Book review: 'Poet Of The Revolution'

Poet Of The Revolution: The Memoirs And Poems Of Lal Singh Dil
Trans. Nirupama Dutt
Penguin
166 pages
Rs399

In his lifetime, Lal Singh Dil was many shades of obscurity as well as fame. He had been tortured for being a Naxalite. He’d been imprisoned. He ran a tea stall. He suffered from psychological breakdowns. These are, perhaps unimportant details because the one important fact is that Dil was a poet, and a celebrated one at that.

Dil’s poems, written in Punjabi, have been translated for English publications, but Poet Of The Revolution is special because along with his poems, the volume includes Dil’s memoirs. These writings are particularly precious because, as editor-publisher Prem Prakash says in his foreword, “many pages of his writings were lost in a dust storm” (which is as poetic a fate as we can imagine for a poet’s memoirs).

Dil was born to a low-caste family in Samrala, Punjab (which is also Sadat Hasan Manto’s hometown, coincidentally). The taunt of “chamar” would haunt Dil all his life. Everyone, from kids to policemen, flung it at him. He went to college — the first of his family to do so — by selling his mother’s earrings. It was as a student that he discovered the two forces that would shape his future: poetry and revolutionary Leftist ideology. He dropped out of college and began working as a daily-wage labourer. His Naxalite activities led to him being arrested, tortured and imprisoned. After three years in prison, Dil went underground in Uttar Pradesh and eventually returned to his hometown of Samrala.

It’s a life riddled with tragedy and it seems inevitable that a man with such experiences would be a poet. Poet Of The Revolution includes 30 of his poems. Spare and evocative, Dil’s poetry is filled with unforgettable images. It pulses with romanticism and idealism. Rather than waste words describing his poetry, here’s an example:
“Forlorn, I contemplate
a single thought:
that your oiled hair
would bring me salvation…”