ENGLISH

Symphony of Peace.–By Baldoon Dhingra. (Published by Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge. Obtainable from Ramakrishna & Sons, Anarkali, Lahore. Price Re. One only.)

Mountains.–By Baldoon Dhingra. (Obtainable from Ramakrishna & Sons, Anarkali, Lahore. Price Five Annas only.)

Songs in Exile.–By Joseph Furtado. (Published by the Author, Jafferali Building, Mount Road, Mazagon, Bombay. Price Rs. Six only.)

Shells from the Sea-shore.–By K. R. Menon, Ph.D. (Published by the Greater India Publishing House, 80, Wilkie Road, Singapore, S.S. Price One Dollar only.)

Thro' Eastern Eyes.–By Nand Qomar. (Published by Popular Book Depot, Lamington Road, Grant Road, Bombay. Price One Rupee and Annas Eight only.)

It is now nearly six years since a group of friends including myself met in Mr. Baldoon Dhingra's room in Lancaster Gate to drink coffee and listen to his recital of his poems from ‘Beauty’s Sanctuary.’ They were, if I remember, immature, but full of promise; there was a ‘quickening like that of the night-sea,’ an innate rhythm that caught the ear and marked the poet. Happily Mr. Dhingra has not falsified the expectations of his friends. Today, one can say without exaggeration, he is the premier poet among the younger men in India.

The ‘Symphony Of Peace’ and the ‘Mountains’ are his latest. And I may say that I have not spent a more charming half-hour than in reading them.

There are in all fourteen poems in the ‘Symphony of Peace,’ and the restraint, which the author shows, from flinging caution to the winds is really admirable. Mr. Dhingra, thanks to his long stay in England, has developed a lyrical style totally unsuited to Indian subjects. Fortunately he does not attempt them, confining himself exclusively to neutral subjects, to praising and loving nature with sympathy and feeling. In fact, among the moderns, Mr. Dhingra seems to be the only one who still clings to earth and sings about her.

This is apparent even in his opening poem. ‘Peace’ in which he says:

And even when peace descends on him it is

The best of this small and good collection is ‘Day And Night.’ Mr. Dhingra’s imagery is powerful.

Such exquisite lines! There is in this whole poem only one weak word, ‘sower,’ that drags the brilliance of that particular stanza to mediocrity.

Some of his phrases are very good. ‘The Cascade sings,’ ‘in indolent and timeless rings’ are the two which spring to my mind.

‘Fear’ is another very good poem and the ending line, the passionate cry of the near-artist,

Keep me from that I am and cannot be.

is truly haunting.

There are, however, some weak lines and also a disregard of certain fundamental rules which go to mar the poems and detract from their just merit.

‘The Vision’ is a beautiful poem, but the opening lines are marred by

This gift of making language sing like birds……..It is such a weak line that it comes as a shock.

In the same, he has coupled an adjective and a noun which is painful to a purist.

Stream-lit, wind-music…….

I would urge Mr. Dhingra to delete the poem, ‘Factories are Eyesores’ It is so trite and full of immaturities.

‘The Mountains’ is a long poem by the same author published separately. It is Miltonic in its imagery and phrases rumble and rise like the

Mr. Dhingra has arrived at a point where his mastery is undeniable; it would, however, be of great benefit for him to pause and take stock of the position. I would like him to create a formula of his own, to shed the shackles which the Romantics have bequeathed to us. I am looking forward with great pleasure to Mr. Dhingra’s further offerings to the Muse.

I do not know whether Mr. Furtado is a Portuguese or a Goanese. In any case, his attempt itself to express himself in English should be a matter for wonder. He ushers the book into light with an apologia. He feels diffident, calling his efforts, ‘old-style verses’ and contrasts them with ‘the ultra-modern, pseudo-muse of the Waste Land.’

The poems are of a pattern long since rejected by the moderns. But Mr. Furtado has no call to sneer at the ‘Waste Land.’ He can be proud of his own achievements without tilting against his betters.

The predominant feeling one gets from the book, ‘Songs In Exile’ (we are not told, why they were sung in exile and not in the bosom of the family) is that the author is a mystic- romantic with a love of children. He seems to have no divine urge to express himself through the medium of poetry; one is driven to believe that he just sits down and deliberately writes out competent little poems that are neat and effective without being poetic. There is a smell of Christmas Crackers about them. He could have expressed himself better in prose.

In this mediocre collection stands solitary ‘The Flight’ which is very good; though he really must not say that he sold his house,

It is an unwarranted expression, and not even the desperate urge to discover a rhyme for ‘hell’ can be pointed out as a justification. Some of these poems can be prescribed for children.

There is a school boy tag, a tongue-twister, which runs something like this: She sells sea-shells on the seashore. Probably Dr. K. R. Menon got his inspiration for a title from that hissing sentence, But his poems are so frantically unpoetic that he could as well have called them by any other name–and it would not have made any difference.

Starting with a Menonesque variation of Longfellow’s Psalm of Life, the book rapidly deteriorates to

His poem to the Moon is a study in cliches. In fact, hackneyed terms abound in this book, and there is no original interpretation, nothing that resembles even remotely poetry, except the lines that are successive and rhyming. Dr. Menon’s verses can be described as those that are not written in prose-style. When he abandons the hotch-potch of various poets and is himself, he seems to be better as he is in ‘A Reservoir.’

‘Thro’ Eastern Eyes’ is an ambitious volume. The wrapper is of silver-blue, and the titles deep-blue. There is an aura of commercialism, and it is such a contrast to the plain and effective covers and the severe composition of Amrita Shergil’s frontispiece to Mr. Dhingra’s books.

This air of commercialism persists even inside the volume, and Mr. Nand Qomar has illustrated everyone of his poems with a picture–the type which is found on cheap calendars, the nightmare of January.

Probably Mr. Nand Qomar naively wants to give value for money. If not, it is hard to understand why these extremely pitiful illustrations are included.

The author, in a very effective introduction, claims to have attempted a rapprochement to the two main trends in Indian poetry–‘the age-old mysticism typical of India’s past and the so-called hyper-modern verse that has recently come to existence.’ But he suffers in the same way as the man between the two proverbial stools. He is neither fish or flesh–nor anything wonderful to behold.

Mr. Nand Qomar starts his invocation to his particular Muse with a prose prelude as to the clash of ideologies in Europe. He tries to emphasise the same discord in his first poem, ‘Cavalcade,’ faintly reminiscent of Noel Coward.

From the Prelude and the ‘Cavalcade’ one is inclined to suspect that the Eastern Eyes belong to Mr. Nand Qomar. Suddenly we discover that these eyes belong to a girl–a reproduction of whose optical organs adorns a whole page opposite that of the poem. He sings to those eyes in which he sees

and he goes on to tell us what else there is in those eyes. The poem is full of confusion,

Next he talks inevitably about Life which is to him,

He seems to feel keenly the Japanese invasion of China, the speed of modern motor-cars, and yes, even the whirr of electric fans. And there is a Christian fervour in his poem, ‘The Path of Right’ where he discovers that

In this group of poems, I do not find why Mr. Nand Qomar had had to requisition the aid of a pair of lovely eastern eyes; any pair of eyes, African or European might have looked at them with the same result. Also the claim of blending the twin trends of Indian poetry has been forgotten after the first pious statement. The verses are unrelieved, heavy with words. There are no solutions, not even a statement of the ills that threaten the world in this decade of the gracious Lord. Altogether, ‘Thro’ Eastern Eyes’ is a disappointing book.

K. J. MAHADEVAN

TELUGU

‘Vinoda-Natikalu’–‘Plays of Mirth.’–Volume the first.–By Viswanadha Kaviraju. (Publisher: Malladi Avadhani, Vizianagaram. Price Annas 8.)

Here is a collection of five short plays in Telugu which, one may say at the very outset, deserve to be named ‘plays’ and not ‘farces.’ The expression of healthy humour in Telugu is still in such a state of infancy that it is very difficult to find an attempt at humour which does not descend into farce. But Sri Viswanadha Kaviraju appears to have succeeded in maintaining a rather high level of art in humour, and one notices with pleasure his capacity to say even an ordinary thing in an extraordinary way. And such a diligent student of human nature does he seem to be; not one of the most trivial mannerisms of the typical Andhra seems to have escaped his notice. Every reader, at some place or other in the numerous plays of this author, finds himself the hero of the story, and is left in wonder as to how Sri Kaviraju, whom he never met, was able to draw such a faithful portrait of himself!

But nowhere in the hundred and odd pages of this small volume does one find a semblance of preaching; and even if a stray character does speak words of wisdom, it is only to caricature the self-satisfied preacher that daily walks amidst us.

All the five plays bear reading but special mention may be made of two: ‘Prahlada’ and ‘Dongatakam’. The former is a clever satire on the very orthodox tendency to outcaste the spoken language. Hiranyakasyapa is here represented to be the guardian of bookish Telugu and the new Prahlada is the ‘enfant terrible’: ‘Live Telugu’. This short play is replete with clever dialogue and quick satire.

‘Dongatakam’–catching a thief–is familiar on the amateur stage, and young students have been known to be eager to enact it. They love to hear the peals of laughter that Prakasam–the vain-glorious young husband–evokes from the audience when he is utterly humiliated by the ‘twentieth century thief’ who, in reality, is his own brother-in-law cleverly disguised. The young wife is a party to the imposture, and in the end all the three delight in their own drama. This play was lately on the A. I. R. from Madras.

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