Most poems about trees look up, toward branches, blossom and light. Manan Das's "Life and Death" goes the other way and takes us underground, where the only question is whether a root can find water. The poem never names a tree, yet roots, earth, stones and thirst build one in the mind anyway. Its central idea is stark: to live is to search, and the search is not optional. By the final line, "There is life, there is death," we understand that the gap between the two is a matter of water and of how far down one is willing to go for it.
The opening line is a command, and an odd one: "Scatter my roots in search of water." Scattering usually suggests destruction, but here it is strategy. If you cannot see where water is, you send yourself out in every direction. The poem doesn't say who is being ordered. It could be the speaker urging themselves on, or a plea to some larger force, and that ambiguity is useful because the speaker is both the one commanding and the one being commanded. The phrase "my roots" also fuses the speaker with the plant, so we are never sure whether we are listening to a tree or a person speaking through one.
The second line deepens this: "Touch with feelings in depth of earth." Roots here are sense organs, groping blindly in the dark. "Feelings" works twice, as physical touch and as emotion. Judging by this, the search may be inner as well as botanical, a reaching that is felt as much as performed. Then come obstacles: "Move aside stones I precede." The verb "precede" is unusual. It can be read as the roots going ahead of the stones, at the leading edge of the push, and the slight strangeness makes the line feel like effort rather than ease. The next line, "In deep to deeper...", has no real endpoint. "Deeper" is a comparison that never arrives at a destination, and the trailing dots leave the line unfinished, as though the descent continues beyond the page.
There is no rhyme and no regular metre. Lines are short, mostly four to seven words, and the music comes from repetition. "This is the way to reach at source / This is the way to obtain" works like a chant or a creed, the same phrase hammered twice. The second line ends on "obtain" with no object, so the reader hangs in suspense until the next line supplies what is wanted. The English is also slightly unidiomatic in places ("reach at source"), which gives the poem a raw, spoken, unpolished texture. A smoother phrase would sound more comfortable than this poem wants to be.
The most important shift comes with "I have to get water." Until now the poem has been made of imperatives and instructions. Here it drops into plain declaration, and nearly every word is a single syllable. The most urgent line is also the simplest, as if need strips language down. Water is no longer one goal among others. It is the hinge on which the whole poem turns.
That is why the last line lands so heavily: "There is life, there is death." Two matching clauses sit side by side, joined only by a comma, with no "and" and no "or." The poem doesn't tell us which one the water brings, or which one its absence brings. We work that out ourselves, and the bare balance makes the stakes feel absolute. It also explains the title, which puts life first, as though the poem's entire movement were an effort to earn that order.
The poem is significant for its reversal of the usual picture of striving. Growth is usually imagined as rising and flourishing in the open. Here it is hidden, downward, stubborn and unglamorous, the kind of work nobody sees but everything depends on. The poem itself stays with roots and water, but it is easy to see why readers might apply it to any deep need, such as knowledge, meaning or belonging. For a student of poetry, it shows how little a text needs: one controlling image, a handful of plain words, and a refusal to explain, and a whole view of survival fits into eight lines.