Adieu to 2011 and Adieu to Oja Shri Biren

JC Sanasam *

He started to love dearly whatsoever he saw starting from his own body, his limbs, his sense organs and their sensations; whatever there was in his environment and whatever his conscious or sub-conscious could gather to make things food for thought. To bid adieu to a passing year, one does not feel that much emotionally down because we always get warmed up with the natural and confident exuberance of welcoming another New Year, this time 2012.

Added to it, a euphoric state of mind with new hopes for happier and more prosperous lives of our own as well as those of near and dear ones around, if not for the world, is always there. But what a sad thing it was! To say adieus to a precious soul like Oja Shri Biren's!

Because the body to which his soul belonged, that was what we identified him with, shall not reappear. Resurrection might have occurred elsewhere as Jesus did in the Bible. Such supernatural things do not happen every day.

Sahitya Ratna Nongthombam Shri Biren, Sahitya Akademi awardee, the noted poet of Manipur, playwright and short story writer passed away at the wee hours of early morning on December 29, 2011 at his residence, Achom Leikai, Uripok, leaving his family and all of us in deep sorrow and with a profound sense of unrecoverable great loss.

All of us know he had a very serious debilitating illness, Parkinsonism. In old age such a disorder may develop to a moderate degree but usually do not prove to be a killer-disease. However, he had had it for the last three decades or so, since his young adulthood days, the like of which usually finishes a life in ten years' time.

As for him the disorder could not subdue him; his love for poetry was his medication; with this weapon he kept the killer- disease at its bay and he continued his sacred journey in literature undeterred.

Many a time he was hospitalized with unpredictable crises; he writhed but he came out clean and victorious. This time he did not; everybody wonders. I am lamenting why he did not wait for another two or three months at the most. Because I have completed my translation work of his last three books of poetry to be published as a second volume, ready for handing over to the press.

Regardless of others' assessment, he was happy with my work in the first volume and I know he was very anxious for the second. We grew up as contemporary batch mates in the DM College and he had a soft corner for me. That is all the more of a reason why I feel such a bereavement, personal and hurting, when he left us.

Shri Biren was the literary man in Manipur who, we believed, was the man for awards like the nation-honoured Gyanpeeth Award or Swaraswati Award if those in the higher up considered conferring upon someone in Manipur which we did expect too. He was a rare example of a writer who started writing since very young and he did not stop till his last days of 69 years of his age. His works manifested closely related to his stages of life.

The march of events in his life definitely anchors a strong influence in his poetry. They have a close relationship to each other at that; and the work of his poetry that manifested the shadows of his encounters in life can be staged into three phases:

o His earlier poems of an angry young man
o His soul searching poems of a ship-wrecked man, fighting with fortitude
o His sublime poems of tranquility; acceptance of life; surrender to God and Nature; love for his motherland and his nativity with the thirst and sense of belonging to them.

The poems in his first and second books, 'Tollaba Sha-dugee Wakhal' and 'Masina Imphalgee Wareeni' are of an angry young man.

His third book, 'Mapal Naidabasida Ei' which bagged the Sahitya Akademi award depicts a turn of his journey at a crossroad. His words, idioms and style of writing, remaining almost same in the wavelengths of vibration, his themes went to another world with a new power of cogitation and reasoning; sometimes in a deluge of uncertainty, sometimes in transgression into what is beyond; what is on the other side, invisible and unfathomable; what would ensue after death; but no more in that old flame of anger and disdain; rather in a more tranquil way with the acceptance of life and its inherent ways as they are, good or bad.

He developed a feeling of being enchanted and mesmerized with anything that was beyond his understanding although he eventually made up his own mind to accrue all in his enfolding creel. He got more and more fascinated with the boundless expanses, so many, around him, inherent of Nature.

He started to love dearly whatsoever he saw starting from his own body, his limbs, his sense organs and their sensations; whatever there was in his environment and whatever his conscious or sub-conscious could gather to make things food for thought. By this time perhaps he had to fight his illness with fortitude. There are enough shadows of this untoward predicament of his health in many of his poems in this book.

This upsetting physical weakness still continued till the time when he completed his fourth book, 'Sanagee Keirak'. However, in his poems in this fourth book he tendered complete surrender to God and Death if it had to come; his mind ready to welcome and accept whatever was destined in his fate or in his life, with a new courage and grit.

There was a time when he admitted, '... I, with my physical weakness wearing me down, could not harvest most of the few things that came.'

He further reiterated, '.. I have doubts this time about the quality of these poems; they appear to lack the ingenuity of creativity to a great degree .... ..more and more difficult for me to say what poem is and what kind of taste poems should have.'

He recuperated up slowly; his mind-power got stronger. He could see nothing can crush you when your mind-power has the grit not to yield to. It was a real victory of the will-power and mind-power that he showed.

In the mean time, he started to feel time was less but the work a lot more to do. Then a deep love for his nativity and motherland where he was born came spontaneously to visit him and now he placed all he had on an altar which he offered to this new love of his. He went down deep to the bottomless abyss of this love.

That is what his poems say in his last book, 'Chatloiko Ei Mapham Kadaidasu'.

He wanted to accomplish many a thing before the sun set. And sometimes when words failed him, in his anguish, he whined, 'Wahei Peeyu, Wahei Peeyu, Eema, Wahei Peeyu' i.e., 'Give Me Words, Give Me Words, Mother, Give Me Words.'

'.. in the thirst
of another expanse vaster
I'm not to take rest;
I must continue my run
the sun sets or not'