The Pain and The Panacea: Reading ‘The Wasteland’ In The Light Of श्रीमद् भगवद्गीता

Abstract

One of the yardsticks to estimate the worth of a work is its timelessness or relevance to the present. Many works in the field of all literatures- in English, Sanskrit, Gujarati or Hindi, have become milestones and benchmarking because of their quality to please and teach everybody, everywhere and every time- the quality of being sublime. T.S.Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, published in 1922 and regarded as a highly condensed epic of the Modern age, is also one such sublime work which has left a perennial effect in the field of literature and has carved a unique niche in its own aesthetic way. The poem is symbolic of a proverb ‘every cloud has a silver line’. The poem talks about the chaos of the then Modern English society. In it, we can see that materialism pervades throughout the poem and as a natural corollary of it, April, the month of Spring and rejuvenation, is referred to as the cruellest month.¹ The poem poses many serious issues which are of significant human concerns. Very finely the inclination of the modern Wastelanders towards inaction is indicated by the beginning line. From the very outset, Eliot talks about the degenerated psychology of the modern man in which he constantly avoids any action which, according to The Bhagawad Gita, is not possible. As Lord Krishna says, it is impossible for any human being to remain actionless; for inaction is also a kind of action or Karma. In the third chapter of The Bhagawad Gita, entitled ‘Karmayoga’, in the fifth shloka, Lord Krishna says,