Icicles of Time is the tenth poetry book by Lalit Mohan Sharma, a bilingual poet, academician, and translator. Born in 1952, Sharma began teaching at a government college in Dharmshala in 1973. He served as Principal for over a decade before retiring in 2010. Additionally, he was a member of NAAC’s Peer Teams. His doctoral dissertation focused on The Quest for Self in the American Novel: Mark Twain to Bernard Malamud. He was honored with the “A Connoisseur of Creative Arts” Award by Galaxy International Foundation. Now residing in Dharmshala, Sharma is actively involved with NGOs like the State War Memorial and Harmony Day Care Centre for Special Children.
The Literature Times: Your poetry spans both Hindi and English, with a remarkable body of work. How do you approach writing in these two languages, and do you find that each offers unique creative freedom or challenges?
Lalit Mohan Sharma: since my days in graduation, I used to write in both the languages, a lot more in Hindi than in English. This continued for some years and I had my book of Hindi poems published in 1978. With readings and teaching English literature to postgraduate students, English came to dominate as expression of creativity. When your thinking and reading get tuned to a particular language, poetic distillation in linguistic terms chooses that language for the freedom of articulation it endows a poet with. With more proficiency in English, it became challenging to write in Hindi, and hence spontaneity is rewarded within the ambience of English language.
The Literature Times: In your English poetry collections like ‘The Brown Tree’ and ‘Loud Whispers’, themes of nature, time, and introspection are prevalent. Can you discuss how these themes emerged for you over the years and how they have evolved in your recent work, like ‘Icicles of Time’?
Lalit Mohan Sharma: I think Keats remarked, Nature is fine, human nature finer. I have been enamoured of the sights of nature, but these continue to be in the background, giving in to choice of metaphors and similes which become emblems for manifesting dynamics of human relationships. Time governs trajectories of relationships, and introspection guides, chooses, decides, and defines the routes which devise working of one human being relating to another. Ancestral voices impinge upon the progression and interaction among the human voices in the later generations. And this is true of the individual, the family and the society. Even the title poem, ‘The Brown Tree’ is triggered by the sight of a bare tree in sector 15 of Chandigarh, but then the tree evolves into a metaphor of loneliness, man deprived of all foliage, leaves and tender twigs, what’s left is the trunk and the bare branches waiting for the final end with an axe.
The Literature Times: Your latest Hindi poetry book, ‘Patal Sey Prangan Tak’, was published in 2023. How does this collection compare to your previous works like ‘Aik Roti Ugtey Swaal’ (1978), both in terms of style and themes?
Lalit Mohan Sharma: Yes, style is variously impacted by this experience of readings and writing over a period of over forty years. The previous book had poems of political nature as well since done under the shadows of emergency in the country. It also included poems of youthful love and also as it is threatened with frustrations under the influence of a romantic celebration and expectations from a world indifferent to individual aspirations. By the year 2023, there was a sudden burst of creativity to express in Hindi, writing 90 % of ‘Patal..’ anthology in September-October 2022. Feeling a deep need to connect with the readers of Hindi, I wrote on the themes which were the subject of my books of English poetry. For the last few years, the general mood in the country had changed; lynchings and launching of satellites together tore their way into headlines, and the idea of India as a harmonious land of pluralism and communal goodwill was losing itself amidst verifiable rumours of surveillance, new terms like urban naxals, presstitudes, and what not. ‘Eyes of Silence’ had several poems on such themes, The Hobby Horse in that book was a political parable. Of course, there were tender poems of love too in the 2023 Hindi book as also in other books of English 2021 onwards.
The Literature Times: ‘Icicles of Time’ delves deeply into the nature of time, love, and the fleeting moments of life. Could you share some insights into how you use natural imagery, such as icicles and glass, to express philosophical reflections in this collection?
Lalit Mohan Sharma: Vagaries of love haunt you, the parting, the separation and the dreamed possibility of a return to the fold fascinate human mind. Moods and emblems in nature speak of human beings, reflecting the sunshine, the twilight, the free-flowing waters of consciousness, the dark grey or the white clouds hovering over our minds, refracting and surfacing in terms of thoughtfulness and emotional reflections which take over the nature of prophetic intimations and even the spontaneity of a philosophical utterance. Each sunrise, a new day, the blossoming flowers, the rainbow variety of colours, the subtle changes with the arrival of a season—the fabulous treasure is ours if we in tune with ourselves.
The Literature Times: You’ve translated Zahid Abrol’s Urdu poetry in ‘A Three-Step Journey’. What was it like working on this translation, and how do you think the essence of Urdu poetry aligns or contrasts with your own poetic style in English and Hindi?
Lalit Mohan Sharma: Zahid Sahib wrote the Urdu poems in Devnagari in courtesy to my ignore of the Persian script. Thereafter, but for the more difficult set of words, it was smooth to get into the rhythm of thoughts and feelings since we, as friends, shared the mental infrastructure, axial lines of introspection and reflection connected us with an ambience of creativity, we were, as if, pilgrims destined to reach the pleasure dome of poetry. Moreover, Zahid is a ‘modern’ poet, not given to conventional associations of Urdu poetry with luxury mention of blossoms, boozing, etc. his poems are marked with the philosophical and the contemporary.
The Literature Times: Your poem “Glass Image” critiques the superficiality of modern life. How do you see the role of poetry in critiquing society, and do you believe that your poetry carries a message of social or moral responsibility?
Lalit Mohan Sharma: The problem with some among us is that we take ourselves too seriously. So our hurts, our views, our beliefs and projections seem huge asmuch as our individual selves are dwarfed and desiccated. Our thinking gets clouded, or even abandoned. This has become truer of the present moment, after a decade of narratives of majority-victimhood being marshaled on social media platforms, the collective has abjured thinking. Poems like ‘The New Self’, ‘Regimented Voices’ ‘We the People’ are some of the poems in the Icicles volume which obliquely point at attempts to dehydrate moral responsibility. Discrimination associated with caste and racial rancor cause a sense of outrage and their acceptance and practice lead to a poet’s rage.
The Literature Times: In your work, particularly in ‘Eyes of Silence’ and ‘The Beautiful’, there’s a strong emphasis on acceptance and introspection. Do these poems reflect your personal philosophies, or are they more a universal reflection on the human condition?
Lalit Mohan Sharma: ‘Eyes of Silence’ talks of how ‘fog gets fairly thick’, ‘doors split at footfalls’, ‘a choiceless state waits’ for man, and
Man must know at what time
To step on and step off
The active escalator.
Similarly, ‘The Beautiful’, as I now recall the poem, in its own way emphasizes the truth contained in the celebrated words, Satayam, Shivam, Sunderam. I really wonder at your phrase ‘personal philosophies’. We are our memory; all that we read, hear, experience, dream, encounter or escape—that’s a part of memory. Memory writes us.
The Literature Times: How do your academic background and long-standing career in education influence your poetic work? Do you find that the intellectual environment shapes your writing process or the way you approach themes in poetry?
Lalit Mohan Sharma: The kind of life and profession we live in certainly impacts our choices of writing. As an academician, one is too conscious of the critical jargon and a critic’s expectations, this affects your writing. More than the profession, it my own predilection to regularly keep reading books, fiction, non-fiction, important latest on society, men, politics, thinkers, all this keeps you involved and engaged in an intellectual temperature, which obviously is conducive to further intellection and articulation by an individual author. A poem is triggered by a word, an image, a feeling shared between characters on the tv screen, a reaction by a neighbor or friend, a thought that suddenly flashes to ignite reflections, a mood of introspection and exploration of mental responses—that’s the poems get written.
The Literature Times: Your poems often explore the tension between the ideal and the real, as seen in ‘Alchemy’ and ‘Rama’. How do you view the relationship between spiritual ideals and everyday human experiences in your poetry?
Lalit Mohan Sharma: A spiritual ideal must percolate into the workings of real world otherwise it is a lot of humbug, a baggage we carry, borrowed clothes which don’t fit us, or we keep Shakespeare, Vyas or Nietzsche on the book shelves just to impress the visitors. The way the name and image of Rama has been weaponised, the compassionate one, or Hanuman with rage written all over his face, it hurts those who worship or hold in great reverence. An all powerful Hanuman in anger! Fallacious images! Love, Turganev said, is like rebirth; love transforms, awakens human mind to truths he could never suspect even in most heightened moments. As Sahir said it, ‘bande ko khuda karta hai ishaq’. In the presence of love, distinction between the spiritual and the real disappears.
The Literature Times: Given your inclusion in several anthologies and critical works, including ’21st Century Critical Thought’, how do you see your poetry’s place in the wider literary tradition? What do you hope readers and critics take away from your body of work?
Lalit Mohan Sharma: It is pleasant sense of fulfillment to be able to speak and reach out to more people, via poetry or prose. And I consider myself being fortunate in getting invited by friends in the academia to join anthologies of poetry, stories and of academic interest and deliberations. I discover my mind in expressing on subjects like ethics, creativity, matters of contemporary conditions in society and politics on authors, reviewing new books for journals, online websites. Reviewing books for a Hindi Paper like Divya Himachal, books of Hindi poetry, on environment and novels has been a good experience, thus able to reach a common newspaper reading audience. The ‘take away’, well, it’s a big, wide world. To be here is just being here, and as Hamlet put it, ‘the rest is silence’.
