To say that poets are products of their times is an inane statement since it’s an obvious truth. Men, including the creative ones, are shaped by concrete conditions under which they are forced to live. Men of course can change their conditions but within the parameters defined by historical forces they are inevitably faced with. Poets, by and large being unhappy with the given, stand for changes and transformations but unlike political workers and activists it’s imagination that attracts them more than praxis. They are usually happy with evoking the past, depicting the present and constructing the future at imaginative plane. Whether it’s the past, the present or future, their approach is influenced subtly and at times not so subtly by the physicality of their environments though there is no harm in their living under the delectable illusion of divine madness which supposedly inspires them. Images, symbols and metaphors employed by them are organically linked with what they live surrounded by.

We can experience all this in the expressions of Punjab’s classical poets if we have a discerning eye. Baba Farid, the pioneer of Punjabi poetic tradition, after having succeeded as the head of the most influential Chishti order of mysticism in the subcontinent, decided to leave royalty-infested Delhi for a small but ancient town of Ajodhan (now called Pakpattan) a little more than one hundred miles from Lahore. This town is on the right bank of the river Sutlej surrounded by jungle known as Bar and toiling peasants’ settlements. We frequently come across images and metaphors in his poetry inspired by and linked with the phenomena of river with its life, forest with its changing seasons, food and famine, and productive peasantry and predatory landlords. Flowing waters, vessels and bird life along the banks and riverbed become metaphors of eternity and transience, spiritual flight and predatory urge, fertility and plunder.

“How long a lonely tree on the river bank can hold its ground? How long we can contain the water in an unbaked pot?” Frightening is indeed life’s ordeal. “Gone are the flocks that inhabited the riverbed / the overflowing water will too be gone leaving the eternally blooming lotus.” Look how the jungle with its changing seasons and meandering paths comes to stand as a metaphor of an absurd world hostile to life. “Season changes, trees shake, leaves fall and cover the muddy path / I have explored all the directions but found no place habitable”. He sees in a semi feudal agrarian society things turn into their opposites in an exploitative relationship. “Farid, these stalks in the pot though sugar-coated are poison / some dropped dead raising the crop, others came in plundering”.

Now let’s look at poet Shah Hussain aka Mdho Lal Hussain who lived in Lahore, the metropolis and the capital of Mughal empire in India for fourteen years during the reign of Akbar, the great, in sixteenth century. Shah Hussain was born and brought up in Lahore. We find in his Kafi, the lyrical genre he created, imagery and metaphors which had their origins in the urban ethos of that period. He shared the imagery/metaphor of river with Baba Farid because he too lived in a city close to a river called Ravi. Both the poets seemed to have incessantly heard the murmurs of serene waters and crashing of furious waves. Shah Hussain experiences the river as a pointer to ever inviting beyond pregnant with possibilities. It’s a divider that stands between the known and the unknown. “The rivers are overflowing and I am stuck at the banks”. “My lover’s abode is across the river/ I must go over to keep my word”. “I chose to be in the midst of raging rivers/ why to blame the sailors now”.

Article continues after ad

Sixteenth century witnessed a rapid growth of textile industry and consequently the social assertion of segments of population associated with it. Earlier, in the aftermath of Bhakti Movement, the rise of artisans had heralded a new vision of individual and social life underpinned by notions of equality and equity in caste and class-driven hierarchies. Shah Hussain employed a new metaphor of spinning and weaving to express the work as a marker of material and spiritual world. “Spin you girl/ don’t loaf around”. “Learn how to spin, you silly girl/ you wasted your entire life / you have no cotton in your basket/ your saunter in the streets will bring you no dividend”. Another verse says the opposite: “I smash my spinning wheel, shred the fibers and kick the basket”.

Contradictory nature of work is laid bare; it can emancipate you, it can enslave you. Work can be fulfilling for the worker as well as alienating. This phenomenon of alienation is remarkably expressed by Shah Hussain in a poetic fashion much before Karl Marx who theorised it in his “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”. Shah Hussain, in his verses, has two other interconnected themes inspired by urban living. He celebrates night as a metaphor of rendezvous and time of wakefulness in freedom made possible by the dark that hints at arcane illumination of city life. “The night has almost gone by but you couldn’t charm your beloved”. In another verse he says: “the night has passed in vain and with it the time to play has gone too”. Playfulness is what makes life worth living. It’s, he believes, not only a fundamental human right but also a divine gift not to be violated. “Playfulness is our destiny as ordained by the Lord himself,” he says.