Friday, November 18, 2005

Poets True Celebrities Of Earth

All true art is the expression of the soul. Poetry is no exception. In one his haikus of
his recently published book “Golden Horizon” Dr. Biplab Majumdar says,
Indian poetry
Springs from nature and ends in
Deep spirituality.
which is true. Indian ancient culture is richest in the history of the world.
The great sage Shri Adi Shankaracharya once came across a poor old woman
who offered a small fruit with great devotion. The sage was so moved that at that instant
he created and uttered a sloka in the form of poetry that gold coins showered from the sky on the old woman.
Else where in the planet too, the old folklore played a great role in foretelling the calamities of Nature.
For example in October 2004 issue of National Geographic Magazine in an article about U.S.A.’s Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in Pacific Ocean says, the sequence of eruption of volcanoes is clear in Hawaiian legend. What described in chant and song is the metaphor for what really happened. Scientist now regret it was all in the stories if they had the foresight to look there first.
Now let us look at tsunami of 2004. In Hindu cosmology the universe is created anew out of the cosmic ocean, over and over again, each time, it begins with a golden
age (the Krita Yuga) and ends in a time of social disorder and individual wrong doing
(the Kali Yuga.)
The flood now becomes the doomsday flood, or dissolution (pralaya), which comes at the end of the last of the four ages of the Eon.
In the oldest Indian variant, from about 900B.C. (the Shatapatha Brahamana) , the first human being, Manu (the Indian Adam), finds a tiny fish who asks Manu to save him from the big fish who will otherwise eat him (“fish eats fish” is the Sanskrit equivalent of English “dog eat dog”, a phrase designating anarchy); the fish promises. In return to save Manu from a great flood that is to come.
Manu saves the fish thus not only himself alone but all creatures with the help of the fish which is the incarnation of Lord Vishnu. More significantly, the myth is now part of the cycle of time, involving fire as well as flood, what Robert Frost called “Fire and Ice”.
So poetry is for the future and not only of the past. Hence poets are true celebrities of this planet; along with adventurers , explorers and scientists.