Krishna Sastri: Man and Poet

An untamed head of hair, worn rather long, a square face which is an anathema to portrait painters and photographers, a thin vermilion line on the forehead, not necessarily indicating any strong religious propensity, a wide mouth and a pair of eyes with a mischievous twinkle in them, are Some of the features of Sri Krishna Sastri’s exterior which have come to be associated in the public mind with the picture of ‘Bhava Kavi’ in the Telugu country. Those features have been the subject of ridicule for the poets and scholars of the old school and have become the symbol of revolt against a dead tradition for the literary men of the new generation.

Those were the days of public meetings and public recitals. Poets of the new school formed into a sort of brotherhood and actually accosted each other as ‘brothers’. Though it looks a bit too naive at this distance of time, the attachment was genuine while it lasted and was more impersonal than blood brotherhood. Poets of that age have not merely created a new school of poetry, they have also created their own platform and their own public. In Sri Krishna Sastri the movement found a powerful protagonist.

There are very few who have made public speaking as much of an art as Sri Krishna Sastri has done. He is witty without being common, lucid without being prosaic, brilliant without pearing pedantic. I sometimes feel that what would have been his greatest contribution to Telugu purpose is lost to us for ever, as none of his public speeches have been recorded. The prose he writes, excellent in its own way does not come anywhere near the prose of his public speeches. His written prose is merely good, but the prose of his speeches is great. He is a brilliant conversationalist with a Highly developed sense of the ridiculous. He loves company and all the good things of life, and is always cheerful. But Krishna Sastri of ‘Krishna Paksham’–his first book of short poems–presents a paradox. He is a lover who has last not merely his Love, but even his capacity for love. The poems leave a feeling of emptiness beyond all possibility of hope. He says of his life:

“My life looks strange even to me, sometimes lit up by the soft silvery moon, and sometimes shrouded in dark shadows.
“Among the purest and loveliest musical notes, do I sometimes hear bitter wails which break the heart. I wantonly search for the highway among the ugly bye-paths. Knowing that it is poison, I drink it to satiety, throwing away the goblet of nectar.”

The prevailing mood of the book is epitomised in the following lines:

“May no one feel pity for me! Who do you think I am? I am the Lord of the dark, desolate land of sorrow. Have you not seen me holding my court at the midnight hour of death, wearing my crown of thorns, in my palace among the darkest clouds, and cleaving the heart of night with my terrible songs of woe, to the tune of the wails of owls?”

These poems appear to have been written under the stress of a great calamity. They present to the reader, with frightening power, a state of mind almost bordering on morbidity, which one would never associate with the ever smiling, cheerful Krishna Sastri of normal life. The answer probably is that he is a dual personality. It is difficult to say which of these states of mind is real and which the escape. The poems are the outcome of a great emotional crisis and possess an unparalleled intensity of feeling. The same mood pervades his second book of short poems, ‘Pravasam’, though the mood is softened a little. It is pain and despair in recollection that these poems portray, rather than the stress of actual experience of pain. In one poem he says:

“If every tree, every flower and every song the birds sing, that rise on either side of the path I tread, melt into nothingness, even as the strange twilight of the evenings, can my fragile life bear the loss?

“Even as the footprints I leave on the endless path of life, the imprints of many many happenings are there on my tender heart, like the stars embedded in a dark sky, like the rustling tunes piercing the land by silence.

“When I look , each footprint, glowing with eternal life, puts new cheer into me and gives me peace and strength to plod on my path, into the unknown realms of the future.”

‘Urvasi’, a third group of short poems, contains some of the finest lyrics ever written in Telugu. In these poems, his imagination reaches out towards glimpses of the Divine. His love sheds its mundane associations and his heart longs for communion with Beauty devoid of form. But even here the doubts and the despairs of the former mood persist. He says to his
beloved:

“You are the diamond-studded feather that adorns the emerald crown of the Lord of the three worlds, whereas I am a streak of sheer darkness crawling amidst the lonely lanes of an underworld.

“I can only claim your hand in the vast abode of the sky lit up by the stars, the moon and the sun. How can you come down to me? Oh, how can I rise up to you?”

The opening poem of ‘Urvasi’ recaptures the mood of the former experience in wistful, elusive phrases. One feels the softening down of despair even in the bitter self-reproach the poet indulges in:

“Many a jasmine was trampled under my ruthless, stony tread. Oh! How I searched and searched for a single flower to put on my dust-laden head!

“As my foolish, longing looks stretched this way and that, there was not a single flower, in all this huge garden, that did not close its petals and shrink away from me.

“Where the stifling darkness spread from the corners of my eyes, there was no fragrance, no honey and no beauty. I was disease, I was old age, I was death.”

But the song of hope rises like the dawn on a rainy day, half afraid of itself and hesitant:

“Are they the jingling steps of the dancing spring? Or, are they the lovely rustlings of your saree, that flash in my eye and whisper in my ear? Are they the receding steps of winter in the four corners? Or, are they the desperate sighs of old age at the time of the final parting, that flee with fear like dim shadows?

“Is my life going to become today the garden of Heaven where eternal spring reigns? Or, is it going to be the glowing eastern sky of the early dawn, a life rid of its shackles, or a glow penetrating the mask of forgetfulness?”

When these three series of short poems were published as a collection, it had a mixed reception, some acclaiming it as a landmark in Telugu poetry, and others decrying it as hopelessly morbid. But these poems exerted an abiding influence on the minds of the younger devotees of the Muse. A series of subjective outpourings have emerged during that period, some genuine and some simulated, though most of them ended as mere echoes of a great voice.

Krishna Sastri is a very sensitive artist. He achieves an unique effect by skillfully concealed assonances, and by breaking the natural pattern of the classical metres with rising periods of phrases and sentences which have a pattern of their own. The way he has made use of the ‘Geetham’–a very simple Telugu metre–is not merely novel, but has opened up immense new possibilities. He seems to have imbibed in himself, the secret of the masters of the Telugu language of all ages in verse composition.

There is another quality which marks him out as a master-craftsman in lyric composition. It is a trick of his to qualify concrete material things with abstract adjectives, achieving an elusive and, at the same time, an arresting effect. In one poem, while describing the advent of spring he says:

“Groups of tender mango twigs abound everywhere,
red like the bunch of desires that is my heart.”

Instances of this type can be cited by the score from his lyrics and poems. It can be said without exaggeration that no other poet of the present age is as good as Krishna Sastri, in putting to the fullest use the innate music of words. His words not merely balance an idea, but they balance a sentence as well from the musical angle. Common words acquire rare echoes of sound, of sense, in the peculiar contexts where he uses them. As he often says, he is keenly conscious of the fact that of a hundred words having the same prose meaning, one and only one fits into a particular context. For him, a word does not have meaning alone, it has a colour and smell as well.

He has written quite a number of plays for the radio, which, unfortunately, have not been published in book form so far. There are, among them, purely lyrical plays like, ‘Sharmishta’, lives of great Bhaktas like ‘Dhanurdas’, and great events of mythology like the ‘Birth of Sri Krishna’. The prose he uses in his dialogue does not distract one from the essentially lyrical qualities of these plays. It leads up to, and becomes one with, the songs and verses which are the highlights of these plays. It is impossible to bring out in translation all the charm and beauty of the original. But I shall render a few songs from these plays into English, merely in illustration of what 1 said earlier.

‘Sharmishta’ is the story of King Yayati who regains his youth for the consummation of his marriage with young, lovely Sharmishta. The story of the earth shedding its garb of old age with the passing of winter and its rejuvenation with the coming of spring, are the undercurrents of thought interwoven into the main theme. The play starts with ‘Hemanta’ (winter) Singing his swansong:

“Why do you make this farewell so painful?
I cannot tarry here any longer,
but must hurry on my journey to my home
on the misty distant shores.

“Is the fire of this warm oven falling into a
slumber of exhaustion?
These chrysanthemums weep and weep, out of
a sense of frustration–And the girdle of Lodhra
flowers slips down tired and faded.

“My mantle of mist flutters, hesitantly before lifting.
Oh! How pathetic is the call of the sighing winds?
Perhaps the northern door has gone a little ajar now!”

‘Aruna Radham’ or the Chariot of the Sun is the legendary story of the Vindhya mountain arresting the passage of the Sun, until Agastya makes it bow down and clears the passage for the Sun, when voices mortal and divine sing in chorus:

“Oh! Is that the herald of the dawn, Aruna rising at last! There the night retreats to its abode in the nest or the cave. Oh! Behold! On the stony summits of the eastern hill, the hoofs of horses drawing Aruna’s chariot sound sharp and swift.

“Look there, the diamond crown of the hill of Sunrise fills the eastern garden with creeper-like patterns of light. Listen, there rises the voice of the earth, its purest and sweetest melody filling the very depths of the sky.

“Oh! Joy untold is ours, for, the cool breeze must have started moving its limbs. Or else, wherefrom are these unseen effortless fans working!”.

In the ‘Birth of Sri Krishna’, when a group of Gopis rap on the door and ask the door to be opened, Radha sings:

“You ask me to open a door which is never bolted, and it makes me laugh. When the Love that is in slumber in you and me awakens, where is any door, or the need to open it? When our Lord has made the entire Universe his abode, there is neither a front door nor a yard. When the Lord follows Radha like her shadow, there is no door and no need for a shout.”

In ‘Andal Parinayam,’ there is a beautiful poem describing Andal’s pre-occupation with thoughts of Sri Rangesa as she grows up:

“Looking at the streaks of light heralding sunrise over the eastern hill, she thinks they are the glistenings of His golden yellow robe. Seeing the hovering line of clouds of Sravan in the sky, she imagines it is His dark and dainty form. Observing the white string of Balakas flying across the sky, she feels it is the garland ‘Vyjayanti’ adorning His neck. Hearing the majestic roll of thunder, she dreams it is the Lord blowing His conch ‘Panchajanya’. Seeing the golden streaks of lightning, she imagines it is Goddess Lakshmi who has made the Lord’s bosom Her abode. And she imagines herself to be His other consort, the Earth Goddess.”

In these Radio plays, Sri Krishna Sastri has achieved a balance between the two aspects of his dual personality. And so, these are the fullest expression of his entire self. They make pleasant reading, and with sparkling wit and mellow emotion fill your soul to satiety. Even when he draws your tears, he draws them out of the fullness of your hearts overflowing with joy and a sense of well-being.

In public and in private many friends have exhorted him to write a long poem of abiding interest and thus claim his place among the great poets of all time. More intimate friends have accused him of a love of easer even of laziness. Whether this accusation is true or not, I personally feel that the very method of his writing precludes the possibility of his ever writing poems of great length. I have known him labour over a line or two for hours and hours together. The word, the idea, the emotion, the music, all should blend together in him and should emerge as a poem or a song. Each one of his poems is the epitome of a long process of contemplation, of an elaborate rejection and selection of words and images. Where others would have made their poems as long as their contemplation, Krishna Sastri waits and digests the entire thought-process into a line or two. Each one of his songs is like an elaborate fresco in which each detail is worked out to a rare and laborious finish. But in spite of this elaborate workmanship, the finished pieces are marvels of ease and flow.

Sri Krishna Sastri is one of the pioneers of the romantic revival that characterises the new era of Telugu poetry. But the classical is so deeply ingrained in him, that all his writings pulsate with the life blood of an age-old tradition. In spite of the classical garb, his concepts and flights of imagination acquire a freshness and novelty on account of a predominance of the romantic element.

In Krishna Sastri, whatever is best in the old and the new find the happiest synthesis and in him the spirit of the age finds its fullest expression.