The mystics, the ones who with their creative expression shaped our literary tradition spanning over a millennium, seem to be frequently occupied with the inexplicable phenomenon of death that generally unsettles modern mind in ways more than one. The power of titillating pleasures, real and illusory, yielded by the excessive use of countless technological products tends to lull modern man into zone of false dawn of immortality. But death with its mystery has always been a scary riddle that never ceases to haunt serious minds. It is something that has not been fully grasped though it has been challenging human mind since time immemorial.

The roots of religion and philosophy both lie buried in early human thinking over insolvable question of death. In the world of human beings consciousness of life is organically linked with the ever present palpable sense of indeterminate but destined end of the individual.

In the nature around him, the individual continually witnesses emergence of new things or similarly dissimilar things being born in repetitive cycle. What emerges eventually disappears.What has a beginning has an end no matter how strong or fit it may be. The instinctual love of life is common to humans and animals which ensures their continued existence. But the painful consciousness of life’s limited span and the sense of its being uncertain are purely human. The awareness in the shape of a lurking fear that life may come to an abrupt end any moment adds to the human anguish.

Modern rationalists and at times leftists in the name of ‘reasoning’ and ‘scientific thinking’ ridicule the mystic poets for what is described as their ‘pathological preoccupation or obsession’ with the phenomenon of death. But this would be a grave misreading. In the Punjab’s literary and intellectual tradition apparent concern with death hides something bigger and deeper; time and what it does to the animate and inanimate. An unending process of incessant changes and transformations associated with linear time is a perennial source of wonder for the mystics. Human predicament for them is, firstly, how to cope with constantly changing conditions the individual is faced with.

Article continues after ad

“The season changes, trees shake and leaves fall covering the path/ I searched every nook and cranny but found no place habitable [Farida, rutt phiri, wann kambia, patt gharay ghar pah / chaaray kunda dhundian rehan kithao nah],” says Baba Farid, the pioneer of the tradition.

It does not matter whether it is time that brings about changes or changes that point to the presence of time because the result for all practical purposes remains the same for human beings. In the face of unavoidable changes the master portrays the delicate human dilemma in fascinating existential terms.

“How long the tree on the riverbank can hold / how long one can contain water in an unbaked earthen pot (Kandhi uppar rukhra kichrak banhay dheer/ Farida, kachay bhanday rakhiye kichrak taain neer)”.

What is one to make of human life in the midst of unending changes? What intrigues or provokes mystic mind most is the most prosaic; the experience of short human life span which is utterly insignificant in terms of cosmic time. Life’s short span in the mystic thinking makes it the most significant from an existential perspective. Mystics’ emphasis on evoking the short span of the individual’s life and the fact of its being fragile and perishable has been mistaken as their disgust for life.

Shah Hussain, the inimitable naysayer among our mystics, can help us to understand the paradox when he says; “false is the world and false is its edifice like a dewdrop (Kuri dunya, kur pasaara jiun moti shabnam da)”. This line has led many a critic in the wrong direction. One must keep their mind open as poetry can be very deceptive. Making things appear imbued with deceptive quality is integral element of poetic imagination.

The world of individual and the trappings that surround it as painted in the verse are not false in the sense of being untrue or untruth. They are false in the sense of being transient and ephemeral. The fact of their being false is rooted in their impermanence. It is love of life rather than disgust with it that makes it look ‘false’.

The first half of the verse stands in sharp contrast to the second one. How something that is really false can be imagined as a dewdrop that is transparent and translucent. It is a symbol of purity and thus aesthetically soothing in its little perfection. The liquid beauty of the simile is lost on none. The falsity of individual’s world and its paraphernalia lies in their transience. It is the lust of life rather than disgust that makes the poet conceive it as a dewdrop. Life is beautiful but its impermanence is disgusting. Impermanence creates urgency that leads the individual back to life with a question; how to live in a manner that paves the way for self-fulfillment. Self-fulfillment cannot be realised in a sanitised social space or through quarantined existence,hence the mystics’ emphatic insistence on sharing and connecting with totality of life.