V.
N. BHUSHAN l
(Lecturer
in English, B. M. College of Commerce, Poona)
V.
N. Bhushan is no more! The full implication of the news I read dawned but
slowly on me. Memories of V. N. B. crowded in mind as the morning paper fell
from my listless fingers.
It
was in 1937. We crowded in the compulsory B. A. class, agog with excitement and
expectation that a new professor was to come to lecture to us. As I settled
down with the nonchalance that only an undergraduate can assume, being too
sophisticated to show my excitement, a portly figure, rather Chesterton-like in
proportion, as he has himself put it, entered. There was the usual scoffing and
jeering... some back bencher whispered, ‘Dr. Ambedkar,’ and then the Professor
slowly ascended the dais, glanced once at the class and began in a low tone,
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am expected to lecture to you on modern poetry.
Unfortunately, the book is prescribed for general reading...” Here the words
were punctuated by a smile and then followed a few neatly worded sarcasms at
the University for prescribing a hook of poetry for general reading. The class
responded with a laugh–that agreeable noise “like a thousand bees at pasture”
clearly showed that half the battle was won. Class-control, the nightmare of
many a new professor was to be a sweet dream to V. N. Bhusan. And soon the
Professor launched upon a rapid survey of modern poetry, thus lifting us soon
to the higher, ethereal regions of Mount Parnassus. The victory was now complete;
V. N. B. had beguiled our ears and captivated our hearts.
But
he was to do more. To my utter surprise he called me after a week or so and
asked me to contribute an article to the College Miscellany. I was flattered.
This was a rare experience. Never before had a professor stepped down his
pedestal so easily and naturally and broken the barriers that separated the
teacher from the taught. This was only a prelude to many a long afternoon and
evening that I was to spend at his small but artistically furnished flat, with
the pictures of literary luminaries looking down from the walls, lined by
bookshelves. I literally drank deep at this fountain of poetic imagination and
literary fervour. Prof. Bhushan impressed one as much by his keen interest in
English literature as by the ardour with which he spoke about literary problems
and personalities to a mere ‘undergrad’. Truly, if a University id formed by an
association of the teacher and the taught, here was the true University born.
Even in the star-studded English Department of the Wadia College of those days,
that boasted of such luminaries as Professor G. H. Kelkar and K. M. Khadye,
Bhushan shone with a radiance all his own. His enthusiasm and ardour were
unequalled and he had a unique gift of inspiring others with a like spirit.
Bhushan was a very successful teacher. He has very ably outlined the
difficulties facing an Indian teacher of English in his article on Lafcadio
Hearn: “The task of teaching English to Easterners is fraught with many
difficulties. Through the medium of a language not our own, we have to be
acquainted with and initiated into literature alien to us in every way. The
barriers of race and the differences in national tastes and temperaments are
indeed difficult hurdles. It is not everyone who can surmount these and make
the teaching of English a success.” It was his love for literature and
literary problems, coupled with an ardent desire to make his students share it,
that made him a successful teacher. If his style at times smelt of the lamp, it
was relieved by flashes of his poetic imagination that enlivened the dead
matter of a mere learned exposition. A romantic at heart, he was at his best in
teaching such authors as Charles Lamb, Shakespeare, and the romantic poets.
As a critic, Prof. Bhushan will be remembered
chiefly for his championship of Indo-English literature. To the typical
objection of sceptics who cannot understand why Indians should write English
poetry, his answer was, “If you understand Indians teaching English, you must
understand them writing English.” In his review of the Indian contribution to
English Poetry published in the British Annual of Literature in 1939, he says:
“The worst of all these handicaps (of Indian writers of verse in English) is
the crusade against the poets for their sin of writing in English. The Indian
crusader has to remember the fact that centuries of attachment and appreciation
has made English almost our tongue, and that it will be our loss if we forsake
English language and literature,” and again, “The question of the possibility
of Indians achieving sufficient mastery over English to enable them to be
successful writers of verse in the language is now an exploded myth. The
writings of some of our common countrymen in the past, as well as in the
present, are eloquent answers to the charges of glib-tongued critics.” And yet
be strongly opposed the view put forth by some ‘Anglophiles’ to make English
India’s national language. I remember his vigorous attack on such a view when
he presided over a lecture by a certain
eminent member of the Servants of India Society.
He
brought a very keen, critical mind to bear on literature and literary problems,
and his miscellaneous critical essays cover a very wide range of subjects,
where he handles almost all the varieties of criticism–comparative, historical,
interpretative and appreciative. One of his most significant and original
contributions is his illuminating essay on “Elia on Childhood and Children” in
which he very successfully brought to light the many observations of Lamb on
childhood and children. Another essay of great merit and originality is his
“A possible Poetic Retort”, contributed to the Humata (Bombay) in 1939,
where he has with great scholarship convincingly put forth the hypothesis that
“Browning intentionally intended his Rabbi Ben Ezra to be a sort of
reply to the supposed epicurean gospel contained in Fitzgerald’s translation of
Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat.” His “Pegasus in Caps and Bells–A
consideration of Light Verse,” shows his keen appreciation of the sprightly
humour of light verse. His exposition of Shelley’s personality and poetry shows
him to be a master of appreciative criticism. His style in these essays varies
according to the subject. At times it has extreme simplicity and directness
while on occasions it glows with poetic fervour and throbs with emotion.
But
Bhushan was much more than a painstaking scholar and able interpreter. He was
himself a great creative artist “a poet worthy of the privilege and
burden of poetry” and as such had won the highest meed of praise from such
authorities as Tagore and Sorojini Naidu, Edmund Blunden and Lawrence Housman,
Ernest Rhys and John Galsworthy, to mention only a few. In many an intense
lyric he sings of the “colour-fed glory and gladness of life” and donates the
reader with a vital thrill of divine delight. Bhushan is a lyric poet par
excellence. He has keen sensitiveness, insight, originality of expression and a
gift of couching noble thoughts in honeyed words. Starting with an intrepid faith
in his self appointed mission,
My
pilgrimage shall be a scented flame on earth
To
kindle the beacon fires of Goodness, Beauty, Truth,
the poet hopes,
“though alone but undaunted, to be a shaper of his times and tendencies of
darling dreams and daring deeds...a charioteer of the Juggernaut car of vital
spirit and vernal song.” Many of his lyrics where he sings of Radha-Krishna
remind one of the colourful charm of Sarojini Naidu. Bhushan’s originality
consists in giving a poetic description of the thought realm of a poet, the
seedling ground of many a noble idea. At times, through the splendid symbolism
of the ‘White Bird’ or the ‘Song of the Tree’ the poet speaks of his dreams and
deeds–the inspirers of his pure pulsed songs. At times more directly, he speaks
how oft a wizard mood of mystery comes over him (Transcendence):
In
those ripe red moods,
With
half-unshuttered visions streaming by,
And
delicate wonder mists dissolving
In
the Saffron-laughter of the spirit–
the poet beholds the
unmasked undertones of life, and then,
The
half known and the yet unknown
Shed
their mystic aloofness once for all,
And
leap to life with the language
That
knows not the contradictions of ephemeral things
As
a true romantic, his muse soars “far above the slush of the world’s sordid
realities”; his sensitive “soul escapes from the body’s deathcold clutch” into
the final Reality to touch life at an exceptional altitude. Many are his lyrics
in which he sings of Man, of Nature, and of God. God to him is a mystery, though
Man
made God after his own fancy and faith
As
an emblem of his power, prestige and gratitude.
He ever abides a
mystery–or else he is no God! In a charming poem ‘Processions’ the poet sees a
marriage procession threading its wa1 through the busy streets and from the
opposite side a funeral procession:
“In
between the narrow space of the two extremities
God
strides up and down with a rapture all His own.
If one of the secrets of great
poetry is memorableness, Bhushan has a number of lines, which, according to Dr.
S. Iyengar, are “compact of beauty and hence one loves to repeat aloud”, lines
like:
Far
above the slush of world’s sordid beauty...
The
sceptred symbol of hidden romance...
Ventriloquist
moans of the gurgling world...
An
argosy of magic merchandise...
A
wonder-sense of sweet womanliness...
One
has only to read lyrics like ‘The Pilgrim’, ‘Fallen Gods’, ‘Confidence’, ‘Snow
and Man’, ‘Lesson’, to realise with Mr. V. de Sola Pinto that “Mr. Bhushan is a
lyric poet with real vision and originality and gives English poetic forms a
new charm and freshness by adapting them to the expression of Indian
imagination and mystical thought. Mr. Bhushan’s poetry opens up a new field of
vision for the English mind and deserves to be better known in Europe.” I can
only close this personal tribute to one who had been “a friend, philosopher and
guide” with the hope that somebody worthier than I would take up this task of
spreading the ‘exotic strangeness and exalted thought’ of Bhushan’s lyrics and
thus enshrine him among the elect.
l
V. N. Bhushan: born at Masulipatam, 16th July, 1909; passed his B. A. from
the local Noble College; post-graduate student at Banaras Hindu University
where he took a double first in English Literature at the M.A., Professor of English
in Wadia College, Poona from 1937 to 1945. Principal, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s
College of Arts from 1947 till his death on 13th October, 1951.
Works: Poems–Silhouettes
(1928); Moonbeams (1929); Flute tunes (1931); Star Fires (1932); Enchantments (1934);
Horizons (1937); Foot-falls (1938); Dramas–Anklet Bells; Samyukta; Mortal
Colis: Anthologies–The Peacock Lute; The Moving Finger; and a number of
miscellaneous critical essays and annotated texts.