The consciousness of water: An eco-existential reading of Savita Singh

By Ravi Ranjan* 

Savita Singh occupies a distinctive place in contemporary Hindi poetry through her intellectually rich and philosophically nuanced literary vision. Her poetic oeuvre reimagines the position of women beyond conventional social and cultural frameworks, opening possibilities for new modes of identity and existence. Among her many collections, the poem "This Water, a Blue Mirror" (yam pani nila darpana) stands as a remarkable achievement—a work that transforms water from a mere natural element into a multi-layered reality encompassing memory, consciousness, love, compassion, and the preservation of life itself.

The poem's opening lines establish its central conceit with quiet authority:

"Not because anyone said so, but from its own knowing,

the water knows it is the mirror of the blue sky." 

Here water possesses self-awareness. Its knowledge does not derive from external authority or social approval but from experiential self-understanding. This seemingly simple declaration carries profound implications: water is not passive matter but an active presence that sees, remembers, and accumulates the experiences of the world within itself.

The Ecology of Memory

From an ecological perspective, the poem challenges the modern view that regards nature as inert matter awaiting human manipulation. Singh's water is not an object seen through human eyes; it is itself the seer. "In the water's seeing, this entire world exists," the poem declares, shifting the centre of vision from humanity to nature. This reversal is not merely stylistic but ideological—it transgresses the human-centred worldview that has dominated Western thought since the Renaissance.

The poem establishes water as what we might call a "living record." It has "seen them dying," "seen love sinking," and witnessed "the lover weeping on the riverbank." Water becomes an archive that preserves not only cosmic events but humanity's personal pains. In this sense, the poem participates in what ecological critics have identified as nature's role as repository of memory. Rivers, lakes, forests, and mountains hold layers of time within themselves—they are witnesses to history.

This ecological sensibility deepens through the poem's connection to literary traditions that regard water as the carrier of memory. The author notes parallels with Kalidasa's Meghaduta, where rivers awaken memories of separated lovers; with the Bhāgavata Purāṇa's description of the Yamunā bearing memories of Krishna's līlās; with T.S. Eliot's "The Dry Salvages," where "the river is within us"; and with Derek Walcott's "The Sea Is History," where the sea preserves the memories of colonized peoples. In all these traditions, water becomes an alternative archive—one that holds what human institutions could not protect.

Memory Between Presence and Absence

The emotional centre of the poem lies in its treatment of memory as a force that resists oblivion. "Only that one is not there who now lives in its memory"—this absence is the poem's heart. The beloved is no longer present, yet his image remains "exactly as it was." This preservation is not mere nostalgia; it is a moral act. As Paul Ricoeur argued, remembering a person or relationship constitutes a kind of fidelity toward it. Forgetting can become moral failure, while memory keeps relationships alive.

The poem distinguishes between "shadow" and "picture." A shadow is momentary and unstable; a picture conveys permanence. Memory is "something more than a shadow"—it preserves the beloved's face exactly as it was at the moment of parting. This precision matters. Time passes, life changes, but memory keeps its beloved in the form in which it was last seen. This is the tragedy and the triumph of memory: it cannot bring back what is lost, but it refuses to let it be erased.

"When he had accepted that nothing was left," the poem continues, "Whatever was like love, he entrusted to the water." This entrusting is symbolic. Human love may end, but its feeling, by flowing into water, becomes part of a larger existence. Love is no longer an active presence but has become flow and memory. It flows in the river—signalling the continuity of life—and remains in the eyes—signifying emotional remembrance. Love exists simultaneously in external nature and inner consciousness.

The Existential Dimension

Read in the light of existentialist philosophy, the poem reveals itself as an exploration of fundamental questions connected with existence, transience, loss, meaning-making, and the will to live. The poem's declaration that water knows itself "from its own knowing" recalls Jean-Paul Sartre's insistence that human existence is not governed by any pre-determined essence but constructs itself through choice and experience. Water's self-knowledge mirrors the existential emphasis on experiential self-awareness over imposed truth.

The poem's treatment of death consciousness resonates with Martin Heidegger's concept of "Being-towards-death." When the poem says water has seen the stars dying, it points toward the universal transience from which nothing is exempt—not even those celestial bodies humans often regard as symbols of permanence. "Has seen love sinking" further clarifies the existential dimension: even the deepest sources of meaning are perishable. In Albert Camus's thought, humans repeatedly pass through experiences in which their faith in the world's stability breaks—this is the condition of the "absurd." "Has seen love sinking" is the poetic form of precisely such an experience.

Yet the poem does not surrender to meaninglessness. "Whatever was like love, he entrusted to the water"—this is the point where meaning-making begins. After recognising loss, the person does not reject life; he rebels against meaninglessness by making his loss part of a broader flow. "Drought is a truth," the poem acknowledges, "Even God wishes to be saved from it." This is the aspiration to return to life. The final lines—"No one wants death, not even a man defeated in love"—present the philosophical conclusion. The man defeated in love has experienced loss, separation, and the crisis of meaning, yet he chooses life. This choice is not naive optimism but knowledge of transience.

Water as Philosophy

The poem's symbolic density rewards multiple readings. From a phenomenological perspective, water assumes the form of a consciousness with its own vision and memory. The relationship between water and sky becomes not merely visual but experiential—what Maurice Merleau-Ponty called the "flesh of the world." From a psychoanalytic perspective, water becomes the metaphor of the unconscious, shadow of repressed psychological material, and the lost beloved of absence and lack. The poem tells us that human beings are not only wounded by their wounds; they also change through them. Lost love does not only cause pain; it also opens the path of self-knowledge.

From the perspective of Heraclitus's philosophy of flux, the poem reveals that deep dialogue between love, memory, and existence in which everything keeps changing, yet human beings search for meaning; relationships end, yet their memories remain; love sinks, yet it continues to flow. Water represents both change and continuity simultaneously. It is never the same, yet its flow continues.

From a feminist perspective, the poem creates an alternative emotional and moral world where relationships are based not on dominance but on mutuality; love is not ownership but flow; memory is not bondage but protection; and water is the power that saves life. From a posthumanist perspective, water is transformed from object to presence, from resource to experiencer, from matter to memory-carrier. The poem refuses to regard humanity as the sole centre of the world and presents the possibility that the world can also be seen from water's perspective.

The Moral Aesthetic

The poem's deepest achievement may lie in its moral vision. Love and water become forces of life-preservation. "Which has settled on the earth to save it from every drought"—this line makes the moral direction clear. Drought is not merely the absence of water; it is the symbol of the erosion of life, relationships, memory, and feeling. By contrast, love saves life. It saves the earth from drought. The highest form of love is the protection of life.

This places the poem at the confluence of environmental ethics, the ethics of care, and existential ethics. Life is not only human life; it is also the life of the earth. Relationships are not only personal relationships; they are part of those broad threads from which the world is made. The moral meaning of love lies in the protection of precisely these relationships.

The final lines—"No one wants death, not even a man defeated in love"—can be read as the moral conclusion. The man defeated in love has experienced loss, disintegration, and sorrow. Yet he chooses life. This choice is not the result of naive optimism but of a deep recognition of life's value. He has seen the possibility of death but remains oriented toward life.

Conclusion

Ultimately, "This Water, a Blue Mirror" emerges as a work whose poetic power lies in the indivisible unity of its content and craft. The process active here of transforming experience into thought and thought into experience becomes the basis of its distinctiveness. Instead of reaching any abstract philosophical conclusion, the poem constructs, through its symbols and images, a field of experience in which the reader becomes a participant in the process of meaning-making.

The most notable aspect of this poetic text is that it does not establish any final duality between transience and preservation, decay and renewal, absence and presence. On the contrary, it shows that humanity's emotional and cultural life is constructed between these apparently mutually opposed states. What is lost often becomes the most meaningful; what is absent remains most alive in memory; and what flows away remains saved on some deep level.

Reading "This Water, a Blue Mirror" is not merely reading a poem; it is entering that cultural and human world of experience where memory creates its silent resistance against oblivion, feeling against inertia, and life against decay. This resistance is the most lasting achievement of the work and also the deepest source of its beauty. In Singh's vision, water knows, water remembers, water saves—and in doing so, it reminds us that the preservation of memory is inseparable from the preservation of life itself.

---

*Professor and former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original paper