The Waves of the Ganga

Science is yet to arrive at a final definition of life. It still divides everything into the living and the dead. But poets of lore treated it as a continuous flow from the life of the universe to the life of the tiniest sub-atomic particle and back. They experienced it and gave expression to the experience. The Vedas and the Upanishads are collections of these expressions.The art of yoga is the way to the experience, the essence of which is the process and the product of integration of one’s life with the life of the universe.Fusion is the key word. Fusion of light with darkness, hate with love, knowledge with ignorance and so on. It is highly rewarding. Art and literature are means to it.In the oriental tradition of aesthetics, beauty is the state of an appreciable standard of integration. The greater it is, the more beautiful. The most beautiful is the perfectly integrated. It is the goal of life and the unmanifest persuasion behind all variations and explorations. So poetry like any other human endeavour should aspire to achieve it.Dr. Balakrishnan’s poems do exactly that. His training and experience makes him amply qualified. He is a physician, he has seen various specimens of integration or the lack of it in terms of body parts and emotional inputs. He has apparently had his holy bath in texts of yore, the essence of the teachings going into him much deeper than skin. He knows, not just by theory but by practice too.Well, what is the eternal? None else than the only factor that continues unchanged and unchangeable in us all through our lives and beyond. There is proof for the existence of such a factor. It can be discerned by four simple questions and the common-sense answers to them. Q.1: Is it or is it not right to suppose that there is an underlying force behind this vast and complicated universe? None can say it is not there. Q.2: Where can that force be residing - in a corner of the universe or everywhere in it simultaneously? Everywhere is the natural answer. Q.3: Should that force not be in us too as we too are in the universe? Of course, it should. Q.4: In that case, everything else in us being ephemeral, is it not the real us? The answer is the mahavakya ‘Tat Twam Asi’.The problem is it is beyond words so all verbal effort to grasp it will come to nothing. But words can take us to its door step. This is what Dr. Balakrishnan’s poetry does. And he does it beautifully. Mystic poets and Zen story tellers did the same in their own style. This poet does it in the style of our time.