Renunciation as a short but beautiful poem appears in Kulwant Singh Gill’s poetry-collection named Scattered Beads brought out from Writers Workshop, Calcutta in 1989. While reading the poem, Christian values and virtues dawn upon the mind’s plane. The Holy Bible flashes upon with its treasure-trove of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Together with that, there is also the preaching of the Sikh gurus said otherwise and the lessons imparted to disciples as the author is from the Punjab and is a Sikh and his domain of research too is Aldous Huxley.

Renunciation

In the midst of night,
There appeared an angel, beautiful and bright;
It blessed me with a book and a bowl,
And then took its heavenly flight.

I awoke and found the memory of the sacred treasure,
While the book I ignore, the bowl I revere;
The book is fetters, the bowl freedom,
For the former is knowledge, the latter wisdom.

The bowl is my Holy Grail, my annunciation,
It’s the motif of my ethos, the way of renunciation.

Let us see what did the angel whisper into the ears on the night it appeared? So bright and beautiful was the angel. But before the angel went away, gifted it with a book and a bowl. The reference is very, very allegorical and Biblical. To read the poem is to be reminded of the Holy Grail and the mythical context. But the symbolical depth of the poem needs to be perused. The narrative skill too needs to be appreciated.

The book is fetters and the bowl freedom. If the former is knowledge, the latter is wisdom. There is some rosary stuff, the counting of beads and prayers too in it. The guru’s wisdom is in it. To be an ascetic is difficult indeed and that wisdom does not come without being bent and humble. Real prayer comes from the soul. The heart is the center of all that. Without seeking alms, undergoing suffering, trouble and tribulation, things cannot be got.

Kulwant Singh Gill is definitely a name which needs to be reckoned with as he wrote and published often in the Tribune and in other literary journals too from time to time. An expert on Aldous Huxley, he had also done his dissertation on him. One from Ludhiana, he was a Sikh scholar interested in Sikhism, precepts and parables, the things of the land he belonged and whose legacy carried he forward to.