Uncharacteristic of her canon
Darshan Singh Maini

Tell Me Ma!
poems by Shiela Gujral. Allied Publishers, New Delhi. Pages 27. Rs 90.

SINCE I have been familiar with Sheila Gujral’s poetry for quite some years now, I find her latest volume, Tell Me Ma!, different in style and idiom from her earlier books. This volume, time-wise, belongs to her period of poetic initiation, and, therefore, isn’t quite characteristic of her canon. It doesn’t belong to her oeuvre, the work of her later mature years.

This volume, a transcreation of her poems in Hindi and Punjabi, is celebratory in character. It’s one long salute to India’s pristine past, to its great men, among them, soldiers, political sages, freedom fighters and martyrs. It exudes an upbeat spirit, and brushes aside the darker areas of India’s history.

The title itself suggests its didactic character. It appears as if the poems are meant to put our young children wise about India’s rich and glorious heritage. The poem Tell Me Ma! makes the initial statement, and is quite clear in its purpose or design. That’s how it begins:

And it goes on in that vein to recall the services of Gandhiji and of Netaji, linking the present with the past. Such heroines of India’s remote past—Sita, Savitri and Damayanti—are remembered in a spirit of invocation and reverence. The noble Buddha, the saintly Guru Nanak are also recalled to initiate the lesson in patriotism and sacrifice.

In the next poem, March On, the title, again, is fairly suggestive, even transparent. It exhorts the Indian youth to "march on" and seek the new horizons of glory, and the poems that follow (25 small poems illustrated in black ink—the handiwork of Maniv Gupta) are no different in theme or style. Their hortatory spirit is extended and enlarged.

In the poem Marching Forward, the Indian soldiers defending our frontiers are given a special salute. The "path of humanism" is to be their mission. In Tiny Handa, Sheila Gujral wants our brave young children to serve all great causes and create "a new universe" free from wars and violence.

The Festive Day, Chacha Nehru’s birthday, celebrated now as Children’s Day all over India, is remembered with affection and pride, and this poem ends on the familiar note: long live Chacha Nehru. One looks, in vain, for some change in thought, theme or mood, and the reader begins to feel the fatigue of redundancy.

"The Law of Diminishing Returns" sets in, and the reader’s interest begins to flag. All good poetry has the elements of surprise, wonder, irony and unexpectedness. Here in this slender volume, our imagination is seldom tested, seldom allowed to raise questions. The verses flow on like a sleepy, little stream. In subsequent few poems also, there’s no bait offered to the imagination of enquiry. The poem Chand Mama deals with children’s age-old guardian and benefactor. The nursery rhyme, lullaby-type song connects such poems with fairy tales, though these poems do not have that fey charm one associates with poems of this genre.

In My Swing, the theme is suggestive of high ambitions that keep "the flame of spirit alive". The optimism of such poems is characteristic, and is in keeping with the tenor of Sheila Gujral’s verse in those formative years.

The only poem, in my view that seems a loner, a waif or an intruder is Fractured Universe. For the first time, there is a long lament on wars, corruption, political intrigues and chicanery that plague the world. The negative side of life seems to suggest a change, but this one sparrow doesn’t make a memorable summer.

Sheila Gujral’s later volumes such as Black Cinders Sparks (1902) and Cosmic Murmurs (2004) are altogether in tune with her new perceptions. I have reviewed a couple of her later volumes, in one of which the Japanese haiku poetry style is adopted, and the poems have oblique gnomic, epigrammatic, tangential trajectories and a sibylline charm.

Those volumes, then, define the progress of Sheila Gujral as a distinct new voice in Indian poetry. A mature poet that has come a long way from her poems of sentimental excess or extravagance.

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