
and the backdrop of the flowerbed
Presented to my
mind what
Must have been
the Garden of Eden ‘Colours’
As a poet and man, he shares the
tears like sorrows of the butterfly in quest of beauty and in thirst for honey
from flowers. When it is crushed, its beauties are lost:
The chance of
another Adam
Being tempted
has withered. ‘Colours’
Like AK Ramanujan and Kamaladas,
Prof. Sharma portrays his autobiographical element to express his whims and
fancies; sentiments and feelings; memories and recollections; doubts and
dilemmas; realizations and confessions; isolation and association; tears and
smiles, etc. He refers to his relations and their traits and temperaments. In
‘Dilemma’ the portrayal of his great grand father and his grand father who was
raised to a rich position like a prince and his father who was not being raised
as per his father’s wish:
People hated my
grandpa
For his held his
head high.
… … …
…
The most
interesting ones were about
His own self and
his father.
… … … …
About my father
Who couldn’t be
raised
As should have
been--
Holding his head
high
Despite being
poor.
‘Dilemma’
He describes his own sulking nature
in ‘Camouflage’, his daughter and son for not looking alike in
‘Inquisitiveness’ and his son who ‘used to/ Soil the mattress/ But you never
minded it’ in ‘Memories’ like AK
Ramanujan’s bed wetting grand son in his poem ‘Obituary’. He presents the
picture of the house he lived in:
I have started
Living in the
home of despair
For the house
of hopes has been shattered
By volleys of
jealousy. ‘Dwellings’
He ascribes this
state to the cobwebs of enemies, dangerous curses of holy men, etc. The
memories are connected and related to his house and penury-stricken family,
‘ancestral house’, his breakfast and his ‘arousing anger’ due to blood pressure
on some occasions:
The tree of
money sheds its leaves
For Autumn had
come
But spring
could not. ‘Dwellings’
Today I’ve seen
a brick come out of the wall
In the
ancestral house in the ancestral street.
I tried to fix
it without cement but it came out--
I somehow saved my
foot from being hurt. ‘Granny’
I salt my
breakfast with tears
That ooze on
the peeling of memories
When the butter of praise
Fails to soothe
me. ‘Dwellings’
My blood
pressure shot up
And I lost my
vision.
… … …
Think of me
How miserably I
spent
My days and
nights
Without you and
the world around! ‘A
Wish’
The poet conveys
his ultimate advice and confesses his heart-felt feelings to the readers to—
Let your days
with
Those around be
Peaceful, harmonious and soothing! ‘A Wish’
Prof. Sharma, as
a poet and man, has sensitivity to human suffering and states that man should
be in quest of goals to be away from the jungle, to quench thirst, to satiate
hunger and to rescue a drowning child into a river, etc. He feels that
eradication of poverty is a must as narrated in ‘Poverty: Some Scenes.’ For
him, the sight of the people in penury is the most agonizing scene:
When somebody
opens the tiffin-box
And someone
else just stares at it
With a hope of
one morsel in one’s mouth.
In the society
today, the suicides of brides are quite common as a blemish on the part of
society. Brides are welcome in the wedding not to be killed. They are meant for
the joy of life and the perpetuation of the race:
A bride belongs
to a groom
She is a flute
to be played on
She is a harmonium to produce a rhythm
She is a
synthesizer to modulate a discordant note
She is a tune
of a young heart,
Full of music
and meaning,
. Signifying
harmony. ‘For a Bride Who
Thinks of Suicide’
The poem, ‘Agony’ reflects his appeal to
people to rescue a woman from being raped, a bird from being caged, a small
girl to be helped to hold her pen, etc. He cries hoarsely for his helplessness
in the eradicating of the evils today. The feelings he has are inexplicable:
The poet is
crying for words,
Clad in
unblemished white
Saraswathi does not oblige.
She is busy
rising a golden peacock. ‘Agony’
As a poet he
feels sorry in ‘Purgation’ for ‘Swelling problems on and on, all around’ and
appeals to the humanity to—
Be your own Buddha
Be your
enlightened soul
To realize the
reality
And to shun
Whatever is
false. ‘Hope Is the Last Thing to Be
Lost’
He wishes to be
amid people with no social barriers: colour, caste, creed, age, sex, culture,
-isms and ages. He wants an ideal society to be established for the oneness of
mankind, freedom from corruption, pollution and degeneration to enjoy the
wonder of humanity. He has the vision of reviving the culture and the heritage
of India’s
past for the mission of establishing peace.
Prof. Susheel
Kumar Sharma deserves encomiums for his wide ranging themes dealing with life
in general and the life around in particular, in his book entitled The Door Is Half Open. He portrays the
themes in snapshot details and presents them to the readers to share his
feelings like WH Auden and other Leftist writers and by the use of ‘you’, the
readers. He would have used ‘we’ like Philip Larkin and other Movement Poets to
share his views to the readers and the poet, himself. The titles of all poems
are very apt, appropriate and relevant to echo the subject contrary to the
title of the volume. The title ‘The Door
Is Haft Open’ is suggestive of the opinion that he is shutting of the door
from the back with a view to allowing no evil to enter or he is opening it wide
to welcome all values and virtues to his homeland for the revival of wonders
and splendors of the past. As a poet of devotion and man of conviction, he
craves for perfection in his motherland and the world, ‘a wonder for all’.
Published
Voices at the Door
Critical Responses to Susheel Kumar Sharma's
The Door is Half Open
UPANAYAN PUBLICATIONS-Delhi
First Edition 2023
Also Published in Yking Concise Encyclopaedia of ‘Language, Literature and Culture’ - 2014
