D. C. Chambial’s Before the Petals Unfold: An
Appraisal
Dr. Mahesh P. D. Singh
D.C. Chambial
is certainly a major voice in the field of Indian English poetry being written
today. He is besides a poet, a great critic and a reputed editor of an esteemed
international journal. His contribution to Indian English poetry is very
significant and he has many books of criticism to his credit in addition to
several books of poems. He is also the winner of many national and
international awards and attended the world poetry conference in 1986 held in
Chennai. Widely published and anthologised in India and abroad, his poems have
been translated into many languages of the world.
The book
Before the Petals Unfold is the second volume of poems which was published in
September 2002. It is a collection of many fine poems composed over various
topics like life, death, war, nationalism and nature. It reveals the promising
facets of the young poet’s poetic soul and is dedicated to the suffering
mankind and world peace. This very approach of the poet shows his humanitarian
perspective and makes it quite clear that his only commitment is to write about
the plight of the common men and to restore their dignity. It is this essential
thrust of the poet which provides the book with humanism.
The poet
presents the harsh realities of modern life in a quite clear and protesting
manner. About life he says in his poem.
‘Life’:
an endless
tale of
vales, dales
and hills
from the
black holes of eternity.
a dance set
to tune
of Master
Divine.
Showing his
deep Concern for the human predicament in modem time he says about the
individual in the same poem:
mere cog
in the wheel
of time.
No will
but ordained
to act and dissolve
from dark to
dark.
His only goal
that life will be really very beautiful when it is devoted to the search of joy
is very clearly expressed in his poem ‘In Quest of Cheerfulness’:
Search for a
berth where
Ebullient
chill warms
And hatred,
stip-teased
Like Snake
shedding its slough,
And love buds
forth
Like a white
lily.
That
sprinkles cheerfulness around.
Life has been
presented as a puzzle, a map and petals in the poem ‘Life -An Enigma’. What
matters much is that one should have only perceptive eyes of an astronomer to
read and drink its beauty:
Life lies
spanned
in the palms
of hands,
like a map
on the table
in an
observatory.
The poet
chooses not only life but touches upon even manifold objects of nature for
poetic expression. Poems of nature include ‘Behold Her Atop the Tree’ ‘A Day in
Rains’ and ‘Spring Tickles in Blood’. Even heavenly bodies, clouds, rain,
mountain, plants and animals make up for his images, metaphors, similes and
symbols. In the poem ‘Life and Death’ he says’:
Heat is life
Coldness, death.
Cold is not
only considered to be a cycle of nature but a synonym of death and heat of
life.
We find a
great resemblance between the theme of William Wordsworth’s ‘The Solitary
Reaper’ and Chambial’s ‘Behold Her Atop the Tree’ When he says in the
concluding stanza of the poem:
O Beholding
her atop the tree
That dances
in the wind
And She, like
a fairy.
Fills the
valley with her sonorous song.
In the poem
‘In Broad Day Light’ the destructive power of native in the form of anger is
expressed very convincingly:
For Some
Queer reason
river loses temper.
swells and roars
and runs down
a lass working in her filed.
In the poem
‘The Jungle of Hyenas’ it is “the fire” that “Singes the mind”. We find: the
effect of rain in the poem ‘A Day in Rains’:
Floors flooded
young and old
in vain
try to keep the water out.
The poet like
P.B. Shelley gives vent to his optimistic view in the beginning lines of the
poem ‘Spring Tickles in Blood’ When he says:
With the
death of December
Come new
hopes and aspirations
Spring is
like a flight and flutter when:
Spring
tickles in blood
Images
flutter wing.
Nationalism
which has been one of the important themes of modern poetry is also a striking
feature of the poems of Chambial. In his poem ‘Upon the Snowy Heights’ he
has highlighted the feeling of
patriotism of the Indian soldiers towards their motherland. It is undoubtedly
one of the finest poems of the book which is a moving tribute to the Indian
soldiers who sacrificed their lives fighting bravely for the defence of their
country on the Kargil heights. They surprised the whole world through their
mighty fight.
While going
through the book from cover to cover the reader encounters a host of spruce images which only Chambial’s
imagination can spin and the reader finds himself lost in beauty-gazing, image
after image rising higher and higher on the plane of ecstatic joy and finds
himself completely satisfied by the time he closes the book. But his poetry is
not only creation of imagination, but fully engrossed in the milk of humanity
and seasoned with the meat of experience of woe. He has made it stand on the
firm rock of realism. His imagination takes into consideration almost
everything of the world from the unfoldment of the petals to the suffering
humanity and the multi-faceted aspects of nature and life. A very beautiful
comparison between man and animal has been established in the poem. ‘The Same
Marigold’. Man and animal are different and yet alike because they “Pluck at
the same sun”. ‘The Jungle of Hyenas’ is a fine poem in which the image of “a
jungle teeming with hyenas” has been used in order to describe the community
and the world around him. ‘The Gujarat Quake’ is the longest poem in the book
in which the complaint is against the maker of the universe who is not
mentioned anywhere in the poem but the devastation that is unleashed is very
furious. His concern for a world with devastating problems brought about by
injustice and social evils is crystal clear in the following lines:
It needs time
To dispel
trauma
From
terrified hearts
And time
to raise
towers
From
terrified hearts
From the heap
of debris.
(The Gujarat
quake)
The poet does
not spare even the politicians of the present time and their hypocrisy and
crookedness. He makes use of animal imagery for this purpose in the poem
‘Vultures and Crows.’ Vultures and crows who stimulate “Swans” stand for
hypocritical and power hungry breed of politicians and their crookedness has
been very beautifully suggested by the use of the word “Swans”. These masters
of falsehood and double dealing have been visualised through an unforgettable
animal imagery:
Wallow like
pigs
In a dirty
ditch
Messiahs of
stinking multitude.
Death is the
profoundest and most awe inspiring certainty in man’s existence which makes for
its tragedy. The unexpected and often premature end of youth and beauty
constitute the sharp sting of death and its triumph over frail mortals. It
fills a wide space in any anthology of verse. There are a number of poems in
this book which mourn death. The dark jungle symbolises, mirage and approaching
death:
The jackals
howl
as the dark
jungle moves in.
and shadows
lengthening
to infinity
dissolve in
dark.
‘Green
Memories’ is written on the death of a three year old child. Death has been
presented under many guises in the book. Cyclone took many precious lives in
Orissa in the poem ‘I wonder at His Judgment’ which is written in the form of a
villanelle. Earthquake causes large scale destruction in ‘The Gujrat Quake’.
The poet presents a very lively but horrible picture of devastation of human
lives in Yugoslavia. It speaks of ‘Sirens deafening sounds’ and “grass” growing
in “blood’. We can hardly find a poem like ‘Death by Fire’ describing the
snatching of lives of people by fire. It consumed hundreds of students and
parents celebrating D.A. V. centenary in 1995, killed hundreds of people in
1997 assembled for Nigomanado convention at Baripada in Orissa and burnt alive
hundreds of devotees to death at Macca in the tents of Haj pilgrimage. We find
a very thought-provoking image of death in the poem ‘Dust into Dust’:
Death these
days
never knocks
at door
Comes flying
on wing.
There is a
poem expressing anguish over the loss of values. The world suffers from moral
void. The poet says in the poem ‘The Moral Void’:
Here the milk
of man is all dried
Devoid of
daring, cowards for sooth,
‘Virus’ is a
poem of vehement criticism on traitorous behaviour of man
Man, the
noble deed of God
Made in His
own image.
Is rotten, A
heap of debris
Big mansions
erected
on the ground
of ethics
Fall down
like sand dunes in storm.
Simplicity
and clarity are two important qualities of his style. He never uses difficult
words. There is no obscurity in his metaphors and images. His thoughts may be
difficult to understand but he always expresses it in the simplest of words.
His poems show his command over metaphors. At its best there is a precision and
economy in the use of language and a profusion of images drawn from nature and
also from animal world. The use of colour, light and shade in his imagery is
very impressive. His reference to a “Tree pink with hope”. (Captive Sun) and
the mention of “love budsforth like a white lily” is highly captivating The
imagery of night in the poem ‘A Day in Rains’ is also not less fascinating:
The night, Crystal clear-
Smoky shutters slither away like the veil of
a newly wedded bride
before her husband in a secluded room.
Chambial’s poems contain the
imagery of warfare, fire and volcanic disaster. Thus, we come to this
conclusion that the poet has a vision of a happy and meaningful existence of
man on the earth. He has also a love for life which can bring happiness and joy
to mankind and which is the basis of universal peace and human harmony. Every
poem in the book claims the attention of the reader with its own quality and
innovative thoughts and fascinates the reader with enhancement of interest to
read the poems more than once.