D. C. Chambial’s “Before the Petals Unfold”-An

D. C. Chambial’s Before the Petals Unfold: An Appraisaltc "D. C. Chambial’s Before the Petals Unfold\: An Appraisal"

Dr. Mahesh P. D. Singh

D.C. Chambial is certainly a major voice in the field of Indian English poetry being written today. He is besides a poet, a great critic and a reputed editor of an esteemed international journal. His contribution to Indian English poetry is very significant and he has many books of criticism to his credit in addition to several books of poems. He is also the winner of many national and international awards and attended the world poetry conference in 1986 held in Chennai. Widely published and anthologised in India and abroad, his poems have been translated into many languages of the world.

The book Before the Petals Unfold is the second volume of poems which was published in September 2002. It is a collection of many fine poems composed over various topics like life, death, war, nationalism and nature. It reveals the promising facets of the young poet’s poetic soul and is dedicated to the suffering mankind and world peace. This very approach of the poet shows his humanitarian perspective and makes it quite clear that his only commitment is to write about the plight of the common men and to restore their dignity. It is this essential thrust of the poet which provides the book with humanism.

The poet presents the harsh realities of modern life in a quite clear and protesting manner. About life he says in his poem.

‘Life’:

an endless tale of
vales, dales and hills
from the black holes of eternity.
a dance set to tune
of Master Divine.

Showing his deep Concern for the human predicament in modem time he says about the individual in the same poem:
mere cog
in the wheel of time.
No will
but ordained to act and dissolve
from dark to dark.

His only goal that life will be really very beautiful when it is devoted to the search of joy is very clearly expressed in his poem ‘In Quest of Cheerfulness’:
Search for a berth where
Ebullient chill warms
And hatred, stip-teased
Like Snake shedding its slough,
And love buds forth
Like a white lily.
That sprinkles cheerfulness around.

Life has been presented as a puzzle, a map and petals in the poem ‘Life -An Enigma’. What matters much is that one should have only perceptive eyes of an astronomer to read and drink its beauty:

Life lies spanned
in the palms of hands,
like a map
on the table
in an observatory.

The poet chooses not only life but touches upon even manifold objects of nature for poetic expression. Poems of nature include ‘Behold Her Atop the Tree’ ‘A Day in Rains’ and ‘Spring Tickles in Blood’. Even heavenly bodies, clouds, rain, mountain, plants and animals make up for his images, metaphors, similes and symbols. In the poem ‘Life and Death’ he says’:
Heat is life
Coldness, death.

Cold is not only considered to be a cycle of nature but a synonym of death and heat of life.

We find a great resemblance between the theme of William Wordsworth’s ‘The Solitary Reaper’ and Chambial’s ‘Behold Her Atop the Tree’ When he says in the concluding stanza of the poem:
O Beholding her atop the tree
That dances in the wind
And She, like a fairy.
Fills the valley with her sonorous song.

In the poem ‘In Broad Day Light’ the destructive power of native in the form of anger is expressed very convincingly:
For Some
Queer reason
river loses temper.
swells and roars
and runs down
a lass working in her filed.

In the poem ‘The Jungle of Hyenas’ it is “the fire” that “Singes the mind”. We find: the effect of rain in the poem ‘A Day in Rains’:
Floors flooded
young and old
in vain
try to keep the water out.

The poet like P.B. Shelley gives vent to his optimistic view in the beginning lines of the poem ‘Spring Tickles in Blood’ When he says:
With the death of December
Come new hopes and aspirations
Spring is like a flight and flutter when:
Spring tickles in blood
Images flutter wing.

Nationalism which has been one of the important themes of modern poetry is also a striking feature of the poems of Chambial. In his poem ‘Upon the Snowy Heights’ he has  highlighted the feeling of patriotism of the Indian soldiers towards their motherland. It is undoubtedly one of the finest poems of the book which is a moving tribute to the Indian soldiers who sacrificed their lives fighting bravely for the defence of their country on the Kargil heights. They surprised the whole world through their mighty fight. 

While going through the book from cover to cover the reader encounters a host of  spruce images which only Chambial’s imagination can spin and the reader finds himself lost in beauty-gazing, image after image rising higher and higher on the plane of ecstatic joy and finds himself completely satisfied by the time he closes the book. But his poetry is not only creation of imagination, but fully engrossed in the milk of humanity and seasoned with the meat of experience of woe. He has made it stand on the firm rock of realism. His imagination takes into consideration almost everything of the world from the unfoldment of the petals to the suffering humanity and the multi-faceted aspects of nature and life. A very beautiful comparison between man and animal has been established in the poem. ‘The Same Marigold’. Man and animal are different and yet alike because they “Pluck at the same sun”. ‘The Jungle of Hyenas’ is a fine poem in which the image of “a jungle teeming with hyenas” has been used in order to describe the community and the world around him. ‘The Gujarat Quake’ is the longest poem in the book in which the complaint is against the maker of the universe who is not mentioned anywhere in the poem but the devastation that is unleashed is very furious. His concern for a world with devastating problems brought about by injustice and social evils is crystal clear in the following lines:

It needs time
To dispel trauma
From terrified hearts
And time
to raise towers
From terrified hearts
From the heap of debris.
(The Gujarat quake)

The poet does not spare even the politicians of the present time and their hypocrisy and crookedness. He makes use of animal imagery for this purpose in the poem ‘Vultures and Crows.’ Vultures and crows who stimulate “Swans” stand for hypocritical and power hungry breed of politicians and their crookedness has been very beautifully suggested by the use of the word “Swans”. These masters of falsehood and double dealing have been visualised through an unforgettable animal imagery:
Wallow like pigs
In a dirty ditch
Messiahs of
stinking multitude.

Death is the profoundest and most awe inspiring certainty in man’s existence which makes for its tragedy. The unexpected and often premature end of youth and beauty constitute the sharp sting of death and its triumph over frail mortals. It fills a wide space in any anthology of verse. There are a number of poems in this book which mourn death. The dark jungle symbolises, mirage and approaching death:
The jackals howl
as the dark jungle moves in.
and shadows
lengthening to infinity
dissolve in dark.

‘Green Memories’ is written on the death of a three year old child. Death has been presented under many guises in the book. Cyclone took many precious lives in Orissa in the poem ‘I wonder at His Judgment’ which is written in the form of a villanelle. Earthquake causes large scale destruction in ‘The Gujrat Quake’. The poet presents a very lively but horrible picture of devastation of human lives in Yugoslavia. It speaks of ‘Sirens deafening sounds’ and “grass” growing in “blood’. We can hardly find a poem like ‘Death by Fire’ describing the snatching of lives of people by fire. It consumed hundreds of students and parents celebrating D.A. V. centenary in 1995, killed hundreds of people in 1997 assembled for Nigomanado convention at Baripada in Orissa and burnt alive hundreds of devotees to death at Macca in the tents of Haj pilgrimage. We find a very thought-provoking image of death in the poem ‘Dust into Dust’:
Death these days
never knocks at door
Comes flying on wing.

There is a poem expressing anguish over the loss of values. The world suffers from moral void. The poet says in the poem ‘The Moral Void’:
Here the milk of man is all dried
Devoid of daring, cowards for sooth,

‘Virus’ is a poem of vehement criticism on traitorous behaviour of man
Man, the noble deed of God
Made in His own image.
Is rotten, A heap of debris
Big mansions erected
on the ground of ethics
Fall down like sand dunes in storm.

Simplicity and clarity are two important qualities of his style. He never uses difficult words. There is no obscurity in his metaphors and images. His thoughts may be difficult to understand but he always expresses it in the simplest of words. His poems show his command over metaphors. At its best there is a precision and economy in the use of language and a profusion of images drawn from nature and also from animal world. The use of colour, light and shade in his imagery is very impressive. His reference to a “Tree pink with hope”. (Captive Sun) and the mention of “love budsforth like a white lily” is highly captivating The imagery of night in the poem ‘A Day in Rains’ is also not less fascinating:

The night, Crystal clear-
Smoky shutters slither away like the veil of
a newly wedded bride
before her husband in a secluded room.

Chambial’s poems contain the imagery of warfare, fire and volcanic disaster. Thus, we come to this conclusion that the poet has a vision of a happy and meaningful existence of man on the earth. He has also a love for life which can bring happiness and joy to mankind and which is the basis of universal peace and human harmony. Every poem in the book claims the attention of the reader with its own quality and innovative thoughts and fascinates the reader with enhancement of interest to read the poems more than once.