My Poetry and Me

Stephen Gill

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I believe that the language of poetry should be more compact, energetic, of greater intensity and emotional depth than the language of prose is. I also believe that poetry has no room for clichés and unnecessary words. Poetry is a villa of glorious shape where every brick that is chiseled in a unique way belongs to its exact spot. Like other arts, poetry needs revisions for perfection and there are more than one way to do that. Poets are professional workers who keep polishing the tools of their trade.
The tools of an artist keep changing while zigzagging down a labyrinth of experiences. When it is said that artists are born with talent, this implies to me that they have natural aptitude for particular skills. These aptitudes or talents are rough diamonds to be chiseled and polished to become hard, bright, precious and flawless gems. Writing is a profession and the skills of every profession need to be improved with hard work, patience and study. Constant revisions were a way of life of the masters, including Dylan Thomas, Nobel Laureate W.B. Yeats and a host of other poets. Artists strive to touch the highest pinnacle of perfection, but perfection is confined to Divine Being Who created the inheritors of His spark. Prominence is the result of years of labour in obscurity to find a market and an audience.

There is no doubt that excellent poems have been written also in the first sitting, even under the extreme of haste. As a rule, revisions produce more satisfying results. When I worked on my earlier collections, my focus even at that time was on peace and social concerns that have to do mostly with my early life. I saw the glass of peace being smashed into pieces when I was growing up in India. I developed the feelings of isolation, rootlessness and terror. The muscles of those feelings smashed the glass of my peace even during the early years of my life.

The depth of my loneliness used to get deeper when I saw people in our neighborhood visiting and being visited by their friends and relatives on special occasions. But for us even Christmas and Easter were like any Sunday because our visits were confined to church. For us children there were no aunts, no uncles, no cousins to greet and be greeted on weekends. They lived thousands of miles away on the other side of the imaginary line that was drawn overnight by politicians and religious robots over the dead bodies of innocents. Now we needed visas, passports and special preparations to undertake hazardous journeys for family reunions. Years later when my mother told us about our relatives, we used to listen as if they were fairy tales.

That was the time when I used to see the RSS (Rashtriya Swamiksevek Sangh) volunteers knocking at the doors of the boys of my age and if they slept outside or on the roof, shouting to awake them in the early hours of the morning. They were taken in front of a flag in the open areas or in the backyards of schools before those schools started. Those volunteers carried solid sticks. Nearly all those boys came from lower middle class families. Some of them were my friends.

I used to feel hurt that I was ignored. Those hurts had been deeper than the hurts of a member of the same family who is treated as a black sheep. We spoke the same language, had the same color of our skin, ate the same type of food, and shared same customs and traditions. We participated in the social festivities of the Holi and Diwali of our neighborhood. We were also born in India, as our ancestors had been. We called ourselves Indians and had the attachment with the country as Hindus had. Yet, I was never asked to attend those early morning gatherings. I tried to console myself with the thought that those gatherings may be of some religious nature for the worship of some god or goddess. Still I was growing curious and suspicious, feeling isolated.  

My friends told me they did some sort of military exercises and sang in honor of Mother India in front of the RSS flag and they used those solid sticks to practice martial arts to attack and defend. My friends asked the RSS volunteers their reasons for ignoring me. They did not receive satisfactory answers. I was not satisfied either with the answers of my friends. I began to think that they were hiding something from me, being under the influence of the RSS. In those gatherings they must be talking against Christians, advising them to keep those discussions secret. I used to look into the eyes of my friends to read if they were hiding anything from me and to know if they also had started to think that we were outsiders.

The indifference of the atmosphere forced me to think that I was different from other boys, perhaps because we went to church. I feared that those volunteers might ask my friends to give up my company. It hurts even now as I think of those days when a boy of that age had no concept of what discrimination meant. This coldness began to develop feelings of inferiority in me. I began to scrutinize the life of Christians, particularly of our family, paying close attention to the words that we used in our daily life and our dress to know if we looked in any way different from the Hindus. I began to use more Hindi words. As far as religion was concerned I could not help it because that was not my choice. I began to read religious literature to find out if Christianity was really bad. There had been times when I began to hate all religions. I began to be more sympathetic to the Marxists and Socialists because of their antipathy to religion.

My interest in the ideological aspects and practices of the RSS grew rapidly. I came to know that Hitler was favorably inclined towards India. Among several stories, the one that I remember best was about an Indian who went to a hospital in Germany for some sort of operation, where he met Hitler by chance. Hitler told the man that he had not to undergo that operation, because India had herbs to cure his ailment. Hitler suggested that in India (gur) ugri is very common and that is the cure for that ailment.

I used to hear that the top leaders of the RSS visit Germany and the RSS was formed along the lines of the Nazis. I also came to know through Hindus that the Vedas are the source of advancement in science and technology. It is the last stage in the human search for knowledge. Germany came to know the secret of the atom from the Vedas. I was told that in the Vedic times there were weapons more sophisticated than the atomic bombs and people had vehicles for interplanetary travel which did not even need fuel.

In 1947 at the time of most fierce riots between Hindus and Muslims I saw the RSS volunteers in more action. They were often seen on the streets wearing handkerchiefs around their necks. They kept eyes on the movements of families. I used to hear they prepared crude bombs. We were helpless and scared because of the smell of death in the air. We did not know if there would be another dawn and when there was, it brought tales of more brutalities. I saw old people running for help and being pelted with bricks and then burnt alive while the patrolling police ignored the clusters of misguided zealots who were in the street in spite of curfews. I perceived death dancing in the eyes of minorities, heard the cries of infants and read about the butchery of the innocent as if that was happening in front of my eyes. It was common to hear and read about women having their breasts cut off and pregnant women killed and fetuses ripped out of their bellies, while the perpetrators chanted their religious slogans. Partition of India resulted in the death of around two million people and around fourteen million were forced to migrate from one country to another and about seventeen thousand women were abducted and raped. There was chaos around.

Curfew used to be lifted for a couple of hours for citizens to buy the necessities of life. Items like sugar, rice, wheat flour and several other eatables had disappeared from the stores. If there were any, their prices had shot up because those who could afford started hoarding them. Minorities suffered this way and also because of other fears. Both the Hindus and Muslims were engaged in this degradation for religious reasons. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated because he tried to end this drama of degradation to humanity.

I began to flutter my wings to escape the prison of suffocation in search of an El Dorado of peace. The question was how and where to find that El Dorado. I began to discuss this and related problems with my parish priest who used to visit us once in a month from his church that was in a secure location about twenty miles from the place where we lived in Karol Bagh. That parish priest was either Italian or German. He could not sense our concerns for higher education and safety. His indifference began to drive me to the conclusion that safety was an individual problem.  

I came to know that to go to a safer nation; we need a passport that was not easy to obtain for various reasons in those days. Next to that was the problem to obtain a visa and above all money to meet expenses. It was almost impossible to come up with solutions when we did not have means even to settle in another part of the same city that was relatively safer. I began to hear that the West had extremely tolerant policies towards minorities. I began to dream that the West could be an oasis of no fear. I began to dwell in the world of dreams, asking knowledgeable people if there was any way to go abroad. That dream was fulfilled years later when I had a master’s degree in English Literature.

In those days, Ethiopia received foreign aid from the United Nations Organization to hire teachers. Shortly after my application I was called for an interview by the Ethiopian Embassy in New Delhi. Every morning after my bath, I began to pray for hours for the acceptance of my application. Once I met a Muslim who took me to a holy man of his religion. The holy man asked me to buy cookies for children he gathered. He distributed those cookies among them and prayed silently for a while, looking for a moment towards the sky. He told me that I would get the work though it would be difficult. Meanwhile I continued my prayers after my bath and before breakfast. A few weeks later I received a letter of acceptance from the Ethiopian Ministry of Education. It was in the early sixties.

I cannot erase the sight of my mother when I told her that I was going to Ethiopia. I turned my eyes to another direction to lessen the seriousness of the situation. She told me that she would not stand in the way of my progress, adding that she would not see me again. There was a silent pain and pride when she uttered those words with a look and twinkle in her eyes that wombed a message, meaningful and sad. I wanted to cry but the hardness of the situation had dried up all my tears. Moreover, I did not want to give the impression that I was weak inside. That would have grieved her thinking that she was not able to give me enough shelter and education. Considering her financial abilities and surroundings, she did her best. Her face that had been beaten with age, industry and anxieties has been frozen on the sheet of my memory that shall remain frozen for the rest of my life.

Ethiopia was an oasis of no fear. However, the demons of my early life continued chasing me. I kept hating nights as usual. I used to dream of soldiers holding guns and shooting at random while I was trying to escape their sight. I also dreamt of the bulls going round and round or passing me. Once in a while they followed me while I was trying to hide in rooms running from one to another or going upstairs. Other times my car went backward while I drove.

Outwardly, I appeared calm, but inwardly tides of frequent ebb and flow did not let me relax, even to enjoy a movie or a book in the real sense. I lacked concentration. Doctors said it was a condition of intelligent persons that I refused to accept taking it partly as a joke. Doctors had warned me against hypertension. Lack of peace may be one reason to seek refuge at the doors of liquors that I began to use more heavily in the evening. I developed interest in writing more seriously. Mother used to appear in my dreams whenever I was sick or upset for serious reasons. Miraculously, I used to get out of danger after those dreams. Tension remained a silent tormentor however.

One morning I received a letter from my sister that our mother had passed away. I did not feel like sharing the grief with anyone, except with Lete and Gopal. I knew that I would hear only customary words that would not mean anything. Lete, my maid, advised me to invite beggars in to receive their blessings. The house that I rented in AdiUgri where I taught had an open back yard with a fence. Now and then I began to ask my maid to invite beggars from the streets for coffee and biscuits prepared in the Ethiopian way, while my friend Gopal Bhardwaj sat on a chair enjoying puffs from his long cigar. He and Lete used to ask those beggars to pray for me. Once in a while it happened that when a beggar would see me walking his way on the street, he would offer his hand to shake, telling that he was not asking for money. I still remember the feelings of pride and joy on their faces. I used to look around if no one was watching before I shook hands.

Gopal Bhardwaj was a teacher from India who lived with me. He was a strict vegetarian, teetotaler and worshiped Shiva every morning in his room where he had a tiny brass statue of his god. I told Lete to be extremely respectful about his religious practices and prepare his food in separate utensils, using separate spoons to respect his vegetarian beliefs. I enjoyed also his vegetarian dishes. We became good friends. Often I shared with him my days of horror back in New Delhi.

I had a reliable maid to take care of the house and the company of a good friend. I received a good income and the climate of Ethiopia was hospitable. I was able to save enough for my further studies and other expenses even after sending money regularly to my mother before she died. Life was comfortable, but Ethiopia was not a country for writers. After three years of teaching, I came to Canada for doctoral study in English literature presuming that the knowledge would assist me in my chosen path. After another two years, Gopal went to Australia to settle. We continued our correspondence until he died a few years later in an asthmatic attack due to his excessive smoking.

Even in Canada I continued hating nights. I often reasoned with myself that why there were nights and why days were not longer. Nights kept bringing fear with them and sleep kept bringing dreams of soldiers, bulls and the house where I spent my boyhood in New Delhi. I kept dreaming that I was not able to walk forward. Instead I was going backward. I also dreamt that I was not able to kick a football. The only consolation was the face of my mother that I used to see in my dreams. Whenever I was in a reflective mood, I condemned myself for deserting my mother when she needed me the most. I received consolation from the fact that I was handicapped in India due to financial reasons and lack of safety that tore me apart.

I kept dreaming of the house where we lived in New Delhi after coming from Pakistan. I was sure that the seedy small house was no longer there. I still kept dreaming and feeling insecure that someone would break the door with one push to kill us. I still dreamt of being targeted by religious robots. I was not afraid of darkness; rather these were nights that brought strange feelings. I hated to go to bed. I developed the habit to work or talk with friends till late in the night until I was exhausted. I continued drinking heavily and also seriously learning the better use of the English language, particularly Canadian English. I began to realize that an aptitude for writing was not enough. It took time for me to cross all these stages of the useful knowledge and guidance to be on the road to become a meaningful writer in a competitive field and country. I began to emerge as a born again writer.

On the other level, even a long absence from India failed to heal my wounds of early days. I still get upset when I read about the growing militancy of the RSS. Such news destabilized my steps to settle down peacefully in Canada. The dreams of the house that is certainly not there in New Delhi are disturbing. It appears that these dreams persuaded me to go back or there must be some other deeper significance. News about killings of minorities in India and Pakistan brings back the bitter memories of my early days.

Here is an example of the type of the articles that bring back the bitter memories. This article is by John Zubrzycki. He observes in the Christian Science Monitor:

"Every morning at dawn a small group of men and boys dressed in white shirts and khaki shorts meets at a parade ground in the central Indian city of Nagpur to salute the saffron flag of their warrior god, Ram. With shouts of "Hindustan is for the Hindus," and "Victory to the Motherland" they break into a daily drill of physical and spiritual training that includes using a wooden staff for self-defense, and the singing of patriotic songs.

"We want all minorities to come into the Hindu mainstream, only then can we build a powerful Hindu rashtra [nation]," says Vasantrao Munde after the hour-long routine is over. "We are Hindus, we should be proud of being a Hindu."

Mr. Munde, an unemployed physics graduate, is one of around 4 million members of the secretive and authoritarian Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or National Volunteer Force. Formed in Nagpur in 1925, the RSS has grown to become India's most powerful Hindu organization with branches in tens of thousands of villages and towns around India."

In nearly every gathering of these Aryan-based and motived workers and volunteers are told that India should return to the ancient traditions of the Aryans. This is their topmost creed. Those Aryans were happy, prosperous and noble and were the source of progress in the world. The ills of India began when disunity among the Aryans began after the invasions of the Muslims and the British Christians.

In Canada, when the stories of the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Prishad) and the RSS (Rashtriya Swamiksewak Sangh) and about their anti minority stand come to my attention, my early memories begin to revive in the mausoleum of my mind. During my study of this outfit and its affiliates which are called Sangh Pariwar (Family), I have come to know that what I experienced about them during my adolescent years in New Delhi is nothing in comparison with what they do and plan to do, along the lines of the Nazis.

It is the pain of these wounds of my life in India that I carry with me no matter where I go. I have struggled to catch a glimpse of that pain in the preface to Shrine, a collection of my poems of peace and social concerns. That pain is still alive in the caves of my arteries and comes to life as specters, particularly when it is night. The more I try to escape those specters the more they torment me. That is also my well from where I have and still I draw the waters for my inspiration. I find that well inexhaustible and its water more satisfying with every visit to it. These visits are like that of a child to its mother.

I carry the luggage of my discomforting experiences everywhere. The luggage of my experiences in Pakistan is not discomforting. In Pakistan my father owned a firm to export sports goods. The break up of the country broke the financial back of my father when his business went bankrupt. He could never recover from that shock even in New Delhi, India. We had been separated from our relatives and friends and a life of a reasonable ease in Sialkot where we all were born and where the bones of our ancestors lie buried. My father could never adjust to his life of new challenges in India. He was almost psychologically dislocated. When I think of those years, it appears to me that after migration to India, he lost his interest in life.

I still remember how he often talked of his days in Sialkot with pride and joy and at the same time with sadness and nostalgia. Yet, he never regretted leaving Pakistan as subsequent events have proved the wisdom of his decision. Minorities in Pakistan suffered and are still suffering because the country has become a religious republic. Minorities fare better in India because of its democracy.

In 1991, 1 was baptized by an eye-opening experience after a reading that was arranged by a local book publisher in Houston, Texas. A woman poet who was also an artist, originally from Russia, asked me if it were possible to improve the world just by presenting poems on peace and love without giving any coherent philosophy. That was the time when I realized my restricted sphere as a poet. I told the audience my conviction that there cannot be peace or abolition of deadly wars unless there is a parliament of the world. Hardly had I finished my sentence when a church minister shouted that Hitler and the old Romans also had a dream to bring the world under one rule. Clarifying myself, I added that I believe in a democratic world government, not an autocracy or military dictatorship.

From that day, I have introduced a new element into my public readings. Usually I pause for a few minutes somewhere in the middle of my reading to say something about my philosophy on world peace, something that is not possible to detail in poetry because of its limitations.

In July 2005, there was a terrorist attack on the innocent citizens in London, England. That attack was to avenge the British Government for its part in Afghanistan and Iraq. The revenge was not on the regime or military establishment. The revenge was on the citizens that had nothing to do with that action. Some of the victims may have been also against the actions of their government in those nations. The perpetrators did not care even if the whole world goes against them for killing even children. A week before that a major in the military of Pakistan asked his sanitary worker to take a garbage bag out and burn its contents. That man could not read– he was illiterate. The garbage is alleged to have a few papers on which verses from the holy book of the Muslims were written. Some people started making noise about that. The sanitary worker got frightened and ran to his home where police arrested him for disgracing Islam by burning the pages from the Koran. Later, a mob came to his house and beat his children and his brother. Another mob destroyed a temple.

While destroying the temple, the mob came to know that the man who had burnt those pages was a Christian. They began to attack the homes of Christians. That time, police arrived. The mob moved towards the main street where they started damaging vehicles. Several motorists who came under their attack were Muslims. The mob started destroying government properties and anything that came in their way. Around three hundred homes of Christians and Hindus were looted and destroyed. The sanitary worker was tortured in prison for blaspheming Islam. He did not know how to read and write. The major was not touched by the law or anyone.

Such incidents bring my early life back during the working and waking hours and as nightmares. In those days the means of communication were not well developed in New Delhi. Telephones were not seen anywhere, except in the offices and homes of the privileged people. The words like human rights and tolerance were hardly heard. There was lawlessness around. Many people took revenge on their enemies though both belonged to the same religion. My hair begins to stand on end when I think of those days.

I have gone through the experiences that have shaped a trail to follow with the singleness of purpose in spite of pitfalls and continuous despairs. Being aloof, I began to think more deeply. My interest grew rapidly in poetry. The companions that remained faithful to me all my life consist of my imagination, pen and paper. My relationships with them kept growing more intimate with the advancement of age. As friends and my children they have never betrayed me. They keep shining on the horizons of my activities no matter where I am and what I do, confirming their worth as the rubies of beauty in my life and a source of hope for warmth.

In the month of February of 2005, I covered a heart-rending incident of Honey– a wife from Karachi, Pakistan. Some of her bones had been broken and her nose, breasts and genitals had been bitten because she refused to be converted to the religion of her husband. When the neighbors moved her to a hospital, still bleeding in her unconscious state, her brothers received threats that all the members of the family would be killed and her younger sisters would be abducted and raped if the matter were reported to the police. The news was carried also in Daily Times of February 22, 2005.

These and other incidents are the result of the mania of the religious robots. In some way, the crop of this mania has grown further. When I was in India, Hindus and Sikhs were on one side to fight against Muslims. Gradually Hindus and Sikhs drifted apart that resulted in bloody riots between them. It is the same type of crop in Pakistan. Now Shia and Sunni are bombing the places of worship of each other. Religious mania produces a fire that would continue burning innocent people. The fire that Hitler carried engulfed the entire world for years. That fire has not solved any problem. When used for political ends, this fire causes untold devastation. It causes untold devastation also when innocent citizens, including infants and normal housewives, become fodder to satisfy the hunger of the maniacs for their personal reasons. This is what happened in the days when India was divided in 1947. That fire forced me to get out the country.

Even now in the twenty-first century the situation has not improved in certain parts of South Asia. It is easy for a member of the majority group to spread hatred through misinformation against minorities using pen and speech. The result produces a suffocating atmosphere because either there are no laws against those activities and, if there are any, those laws are ineffective to try those perpetrators in courts. For a wider awareness, I began to write articles about human rights situations in the region of India and Pakistan.

In January 2001, Dr. Peggy Lynch, a prominent poet from the United States, interviewed me for her journal. She asked if I was deviating from the centre of my writing that is peace by focusing on human rights situations. I told her that I have written prose for the awareness of the human rights situation of the minorities in the subcontinent of India and Pakistan, starting with Pakistan because of the anti democratic laws of that country against the minorities. Normally laws are made to protect the rights of weaker sections of society. But the trend is the other way in Pakistan. Shortly, I included India in my writing.

Minorities in India and Pakistan suffer also due to the climate of the misinformation that is being created to produce hate by religious robots. I believe that to maintain law and order situations, it is necessary to respect the human rights of minorities. If minorities are not happy, there cannot be happiness within the territory. Systematic violations of human rights, particularly when they are state-sponsored, lead to counter violations and agitation that eventually lead to the devastation of the divided nation. Any nation that is founded on hatred and bloodshed cannot be at peace. I believe that bloodshed has never been able to solve any problem. This is one of the fronts of my crusade.                  

We are living in a global village in which hatred and unfair laws produce international reactions easily. It may create refugee problems also. Several refugees may be fake. These fake, as well as the genuine refugees, may use foreign lands for their terrorist activities. The unrest within a country may give headaches to the bordering nations. The unrest within the country hampers the growth of economical health. The worst sufferers are minorities because they are the soft targets.                           

It is in the interest of the majority to take care of their minorities. In other words, there cannot be peace in the country that does not respect the human rights of minorities. By writing about the minorities of India and Pakistan, I did not deviate from the center of my writing, which is peace. I have written several poems on the subjects of peace and shall continue writing them.                                                                                                                                      

For their writings, poets use words as rocks. History has proved it again and over again that words are the atoms of the nitroglycerin which are suffused with energy. The first poet was God who created the universe with His words. God created humans in His own image. In other words, human is also creative. At the end of every creation, He said it is beautiful. The creation of a true artist is also beauty.

To me every creation is beautiful. Poetry is beauty. The other forms of beauty are also poetic, including dance, painting, fiction and all that one can name. But there is no beauty in terrorism and the violation of human rights. There may be beauty to the perpetrators of destruction. Such destructive activities are the aberration of creativity and beauty. Violence is a disgusting aberration of beauty, and beauty is the music of creation. The systematic violations of the rights which were universally declared and adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations are the worst aberrations. Both India and Pakistan accepted the Universal Declarations.

These Declarations are to maintain peace. At present, the United Nations is the supreme mouthpiece of humanity because there is no other organization that commands respect as widely as this organization does.

Poetry is to present my vision and my concerns and to conceive peace in a peaceful way. The compelling influence for my crusade is the peace that is beauty-- the peace that is creative-- the peace that makes life meaningful. I attempt to illustrate that peace in its myriad form on the rocks of my words. These rocks shout that Lazarus buried under them longs for life.

Poetry is an art and I do not try to break rules of the art for the sake of the propagation of my views. I am a votary of beauty and beauty is peace. I use poetry also to escape. I feel relieved when I clean the glasses of the self to glimpse a panoramic view of a new island. I am at my best when my fingers tingle and my arms begin to cry. That is the time when I feel happy that I am able to communicate better with the inner self and give birth to my thoughts and feelings. I call this process a type of spiritual liberation.

I breathe in the fortress of poetry under the roof of security. Within its genial walls I strengthen the feathers of my pen around the fire of beauty while the demons of daily life surround its entrance of sacredness. I have stopped drinking because of my muse. I have learnt to coexist with the pangs of the invisible enemies of tension. Nightmares still bother me but poetry opens a gate to calmness from the neurotic world that is full of theatrical despair. Poetry opens a window to breathe the mystical power of catharsis that purifies my emotions about the mirage of the images of my early life. My mother has stopped making her presence in my ethereal realms that could be because I did something against her wishes that she expressed repeatedly in my dreams. How deeply I long for those unpredictable moments of pleasing emotions that feed the spirit of humdrum! This longing is the driving force behind the dedication of Songs Before Shrine, a collection of my poems, to my mother whose chocking moans I often hear coming from the crumbling pyramid of her pains.

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