Why Nirala’s ‘Vah todti patthar’ beckons society towards itself?

Counterpoint: Why Nirala’s  ‘Vah todti patthar’ beckons society towards itself?

By Vivekanand Jha

Just imagine a situation: it is the sultry weather, the radiating sun, unleashing its fist of fury upon the earth, invariably compelling the men and women to take an inevitable recourse to the cushioning shades.

While the less fortunate ones, finding no such luxury of cemented shades, quickly rush towards an immediate respite of seeking refuge under some peepal trees, an old woman, far withdrawn from the stark reality staring nakedly at her face, indulges in breaking stones.

This is the grim reality eloquently depicted in one of the finest stanzas of ‘Vah todti patthar‘ (loosely translated: She is crushing stones) by an immortal poet, Pundit Suryakant Tripathi Nirala. A poet who chose the rigorous path of rebellion over that of obsequiously kowtowing to the power that be.

Unequivocally then, even when his daughter Saroj, died in the absence of proper treatment, the great poet never kowtowed to the dispensation that ruled Delhi then. Still, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, the then favourite of Jawaharlal Nehru – he was sent to Rajya Sabha by Pundit Nehru – had supplicated to Nehru for helping out the great poet Nirala financially, failed to impact Nehru, even negligibly, to take cognizance of the pathetic state of the great poet.

Regrettably, with no financial assistance in sight, Nirala’s daughter Saroj expired. Subsequently, in reminiscences of his daughter, Nirala wrote Saroj Smriti, which became a masterpiece, engendering a good earning in the process. But then, the great poet as he was, he donated that money for the purpose of the altruistic cause of medical treatment of all those helpless girls who die in millions because of lack of proper medical treatment.

Nirala failed to gain any official recognition. Yet decades down the line, much after he had left for the heavenly abode, he left his glorious footprints behind for the writers and poets to speak the sunlit truth; not to be the cheerleaders of the power that be. Instead, what we have today is the mushrooming cheerleaders everywhere for currying personal favour with the party officials; they seek their personal gratification in exchange for cheering their leaders as their Bhagya Vidhata. The political parties today have become a means to satiate the material cravings through all foul means masquerading as ‘ helping the needy’; a surer recipe for a shortcut to enrichment through political liaisoning, a euphemism for dalali.

With the benefits of hindsight, the illustrious life of Suryakant Tripathi Nirala is an exception; a phenomenon in a tryst with history; an iconic characteristic which needed to be imbibed to insulate the society from sinking deeper into the quagmire of degenerating values and ethos.

The writers and poets are the pillars for guiding society into the state of enlightenment, from that of the stage of obscurantism. And, one of the facets of obscurantism engulfing society is the situation when writers and poets, far from assuming the position of being harbingers heralding the resplendent path of objectivity guiding them towards fulfilling their obligations towards society, irreversibly seek material gratification as their raison d’etre and summum bonum. This is the situation which bleakly stares us in our faces: media, teaching community–almost the whole of society frenziedly appeared to have embraced the role of cheerleaders for pleasing their bosses.

Unequivocally then, in a situation such as this, the needs and necessity of such exemplars, as that of Nirala, is increasingly felt today.

In fact, the way that old woman, exposed to the nakedness of sun, did not bow down to its diktat to find some shade as most, in her place, would prefer to do, but rebelled against the brutality of sunrays: ‘Woh torti Patthar‘ beckons the society towards itself; let the society heed the call of ‘ I’ and take to path of rebellion against the cheerleading of those who are in power; it is the time to stop singing panegyrics for those in power, for the greater good of the nation.

Suryakant Tripathi Nirala stands out as the towering example of the same, along with his poem, ‘Vah todti patthar‘. 

*Author, Academician and Public Intellectual.