Harbhajan Singh

Dr. Harbhajan Singh (1920-2002) was a leading representative of the New Poetry in Punjabi literature, which projected the loneliness and isolation of the individual in the machine age and which the poet experienced as a young man. He had been Professor of Punjabi, Delhi University. His poetry is concerned with freedom of the individual, with undertones of mysticism in the tradition of Nanak and Waris Shah. Influenced also by the English Romantics and Iqbal, his collections, notably "Na Dhuppe, Na Chhaven (Neither Sun, Nor Shade), Lasaan (Whiplashes) and Adraini (Midnight) have a fusion of lyrical, humanist and modernist elements. He received the Sahitya Akademi and Soviet Land Nehru awards, as well as the Kabir Samman (instituted by the Madhya Pradesh Government).
Apramanik (The Nondescript) taken from the collection Na Dhuppe, Na Chhaven), reflects in a lyrical vein, the feeling of insignificance experienced by the individual of today.

The Nondescript

Every night
both of us, I and the stars,
sleep together.
We, the witness to
the inflamed limbs of each other,
fight shy of disturbing each other.

Every morning
when the newspaperman awakes me
I become aware of
the entry of the sun in my home.
AH the stars go away
leaving me behind awake.

And when the woman sweeper
scrubs the back of this street
I understand very well
that the street will now run
at full speed.
It's time for me to get up
otherwise, reduced to bits,
I shall lie scattered on the pavement.
Or I shall be pierced through
by the pointed thorn of a sharp look,
like a piece of flesh
(undressed and half-baked)
which nobody will partake of
nor will help it descend
from the cross of a sharp, pointed thorn.

My door opens like a yawn
I sweep myself inside from the street.
The humidity covers me up,
as in the open air
I always find myself naked.

My wife throws into the street
the garbage of the house.
I am fearful
lest her eyes should fall on me too.                                 Apramanik (1967)