DISEASE AND MEDICAL SCIENCE

                          DISEASE AND MEDICAL SCIENCE

The views expressed here are those of Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) who was a great India philosopher, political thinker, yoga expert, poet and spiritual reformer. He wrote a good deal that has found prominent place in Indian philosophy, literature and spiritual heritage. His thoughts on ‘Disease and Medical Science’ though penned long ago are both realistic and critical. They are neither ephemeral, nor eternal, yet they are really significant ever-fresh.

Disease, says Aurobindo, is needlessly prolonged and ends in death oftener than is inevitable, because the mind of the patient supports and dwells upon the disease of his body. The doctor aims a drug at a disease; sometimes it hits, sometimes misses. The misses are left out of account, the hits treasured up, reckoned and systematized into a science.

Aurobindo adds it is not the medicine that cures so much as the patient’s faith in the doctor and the medicine.  Both are a clumsy substitute for the natural faith in one’s on self-power which they have themselves destroyed.

Aurobindo suggests that we ought to use the divine health in us to cure and prevent diseases, but Galen and Hippocrates and their tribe have given us instead an armoury of drugs and a barbarous Latin hocus-pocus as our physical gospel. Medical science is well-meaning and its practitioners often benevolent and not seldom-self-sacrificing; but when did the well-meaning of the ignorant save them from harm-doing?

According to Aurobindo the spirit within us is the only all-efficient doctor and submission of the body to it the one true panacea.

However, he is not outright against medical science.  He looks at it with the spiritual eyes of a naturalist and claims that medicine alone cannot cure a diseased being who also needs the spirit within to accelerate and accomplish the healing process.

26^th JUNE 2020                                      G. R. KANWAL         

BREATHES THERE THE MAN

                                BREATHES  THERE  THE  MAN

“BREATHES there the man with soul so dead

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,

At home his footsteps he hath turned

From wandering on a foreign strand?

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;

For him no minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,

Despite those titles, power and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonored, unsung.”

            This intensely patriotic poem was written by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), a renowned Scottish novelist, poet and journalist. Scott was more interested in historical fiction than in poetry. As a novelist, his reputation is everlasting. He gave historical novel a popular form of romantic fiction.  According literary judges, he dramatized history, made it live before us. There had been many historical romancers more accurate than he in the externals of his tale but none was so true to the inmost spirit of the age he was depicting. His delight and relish for the past was warmed by a genuine love for Nature.  He loved not merely the institutions of his country, but his country’s soil; loved it as a child loves, for its associations.

             In the poem cited above, Sir Walter Scott is extremely harsh to such great men as hold many titles, possess unlimited power and boundless wealth but are self-centred and have no patriotic spirit for their motherland.  Such men are just a handful of vile dust and will be confined to their graves just as dust after their death. They will remain unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

             Written more than two centuries ago, this poem is still one of the most quoted poems on patriotism due to its thematic significance and verbal felicity.

22^nd JUNE 2020                                                         G. R. KANWAL

GHAZAL : 20TH JUNE 2020

GHAZAL : 20^TH JUNE 2020

Gunahon ki saza ne maar dala

Usey aakhir khuda ne maar dala

Ujalon ki umeedain bujh gayeen, jab

Charaghon ko hawa ne maar dala

Muaalij ho gaye badnaam, jab bhi

Mareezon ko dawa ne maar dala

Jo goonga tha magar kehta tha sab kuch

Mujhe us khush nawa ne maar dala

Wo ghunchah phir na aaya gulista’n main

Jisey baad-e-saba ne maar dala

Kanwal wo kis tarah mehfooz rehta

Jisey ik dil-ruba ne maar dala

                        ……..

GLOSSARY

Maar dala: This phrase has many meanings: to kill, to murder; to attract; to fascinate; to win over; to impress admirably; to act miraculously, etc. Charagh: lamp, candle. Muaalij: Physician, doctor, healer. Goonga: dumb. Khush-nawa: One having pleasant voice.  Ghunchah: bud; rose-bud. Gulista’n; garden.  Baad-e-saba: morning breeze. Mehfooz; safe; protected; unassailed. Dil-ruba: Sweetheart; one who has won your heart.  

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20^th JUNE 2020                                DR.G.R.KANWAL    

THE JOURNEY OF LIFE

THE JOURNEY OF LIFE

Here is a very short poem on the journey of life written by the English poetess Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894).

  The title of the poem is: UP-HILL. It reads as follows:

“DOES THE ROAD wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you waiting at the door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for all who come. “

The questioner in the poem is an ordinary human being who has some intriguing questions to ask about the road of life from beginning to end. The one who takes up those questions and answers them very simply and subtly is a great mystic. He is a religious master who knows everything about the beginning and the end of the road of life.  

  The fact that the road is up-hill to the very end shows that life is not a bed of roses. It is full of hardships right from birth till death.  One has to walk up the hill from the starting point till the last foothold the destination.  However, when the arduous journey is over, there are pleasant compensations: a roof when slow dark hours begin, reunion with everyone who has reached there before him and a fulsome reward for all the hard labour he has done.

Christina Rossetti is a religious poet. She expresses her personal experiences in a very simple and lovely language. Her total poetry celebrates superiority of divine love over human passions. ‘Up-Hill’ is one of her best poems. It has a profound expression of mystical knowledge expressed with enviable simplicity and sincerity. Its unusual conversational style strongly distinguishes it from other poems written in typical forms.  

17^th JUNE 2020                                   G. R. KANWAL

GHAZAL: 13th JUNE 2020

GHAZAL: 13^th JUNE 2020

Mujhe ab kisi ka sahara nahin hai

Wo darya hoon jis ka kinara nahin hai

Sada us ki bhi kan ma’n goonjti hai

Kabhi jis ne mujh ko pukara nahin hai

Tasawwur ma’n aati thi aawaz jis ki

Wo patthar kisi ne bhi mara nahin hai

Chalo us kharabe ma’n phir sar ko phore’n

Jahan ab ko’I bhi hamara nahin hai

Na ho ko’i apna sabhi ajnabi ho’n

Mujhe wo zamana gawara nahin hai

Mirey aasma’n par hai’n badal dhu’en ke

Wahan ko’I roshan sitara nahin hai

Kanwal chahtey ho jise tum wo dilbar

Kisi aur ka hai tumhara nahin hai.

GLOSSARY   

Sada: voice, sound.  Tasawwur: imagination. Kharabe: Ruined place. Gawara: Acceptable.

Dilbar: Loved one.

13^th JUNE 2020                       DR.G.R.KANWAL

THE COMMON ROAD

THE COMMON ROAD

‘The Common Road’ is a great poem written by the American poet Silas H. Perkins (1758-1819). He is known as a people’s poet. The poem under reference reminds me of thousands of Indian immigrants who were shown on televisions screens. They had been uprooted because of the lockdowns as a result of Corona Virus.  Their jobs as daily or monthly wagers had come to end. They had no source of income. The savings had been exhausted. The landlords had thrown them to the winds because they could not pay them rents for the accommodation hired by them. Their employers had sacked them because their establishments had been shut down.

No bus or rail transport was available to them. Most of them had decided to walk, even bare-footed, towards their respective native places in far off states. Most of them had no luggage, but those who had a little bit held it by their hands or placed it on their heads.  

They were hungry, thirsty and tired, treading forward with the members of their families including small children and aged relatives.  

Quite a few of them fell sick and breathed their last on roads.

Why were they ignored and neglected by the people at the helm of the affairs is a big question?

Ultimately, when they had suffered for too many days, it was The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India that took pity on them and directed the State and Central Governments to pay immediate attention to all the problems related to their going back to native places.   

                        ‘The Common Road’ is the testament of a poet who loves the common road and the common people. It is interesting to read it today in the background of millions of helpless migrants all over the world. Remember common people, too, are human beings.

                        The poem reads as follows:

“I WANT TO TRAVEL, the common road

With the great crowd surging by,

Where there’s many a laugh and many a load,

And many a smile and sigh.

I want to be on the common way

With its endless tramping feet,

In the summer bright and winter gray,

In the noonday sun and heat.

In the cool of evening with shadows nigh,

A t dawn, when the sun break clear,

I want the great crowd passing by,

To ken what they see and hear.

I want to be one of the common herd,

Not live in a sheltered way,

Want to be thrilled, want to be stirred

By the great crowd day by day;

To glimpse the restful valleys deep,

To toil up the rugged hill,

To see the brooks which shyly creep,

To have the torrents thrill.

I want to laugh with the common man

Wherever he chance to be,

I want to aid him when I can

Wherever there’s need of me.

I want to lend a helping hand

Over the rough and steep

To a child too young to understand ---

To comfort those who weep,

I want to live and work and plan

With great crowd surging by,

To mingle with the common man,

No better or worse than I. “

 10^th June 2020                                   G. R. KANWAL    

GHAZAL 8TH JUNE

GHAZAL 8^TH JUNE

Hain aqwaal Ghalib ke bhi kya  kya

Na ho marna to jeeney ka maza kya !

Jisey tum poojtey ho duniya walo

Kabhi suntey bhi ho us ki sada kya !

Hai phir charon taraf ik ajnabiyet

Phir insaa’n ho gya hai be-wafa kya!

Caroona ki waba phayli hai jab se

Hai tab se har maraz ab la dawa kya!

Khataa kya soch kar ham kar rahay hain

Nahin milni hamain aakhir sazaa kya!

Kanwal kyun dard se be-haal ho tum

Masiha ho gya hai la-pataa kya !

GLOSSARY

LINES: 1. Aqwaal: sayings. Ghalib: One of the greatest Urdu poets (1797-1869). 4. Sada: Voice; call; message. 5. Ajnabiyet: alienation; estrangement; unfamiliariy. 6.Be-wafa: unconcerned; unfaithful.  7. Waba: epidemic. 8. Maraz: ailment; disease. La-dawa: cureless. 9. Khataa: Moral lapse; immoral act. 11. Be-haal: Uneasy; restless. 12. Masiha: Healer; One who can cure even incurable disease. Lord Jesus Christ was endowed with miraculous healing power. La-pataa: Untraceable.

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8^th JUNE 2020                        DR. G. R. KANWAL