DR LALIT MOHAN SHARMA ON DR JERNAIL SINGH ANAND 'S EPIC POEM 'FROM SIEGE TO SALVATION' SEIZING THE ESSENCE

 

DR LALIT MOHAN SHARMA ON DR JERNAIL SINGH ANAND 'S EPIC POEM 'FROM SIEGE TO SALVATION'

SEIZING THE ESSENCE

Dr. Lalit Mohan Sharma

Having harnessed a creative instinct to compare and contrast, Dr Jernail Singh Anand finds himself in the presence of a thesis, confronts the anti-thesis and arrives at a synthesis between the East and the West, the ancient and the contemporary, the spiritual and the mundane, actualising in his poetry the conflicting claims of the sacred and the profane, moral ethical and the narrow personal egotistical, the precious and the spurious. In the preface to the poetic drama, Dr Anand observes that 'the siege of troy led to the exhibition of great personal valour and national honorifics, while the Mahabharata shows us the way to immortality through righteous action'. In Invocation, the author juxtaposes the two events :

How the West revels in individual

And the East in a collective destiny for mankind.

The thirteen Canto poem unravels through interaction between Chorus and Professor as they debate and deliberate in an argumentative manner on the ethical and human consequences of this juxtaposition. Other characters from the epic poems also mark with their appearance the progression in 'Siege to Salvation'. Even as 'an impersonal fate directs 'unquestioning minds' in terms of religious mythology, Anand has the Professor articulate how poor masses suffer ' not only mediaeval obscurity/ But also the identity stricken massacres of modern times'. Ancient time of the epics or the contemporary scenario, the fate of common man is at the mercy of ' vain power', for it is 'not only siege of Troy/ But also the siege of human will'. Professor wonders if ' Iliad has no moral framework'. Is it only to 'settle personal jealousies, not epical issues'. Does Mahabharata concern itself not with victory only, but victory of ' good over evil'? Only beauty of Helen is extolled, but doesn't it 'deny her individuality and personal will' ? Isn't such freedom 'imparted to Cleopatra/ And other great women of epics/ Like Draupadi and Sita of Ramayana'?

During this juxtaposition between the great epics, Dr Anand raises a sequence of questions and erases a plethora of doubts about the celebrated happenings; 1184 BC events being the reflection of the heroic age Homer recounted in his epic poems, and the Mahabharata, the great Vyas, contemporary to the epic events serialised in his work! How these great poems impacted Western literature and that of the East is universally acknowledged. Dr Anand has taken over the audacious approach to access works of Homer and Vyas in a simultaneous gesture of looking at them as a single imaginative canvas. Consequences are the lavish details Anand presents in this epic drama, leaving the reader with a freedom to arrive at his own conclusions and reflections.

Dr Lalit Mohan Sharma

Poet, Translator and Reviewer,

Dharmshala, HP.