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Prof. M. S. KHAN
Indian Education Mission, Kabul, Afghanistan.

鈥淭he most artistic and poetic problem before the poet of today is not of evolving new techniques of expression or forging new imagery or form but developing a perspective suited to the complex ethos of war-renewed existence supported by the convic颅tion that man is his own consolation鈥� said Bhatnagar in one of his answers to my questionaire on the role and nature of poetry in modern times. That is why his poetry probes into the validities of human convictions against the ground of space-oriented rationality. He does not idealize God, nature, religion or emotionality. Instead his poems are rooted in man鈥檚 consciousness and intellect. And he goes on to add that, 鈥渟ince poetry is a human product it must concentrate on man and derive its form, structure, syntax, logic and vision from him and for him alone.鈥� He therefore discards surrealism, imagism, symbolism and other poetic movements as anti-poetry and condemns every elitism in poetry.

In 鈥淧oetry: An Anti-Literary Stance for Modern Times鈥� he says that 鈥減oetry must be unpretentious, simple, relevant and communicative without assuming roles. If at all, it must have collective rather than individual appeal with focus on simplicity. For simplicity itself is an artistic attitude towards life, truth and reality.鈥� He renders his poetry simple by his clarity of thought and expression. He doesn鈥檛 search for themes but for meanings that connect experiences to the vision of existence. His poems make one sit up and think of the apparent absurdities of human beliefs and behaviour heightened by an awareness of a delicate irony鈥搑evealing itself at the root of things. In this poem 鈥淭he God-Game鈥� he talks of the different gods who created the same universe in their own ways and pleads for sympathy with the condemned believers:

Is God a sufficient cause
To fight and die for?
The unholy war is over
It鈥檚 now a question of building memorials
To the numberless
Mauled and mutilated by their faith. (Oneiric Visions, P. 39)

The fallacy of kindness and love of God towards his devotees and followers is brought out with an equal touch of irony in the tragic death of an innocent boy who worshipped his God everyday.

During one of his innocent prayers
His clothes got all aglow with fire
In a holy contact with the lamp
But with his Lord unmoved by this purification
The tiny self lay in a trance
Never to return to his temporal worship of God.
(The Ritual: Thought Poems, P. 18)

Similarly 鈥淎 Poem for the Pantheists鈥� deals with nature鈥檚 indifferent cruelty to man suffered in the cyclones in Andhra:

An eerie hush reigns
Over the lush paddy fields
Littered with human carcasses
Like rice spluttered by an angry infant
And coconut trees fallen like matchsticks
And dwellings like houses of cards. (Feeling Fossils, P. 25)

In all these poems irony operates like the dazzle of lightning lighting up the dark, the gap between human beliefs and reality. The poet takes a further dig at the beliefs of man when he says in the same poem:

Now is the time to call a miracle-man
Or summon a meditating saint
To show his prowess of spiritual feat
So that we have at least a stick in hand
To beat the waters with. (Feeling Fossils, P. 27)

The concomitant presence of irony in the imagery and descrip颅tion of Bhatnagar鈥檚 poetry makes him stand out distinct among the Indian poets in English today. He does not use irony to take a dig like Ezekiel but to reveal the essential nature of human predicament and existence. His view of irony becomes clear from his statement that 鈥淐aught up in the centraries of life and death, man鈥檚 existence is the most profound irony varying to the extent and intensity of awareness with which the two extremes are per颅ceived and harmonized. Further, the linear perceptions of man inhibit his vision to see the contradictions inherent in the nature of both human and non-human world.鈥� Irony cannot be felt but perceived. That is why his poetry prescribes an intellectual apprehension and view of life. It therefore challenges the out颅dated mores, values and modes of human conduct and thought into a new awakening of perceptions. The way ethics can be cruel is portrayed in 鈥淥f Court and Cancer Ward鈥� where a man not wanting to die is sentenced to death and the other wanting to die is kept alive to suffer:

But deaf to his cravings
The doctors pronounce in hushed silence
Of the painful end to be
And quote medical ethics
For his sufferings
Giving an unsought for hope
To his life. (Thought Poems, P. 6)

How contraries exist and work to a success is exhibited in 鈥淭he New Scale鈥� where what may be poison for one man may turn out to be another man鈥檚 meat:

A simple, honest man
In an outworn mode
May still himself find
Measuring life in value spoons
Bribery, corruption and forgery
For him a bitter poison be
But the clever in it
A meaty situation see
Dispensing poison like a doctor
Normalizing a disturbed balance. (Thought Poems, P. 15)

Bhatnagar is against fear because 鈥淚t helps the negative forces to overpower the positive, the diabolic, the innocents. More than that, the voluntary surrender to fear frustrates the very purpose of life. Fear is a self-imposed indignity.鈥� For this reason 鈥淲ho is Afraid of Fear鈥� is a challenging poem in the whole gamut of Indian poetry in English, which is so much warped by its poverty of thought, vision and attitude, especially in the field of our political existence. His mockings at the national leadership and its love for its country is revealed so subtly in his poem 鈥淚 Have Promises to Keep鈥� the leader vows:

To shake the universe
With the thunder from my throat
And was the last breath of mine
To keep any countrymen awake
With more dying words to reach
Before I sleep.
I love my country
Which loves my voice
And my speech. (Feeling Fossils, P. 12)

The way nations are born at the cost of human sacrifices 颅has been so subtly and touchingly exposed that it has few parallels in description:

She was only thirteen
When she was butchered
On the birth of a nation
So that she could bless it
From above. (Birth of a Nation: Feeling Fossils, P. 14)

In a rare display of economy Bhatnagar recreates the mad race for chairs and positions of power in our country in a remarkably finished poem of high simplicity and depth.

Oh, what a fuss
Over a chair
Of old cedar
And teak!
It only holds.
Eh! It doesn鈥檛 possess
It has long given up
Its power of a tree. (Over a chair: Feeling Fossils, P. 21)

The hollowness of our national loyalties is exposed in 鈥淐ross颅ing the Bar鈥� imposing a deliberate parallelism with Tennyson鈥檚 poem of the same title both for deepening and widening the intent of his irony as observed in his earlier poem 鈥淚 Have Promises to Keep鈥� invoking the famous lines of Frost. Desciibing the deplorable national morals the poem reads:

Passing national secrets
On cold heights
Thickening conscience to snow
Makes small news in our country:
The big news is floor crossing
To keep our progress moving
Towards unrealized goals. (Feeling Fossils, P. 13)

The poet also sharpens his irony by subtle and gentle understatements and undermodes. Instead of emphasizing the tragic life of a homeless man in a big city he understates the predicament as follows by substitutes:

Although I have no room on earth
I have a place in the sun:
My life is not tragic
For I do not belong to the nobility
Even by way of fun. (What is the Difference: Gneiric Visions, P. 14)

The helpless cry over the pitiable condition of the demoralized self in general has gone so much out of repairs in our country that one has to be a slavish beholder of crimes, corruptions and injustices:

When I see a crowd
Line up for a bottle of kerosene
In tiring queues to light up
Their hungry hours: The numberless
Go blind of adulterated oils
Making a smooth passage to dark
And children thin out to death
For want of milk in the water
Served to them as food
I can鈥檛 ask my conscience to revolt
For suffering has become our creed.
(I Can Question only My Dreams: OneiricVisions. P. 13)

In one of his very provocative and novel poems 鈥淒eath Must Belong鈥� the poet treats death as a loner and pleads that man must adopt it and that颅鈥�

Man must give it an abode,
A warmth to feel by,聽聽聽聽
And a loss to mourn about
Till a lost child it returns
To its fold.聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 (Thought Poems. P. 14)

Living, for the poet, is more important than death. And life is a long living in the exploration of the quality of life. Many of his poems deal with the problem of life and death in a new perspective. In a very pathetic portrayal of a hungry man the choice goes beyond both life and death:

He was not so hungry for life now As for food:
Not so afraid of death
For all its inevitable pull:
He only wanted to die eating
To die full. (To Die Full: Thought Poems. P. 12)

With all these subtle attacks on the worn out mores, modes 聽聽聽聽聽 and morals of human beings Bhatnagar celebrates innocence, which according to him is 鈥渢he serenity and easy composure of a harmonis颅ed mind.鈥� Poem after poem he points and pleads for innocence and innocents. Some of the most compelling lines from 鈥淥n the Crossroad鈥� read颅鈥�

Uproot the signposts
That have aged telling faded routes
And bring down the milky way
For the innocents to tread on.
(Oneiric Visions, P. 18)
Like other Indian poets in English, Bhatnagar is also interested in the problem of art, poetry and life. While Ezekiel holds that颅鈥�

A poem is an episode, completed
In an hour or two, but poetry
Is something more
(A Time to Change P. 13)

He makes a forced and frivolous division between poem and poetry. For, a poem can be nothing but a finished form of poetry. And then, describing a poem as an episode is making it mundane, accidental and casual. Poetry may remain as a flow in man but unless it forms itself as a poem it is not poetry. That is why Bhatnagar regards颅鈥�

A poem is a smile
That spreads from eyes to heart
Using gestures
That have hidden their meaning
In an ecstasy
Of being beautiful.
(A Poem is A Smile: Oneiric Visions. P. 7)

The poet is against the prophetic in poetry as against the concept of the final meaning of life. Bhatnagar is of opinion that 鈥淎ll that a poet can do is to interpret the meaning of his experience poem by poem.鈥� One of his poems reads:

Poetry is meaning
Like a deity enshrined
Words upon words the edifice built
What is the idea?
Where is God?
Who will tell what the artist sought?
(Round and Round: Thought Poems. P. 5)

Although the reader may not be in a position to understand fully the import and meaning of a poem 鈥渢he poem must be direct and clear in its meaning after the tradition of Illiad, Ramayana and Bible.鈥� Yet the whole truth or reality of things cannot be exposed to its nudity:

Some hold that a thin veil
Exposing the body
Makes the best overture to beauty:
A young maid unable to admire
A look at her bare body
Holds the veil of a mirror
To separate herself from her body
And looks at it as an artist聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽
Possessed by the grandeur
Of nature鈥檚 art.
(The Cover for Beauty: Thought Poems, P. 19)

In a poem of sparking humour the poet resolves the aesthetic dilemma of the copy and original presented by Miss Burr as follows:

She was so delighted
With the fine copy of herself
That she readily proposed
鈥淵ou are presenting a copy to me.
How about having the origina1 for yourself?鈥�
The artist was puzzled.
He thought of Plato鈥檚 idea
Of the original in heaven
Brought so within his reach:
But as an artist
Chose to keep the copy
For himself.

(Of the Copy and the Original: Thought Poems. P. 20)

Bhatnagar鈥檚 poetry emphasizes the nature and quality ofhuman life which exists by memories or dreams avoiding reality. It also has a tendency of living by substitutes, the paradox of which is presented in his remarkably condensed poem 鈥淣ot to Die of Life鈥� as follows;

We hope
Not to die of frustrations
Dream
Not to die of realities.
To die of truth
We have no heart
In order not to die
Of life
We have art.

In a rare achievement of the simplicity of diction and the fluidity of vision this poem can rank as a model of poetic excellence in Indian poetry in English today. It has all the power of a smile that is capable of moving the morose:

Grief over fate
Or pity from heavens
Gather weight like cotton
Soaked in water:
Saints, religion or philosophy
May enlighten him but
Smile alone will lighten his weight
And make his going light
So go with a smile
Bleaching sorrow from your bones.
(Go with a Smile: Oneiriic Visions. P. 52)

This is how both irony and vision, reason and emotion, merge into a smile that spreads from eyes to heart making Bhatnagar鈥檚 poetry richly simple, luxuriously clear and magnificently moving. His is a personal voice compelling composure and balance amidst confusion, chaos and contradictions. For him 鈥渆ach poem is an opening out into another, a clearing, a way to a more intense experience like a frogman exploring the depth of the sea.鈥� Both his artistic and human beliefs move in the direction of what he calls 鈥渁n awareness more aware of itself than awareness.鈥� He, therefore, describes feelings closest to the mind expressed in a directness of urgent exposition without giving into Indian Geor颅gianism. His is a poetry not of lost identity but what prevents identity from being identified. And his best achievement lies in establishing his identity with ease and brilliance in a language of least compromise. There is a winning intimacy in him which refines perception. There is a strength of hope built in his poetry by a secular and rational vision of his poems, thus breaking from the bane of insularity. His is a poetry of growth into manhood and humanity away from regional, provincial and cultural inhibitions. His conversational style makes him accessible to all those who love simplicity and clarity. His poetic powers drown the foreignness of the medium and lend a rhythm and sonority that is native to Indian contexts. Words do not drop like stones in his poetry but turn light and effective with the logic of feelings and rebellions questioning of the outworn modes of belief and conduct and the suspect national character and loyalties, yet he celebrates the personal voice speaking for humanity and his poetic wisdom ends in颅

鈥︹��.a smile
That spreads
From eyes to heart
Using gestures
That have hidden their meaning
In an ecstasy
of being beautiful.