Philosophy In The Poetry Of Shri Biren: A Perspective

By Sanasam Momo
The poetry of Shri Biren is a shadow of the hard life that he had traversed owing to the post-war circumstances of Manipur.His birth in 1942 marked the beginning of world war II in Imphal.The experience that he had as a boy shaped his poetry into a statement of the cruelty and roughness of life. He had a life of sniffles and this had turned his poetry into a dull but significant melody of life which to him has many wonders but behind its facet there seemed to lie the hard viccisitudes,There had been occasions when he felt hard to continue with life owing to his health but ceased to stop because of the will to pursue the literary interest. He , as a poet well understood the meaning of life and he could tell what it means and he also equated it with sniffles like O, Henry ,the American short story writer.There are little smile and sob in the life that is perceived by Shri Biren, a new dimension that was characteristic of the post –war Manipuri poets.

The death of Nongthombam Shri Biren did not bury his poetical works but rekindled a fresh impetus into a topical research of his poetry. The 2nd world war was a watershed in the poetry of Shri Biren who viewed progress and development, particularly industrial development with skepticism. Skewed by the materialistic tendency of the modern industrial progress, the poet in Shri Biren posed an angst, a protest cry against the destruction of the spiritual soul. The supremacy of the spirit and the soul came under test, the modern industry and economic development with its callous approach unhinged the spiritual balance of shri Biren who as a poet would like to safeguard the traditional texture of the spirit and the mind. Like Thomas hardy who raised a protest voice against the Industrial Revolution in his Wessex novels, Shri Biren found his poetry as a medium to record his protest against the ‘CONCRETISATION’ of existence. In a way, Shri Biren was a protest voice, an unheard voice in the noise of violence lodging complaints against the destruction of morality.The Industrial and Economic development, though it smoothened the place of existence, brought about in its wake the erosion of morality and sounded the  death knell of ethics. Shri Biren posed a moral and ethical protest against the vulgarization of the Industrial progress. It is well echoed in his poem “ TANGKHUL HUI’ (Tangkhul Dog). Only the dog lamented the crush of the flower under the weight of the massive ,cruel bull dozer driven by a vulgar, dirty and brutish man. Beauty, love and kindness were at the receiving end of this industrial and economic progress. The place of beauty and delicacy was consumed by the brutish cruelty of the machines and the heartless humans produced by the environment of the heavy machinery; while man has lost his moral and aesthetic sense, it is retained by a Tangkhul dog, an irony that struck and put it memorable because of its sharp and blunt use.

In another poem,”I AM NOT BAPTISED”(Ei Laiming Loude), Shri Biren attacked the concept of God. He used his poetry to destabilize the myth of God. His poetical philosophy was that God only is a figment of the imagination and criticized the Hindu myth of re-birth and previous birth as a ploy to conceal the non –existence of God. He cited instances of inequality and injustice to lodge that if God realy exist, such things could not be there. The existence of the immorality and inequality, he pointed out through his poem was true corroborative evidence that God  did not exist and He is only a figment of the imagination.In the play,”MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL” written for the 1935 Canterbury Festival, Thomas Stearns Eliot also brought out God as a” STILL POINT” which could suggest that it could be imagined anywhere. A point can be anywhere and is perhaps a close link with the imagination. This parallelism between Eliot and Shri Biren struck poetic wonders in the topical research into the poetry of the post –modernist talent, Shri Biren.Indeed, the poet is a store-house of researcj for new pioneering scholars.

Since the poet belonged to the post 2nd world war generation, the unethical dimension of violence and injustice is a recurring theme in his poetry. The materialistic vulgarization of existence sapped the soul of all tastes and sweetness nay dismantled morality and justice. God, perceived as a tiger by the poet, did little to rectify the inequality and injustice which defeated His very purpose and becomes the proof of his non-existence to Shri Biren. This approach to God is a post –modernist element.