Surjit Patar: A Candle in the Wind
– Akshaya Kumar
Punjab has been a difficult region.To speak in the language of this volatile region is an ordeal, a death-defying act. The poets of Punjab cannot afford to be poets alone, they have the cultural obligation to speak for its restless people in their idiom and ideology. Poetry, popularity and politics constitute a heady mix in the Punjabi context. Surjit Patar internalizes the outer turmoil to emerge as a poet and a person who evinces resilience and resolution to bear the brunt of wounded Punjab with an aesthetic poise, lyrical appeal, and ideological maturity. Many of his early contemporaries from Shiv Kumar Balalavi to Avtar Singh Sandhu ‘Pash’ eclipse him with their sheer poetic brilliance and energy, but unfortunately, they areconsumed by their own brilliance. Patar never pitches for flamboyant flashiness to overwhelm the Punjabi landscape with poetic activism, his has been an approach of mild-mannered well-meaning poet who never invites the wrath of the radicals, nor the backlash of the establishment. He does not ‘dare disturb the universe’, yet like a little sparrow or a flickering candle in the wind, or a waft of air, he, in his intimate non-confrontationist ways, challenges the hegemony of sprawling darkness.
A young Surjit Patar begins rather tentatively as he struggles to be heard in the din of Naxalite violence that swept Punjab in the 1970s. Obviously he fails to match the high-octane poetry of the revolutionary jujharwadi poets. Even as Pash – a cult among the virulent youth of 70s, claims a kinship with Patar, he brands him as a poet of bourgeoise aesthetics. In an oft-quoted poem, Pash compares his militant poetic credo with Patar’s rather genial ways thus:
His was the wait for the letters,
I longed for the answers.
He nursed the wounds of sparrows,
I kept looking for the falcons.
I earned my degree in hurling abuses,
he learnt the musical notes …
Placed in this kind of surcharged post-Green Revolution Punjabi environment of discontent and rage, Patar joins the chorus, much against his innate nature. He writes with rare youthful impulse:
This small bit of passion of the heart that I have
evinces a sensation, fierce.
Don’t let it extinguish, my dear friends.
Who knows it might bring the dawn tomorrow.
Patar caught in the drift of the times writes: “say wound a wound, do not declare it a flower.”
Once the fever of ideology subsides post-1980s, while most of his contemporaries – from Darshan Khatkar to Sant Ram Udasi, run into a crisis of relevance, Patar’s poetry, with its abiding melancholic ghazalesque melody, finds its natural organic verve. During the sensitive phase of what is now termed as Punjab Sankat (Punjab Crisis), his poetry navigates subtly with various registers of Punjabi cultures in a remarkably balanced manner. Taking onboard the thick textuality of Punjabi idiom, inseminated as it is by folk, sufi and as gurmat streams of poetry, Patar never allows ideology to overwhelm his poetic emotion. In a remarkably succinct poem “LaggiNazar Punjab nu” (Evil Eye has targeted Punjab), Patar encapsulates the history and pathos of Punjab thus:
First bountiful harvest of chilli, we reaped,
when Punjabis disowned their own language,
in the next season, the seeds were sprinkled all around,
the innocent people travelling [in buses] were killed.
Who were the killers, was never ascertained,
but fingers were pointed towards the turbaned …
Each line corresponds to a bloody chapter of Punjab’s recent past. Patar’s poetry becomes a cultural locus of Punjabi history – particularly its contemporary murmurings and turbulations. From the tragic days of terrorism, to 1984 anti-Sikh riots to the latest protracted agitation of Punjabi farmers on the borders of Delhi – various historical events and turns constantly nag Patar to write more, even write endlessly to articulate the pangs of punjabiat. A range of poets – from Jagtar to Harbhajan Singh – comes closer to Patar in terms of their prolificity and poetic prowess, but he surpasses them all with his accessible poetry which is acoustically mesmerizing, politically non-combative and culturally composite to take onboard every stakeholder of Punjab in its fold.
In a perpetually lacerating Punjabi present, which can stun a poet into bouts of silence, Surjit Patar goes on to write a number of collections, namely, Hawa Wich Likhey Harf, Hanere Wich Sulgdi Varnmala, Birakh ArzKare, Lafzan Di Dargahand Sarzameen with enduring conviction. Collectively these collections along with his translations and transcreations of European and Indian playwrights constitute a formidable cultural resource for Punjabis to read, rejoice and reflect for years to come. In one of his latter-day phenomenal poems “Eh Baat Niri Aini Hee Nahin” (This is not about this only), Patar once again rises to the occasion as he writes about the unending caravan and carnival of farmers as they march towards Delhi against the black farm bills. The poem has anthemic resonance, but there is no attempt at rabble-rousing:
This is not about this only,
nor is this about farmers alone,
This is about the very survival of village,
which faces the danger of devastation.
….
its heart is wounded more than its body
the pain is about the abandonment of its soul
As a custodian of Punjabi countryside, and its farmers, Patar goes on to the extent of returning his coveted Padma Shri in protest, without ever dramatizing before the media. Earlier he had returned Sahitya Akademi award also in 2015 along with a number of other Indian writers to protest against the targeted killings of the rationalists and other cultural activists.
Patar is a die-hard nativist, but when he speaks about diminishing space of village, or about the constant marginalization of mother-tongue, or about the trees that have turned into deadwood in the hope of some last-minute shower, he acquires a planetary presence, and becomes a resident of the entire earth itself:
In the end we all shall decompose,
who will remember, that we were a flower too,
some will be seen;some shall remain unseen
some shall be dome; some shall be just base beneath …
smouldering words, these shall burn
never shall they turn into lamentations
the people will understand the fire within
when it shall stand translated on the funeral pyre.
