Shiv Kumar Batalvi Lived in Dark

[BoxerBunty]

I wish to add my own appreciation of the man who came in our life only for a few brief moments. I had not heard of him in India and met him for the first time when I went to receive him at Heathrow. I was not aware of his poetry either.
During all his stay in England I had never found him sober, but he was wonderful to his onlookers, a joke to his critics, and an enigma to himself. What I have written so far is the expression of a mixture of feelings that Shiv generated. But he had something really unique in him which would have him a place of pride among poets of the Punjab. He will be remembered long after his contemporaries would be forgotten for having brought to the Punjabi Kavita a true expression of the Punjabi cultural panorama.

Although he has written on a variety of themes, the main theme in Shiv-s Poetry is Chet, Chandni, Joban rutan, Bhalke - nah - rehna. He writes

Phul di mahek mare
Par agg di mahek na mardi.

A flower does not die only its odour disappears

That is why he wished after death to become first a star and then a second choice a flower to pervade on the earth and sky, be here day or night. A shining star gives its odour in its twinkling - the fire of love. Shiv was himself a fiery person. His laughter was tinged with fire of inner grief and showed a perpetual depression - a fiery depression. He was depressed, is no doubt.

--Main niki umren sara dard banda baetha
eadi joban rat lahi dard kenwars hor deo-

In the parts of the Siwaliks there grow wild trees of har sangar (cyctanthes- arbor - tristis). The whole tree flowers around the early hours of the morning and fully grown white - dreamy - tinged with orange flowers fall down almost in rain before daybreak. It is a wonder-ful sight to see this spread of flowers, a massacre of youthful beauty. These are picked up, wovwn into garlands and tied around hair knots by young village lassies. Bushes of chamba and chambeli have also fully grown white creamy flowers that fall in the same way, but not so spectacularly. Chambe-di-kali flower buds are more commonly attributed to chamba. I am sure Shiv as a child must have been impressed by this dramatic death of the full grown youthful flowers, dying at the height of life. This became Shiv-s ideal -

-Chambe da phul sajra naio tur paina-

He grieved to see the death of a Chamba flower -
Aj ik chambe da phul moea
Gal paona de pa ke bahin
Gora chetar chham chham roea
-Asaan te joban ruten marna
Mur jana asan bhare bharae
Hijer tere di kar prikarma.

These lines are a superb poetry as an example of delicate sensitivity in expression. He filled sadness in the refreshing dew on the fallen flowers - as chham chham roaa and confirmed his faith in the transmigration of the soul.
He was truly a poet of nature-flower-soil-death and life, threading these into a garland of laughing sadness.
-Pa tandan de thaknan
Kis lei katna
Oah nah aapna
Tan asan kis lai katna hor ji-
He wanted to go -
-Ni jinde main kal nahin rehna-
Asan kis khatar hun jina
Is miti kise chuman da phul
Kade nah ditha khiria-

He was a lover of colour and beauty but with these he wanted purity integrity and respectability. He complained of -Widwa rut- Widwa joban

Whatever personal and impersonal emotion Shiv experienced he spread these to the outside nature. His outer and inner nature became one many a time, and one waited for the other for the union.
-Marua khirna babul Ji,
Jad chetar mur aawe-

In every aspect of nature he found an image of death - a phenomena which was unique in Shiv. He said -

-Main chaonda haan aaj da gora din
Aanaei maot na mar jae-