If Baba Farid is acknowledged as Birha Da Sultan from spiritual point of view, Shiv Kumar Batalvi is Birha Da Sultan of love. If birha (separation) is the cause of life and blesses life with warmth and heartbeat, then poetry cannot be written without birha. It is said that poet and poetry are born after the pain of birth. In this way poetry is like a creation of the mind. To be a poet, the sense of pain is must and this pain is considered very pleasurable for poetry. Most of the poetry of the world is the poetry of separation and hijar (pain). Rabindra Nath Tagore says “There is a separated (birhani) woman sitting in my mind who teaches me the melody of pain.” (Lewis. M.John., p. 54). So pain is a sweet emotion and in deep pain, man becomes compassionate, sympathetic and harmonious. In fact the decorum of love is vain without birha. Separation is the touchstone of love. All the dirt is cleansed from the heart of a person and what is left is sane and chaste.
Shiv Kumar Batalvi is widely regarded as an unequalled modern Punjabi poet.Trawled through the landscape of romance and sorrow, his lyrical verse exploring unanswered love and the feel of death is a sacred bond between an artist and his creativity. Such is his opus that growing up in Punjab, it is common to confuse his verses with folk songs. One of the youngest recipients Sahitya Academy Award for his contribution to Punjabi literature, he is known for his deep sensibility and his emotional melodies. He not only wrote poetry but also expressed his views on different forms of literature, including character-sketches and translations of foreign fiction. A born poet, Batalvi was very popular and full of plaintive emotions in his poetry which he used to sing himself. He was highly applauded at Mushairas. (poetic symposiums) Born on July 23, 1936 at Barha Pind Lohtian in Sialkot District, his father Krishan Gopal Mahajan and mother Shanti Devi helped him in using mythological and historical vocabulary for composing poetry. He passed matriculation from Salvation Army High School, Batala, and got admission in Baring Union Christian College in the same town. Without completing his F.Sc. he left the institute and joined a college at Baijnath to obtain a diploma in Civil Engineering but the fate willed him to follow a different course and he soon had to change his entire approach to life. His first love Meena died early and became the source of his poetry. His deeply wounded cries and his deep pain was the first cause of his whole poetry. The appeal of separation in the poetry of Shiv is intense. Amrita Pritam comments on Shiv Kumar Batalvi in the book Sampuran Kaav Sangreh:
“When Heer of Jhang Sial was born, the midwife made her taste love as the first food instead of honey, and this is also equally true that when Shiv Kumar was born in Bada Pind Lothian , his mother administered water from the river of fire of pain to her son. This river Basanter flows through the waist of this village. Shiv experienced this fire during the years countable on fingertips” (Kelsey, p. 9)
Shiv presents deep pain where ego diminishes. He wrote his whole poetry by visiting the unexplored cores of female psyche. In his poem Maye ni Maye, first five lines are symbolic of aesthetics of pain. In other lines, pain is intense where he revokes self and offers his beloved the flesh of his heart. His pain leads to extreme level when he compares his beloved to a hawk and hawk is the bird that eats only flesh of the heart. “This is the greatest example of living pain where self is no more and selflessness is everywhere. Shiv consciously offers his self to a person who has plume on his head. This plume means kalgi in Punjabi language.” (Kaur R. ) Shiv is surely recalling Kalgidhar, the 10th Sikh guru to come on this earth through in the guise of hawk. He is ready to offer an invisible flesh of his heart. Only a tolerant person can understand this pain. In a poem Maye ni Maye, he postulates:
Maye ni maye!
Main ik Shikra yaar banaya
Ohde sir te kalgi
Te ohde pairin jhanjar
Te oh chog chuginda aaya
Ni main waari jaa
Choori kuttan te oh khanda nahin
Ohnu Dil da maas khuaia (Batalvi, p. 249)
(Mother! Mother!
I befriended a hawk
A plume on his head
Bells on his feet
He came picking the grain
I was enamored
I fed him choori (sweet bread)
He did not eat it
Therefore, I fed him
The flesh of my heart) (Batalvi)
Batalvi illuminates separation in his own way. He regards birha (separation) as the cause of the creation of the world. In his poetry the very life-force is separation. He embarked on immortalizing birha and wrote:
Assin sab birha de ghar jammde
Te birha di santaan
Birha bina hrek khushbu
Zindagi di bekaar
Maine milea hai tohfa birha da
Is birha de utton mere koti
Janam kurbaan (Batalvi)
“We are born in the house of separation
We are children of separation
Without separation every odor
Of life will perish
I must extract the very essence
Of fragrance,
For I have been given the
Gift of separation
For the sake of this separation
I would give up a hundred births.” (http://www.PoemsHunter.com)
Death has been the negative concept in the lives of human beings but Batalvi glorifies death in his own way. “In Gurbani and Sufism, death is regarded as the transformation from one life to another. The concept of separation and death in Western poetry is full of charm. Keats is afraid of it and feels that he will die without expressing himself in his poetic manner but Batalvi’s birha and death are soothing and mystical.” (Singh) Shiv, in many of his poems, presents marvelous views about death. He says:
“sikhar dupehra sir tem era
dhal chukya parshawan,
kabran udeekdian mainu
jeo puttran nu maawan” (Batalvi)
(Afternoon is on full
swing, my shadow is aged,
graves are waiting for me
as mothers to their sons) (http://www.PoemsHunter.com)
Death is like a life force in his life. He was waiting for this auspicious moment. He was enjoying the voyage unto death in his poem Mainu bida kro (Bid me goodbye) :
Mainu vida kro mere Raam jeo
Kossa hanjh shagan paao mainu
Birha tali dharo
Te mainu vida kro!
Vaaro peer meri de sir ton
Nain saran da paani
Is paani nu jag wich vando
Har ik Aashiq taani
Prabh ji je koi boond bache
Ohda aap ghut bharo
Te mainu vida kro (Batalvi, p. 283)
Bid me goodbye
Lord
Bid me goodbye
Gift me a warm tear
Lay separation upon my palm
And bid me goodbye
Circle pain around my head
With the sacred water of tears
To every single lover in the world.
And Lord, if a drop remains,
Gulp it yourself
And bid me goodbye. (http://www.PoemsHunter.com)
A comparison between John Keats and Shiv Kumar Batalvi is very natural. According to Jatt Singh: “When I started exploring the myth of this Punjabi Byron, for what else it could be, thought my cocky/read ignorant /self, I came across comparisons with Keats as well. Shiv Kumar Batalvi was viewed widely through the prism of English Romantic Poets by people educated in English; for the semiliterate average Punjabi, he was the emphatic poet who spoke to them directly with his down to earth metaphors, his soaring lyricism and his aching poignancy.”(Singh, 2012) Shiv does not want an easeful death rather he demands for more fresh tears and fresh pain. On the contrary, John Keats in ‘Ode to Nightingale’ wishes easeful death. When Keats hears the song of nightingale, he really loves the song that pierces his heart. In the world of nightingale, he thinks it would be rich to die. There is charisma for easeful death. In this way death would be another way to free him of all worldly cares. He wishes to die easily:
“Now more than ever seems it rich to be
To cease upon the midnight with no pain” (Keats)
Robert Frost and Shiv Kumar Batalvi, though their poetry is unmatched and they are considered at par with each other yet their approach towards life made their work vastly different. Frost speaks of hope, Btalavi talks of broken hope. Frost talks about living life, Shiv talks about idolizing death. Robert Frost in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.” (Frost)
Batalvi , on the other hand writes
“Kinni beeti te kinni baaki ae,
mainu eho hissab le baitha (Batalvi)
(How much life is spent and how much remains
This calculation has seized me) (Batalvi, melodicverses.com/)
Frost idolized love “Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired” but Shiv is disillusioned by love. Poetry of Frost expresses optimism in life but Shiv has just given up on life.
“Main te mere geet ne doha ne
Jad bhalke mar jaana
Birhu de ghar jaea sanu kabra laban auna
Sab saiyaan iko awaze mukho bol alahna
Kise kise de lekhi hunda edha dard kmana
Eh mera geet kisse na gaana.” (Batalvi)
“When I and my songs
Both die
They, who inhabit separation houses,
Will seek out my grave
With one voice
They will declare
Only a few are fated
To shoulder such pain. (Kashyap)
He further writes:
“Bhatti waliye
Chamber diye daliye
Ni peeran da praga bhunn de
Tenu dean hanjuan da bhada
Ni peeran dapraga bhunn de
ho gya kuwela mainu dhal gayian
shanwan ni
belean chon mud gayian mujian
te gawan ni
paia chidian ne cheek chihada
ni peeran da praga bhunn de
bhatthi waliye!” (Batalvi)
“Tender of the fire:
Tender of the fire
Roast my sorrows in your pan
I will give you the grain of tears
Roast my sorrows in your pan
I am too late already
The shadows are fading
The cattle have returned, from the forest
The birds have raised their clamor,
Roast my sorrows in your pan
Tender of the fire” (Malik, p. 35)
"This was the end of the man but the beginning of a legend ', says O. P. Sharma in his book on Shiv-Batalvi. (O.P.Sharma) Shiv Kumar Batalvi will always be remembered for his invaluable contribution to Punjabi literature. He wrote for the people and the people who enjoyed his poems in their solitude, discussed them in the seminars with warmth, verve and vivacity. He appeared as a bright star on the horizon of Punjabi poetry, and true to his death-wish, he disappeared when his glory reached its zenith. His doleful notes would continue to echo in the minds and memories of the lovers of Punjabi literature for centuries to come for they are written with the pen of imagination, dipped in the ink compounded out of the agonies and aches of a bleeding, lacerated heart.
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