Questions for You
Anuradha Sharma
*First appeared in Stephen Gill”s Poetry: A
Panorama of
World Peace. Ed. Prof. KV Dominic.
1. Does the realization of the Flame also give pain?
A.
Realization is the destination and destination is the stage of
liberation from desire and desire is pain.. The normal
desire even for health leads one to organize a schedule for rest, diet and
physical exercises. Physical exercise itself is painful, but the result is health that is liberation
from sicknesses. A mother carries the baby of her desire. The birth of the baby
is painful. The realization of the Flame is a state of liberation
and the culmination of this
liberation is bliss.
The realization of the Flame is also
light and in the light one can see the hyacinths of wisdom which spring
up fresh and green from the soil of love
and peace. Realization is to know Truth and Truth
is peace and peace is the realm of Divinity.
A candle is meant to be placed on the table to lighten every corner. Brutes put the candle
under the table of their self-glory. In the darkness, they cannot see children,
women, wives, friends, anyone. They
flash their swords,
killing everyone whosoever comes within its range.
The darkness
is the absence of knowledge and knowledge is to find the rock of truth.
Separation from the Flame caused by brutes is painful as it is for a lover who is separated from his beloved.
This pain has been highlighted in parts seven and eight of the
Flame
2. Do you think the lap of the mother has been preparatory for
these maniac messiahs as you wrote in the preface of the Flame?
A. The laps of mothers give warmth to shape muscles to
build the future of peace and prosperity. The best time for a mother to give this
warmth is when she tells a story, holding the child in her lap. Studies have confirmed that the children who have been
touched, caressed, kissed and hugged by their parents constantly in an aura of
love score high marks in language and IQ tests. It has also been confirmed in
studies that the babies who received massage from their parents before going to
bed fell asleep faster and more comfortably and shared their feelings of love
easily with others when they became adults.
A new study reveals
that children who are spanked have lower IQs. Researchers at
The maniac messiahs are these chimpanzees who are from the loveless
atmosphere of childhood. They experience abandonment in their formative years.
Because of this abandonment, they develop warped views, accumulating the
destructive arsenal of lovelessness. They take
revenge on society for the love that was denied to them. They have nothing pleasing to share with others. They become emotionally deformed and amputees.
They fall easy prey to cunning politicians and religious fanatics who present
distorted pictures of
life after death to snare them. They become suicide bombers
because inside they have emotional explosives. They look for opportunities to
use them.
3. Don’t you think that these terrorists are mentally
sick and need help? What type of help should be provided to them? Do you think
that a sympathetic approach towards them will bring peaceful result? Give you
views on this stating to what extent literary activities can be helpful in
addressing the burning issue?
A. Everyone is angelic when he or she is born. It is the indifference in the lap of the mother, and later the smithy of the books they read and the company they associate with that shapes their angelic nature into the nature of maniac messiahs. There is hardly anything that can be done for these emotional bombs. The cancer of some of them reaches the stage where no physician can help. They become robots. The key is in the hands of their masters.
The ideal path is to educate mothers
to stop raising these cancerous cells.
Poverty has nothing to do with this cancer. A child born in a wealthy environment can
also develop these emotional bombs which can be manipulated by politicians who
are ready in the garb of religious persons to use them. Only education can
help. Some minor cancers at the early stage can be cured in a healthy
environment of love and education if detected.
One thing that can be done is to
deny oxygen to these cancers, called robots. Their masters have formed a sophisticated net to
finance their brutalities in the garb of
religion. In fact, they have a political agenda. Their network collects
millions of dollars in drug trade, kidnapping, extortion and also from foreign
donations. It is difficult to cut off the line of oxygen because some nations and
private donors help them for personal
reasons. A large
part of their money comes from criminal activities.
To monitor every nation and to keep an eye on donations and activities under the modern system which allows them to be sovereign and free in their domestic affairs is almost impossible. Nations are divided along religious and non-religious ideologies and there is not even a single person or organization that is trusted by all. The UN is one to some extent. But it has no power to implement its decisions. To stop oxygen to cancerous cells, it needs cooperation among all the nations of the world that is a dream because every nation has its own agenda. The easier way is to strengthen the hands of the UN to make it a more democratic and representative body with more muscle. This will turn the UN into a democratic parliament of the world based on the ideology of partnership for the safety of the mother earth. It is a dream to achieve it under the present circumstances. The fact is that the world is close to the mouth of complete annihilation unless this dream comes true. Sooner or later, all the nations will have to form a democratic parliament of the world.
However, everyone, including creative artists, should keep doing their
work. Frustration does not help anyone.
4. How man can be
civilized in true sense not in the way where he performs animal activities
having a mask of civility on his face? Do you think prevailing education system
can educate him to be a thinker having feelings for his fellow men by
developing respect for all the religions?
A. The prevailing
education system has failed in producing reasonably responsible citizens. This
system is based on competition and survival of the fittest. I have written a
research article on this subject under the title of Development of
Internationalism in Universities. I have discussed this problem in this
paper in detail. The article is available online and on my web site.
5. Is the condition
of the world deteriorating or improving after untiring efforts of decades by
the leaders and writers like you? To what level are they successful in solving
the problem of terrorism?
A. The condition of the
world is improving in some quarters and deteriorating in others. Terrorism is
on the increase and it would continue increasing under the prevailing
circumstances. The worst nightmare is that these terrorists will be able to get
hold of nuclear power. They will not mind unleashing it on themselves and
others because for them there is no child, mother and benefactor. The whole
world is worthless to
them. They are like anarchists who will destroy the whole world
because it is corrupt. These terrorists are more concerned with their life
after death than with the life on this earth.
Some irresponsible regimes are working on getting nuclear power. Either because they are inefficient or due to
corruption or the unsafe environments within those nations, these terrorist
groups can get hold of the
engines of mass destruction. These groups are becoming more and
more powerful and
knowledgeable.
It is encouraging that
there are also groups that are actively engaged in spreading the gospel of love
and human rights. They have also succeeded to a great extent. However, the
world is a house divided. The only hope is the UN and this single organization
does not have muscles to implement its decisions on nations because it accepts
their sovereignty. The power of veto of permanent members is also an
impediment. It is a depressing situation. Hopefully something will emerge out
of this prevailing chaos.
6. You always talk
of your painful childhood experiences in
A. Please go over canto fifty-two
(52) of the Flame, along with a few others in sections seven and
eight. I will quote a few pertinent
lines below:
Receive me
eagerly
a
battle unending
I need support.
Hold me ardently
a
root unprotected
I need the breeze.
Accept me readily
a
lamb unclaimed
I need good shepherd.
7. Do you have some happy memories
about your days in
A. What sort of happy
memories do you expect from someone who has passed his formative years in
I find
8. Please share what did you feel
when Amitabh Bachchan was
given the title of the ‘Man of the Millennium’ in 2001.
A. Amitabh
Bachchan is a role model in the entertainment
industry. He deserves
Man of the Millennium Award for
discovering techniques for
self-promotion and evasion of income tax.
9. Do you think
poverty, illiteracy and terrorism are inter related?
If yes in what order these problems should be tackled to make the world a
livable, lovable and peaceful place?
A. Terrorism has
nothing to do with poverty. The terrorists who targeted
10. Does your poem
the ‘Flame’ bear some autobiographical suggestions?
A. Artists combine
personal experiences with the experiences of others and also something from the
imagination, adding
and deleting, to get across the message. In this struggle nothing remains
pure-- neither autobiographical nor non-autobiographical experiences. To try to separate both is like trying to
separate milk from the water that is added. The best way is to read the
biography or biographical writings of the poet, including interviews, to know his or
her life. I try to explain some reasons in my prefaces that lead me to my
creative work.
In a way every poem,
every article and every word of a writer is autobiographical because it
represents the way he or she thinks and that
way of thinking is shaped by the family and social surroundings. This
leads to the fact that humans are products of their environments. World literary
masterpieces are
filled with fine creations because it is
not difficult for a poet to find painful material from life. To find smiles from the treasury
of life is difficult because often they are not there. An artist has to manufacture those smiles in the
laboratory of imagination. The
manufactured stuff is not lifelike. I
am also a product of the environment in which I grew up. Many literary critics
have shed light on this aspect.
Sometimes, I have to adopt a persona to
separate the poem from the poet to conceal self-identification. Often poets
need symbols to hide themselves. This is to create the objectivity of a play to
some extent. To illustrate my point
concretely, let me quote a few lines from the Flame that is the subject
of this question. These are from canto sixty (60) which is often compared with
a poem of Tagore:
Where love is not suffocated
Or another
canto, number 53:
If the pangs of separation
ever prick me
I shall clap the soul of the night…
Or when the poet talks of himself in canto 52:
Receive me eagerly
a battle unending
I need support.
Cares me carefully
a rose tethered
I need tenderness.
The above lines have a persona
that may suggest something about the frustrating experiences of the poet
because of the social and religious environments or things like that. These poems talk
about love. The pronoun I is involved in these poems. To express experiences, real or imaginary,
a poet adopts a persona. The poet uses this technique as a veil. It is a forgivable deception for which the
art is often used to hide the truth from
the reader. Persona, a word from the Latin that means a mask, conceals the actual face of the
poet.
11. Do you feel that everybody is
suffering in the world,
trying to survive by suppressing his/ her inner voice. Is it a form of
terrorism? How can it be addressed?
A. Everyone is
suffering in this world for one reason or another. Buddha identified desire as
the cause of suffering. The moment a
person desires to have a new car or a new house or a new job, suffering takes
its root, causing stress and anxiety.
One way to reduce suffering is to get rid of as many desires
as possible, not by suppressing them but by understanding their true
nature. Some of them may not be important. A person may elevate his blood
pressure for nothing by putting too much attachment on fantasies or unimportant desires. Moreover,
fulfillment of a desire is no guarantee that the anxiety or suffering will
stop. Fantasy is one example. They are never satisfied.
Some desires are necessary like taking extra courses to make
life better. There is suffering involved but this desire or suffering is
desirable. It is based on a motivation. One can pursue this course of action to
fulfill the desire without much pressure or attachment. Elimination of some kinds
of personal desires
through reasoning are important because they lead to immoral
acts. Such desires include the desire to kill or steal. Some desires are necessary to eliminate for the
common good. For instance,
Certain dictatorial regimes may have laws to stifle democracy. This includes the
right to criticize the government in a constructive way. During an election,
the media provides information to the electorate to be able to make decisions.
For this reason, there should be a free flow of information. Sometimes,
national governments suppress the media to the
free flow of information because the free flow of information may not be
in the interest of the government. That suppression is against democratic
values.
Some individuals may suppress their inner voice because of
fear of some sort or to abstain from hurting others. Normally the inner voice
is referred to as the voice that represents the Divine Power. Every being has
the spark of Divinity that is often dimmed or clouded with negative desires,
including hate, greed and violence.
The inner voice may also refer to the exploration and
examination of oneself deeply and constantly through relaxation
techniques. It is listening to the
silent sound that
springs from heart. When the inner voice becomes louder and clearer,
revelations are born. Gautama, Christ
Gandhi and great artists, including Dante and Michael Angelo, listened
to their inner voices that represented Divinity. This inner voice is the voice of peace—it is
These
talents are the coins,
not to be kept buried.
These talents represent the light that is to be kept on the table, not under
the table. Not to use this light for fear or for any other reason is of character. It may also indicate that light or the whisper, called also the
inner voice, is not strong enough to goad and guide a person to be able to
implement it. Its suppression
may result in psychosomatic ailments, including depression and unhappiness.
This inner voice is with every human even before he or she
learns to speak and understand. It is also called intuition or a spiritual
guru. To listen to it is
exploring oneself. A
person can master
techniques to communicate with the inner voice closely through
prayers and fasts because this way the window to worldly desires can be closed
to open the other window.
There is every possibility to confuse the inner voice with something that
is originated in the mind or with something that is the result of brain wash or
lack of love that dims the spark within. If that inner voice does not meet the
conditions of love and peace, the main attributes of the Divine Power, then that whisper
is not from Him. God is peace, and peace is the other side of the coin that is
love. God send his rains and sun for evil as well as for righteous people. His love is unconditional and
for all. The inner voice represents that Being. It suggests a
path to travel for
satisfaction--for happiness and fulfillment. There is also the pain of loss because to
gain something one has to lose something. Desire and pains go together. However
that pain becomes meaningful and desirable.
Terrorists do not suppress the insidious desire to eat the flesh of peace
They plant the shrubs of brutalities
with the water of their rage. Lost in the wilderness of perplexity, they terrorize citizens, turning the world of freedoms upside down for
their political agenda. They soar in the realm of their delusion to commit
horrendous crimes against humanity.
They do not represent
any religion, and any
community. They have a clear political
design to achieve.
12. In which category of the poets you put yourself-- Romantics
who take refuge in poetry, Modernists who are perplexed by the way of the
contemporary life or to some other category?
A. I don’t think I belong to the
pigeon hole of any school or category of poets. As a creative writer, my job is
to write without paying attention to any category. I have written an article, titled Symbolism
With A Special Reference To My Poetry. On this subject. One can Google to
find it.
However, I have discovered some
similarities of my poetry with the nineteenth century French symbolist poets.
How much similarity is there is anyone’s guess. I believe, some literary
evaluators will write about it some day. I have stated in this article:
Symbolists also refer to a major
literary movement of the second half of the 19th century from
I would like to add that the subject of my writings
is peace. The problem that has been posed by terrorist groups in the
twenty-first century assumes different
shapes. Modern terrorism is a new phenomenon. I can say with confidence that no
poet in the world has written so much about peace and social concerns as I
have. There are poets who have written good poems on peace and even terrorism.
But no one has given his or her entire writing life to this aspect. Most of my talks,
interviews and writings are connected with peace. To isolate peace from my poetry is
isolating roots from tree.
13. Why all Diasporas lament for their lost land and try to gain sympathy of
the people? Why don’t they try to create a “Swadesh
in Pardesh” like Gandhi created one for himself and
others in
A. It is wrong to use diaspora for every immigrant,
worker and tourist abroad. They are gold
diggers, or may have been abroad for another purpose. To expect them to create
a “Swedesh in Pardesh” is
like expecting milk from a dry cow. I
have discussed this subject
in my research paper titled
Mythical Interpretation of Indo-Canadian Diaspora. I have stated:
Diaspora essentially is
a bitter experience of dislocation that leads to alienation, a sense of loss
and nostalgic desires. It refers to that particular class of immigrants who are unable to go
back, primarily because of the hostile climate of discrimination in the country
of birth. The hostile climate is intolerable in the land of birth and tolerable
in the land of adoption. Usually Diasporans are not
happy anywhere, and suffer silently.
I have tried to
catch their inner self to
some extent in “Refugee” in my
collection Shrine:
I have gazed
into the graveyard of their
eyes
often grabbing
the dry bones of their
silence……
A smoke of uncertainty
surround them like fear
and the albatross of
loneliness
sits upon them
like a paperweight (p.76)
The “dry bones of their silence” due to hostility are seen nowhere among
Indo-Canadian writers. Their writings do not reflect any trace of hostilities,
because the climate of intolerable discrimination is non-existent in the
country of their birth, and is tolerable in the country of their adoption. Indian immigrants in the global age are aspirants of new
affluence. Indian immigrants to
14. Do you feel there is a need to
bring Herculean change in the technology in
A. Any development in science and
technology is helpful in solving educational and other problems.
15. Do you feel we are killing our
own vernacular languages by giving so much importance to the English language?
English medium schools are growing like Mushroom leaving students in a vortex failing
them in the lives, a Western style of living and the rustic to which they now
feel to be unfit.
A. There is change everywhere and
this change will continue even without English. It has to do with science and
technology which have shaped the world into a village. Fashions, taste,
ideologies and concepts are impacting one another more than ever in this
village. No one can blame language.
What is Western influence? Does it refer to smoking and drinking or anything
else, or wearing Western dress or the availability of medical care and clean
water to everyone? In this global village, citizens in
On the positive side, history
affirms that Indians are adaptable to changing circumstances and this is the
main secret for the survival of the Indian culture that itself is a blend of the Aryan
and the Native cultures. There have
been changes in Indian cultures for centuries and this change will go on.
Change is the law of nature. However, there are intrinsic strengths in Indian
culture that have not
changed in these centuries and these strengths will remain unchanged for
centuries to come.
It is notable that
This area cannot be taken care of
unless book publishers become more professional. I am happy to note that more
and more educated and qualified Indians are getting into book publishing that previously attracted mainly printers and
booksellers who did not have even a
high school education.
I would suggest that universities
should have the position of poet or writer in residence for a few months to one
or two years. Also universities should have one or two foreign teachers of
English on their staff.
16. Every nation of the world is
free and sovereign. You say often that their sovereignty is a danger to world peace. How it can be a
danger?
A. National governments provide
certain services to their citizens, including the services for protection of life and property. Problems arise when governments become sovereign with no
authority to control them. When every government starts arming itself to assure security to
its people from external aggression, real or imaginary, wars become inevitable.
The security of the people is endangered when countries become sovereign and
fully independent of one another. This leads to clashes among them.
Sovereignty or complete independence
of national governments is the reason for the failure of the UN
to prevent several wars. The UN recognizes the right of all the nations of the
world for self-determination and to resist interference by any foreign
authority in their domestic matters. As
long as national governments remain independent in the international
arena, clashes are bound to arise. To stop those clashes, there have to be some rules
and laws for all the nations of the world to observe when they deal with one
another. A parliament of
nations will make those laws which will define clearly the
limitations of national governments. A democratically elected world parliament
will see in the first place that such a situation does not arise. If it does, it will deal with the
warring nations appropriately. Armed clashes between nations have been taking
place primarily because one of them is the aggressor and deceitful. Or the
reason could be that the one nation wanted to swallow the land of the other
nation.
Presently, the world is like a large
house which is
unsuitable for living because several workmen with the help of their individual
plans and skills and without any design have built it. The world has international institutions but
there is no world authority to organize them. The world has become a global
village, but this village is without its mayor and councilors. National
governments have failed to bring sanity to the insane situation, primarily because
they are not based on the principal of cooperation and sharing for the good of
others. Every nation thinks of its own citizens first.
If the world is to be turned into a
safer place to live, it is vital to pass laws to control arms through
legislation. Otherwise the demonic power of sophisticated arms that humans have
created will destroy humans for ever. To avert this situation, the world needs the next step in the
development of human civilization and that is to form a democratic world
government above all the national governments. If the law of the sea, the law
of diplomatic immunity, the postal conventions and civil aviation can work,
then the parliament of the nations can also work.
Space travel was not achieved in one
day. Other scientific and technological discoveries were not made in minutes
either. It took years of research and dedication. The same argument applies to
this parliament of the world. After the formation of nations, now is the time to form a
world parliament. This does not mean that national governments will go away. It
also does not means that
national languages and cultures will go away. They all will continue to exist as usual. The national governments, as
provincial governments are at present, will have jurisdiction over their marked
boundaries to enforce their sovereignty. These governments will hand over a
part of their sovereignty to the international parliament to deal with
international affairs.
To maintain sovereignty, every
nation at present has armed forces and intelligence agencies. When a parliament of the
world is formed, there will
not be any need for them.
At present, citizens are governed by a set of laws framed by their respective governments. They will continue to be governed this way.
However, their
national governments will be governed by
the government above them as provincial governments are governed by the federal
government. The parliament of the world will restrict the powers of the
national governments to produce and to arm themselves
against any possible or imaginary aggression. Assurance against any aggression
will be the domain of the world parliament. This is the way to make the world
free from wars and to stop waste on arms preparation. This will save billions of
dollars that every nation can invest on schools, to open hospitals and to give
better care to its citizens..
17. Would you please like to comment
on your upcoming projects in the near future?
A. I am working on several projects. One of them is a novel
and another, a literary work on Indian creative writers of today. In addition,
I keep working in several minor projects, including writing articles and
papers. A large part of my writing life is taken by writers who need pieces of
advice and those who want me to write preface/ introductions for their works or
write comments.
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