My diary is seldom an object of debate. But it finally became so, yesterday. That person Yashrāj, you know? Yes, yes, the same guy! Lives in that gully. No, no, his legal practice is in a fix! Yes, that’s how it is, otherwise, he is a capable person. B.Sc., B.Tech. L.L.B. has all the degrees but remains altogether unemployed. Everyone knows him in this city. Laughs at him. Told you, he’s unemployed, that’s why! His face bears an ill-omened shadow, all the time. 

Anyway, I was very happy when I had the fortune of narrating to him the latest diary I had written for Vasudhā ¹. What an extraordinary feat I had achieved! Yashrāj was quietly listening to my diary with his head lowered down. When I stopped, he raised his head languidly, and said, “This diary is a total fraud”. 

It felt like thunder had struck me. I was in a blue funk. My pulse got dislocated. Yashrāj so contorted his face as if the taste in his mouth had suddenly turned bitter. 

I had put a lot of effort into the diary. Inspired by Parsāī Ji’s letter-pistols, I had worked so hard.² But what came of it…dust…ashes…sand!

I profusely counselled my heart. Patted on its back. But undoubtedly my face must have turned very pale then because I felt in those moments that squeezed blood from my face was dripping into my heart. When I looked at Yashrāj I got the feeling that he was also laughing at me. 

Trying somehow to regain composure, hesitatingly, and searching for words, I said, “You might call it a fraud, but it certainly has personal integrity! It stands as evidence of my personal integrity”. 

Yashrāj suppressed his smile. The little movement of his lips cut a wound through me. I wanted my eyes to look incensed and glow red. But there was no blood left in my body. Secondly, acting outraged would not have helped either, for doing so is completely opposed to the standards of intellectual sensibility I have set for myself. 

The practice thus far has been that I have always been editing and modifying my heart’s inclinations under the directive of my mind. This process has been ongoing right since childhood. Life is not a college or a university, it’s a primary school. One has to sit on Tāt-Patti; and be prepared to bear intense slap blows on cheeks at the slightest of mistakes. Yes! That is how life is! Fear, terror, weird apprehensions, strange entanglements, torn Tāt-Pattīs, old ink-soaked tables, masterjī’s terrifying wooly moustache, objurgation from parents at home, and a child’s soft-diminutive body to bear all this!

I expected to grow up real fast. Tall, sturdy, and huge. Life would not have been a primary school then. But, no! As I grew up, blood dried up from my body. I grew tall alright, but extremely weak too. Life became an even worse primary school than before. Yes, that’s right, the lessons go on for life. Just mugging-up math tables will

not work. Ever-new contrivances of division and multiplication will have to be learnt. Ink on fingers, blue stains on the shirt, and a blue spot on one corner of the lips. This life will remain a primary school until death! Same old torn Tāt-Pattī, like a line from my poem!

Things are different with Yashrāj. He is a top-notch man. He speaks of Einstein. Planck and Laplace tango on his tongue. ‘I’? Destroy this ‘I’! This is the message of Indian culture!

Yashrāj’s outpouring flowed in my ears, “What do you mean by personal integrity? At the most, it is the integrity of expression. Nothing more than that! And often you don’t get the integrity of expression either.”

I don’t know what he kept on saying. I was, on the other hand, thinking that, I have to place my heart under the intellect for editing and modification, add footnotes to it, write a preface, and place a glossary and index at the end as well. But, will this editing and modifying ever be completed? Will I be able to present it as a master-piece, ever? Perhaps, it’s not even possible. Yesterday only, my old, very old father had said to me, learning goes on till the very last breath, one has to keep improving oneself, to continue being a learner and absorb ever-new lessons. Yes, so he said!

I said to Yashrāj almost self-confessedly, “By personal integrity is meant – In the proportion or measure an emotion or thought has arisen, to express it in the same measure. To present an emotion or thought in the same form in which it has presented itself is the utmost duty of a writer!”

Yashrāj responded in a stubborn tone, “Is the duty of a writer just limited to this much? If that is the case, then it is not even integrity of expression, forget about personal integrity!”

I was not in the mood to get into an argument with Yashrāj. I was yearning inside for a cup of tea that would heatup my nerves. Perhaps that’ll make me fit to engage in a debate. Nevertheless, it would have looked really bad had I not responded to Yashrāj then. I mean, why not to respond at all! It’s quite possible that Yashrāj too might have something to say which will complement my thoughts. Please be a bit patient! 

So I said, “Why do you say so?”

Yashrāj flew away like a bullet fired from a pistol. He said, “To present an emotion or a thought in the same form in which it has manifested itself in a specific measure and proportion, is grossly inadequate. What is of importance is whether that emotion or thought is in accord with any objective-fact or not. People who raise the cry of ‘personal integrity’, in reality, privilege the representation of only the ‘subjective’ or subjectively-felt aspect of an emotion or thought, crowning the same as ‘affective’ or ‘subjective’ truth. But any emotion or thought has an ‘objective’ side too, i.e. an aspect with objective content. These days the subjective orientation is given importance while the objective orientation is ignored in the act of writing. In the process of representation, the subjective aspect is accorded primacy, not the objective aspect. This attitude has an impact on the technique too.”³

It was worth looking at Yashrāj’s eyes at that moment. He was staring at me with rebuke. But, I started to pay attention to what he was saying, instead to his facial expressions. 

He continued, “In medieval Indian poetry, with few notable exceptions aside, the dominant inclination remained towards portraying the objective aspect. This attitude didn’t care much about the subjective aspect. The new Chhāyāvādī (Shadow-ism) era on the other hand focused prominently on the subjective aspect, relegating the objective to a subordinate position.⁴ If the Nayī Kavitā in Hindi has to play an important role in the history of literature, or in the history of culture for that matter, it will have to exhibit in the nature and craft of poetry coordination between the subjective and the objective.”⁵  

Yashrāj looked triumphantly at me. Undoubtedly I had to concede. I nodded my small noggin in agreement. It felt at that moment as if the trunk of my head was really full of potatoes and corn-cobs! Not even fit for cooking a Tarkārī. 

In spite of that, I started paying heed to Yashrāj with greater intent. I sensed that he had something to say which might also prove valuable for me.

In an imploring tone I said to him, “Yashrāj, I am no spokesperson for Nayī Kavitā. I’ll even agree with what you have said, but how to bring the objective and subjective aspects into coordination continues to be a mystery for me.”

Yashrāj interrupted me midway and said, “I was only talking about your diary. The discussion on it brought me to Nayī Kavitā. Even though you keep talking about it, I find the idea of personal integrity very foggy. ‘Personal integrity’, I mean how do you even define it? I keep reading a lot of ‘new’ poems, but I don’t find any mentionable integrity in them.”

Yashrāj went on to say, “Nayī Kavitā is in a rut now. It follows in its own beaten track, and that attitudinising can now absorb anything under its name⁶. You just need to master the craft and that’s it…!” 

He kept at it, “you will also agree that an emotion or a thought has an objective basis to it too. That means, it is a mental response to something objective. Truthfulness will only emerge in this mental response when something objective manifests itself objectively in it. Further, the mental response being made to that objective substance must also have an implicit awareness about its own correctness or incorrectness, appropriateness or inappropriateness, and whether it is made in the right proportion or not. It will be very strange if all this is ignored.”

I smiled and said, “Hajrat, you seem to be implying that the poetic process is knowledge-based when it is in fact not.”

To this Yashrāj replied, “Agreed! But knowledge and understanding make the foundation on which stands the edifice of emotions. If there’s an error in the foundations of knowledge and understanding, the edifice of emotions erected upon it will also be unformed and useless. This will adversely impact the craft of poetry too.”

After having said this Yashrāj paused momentarily as if he was trying to catch his breath. Then he continued, “Personal integrity will only be aimed when while analysing the object objectively, the writer makes an accurate mental response to the objective-fact on the basis of this analysis. If he doesn’t do this, truthfulness will not manifest in his response.”

To which I said, “If accepted, your definition will lead to something like a riot in the field of poetry. The fact of the matter is that the object-oriented truth that you keep talking about is different from the affective-truth of poetry…”

Upon hearing this Yashrāj started to stare at me with widened eyes as if I were a curious creature like a giraffe or a kangaroo.

I too responded with all the defensive seriousness I could muster, “I too am not able to explain myself well!”

We shifted our seats before continuing with the conversation. 

I began gaping into emptiness, and I could see two things emerging there. One is that according to Yashrāj it is absolutely essential that the object with respect to which the mental response is made, is also duly depicted. And secondly, for the manifestation of truthfulness, it is necessary that the poet reacts accurately to the said objective-fact. 

I commented in my mind on this opinion of Yashrāj’s in the following manner. Thoughts began to flow: whether one’s mental response towards the objective-fact is accurate or not – what is the criteria for that? According to me, a poet-writer responds to an objective-fact from his perspective. Agreed that feeling is involved in the mental response, but so is vision or perspective. Mental response results from a combination of feeling and vision. Yes, it is not necessary that while making a mental response the poet is fully conscious of the overall ideology working behind or in the background of his point of view. All objects cannot be held together in that exalted focus of human attention, Dhyān. But attention is one thing, and mind another. In attention, there is an objective fact and a sensory response is made to it; but in that response, in a disguised or subconscious form, the poet’s vision or perspective is surely present. It cannot be said that this vision or perspective is necessarily intellectual. We can call it an attitude or temperament as well. The quirky thing is that sometimes while giving a mental response there’s one attitude or vision, but the mind itself is not unity. A duality too lives within that unity. In such a situation there is another stance present in the mental response and another vision editing and modifying it. A section of critics believes that editing-modifying a mental response is unnecessary, wrong, and even full of dangers. There is scope for deception there, in fact, there are instances where it is there, sometimes even deliberately committed. Therefore what must happen is that individual mental response should be expressed, as it is, in the exact proportion and measure it has manifested itself. 

I believe this opinion of theirs has a lot of substance to it. People, who in poetry, boast big, put on appearances, and talk as if they are messiahs or revolutionaries, exaggerate greatly even a minor mental response according to their perspective. They are actors, and performers. They don’t have the slightest moral-courage to actually engage in love; but they’ll feign as if they can’t survive without their beloved. If we don’t put the condition of expressing the mental response as it is, in the spontaneous proportion and measure it has arisen, and don’t give due importance to this condition, then such actors and duplicitous people, gentlemen who weave deceitful tales, will undoubtedly produce more dishonest literature in the field of poetry. The duality inflicting their hearts and minds makes them edit and modify their spontaneous mental responses. They argue that poetry is a cultural thing- and not just an individual. This seemingly gives them the complete license (within their minds) to act, to put up a pretense, to boast big,etc. in the process of creating poetry. They say that poetry is a cultural institution and not just a personal safe-house for an individual. 

Anyway, leave aside these big words. I too have been talking about editing and modifying the mental response. What is the real meaning of this thought of mine? And what is the directive significance of what Yashrāj keeps saying about the appropriateness of the mental response or insists on making the correct mental response towards an objective-fact? Does he imply by this that a poet should develop a real vishwa drishti (world-view) towards life-world, and that world-view should motivate his mental response? If that’s what he really thinks, then there is no special difference between our positions. 

These thoughts went through my mind in a flash. The thought-universe inside me got illuminated into a form. But the flow of Yashrāj’s reflections was going in a different direction altogether. 

He went on to say, “personal integrity is where the writer while analysing the object objectively, reacts correctly to the objective element based on this analysis. If he doesn’t do this, the manifestation of truth will not arise in his response. Right, isn’t it?”

I answered, “If accepted your definition will create an uproar in the field of poetry”. The truth of poetry is not the truth of science or governance. Had it been really so, then all poetic literature produced in the world thus far would have obeyed your definition.”

Yashrāj interrupted in between, “I am only talking about personal integrity. All I want to say is that in Hindi (I can only talk about Hindi) there are numerous poems that are outright fraud. What you call  Nayī Kavitā has no dearth of fraud either.”

Perhaps, Yashrāj might have said this to provoke me. But by God’s grace I managed to keep my composure intact. Calmly, I resorted to a sideways attack. I said, “Isn’t your criticism a fraud too?” 

I even wanted to name a few critics but decided against it due to an afterthought. After all, critics do at times end-up uttering truths along with falsehoods. Yes, that does happen, despite the messianic intellectual arrogance of a critic.  

Although I was calm, anger was building up inside me. In fact, I and Yashrāj have often smashed our heads against each other before. So a possible fight wasn’t really a thing to be feared.  

***