By Vijay Phanshikar :
 
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry. 
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
– ‘A Book’,
 A poem by Emily Dickinson
 

 

ONLY an Emily Dickinson can handle such paradoxes ! And what a connect she attains in these simple words -- spiritually ! Human soul ! -- Atman, Brahman, the emotional core, being carried forward in a frugal chariot, so to say ! So fine this ‘soul’ is that it also can move on on the strength of what a book wants to say, or even what a poem has to suggest in a fine nuance ! But the poem is about ‘A Book’ -- and, naturally, its power as a spiritual thruster. It also treats a poem as a courser -- that is a swift horse prancing and dancing its way forward -- to take the human soul into the forward zone of life, without getting hurt or pushed down in the process.

 

The whole idea is basking in paradoxes (not contradictions, if one may say so). But the imagery of a frigate -- a light, fast-moving small ship used for the protection of bigger ships in the naval armada -- or of a chariot hosting the soul does offer a confusing paradox -- that, thankfully, takes the pursuer into a zone of deep thought. The human soul often needs a lot of props, so to say, to keep itself afloat while getting tossed up and down in the vagaries of life and its contradictions and contrasts that threaten to tear apart one’s small emotional nucleus. In that state, what helps is a book, a poem, a composition, a sentence, a word or even an unexpressed but sensed sentiment.

 

The chariot that carries the human soul -- the human body (which one often mistakes as self) -- is certainly frugal, but gets empowered -- again -- by a book or a poem or a composition or a sentence or a word ... ! -- to carry on to meet the next day, the next challenge, the next mount to scale, the next moment to live ... ! The poem embodies a deep message -- and also an intense one. It offers an eternal consolation to a civil person -- that don’t be afraid of life’s vagaries. For, you have the book, the poem to help you float on, to move on.The book, the poem and all the members of that clan of written words will certainly help you to live a life of equilibrium, of peace, of harmony -- with one’s self. You will realise that you are ‘that’ : Tat Tvam Asi ! -- no matter then if the chariot of your soul is frugal. Inside, the soul is the core value of existence. Realise that TRUTH !