Written in 1922, “Jīvan kī Hai” (“What is Life?”) is one of Bhāī Vīr Singh's earlier poems. The young woman with this existential inquiry is the sole human figure in the composition. Magnificent scenes of nature form the backdrop. In fact, her question is put to the transparent waters of the lake. So vivid are the descriptions – both of the nature around and of the woman's psychological state – that the reader seems to be present with her during her five visits to the lakeside. Her first visit is during a bright moonlit night, the second at the break of dawn, the third as the sun is setting on the horizon, the fourth at crisp midday, and the fifth on a dark and rainy day. Through this sequence, a journey is made from intense anguish to supreme joy. Basically this journey revolves around her perception of the Transcendent One, and it could be interpreted as a statement of Sikh existentialism.

Now we do not often come across the terms “Sikh” and “existentialism” together. How could they relate to each other? Are they not in fact apart from each other, as if they belonged to two different realms? The difficulty is compounded by the fact that “existentialism” is not easy to define: “Like the unicorn, whom legend endows with wondrous attributes, but whom the empirical eye has never calibrated, existentialism is a kind of poetry of the philosophical imagination, defying rational systematization.”