A poem is a mystical entity and radioactive matter – Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, in conversation with Dr. Sarita Sharma
Dr. Sarita Sharma is an academician, author, poet, translator and life coach. She is a TedX speaker who moves around conducting workshops on creative writing, communicative skills, translation, personality development and body image.
Sarita: In your writing, Dr. Anand, how do you navigate the space between what is deeply personal and what becomes universally relatable?
Anand: A poet knows the art of turning his personal joy and pain into a universal hieroglyph. In fact, all joy and pain that we experience, even if we call it personal, yet, it belongs to the universe. I mean, every joy has behind it a universal script. For example, when we define joy, the dictionary tells us how we experience this feeling. And these moments are not personal but universally relevant. In this way, all the personal joy that we experience, has a universal reckoning.
Common people focus entirely on their personal happiness. But, poetic sensibility enjoys a simultaneous connection between the individual and the universal. A poet’s world includes the joy and pain of the world, and it is rarely that he talks of his own loss. Moreover, he has the power to universalize his experiences. In fact, we have a dual existence. We are what we are, a physical entity, but we have been taken off from a larger cake, to which we do not stop belonging after being cut off. Our individuality has no meaning unless we relate ourselves to the cake/block from which we come.
Is there something you find yourself returning to in your writing-an image, a feeling, or a question that refuses to leave you?
Every day, we move out of ourselves, into different directions, perform various tasks, which relate to human existence, to keep ourselves going, and then, by evening, we return to our home, we close in, and have sleep, so that the same actions could be repeated the next day. In this busy life, we are not living only on the physical plane. Our minds are always on the run, memories, feelings, moments, wishes, passions, desires fears – keep up their road march up and down the lanes of our consciousness. There is one question which keeps bothering me. I am a human being, and temptation is a very common issue with humanity. I always wish to keep my mind clear of thoughts which harm others. It is more because I want to keep myself in a state of peace. I know, what disturbs our peace is when we start playing foul with others. Harm starts, the moment we start thinking such thoughts. Again and again, I wish to remain free from these issues, and be helpful to the creation. I believe in cosmic responsibility and a sense of natural fairness. Last night, when I was having a post-dinner walk, my son was telling my grandson, who is eight years old, but wishes to be a cricketer that he will ask his coach to get him into the team which plays at the academy level. The little one interrupted instantly and said, “No, it would be cheating. I want to get whatever I can without any help”. This is what I have always looked for, and tried to practice in my life. I am happy my grand-son, at this little age, knows what is fair and what constituted ‘cheating’, and this is the feeling, of the fair and unfair, to which I return again and again.
What, in your view, is the responsibility of a writer in today’s world, especially when silence and noise coexist so strongly?
The writer has to negotiate between silences and the noise. The noise is a signifier of life, which then, stands for the civilization, and silence, which represents the absence of noise, is feared to mimic death. The poet has to define the silence as well as the noise, critically for the benefit of common man, for whom this world is rather too complex. Those who remain silent, are not necessarily the wiser people, because I recently introduced the concept of ‘Artificial Wisdom’ which means, people choose silence over speech, when they feel they are courting danger. Even animals can sense danger, man is far superior in artificial intelligence, which tells him, silence is golden, while speech is silver. A poet hazards into speech, even when he knows silence is golden.
Do your poems begin as emotions seeking words, or as words that discover their own meaning along the way?
Of course, it is emotions which are in quest of words, in order to load themselves into meaning. Once, emotions are wrapped in words, words then move forward, and find their own lanes. There is a central emotion, which is the fountain head of the flood of a poetic commotion. I start giving it a shape, and then, just as small rivulets start flowing as there is rain in mountain ranges, rivulets of emotions start from unknown sources, and flow into the main body of the poem. No poet knows how a poem will begin, and how it will end, because along the way, who knows who will join this arduous journey of creation. This is what accounts for the mystery. I would like to use the expression, ‘the poetic mystery’ because the creation of poetry is a mystery to human intelligence, it cannot be decoded, nor preordained, and when the poem has been created, it again presents a tempting mystery. Even now, it poses a challenge to human perception. A poem is a radioactive matter, which radiates eternal messages, which are universal, but not identical, because the receptive mechanism of the readers is vastly different and divergent.
Do modern retellings of epics expand their relevance, or risk diluting their original essence?
Epics are examples of creative genius which deal with eternal questions, transcending time and space. Man has physically changed a lot, but emotionally and spiritually, his evolution is doubtful, because, as civilization has grown, and science and technology have brought in comfort and luxury, the human stuff, his emotional being and his spiritual content have gone down. In this way, the epics hold great relevance even for the man of today, whose intent and content as a human being has suffered decline.
So far as my epic writings are concerned, I believe that man needs to redefine the meaning of those creations, so that it finds relevance in the realm of altered reality. So many things which have become irrelevant, can be discarded, but the message of each epic on which I have worked, has been given sacred space. In the present era, where man’s humanity is under siege, and he is under grave threat of consumerist culture, and loss of values, those epics hold greater value, and they need to be retold in the modern context. In the backdrop of the great ‘Mahabharata’, and Lord Krishna’s ‘Bhagwad Gita’ when we talk of ‘karma’, our discourse gains greater intensity.
Trekking beyond the original theory of ‘Karma’, I have made certain interesting observations. In one of my articles, I challenged Newton’s third law of motion, referring to the theory of ‘Karma’ where I said that the third law of motion is flawed, because, action and reaction are neither equal nor opposite. According to Bhagwad Gita, nobody knows the fall out of his actions. In this way, the article subverts Newton’s theory. Recently, in my epic ‘Revelations’, again there is a reference to the theory of ‘Karma’ where resting my views on this theory, I have observed that individual responsibility for an actioin is not enough. According to the concept of Associated Responsibility, instead of indicting one person for his crime, we should arraign all those formative forces which helped a man in his crime. Thus, the epics which have stood the test of time, when reinterpreted, do not find their message, diluted in any way, rather, it is reinforced.
Dr. Jernail S. Anand, with 200 books to his credit [20 epics] is a Chandigarh-based polymath, whose seminal work ‘Lustus: The Prince of Darkness’ challenges the moral complacency of our era. Founding President of the International Academy of Ethics, and Laureate of Charter of Morava [Serbia], Seneca [Italy], Franz Kafka [Germany, Ukraine, Czech Rep] and Maxim Gorky [Russia], his name is inscribed on the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. He is an Honorary Member of the Serbian Writers Association, Belgrade. Anand has built a poetics that unites ethics, Vedic spirituality, social critique, and the philosophy of meaning. Anand presents an articulated perspective on poetry as an instrument of planetary consciousness. A moral philosopher, professor, and international speaker, Anand has devoted much of his research to the ethical dimension of language, to the responsibility of the individual within a globalized society, and to the relationship between matter, consciousness, and transcendence. Email: anandjs55@yahoo.com.
Bibliography: https://sites.google.com/view/bibliography-dr-jernal-singh/home
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Read: Poetry is not a Romantic Luxury
