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| Gieve Patel Photo Courtesy: http://www.goastreets.com/gieve-patel-depicting-human-failings-warmth/ |
Today, June 5, is World Environment Day and on this
occasion I share this brilliant, almost legendary, poem of one of our most
gifted painters, playwrights and Indian English poets, Gieve Patel (b.
1940). I know Gieve Patel, a practicing doctor, only due
to this poem, which I had an opportunity to teach to a few class 12th students
at a coaching centre in Delhi sometime in 1997-98. I think it was prescribed in
English Elective course of CBSE, and the moment I came across the poem,
it instantly cast a spell on me. (Perhaps it is also prescribed in class 9th).
The killing of a tree is of course the most obvious
part of it, but as you read it along, you find that it actually is talking of
lot of other things--friendships, human relationships, family bonds, wisdom, in
fact, about all other kinds of social and cultural bonds, so to say. It is
not with a bang--'not a simple jab of the knife''--that one can cut the tree
off, rather it requires a much deeper instinct to destroy things around,
the instinct to wipe out completely, to cut to pieces long and deep
associations to kill a tree.
Actually, tree serves as a perfect metaphor for the
inter-relatedness, inter-dependence of human society within itself and vi-a-vis
the surrounding nature and environment. It thus ultimately acquires a very
aggressive stance to underline the purposelessness, nay the impossibility, of
doing so because one would be doing that at the cost of finishing the universe
itself, so to say. Its 'root is to be pulled out', and that would require the ‘choking
out' of the sun and the air themselves: And then it is done. This
last line falls so angrily and desperately on our head that one starts to get
too restive to manage.
Naturally, a poem can be read at various levels and
one is free to have one's own interpretations of the same, but I, for one, can
not resist to look at the symbolism of environmental decay used to define
civilizational decay, where killing is not only a manual act, but rather more
about denying and annihilating the otherness of the other beings, other
cultures, other societies. A strange mix of pain, anguish and anger sustains
the poem making it a near perfect one. And I sometimes try to make out the kind of conflict that must
have been rankling Gieve, who as a practicing doctor, knows too well how killing
of life and values go against his professional calling which is essentially meant
to save the same.
On a personal note, I would like to mention the joy
that I had of interacting briefly with Gieve Patel while bringing out noted
poet Eunice De Souza's edited anthology Both Sides of Sky: Post Independence
Indian Poetry in English, where we used one of his paintings on the cover
of the book. The anthology also contains his poems, including this one. Those
interested in knowing more about Gieve can look at these and similar links:
Kumar Vikram
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Sculpture:
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On Killing a Tree
It takes much time to kill a tree,
Not a simple jab of the knife
Will do it. It has grown
Slowly consuming the earth,
Rising out of it, feeding
Upon its crust, absorbing
Years of sunlight, air, water,
And out of its leperous hide
Sprouting leaves.
So hack and chop
But this alone wont do it.
Not so much pain will do it.
The bleeding bark will heal
And from close to the ground
Will rise curled green twigs,
Miniature boughs
Which if unchecked will expand again
To former size.
No,
The root is to be pulled out -
Out of the anchoring earth;
It is to be roped, tied,
And pulled out - snapped out
Or pulled out entirely,
Out from the earth-cave,
And the strength of the tree exposed,
The source, white and wet,
The most sensitive, hidden
For years inside the earth.
Then the matter
Of scorching and choking
In sun and air,
Browning, hardening,
Twisting, withering,
And then it is done.
Not a simple jab of the knife
Will do it. It has grown
Slowly consuming the earth,
Rising out of it, feeding
Upon its crust, absorbing
Years of sunlight, air, water,
And out of its leperous hide
Sprouting leaves.
So hack and chop
But this alone wont do it.
Not so much pain will do it.
The bleeding bark will heal
And from close to the ground
Will rise curled green twigs,
Miniature boughs
Which if unchecked will expand again
To former size.
No,
The root is to be pulled out -
Out of the anchoring earth;
It is to be roped, tied,
And pulled out - snapped out
Or pulled out entirely,
Out from the earth-cave,
And the strength of the tree exposed,
The source, white and wet,
The most sensitive, hidden
For years inside the earth.
Then the matter
Of scorching and choking
In sun and air,
Browning, hardening,
Twisting, withering,
And then it is done.
Gieve Patel
(From POEMS, published by Nissim Ezekiel, Bombay 1966)
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