Reflections on Mahendra Bhatnagar's Philosophy of Death by A K Chaturvedi

A. K. Chaturvedi
Reflections on Mahendra Bhatnagar's Philosophy of Death
Mahendra Bhatnagar with 18 published collections of poems to his credit occupies an important place among the distinguished contemporary Hindi poets of India. A poet of high stature, Bhatnagar has been widely acclaimed as a versatile genius and literary luminary gifted with in-born poetic competence. A number of his poems have been included in the curricula of a host of Indian universities and school Education Boards. This article is exclusively based on the contents of the poems that constitute his 17th poetic collection titled Death-Perception: Life-Perception.
Death is the last reality of life and marks a great final change. It is conceived as a bitter and ineffably painful experience of life that no living being can escape or avoid howsoever powerful he may be. Like other knotty problems and riddles of life, the riddle of death has engaged the attention of a host of thinkers, poets and dramatists across the globe. Considered as a serious subject, death has been treated by them in different ways. Some of them have treated it as a cruel enemy, while others have regarded it as a gateway to the other world. Bhatnagar's perception of death is worth attention. In his poem, 'Gratitude', he holds that there is a co-relation between life and death. If the transience of life makes death acceptable, the inevitability of death increases the beauty and desirability of life. Swayed by the attitude of gratefulness, the poet in his next poem, 'Gratitude: Again', gives credit to death for the metamorphosis of this world into heaven and of men into higher beings.
One of the important features of Mahendra Bhatnagar's philosophy of death is a blend of pessimism and optimism. In 'The Wheel of Death', the poet expresses his pessimistic views about the ferocity of the wheel of death that indiscriminately destroys all animate and inanimate things. The following lines of the poem reveal his pessimism by calling it pitiless:
Cruel is
the wheel of death
very cruel!
Under which
lifeless - living
gradually grinding and changing
every moment, every minute!
This earth rocks horribly!
'Contemplation', also represents poet's cynical approach to the riddle of death. The poem begins with a question mark on the rationale of human efforts to know the mystery of death and ends with the glum revelation that:
All efforts futile -
to explicate
the meaning of death;
it's very intricate, difficult
to contemplate.
'Conclusion', another poem also begins with the same negative mood, but he grows surprisingly optimistic in the last lines of the poem quoted below: "The mystery of death / to be unmasked … revealed / sure / sure / some day! "
The poem, 'Free from Worry', reveals poet's keen awakening to the impact of the fear of death on human mind. According to him, talking about death is considered ominous for the reason that the very thought of death makes life dull, burdensome and unworthy of living. While 'Contemplation' represents his negative approach to the enigma of death. 'The Truth' shows that he is very positive in his perception of death. In this poem, he regards the fear of death as a boon in disguise. He is of the view that if it had not been for the fear of death, the divine attributes, like the fear of God and faith in his benign power, would have been conspicuous by their absence in human mind. Haunted by the fear of Yama, man turns to God for succor and seeks relief in belief. The poem, 'Puzzle', is interrogative in both form and sense. The universal question as to where soul goes after leaving the body perplexes poet's mind. Under the spell of perplexity and puzzlement, the poet utters: "Unknown, / Everything unknown! / A pitch dark night, / Everything / Mysterious!"
Death has many forms. It may come in any form at any time. In 'Forms of Death', the poet talks of two forms of death—natural and accidental. Natural death signifies the endless sleep, the cessation of active life and stopping of the palpitation of heart. Accidental death, on the other hand, means the termination of life by suicide or murder. But the final result of both forms of death is always the same. As the poet puts it: "Be death natural / or accidental / conclusion is the same - / end of a conscious life."
Birth and death mark the extreme ends of life. Dr. Bhatnagar has drawn a contrast between them in his poem, 'Life-Death'. Questioning the propriety of jubilation at birth and lamentation at death, he asks:
Birth:
Why a jubilation?
Death:
Pain …!
Why?
Birth-death
When equal?
Drawing a line of difference between birth and death, he writes:
Birth -known,
Death - unknown!
Birth - beginning
Death - end,
Birth - initiation
Death - an earthly end!
Bhatnagar's analysis of birth and death is, at places, paradoxical. The poem, 'The Opposites', holds the view that death is different from birth in that it brings forth a cry or loud lamentation as opposed to birth that causes jubilation. Another poem, 'Equal', puts forth the view that true wisdom lies in treating birth and death identical in connotation.
Extreme pain at the death of a dear and near one is a natural phenomenon. Humans have no option except to bear it and bow to His Will that is considered the Supreme cause of death. Through his poem, 'Sakhi', he suggests reconciliation to the game of death as a palliative. But, this soothing proves ineffective in the case of the untimely death of a child or a young person. This thought forces the poet to contemplate and wish in his poem 'Desire' that all children and young men, nay-all, should live long. The poem, 'Philosophy of Death', presents the essence of poet's perception of death. In the opening lines of the poem, the poet questions the very logic of being afraid of death and suggests that instead of fearing death man should remain prepared to welcome it with gaiety:
O, tell death -
'Come; when you please.'
At this time
come,
Let's sing and dance!
Play on varied musical instruments!
In the poem, titled 'An Invitation', the revolutionary in Mahendra Bhatnagar wakes up all of a sudden and invokes death to come at its appointed time and lead him to hell so that he may unite the victims of cruelties of Yama and hoist a flag of revolt so as to prepare them for a change in life. How can the dictates of Yama bend those who did not learn to yield to the dictates of the earthly rulers? With his indomitable will, the poet vows to lead the sufferers of hell in a fight against the cruel rule of Chitragupta, an official in the court of Yama who keeps record of righteous and unrighteous actions of living beings. His confident and indomitable sprit manifests itself in these lines: "I'll challenge them! / just, let me jump into the hell-pond! / Just, let me mingle / With the huge crowd of / Hell-denizens!"
The poem, 'To the Fairy of Death', presents death as a naughty girl who always prefers to surprise her lover by her sudden appearance. Here, the lover in the poet shows his preparedness not only to welcome death as his beloved but also to happily accept its sudden arrival as a part of its game. Not only this, he restlessly waits for the point of time when he will enjoy the blissful company of death. The following lines show the poet's preparedness to face death gladly:
Come
O death, come
I'm ready!
Awaiting you
I've bedecked myself
I'm ready!
Having regard to the feminity of death, the poet, in his poem, 'A Request', extends an offer of his friendship to death and requests it not to be shy of responding to his offer. Here, the poet has personified death as a female friend who likes to be teased and taunted while being accompanied to the land of the dead. The poem, titled 'The End', describes death as the cessation of all struggles and activities associated with the journey of life. In the first stanza of the poem, the poet raises the question as to where the struggles of life have gone. The following lines of the poem provide a solution to this question with the use of simile: "Everything stood still / The running, jumping, the liquid river water / Everything frozen - / like blood in veins!"Each and every moment of our life leads us to death. No living being can escape the mighty hand of Yama. Human efforts can affect miracles. But when death comes, all efforts fail. The only thing that we can do in the face of death is to reconcile ourselves to its game and it is only herein that true wisdom lies. Weeping over death is absolutely foolish. To bring this fact home, the poet writes:
Early or late
all
in an eternal sleep have to fall,
dust unto dust!
O unfortunate!
Then, why to weep?
The poet compares death, in 'Truth', to the flight of a bird and declares all human efforts and prayers meaningless in view of the impending disappearance of life-bird with no possibility of its return. In the next poem, 'Preordained', the poet espouses the universal truth that the departure of the life-bird is predestined and no power on earth can protect the body from being reduced to ashes. As he puts it:
It is preordained that
You
one day
renouncing name and fair form
will be reduced
to ashes!
Man's fear of death stems from his ignorance of what may happen to him at the time of death and where death may lead him. It is for this reason that he does not want to register in his mind the bitter fact that one day death will detach him from the worldly things that he fears to lose even in dream. But the great saints and poets have preached to happily accept this bitter truth and mentally adapt themselves to the conditions death may lead them to. The following lines divulge Bhatnagar's preference to accept death:
O immortal death!
You may consider me
helpless,
end,
I voluntarily
accept you,
accept you from body and mind! ('A Proclamation')
There is no denying the fact that truth eludes in the beginning and dawns in the end. In the first few poems of Death-Perception: Life-Perception, Mahendra Bhatnagar's discernment of death is marked with fear and perplexity. Here, he regards death as invincible, "uninterrupted … unchanged" ('The Wheel of Death'). Towards the end of this collection, the poet's fear and apprehension, doubt and delusion disappear and are replaced by the conviction that death can be defeated by following the path taken by the great ascetics like Gautama the Buddha. The poet vents his determination, in 'An Ascetic', to overcome death by singing "songs of life at the edge of doom". Thus, his poetic competence is a weapon in his hand that he intends to use in the fight against his impending death so as to defeat it in the manner a successful warrior defeats his enemies in war. The poems discussed in this paper outline his philosophy of death which is rewarding to the mortal human beings to redeem them from the psychosis of death.
Work Cited:
Bhatnagar, Mahendra. Death-Perception: Life-Perception. Trans. D. C. Chambial. New Delhi: Indian Publishers' Distributors, 2002. (All references to poems are from this edition.)