Ides of March - 2

When his friend met him after years, the friend observed with a smile, "You look sukhi". He was scandalised. Sukhi is a Bengali term that has no English equivalent, according to me. It is an adjective to define a settled-into-life state of mind and being. The comfort of having a pattern of life that one is well-accustomed to creates a sense of security and safety. When used to this state of being, a small attempt to step out of this zone of comfort (for instance, when the brand of shampoo that you use is no longer available in the market) appears to be very unsettling. There is nothing criminal in being sukhi; just that there is a little less opportunity to live vibrantly.

Colours (the concluding part)

Another dream it was in a series. On the plain black screen figures appeared. The language was unknown. It meant "Mount Fuji in Red". 

Since the geography project in which the nine year old had presented the 'land of the rising sun' as best as a nine-year old could, Japan became the land of dreams. Internet was still a few years away. Scourging through books in libraries, Japan unfolded in its mystic charm. The kimono, the island country that feels the sun first - so to say - every day of the nine-year old's life, the eyes like little arcs on the face, and Mount Fuji, the dormant volcano, pristine in its silence, against the backdrop of the aqua sky - enchanted the mind.

Mount Fuji as the nine-year old found it

Ah! It was a land of dreams; it was a dream in which the music from the string instruments always flowed on, as can only happen in dreams.

  

Mount Fuji was standing tall. It was changing hues - red, orange, blood red. There were a series of explosions behind Fuji. There was a mad rush of people. The middle-aged man in black and white formals mused : "Japan is so small, there is no escape." The woman, holding on to the hand of a child, another child secured on her back, spoke as a living being speaks till s/he is dead. She said, "We all know that! No way out! But still we have to try. No other way! " 

Akira Kurosawa stepped into the world of coloured films towards the end of his directorial life. After directing films in the black/white medium for about twenty-five years, he used colour for the first time in Dodesukaden in 1970. The film was a financial disaster possibly because it was unlike any film that Kurosawa had done. Along with the explosion of colours in every frame, the camera was used almost as a detached observer, with no desire to create a causal narrative. It was simply watching things, people, places. 

It is truly an experience to observe the use of colours by a director who has worked for long in black/white. 

Dreams (1990) (accompanied by Ishiro Honda in direction) presents eight 'dreams', that, critics argue are Kurosawa's own. However, it seems that Kurosawa travels from the personal to the universal in them; as dreams usually do. 

Dreams are never what they seem. They never tell the whole story. They hold un-uttered fortunes in them. It is here that the psychoanalyst and the viewer of Dreams gain a space of existence in disturbance, like volcanic islands in placid lives.

Mount Fuji, the landscape from the land of dreams, appeared in a macabre splendour in Dreams. In spite of the fact that it was still dormant, there was absolute chaos. Something tells you that the scene is progressing to absolute annihilation. This dream titled "Mount Fuji in Red" is actually a nightmare of a nuclear meltdown. 

On the morning of the festival of colours, a peculiar scene from this 'dream' kept coming back amidst the waking life: the scene of the coloured clouds gradually shrouding Mount Fuji as the middle aged man in formals explained 

Radioactivity was invisible. And because of its danger, they coloured it. But that only lets you know which kind kills you. Death's calling card.

The different radioactive elements had been coloured so as to identify them. The man in formals, a man who had worked at the nuclear plants that were exploding, named one radioactive element after another, specifying how it affects human beings. The woman with two kids was increasingly becoming horrified. Her words seemed to come from beyond the cultural calm that Japan was showing in the waking life, faced with the possibility of a nuclear meltdown. She screamed as she held her kids to her bosom: 

They told us that nuclear plants were safe. Human accident is the danger, not the nuclear plant itself. No accidents, no danger. That's what they told us. 

As I remembered all the clouds of colours that we created on Holi, a prickly sensation passed through the body. As I remembered how we used to run after anyone who wanted to stay away from colours on Holi, I shivered. The memory of faces smeared in red, in yellow, in purple made me feel weak in the knee. The stomach curled up, trying to expunge the nightmare of the dreams that can be tangible and real in the crudest manner possible. How horrific it seemed, that, on a day celebrating the vigour of life, the terror of colours was engulfing the mind.

Mount Fuji looked as if it was a glowing hot iron. And then, there was no one around except the woman with her kids, the middle aged man in formals and a young man in jacket. And then, there were only the woman with her kids and the young man frantically waving his jacket at the coloured clouds - red, yellow, purple engulfing them. 

I do not know what numbed the mind more - the possibility of a nuclear meltdown or the truth that human beings, like you and me, had chosen to develop this power on which they truly have no control.

You can watch "Mount Fuji in Red" from Kurosawa's Dreams here.

(Special thanks to Arijit for discussing the films and enriching my understanding of them) 

On why all things change and yet none do

There is nothing that is the absolute truth in this temporal world of ours. When you and I hold a day old baby in our arms, and touch its soft, smooth skin, you and I are in the here, in the now. You and I do not think of the bruises and the wrinkles that time will bring upon it, though time will, in its own sweet pace. The truth of the child is in the now. No other truth exists at this point. 

Often we meet people, in social gatherings and in mirrors, who feel their lives are a lost cause. They think their dreams are too late to be awake. Sixteen, twenty, forty years have passed since they had this dream. It is not sympathy when you and I say, under our breaths, that we know how they feel. We really do, because you and I have felt like this, at some point.

You and I may have walked through those stormy zones of the mind. You and I may have been drenched and left dripping like a crow in the storm. You and I really know the weight of wet straw and the eventual loss of it. One of us may have picked up fresh, dry straws and stuffed the scarecrows with them, creating them anew. The possibility of another rain and another storm washing it away didn't stay longer than a breath in the mind. It is at this point in our lives, you and I were there and then. You and I were in the here and the now. 

Life rarely lives up to the blueprints we create at the beginning of our lives. At the beginning, you and I were childish, full of dreams, full of confidence that all those seemingly absurd dreams could be made true. As we walk down the road, the blueprint doesn't seem to match the route. You and I still hold on to it, for some time more. We still have some hope left in our youths. We take a few risks here and there, make a few abrupt jump cuts. For one, maybe, the blueprint now seems visible in the road that lies ahead. For the other, the blueprint seems to be a distant truth, as distant as the truth that years ago, the mature body was a lump floating in amniotic fluid. The blueprint ends up in the dustbin by the road if we can retain our composure. If we are struck by rage, the roads are strewn with bits and pieces of something that you and I once called a dream that we believed in. 

As the pebbles and the boulders seem to lie right at the place where you and I intend to place our singular foot, we laugh at the childishness of those dreams. You and I share the joke all along the way. Our laugh thunders through the journey, maybe. And yet, something within feels like the empty place left by the oil drilled out from the earth's core. A collapsing empty space, away from the eyes. You and I are nowhere. We are not in the here, we are not in the now. 

Are our blueprints of dreams truly an outcome of a child's play? What about the potential you and I felt as we tapped our earths? Was it a dream, a fantasy of the child who can create universes out of nothing? But, was life not born from nothing that can be tangibly called 'living'? Our dreams, dreams that you and I nourished, can not simply be a passing toy! Even as you and I tear it apart, from our bodies, they stick to our souls. You and I can't find anything to loosen the adhesive.

Dreams are relative as is the truth about them. They transform as caterpillars do to butterflies or tadpoles to frogs. Yet, they retain the quality of dreams - that which can be a truth - may be in a different time; but truth it is nonetheless.

As you and I meet such individuals again, in conversations or in mirrors, let us remember to share this little joke of relative dreaming.


Image/s: Same tree, same time, just with two different application modes. In Lund, Sweden. By self.

Weird connections : Necessity, Evolution and Learning

What did those ancestors of ours thought when they drew bisons on the cave walls, perhaps in the light of a burning wood. Perhaps there were others looking at awe at this unique phenomenon of capturing, in a completely new sense, what they see running and throbbing amidst the landscape. Perhaps they were dumbstruck that something like this can happen. Perhaps the first artists in the history of mankind were shunned from the group. Or, perhaps the artists were hailed as supernatural beings. Perhaps it was at this point of time in human history that the idea of creation most poignantly emerged separately from the history of necessities that made man. Necessity is said to be the father/mother of all inventions. Necessity is also the reason there are discoveries. Had there been no urge to find new sea-routes, the landmass we call America would have never been discovered. (But that is another story altogether). What if we go a step further and say, necessity is also the cause of evolution?

Evolution is cryptically defined as the Darwinian idea of the survival of the fittest. It is not the survival of the strongest. It is not the survival of the most ferocious. It is a poetic truth actually. What can be more poetic than the radical cocktail of the element of chance (not so radical in the post- Quantum era though) and the primal urge of survival? Had the human ancestors not felt the radical urge to continue existing in a world that is naturally more powerful than humans ever thought of being, the history of mankind could have been lost in the voids of time.

As mankind trekked through its own history, Darwin's adage was seen as a scientific truth, detached from the reality of our worlds. Power became the stronghold of survival. And humans believed it; they continue to do so. Histories and myths of once great and thriving, and, now extinct civilisations are not very hard to find: the Harappasn civilisation, the ancient Egyptian, Greek,  Roman civilisations, the native American civilisations. And yet, man believes that, that is different. Humans believe that they exist as a continuity of the past civilizations. In terms of genetics, it may be so. In terms of the basic science of Darwin, may be not. 

In  an Old- English poem, a refrain occurs : "That has passed and so shall this". It was a refrain in an elegy, a poem about loss, a poem of lamentation. In that context, this is a hopeful, stoical view of life. Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest seems to be a variation of this refrain. What has survived in pre-historic eras - the wide variety of dinosaurs, the mammoths, the Archaeopteryx (possibly the first bird)- is lost in this present time. What is in this time, may as well be lost in some future time. And yet, Darwin's theory is but a story in the history of science.  

Does this mean we have a meaningless existence? Existence is the meaning we give to this present moment; what meaning it will have in future times we can only speculate. The most profound quality thatthis rather young species in this world needs is perspective.

Herein, interjects the history of the human civilisation and our ongoing discussion of learning. There are differences between what was done, what can be done and what can't be undone. The human learning process does not initiate the mind in seeing the difference between each of these. Education in this modern world is still largely something like the factory production system. There is no  one better to explain this than Ken Robinson in his admirable light-hearted and yet forceful way. 

(to be contd.)

Learning the elements: Earth (Concluding part)

mothering

While the symbol of the continuous cyclical order of things and life is addressed, in the previous post, there remains another part to this element that none will deny. The element of 'motherhood' bestowed upon this element is essentially feminine, or so it seems. The female body conceives and gives birth. Hence the association of the female nurturing self with this element is understandable.

Rewind to a time when life, as we remotely understand it, possibly began. 

From where did this unicellular organism evolve ? From the water, the scientists say. The birth of life happened in another element and the life of man is and was nurtured on land. The idea of the mother earth is, then, an evolutionary realisation.  Humans are terrestrial creatures and thus this element has gained motherhood. (We are yet to know of the possibility of human beings as amphibians).

It is an interesting experience for the blogger as she reviews the notion of the 'mother' earth. The image of 'Gaia', the spirit of the earth; the image of Sita; the fertility images since pre-historic times - all of these direct us to this singular realisation that, the human kind has attributed the role of the nurturer to earth since it has appeared to be the primal necessity for human existence.

Before the blogger had started scripting this series, this idea, the earth as the mother, seemed elemental to her. Now, as she writes and reads and delves more into the thoughts that made earth the 'mother', the blogger realises that, the 'mother-ing' of this element is more of a convention. It is done by humans seeking security in the psychological comfort that arises from bestowing this nurturing capacity to a singular element. For, imagine living without the other elements - without the knowledge of fire the human race couldn't have survived this long; without water a human being can supposedly survive for about 3 to 5 days on an average; without oxygen a normal human being survives for a few minutes only! The blogger is surprised at the conditioning of her logic that had yet undoubtedly made her believe that, earth is THE mother!! 

Captain Planet and the Planeteers

The blogger wishes to conclude the re-learning (if she may say so) of this element with reference to a cartoon series she devotedly watched during her early youth. This cartoon series was titled Captain Planet and the Planeteers. The spirit of the earth encapsulated in the character Gaia, bestows on five youths, across the five continents, with magical rings that can control the four elements, the fifth being the Heart, symbolising love and compassion. When the powers of the five rings are combined, a fantastical entity emerges - Captain Planet, whose power is derived from the sun.

As the blogger was writing this post, she was constantly reminded of this fantastical Captain, one 'born' (if the blogger may use that expression) from the combination of the varied elements of nature and from an element that the humans share with the natural world - the heart/love. The 'mother-ing' of the element earth becomes re-interpreted in this perspective. It appears that the elements, both individually and collectively, nurture human life in this strange celestial sphere whose 72 % is covered in water alone. The idea of the 'mother earth' is far from being gendered. It is possibly a metaphor for that part of the cycle in which we, humans, exist; the part of existence that we acknowledge as life. 

Images: "Mothering" - image of statue in Prague. by self. 2010.

"Captain Planet and the Planeteers" , the web.

simply-fly

I signed off with this image in the last post. I tentatively left a rather rhetorical question along :  

What do you see? 

The image is really the memory of the noisy neighbourhood when the roads were being repaired. The usually quiet neighbourhood in this part of Budapest became a crazy chaos. You walk 50 meters to find that the pathway was closed. You turn back retracing your steps, thinking all the while if this loss of a fraction of time would be vital, since the neighbourhood store closes in less than 5 minutes and your refrigerator is empty right now. The continuous sound of the drilling machine in a sultry morning is unbearable at times. I while my time observing the workers and their broad work-space: the entire neighbourhood. And all the others continue their own flights.

This picture was taken on such a day, as a experimental shot using some function in the camera (i forget what). I didn't intend to capture the flight of the bird. As I saw the preview, nothing struck me initially. I saw what I thought I would see : the green makeshift rooms, the dry branches poking out from here and there, a part of the car-parking zone, and that huge yellow truck, blue stripes in its mixing section I guess. And then I saw it - the bird in flight, framed in motion forever! Its eyes are intent. It blends with the wry surroundings because of its colour. And yet, when I looked closely, I saw the perfect spread of its feathers in its tail - the black and white parts spread to look like a half-opened Japanese fan. Its wings were free and yet so aware of itself. It is as if in meditation, aware of all and yet not restless, participating and yet not sucked into the momentum, like a fish in water - always in water and yet, never wet!

With all the commotion in the background, the bird simply flies. As I stumbled upon this image yesterday night, I just had a eureka-ish feeling for the umpteenth time - the picture communicated with the restless kid called the mind. It seemed to say, simply fly, in wind and rain, in sunny days, in grumpy days, in spring and in winter, simply fly. Simplify.

Image: in Budpaest, by self

 

On busy-ness and time

Busyness, we say is the syndrome of the malady of modern life. There are always more things to do than the hours can accommodate. It almost creates a surreal wish for an additional 12/24 hours (as per the individual needs) or for cloning of the self in many of us. We imagine life would be so much better if there was more 'time' in our hands. What this leads to is a constant sense of incompleteness, a constant feeling that so many thoughts, ideas, desires, possibilities have to die due to lack of what we know as time. The Irishman, James Joyce, talked very candidly about time as we perceive it. If we are 'busy' doing something that we love, or, participating in something that we enjoy, time seems to fly. It seems time has walked its space a little faster when we are doing things that that we are fond of. When I used to attend Bharatnatyam (a classical Indian form of dance) classes, the two and a half hour rigorous routine of practicing dance moves and steps, repeating them incessantly till the gestures are right, seemed like a fleeting evening. At times, I wanted the clock to slow down, so that I can dance a little more. In a similar vein, try doing something that is a pain-in-the-neck. No matter how little clock-time such a thing would require, it would seem like an eternity. For me, it can be anything from making the bed to dusting the furniture. Time can and does (if you will notice) fly or creep, depending upon the involvement of the mind, the body and the soul in the act being performed.

Time leads where we want to go...

Joyce charted out the difference between the clock time and the psychological time exquisitely in a novel titled Ulysses. (If you love reading Joyce, you will sail through the book. If you don't, you may end up making several attempts to read the novel, each with a fresh surge of enthusiasm, for a period spanning from 5 to 15 years.) Without involving ourselves with Joyce's particular novel, let us rest our case on what such different categories of time would mean in our common, down-to-dust lives.

*****

In the previous post, I had confided in you that I was assailed by too many tasks and ideas, thus leading to a serious need for a stopgap post!!!! When we have to undertake several important tasks (each with a red priority tag), the mind takes the easy route of escape. It simulates tiredness and acts as if it is too much burdened. (This almost reminds me of stomach aches I 'had' in order to stay away from school.) The mind tells the body - "Gosh, you are sooooo tired! Why don't you take rest?" The body believes in the mind and thinks, "Yes, I will regain my strength if I rest." And so, the mind and the body, along with a little pricking in the soul, draw the curtains, arrange the pillow and sneak underneath the tugged blanket. Off to sleep. Off to a world away from the real world of red-tag-priorities, until waking brings back the horror of priorities. Continuing to postpone the priorities create Hamlets out of us. To wake or not - that becomes the crux of existence. The only unfortunate thing in this entire episode is, that, the priorities never lessen or die. Every time we shut our eyes, the priorities flash like the headlights of an approaching vehicle. It keeps getting bigger.  

*****

The only way to avoid the evident imminent disaster is to keep awake the whole while. Instead of giving in to the bullying mind, we need to master over it by understanding the way a bully functions. A bully has the might to threaten because the victim has the fear of the bully. If we choose to be unafraid in the face of the bully, traditional wisdom asserts that the bully will crumble. The definition that might constitute the idea of being 'unafraid' is pretty ambiguous. It may appear to mean the absence of fear, while I understand it more as the act of walking through fear. This is because denials doesn't help me usually. When the priorities loom large, in number and/or in complexity, take a break but do not go to sleep! 

The 'psychological time' that flies is the time that we enjoy, that relaxes the mind such that it leaps beyond the continuous hammering by the clock-hands. Create that 'psychological time'. Do something that gives you immense sense of pleasure and peace. As the mind falls into the rhythm of the relaxed psychological time, it calms down and stops its hysterics. Then, you can simply sit with pencil and paper and chalk out a routine that accommodates all the priorities. As the routine is sketched, with each unit of time allotted to a particular priority, the next important gesture is required. 

In each bundle of priority-allotted-task, we need to train the mind to focus. As we focus, we simulate the absorption in an act that we feel during our experience of 'happy' psychological time. And then we conquer the inhibition that clock time injects in us. What we do in the process is simply see the priorities in perspective. They remain priorities that need to be addressed, but shed the aggression  implanted in it by the unbridled clock. At the end of it all, we realize, it is all about perspective.

close up

from a distance

 











Images:
"Time leads where we want to go". Spiral staircase inside Salzburg castle. Salzburg 2010.

"close up". Structure in museum in Vienna. Vienna 2010.
"from a distance". View of Prague from top of a tower. Prague 2010.

            

All images copyright Susmita Paul 2010.

 

An experience in translation ...

As a kid I have read several versions of the fairy tale dealing with the two queens of a king: the selfish materialistic queen Suyorani and the humble,caring, non-complaining queen Duorani. The standard fairy tale version narrates the story of how the selfish queen ousts the humble queen from the palace and tries to keep her away, and how finally the worth of the banished Duorani is realised and she is brought back to the palace. Rabindranth Tagore's take on that fairy tale in his book of poetic prose Lipica deals with the story from a slightly different perspective. Tagore's tale is about the unhappiness that Suorani encounters in the palace of comforts. As I sit and read and attempt to translate Tagore's take of the fairy tale, I am drenched by waves of thoughts from different seas of ideas. 

Duorani or Shuorani?

Fairy tales charm the mind of the young and the old by virtue of telling a tale that has been told forever. We, the listeners, know for sure, that the evil will be defeated by the good by the end of the fairy tale. The allegory of the power of good that prevails over the power of evil has been narrated in various ways across the globe. And all such conventional fairy tales categorise everything in terms of binaries. Each and every character is either good or bad. There is no trait of one in the other. The lines that demarcate each are distinct. The structure of the allegory aims to teach; and the basic requisite of teaching is to demarcate and differentiate. This brings me to the thought-sea that churns questions like : Can everything be identified as either black OR white? If so, then where does the colour grey come from? Where is that space where BOTH black AND white exist? The waves of this sea leave me in the sands of words created by Tagore in Lipica. 

The treacherous Suorani  who had left no stone unturned to push the existence of Duorani to the brink of the kingdom of the king's heart, weeps with sadness in Tagore's take on the standardised fairy tale of Duorani-Suorani. In Lipica, his book of poetic prose, his version of the fairy tale is titled "Suoranir sadh" (Suorani's desire). Unlike all the desires that Suorani had in the wide-spread fairy tale, the desires that she experiences are non-materialistic. She does not desire fine clothes, precious jewellery or such stuff that can be quantified in terms of money. She desires simplicity of being, she desires the dignified calm of simple living, the joy and the warmth of the hearth. She desires the sorrow of Duorani...

Duoranir dukkho ami chai ...

"oi duoranir dukkho ami chai ....or oi ba(n)sher ba(n)shite sur bajlo,kintu amar sonar ba(n)shi kebol boyei beRalem, agle beRalem, bajate parlem na." 

I long for the suffering of Duorani .... her reed can create such music, but my golden flute I vainly carried along, guarding it and alas never being able to create music from it.   

Image with caption "Duorani or Shuorani?" : Woman's face by Rabindranath Tagore, Ink on paper, n.d.

Image with caption "Duoranir dukkho ami chai..." : Lady with flowers by Rabindranath Tagore, Watercolour on paper, dated 28/9/37.

Images taken from the web. 

rumbling crumbling concluded : heal

"And die of nothing but a rage to live."

From: "Epistle II: To a Lady: Of the Characters of Women" by Alexander Pope

Innocence in its purity is powerful, only when it is aware of itself. Anger is the weapon of the calm. Silence can be the choice of the weak out of the fear of speech. Silence can be the virtue of the strong who would conserve it and use it for the best purpose defined to the self. Silence can be an awareness of where I invest my anger. Each moment  when energy gets wasted in the form of destructive anger, the possibilities of the moment dies. Conserving anger to direct it at the more powerful 'wrongs' can be a healing process. Anger is like fire. If we can direct the flames in the proper manner, it can create beautiful glassware. It also has the power to ravage and destroy, all for nothing that can be valued.


Does this mean, destruction is a non-natural process? Is it something that should never have been? Funnily, I don't think so. Destruction is as natural as construction. Death is as natural as life. Rage is as natural as love. The question is not to to 'decide' and to 'decree' what should be. The question is what you and I choose to do with all the "combustibles" in our lives.

*******

The previous section of the post was written before the previous post  was published. At first I thought of deleting it , or, adding it as a postscript to this post. But then, the responses of Somdatta and Shiuli, made me think otherwise. 

Somdatta's response is worthy to be noted since it perceives anger as a very personal emotion. I am angry when things pertaining to me are not as I had expected them to be. I am angry when the bed is dirty. I am angry when the dishes are not washed. Ask yourself, and you will find a thousand reasons for being angry. Anger IS a very subjective experience. And that is the reason I decided to shift its approach from the literature of Blake to the literature of common lives. I believe strongly, there is magic in each of us. There is magic around us. But all of that is waiting for the magician to surface. All I wish to share with you is my encounter with magicians like that ... What these magicians do, I wasn't doing when I was writing the first post on rumbling crumbling ... I was objectively talking about it, from the armchair of a thinker. And that the reader in this blogger didn't like ... she had made a choice of 'proactive living' a few posts back ... and all that she was hell bent on doing was mincing words! That is when I stopped writing a moment, took a break from thinking about things in abstract terms and started experiencing the magic ...  and here I share with you some of those ...

Magic of dance...

A beautiful woman, in her middle ages, at the peak of her performative years in dance realises she has cancer. She breaks down. She is afraid. That is the nature of her anger- her fear that she is actually walking towards the end. And then she chooses. She chooses to dance like 'magic'. She believes her dance IS magic ... and here she is  ... not a survivor of cancer ... in her own words ... "a cancer conqueror" ... She is Ananda Shankar Jayant ...

Listen to her story here.

Magic of courage...

As a teenager she was gang-raped by eight men.  From that episode of her life,  she remembers the "anger part of it". She was, is and continues to fight the outrageous dissociation that we attest to survivors of rape victims. She didn't sulk and let that single chapter of her life take over her entire life. she did not end her life in despair. Instead, she fights the odds with that anger that is still oozing out of her ostracised self. She doesn't believe the merit of a woman is her meekness. She believes the merit of her pain is her anger. And she helps directing that anger in all such survivors and yes ... i will say conquerors of societal stigmatisation ... by channelling their anger in performing tasks of heavy physical labour in industries which categorically ward women off by virtue of being women. She is Dr. Sunitha Krishnan.

Listen to her story here.

Magic I touched   

A beauty with a smile. Back at home she was fighting the world for her angel, who is very special. And yet, every time I met her, every day I met her, she was smiling that angelic mesmerising smile. She still does. Her skin shows signs of the waves that lashed out at her. It may have eroded the glow of the skin, but her eyes are still bright and her smile still warm. She is the only magician in this list whom I saw ... who touched my life with a magic spell ... The power of her magic is so strong ... that all who have been touched by her, will know her, when he/she reads this ... Her story we carry in our hearts ... her story is that of life ...

*******

Blake's world of creation is that world of magic, where the magic is not in any pockets of existence. It is everywhere - from the mild green meadows of the lamb to the pitch black forests of the tiger - magic is everywhere, only in the need to be harnessed. When our professors said, the poems 'the Lamb' and 'The Tyger' are about the creator instead of the creation, all that the academic mind saw was the answer to an academic question where one has to take pains to tell how the One who created the lamb can create a tiger. Now, when the degrees are at a distance, the academic shroud is shed. And with unclouded eyes, all that this blogger realises is that. Blake's poems are not about a distant unknowable god. It is about the power that lies in each of us. It is about us -about you and me. Yes, we have the playful innocent child in us. Yes, we have the fierce rage of the superman/the tornado/the tiger. All that we need to do is CHOOSE. We can choose to let that rage run over all that is good in us. We can choose to let that rage consume us in a split second of cosmic time. We can choose to use that rage to nurture all that is playful and creative in us. We can choose to be the magic.

the road's within ...

The choice is essentially ours. I made one today as I write this post. Did you?

Concluded

Image Courtesy: Macwallpapers @ web

Puja Chronicles: Actual/Virtual

No one spelled it out. And yet, it was there. Like a star. 

I always thought I had a non-scientific mind. When I looked up at the clouds, I could never recognise whether they were cumulus or stratus. I saw images. Of elephants, of Archaeopteryx (I loved to figure this out specially), of flying castles, of Santa Claus's face. I believed I was prone to imagination than rational thinking. Then, a few years into high school, and Physics introduced me to the world of constellations. Individual stars being a part of an image in the sky. I was baffled to know, science needs imagination. 

That was the beginning (I guess) of questioning what seems to be 'real'. The absolute versions held ground for a long time since then, but the foundation of the idea of the 'absolute' had started eroding. 

*****

Far away in the distance, there used to be a ball of gas. It started 'living' - burning itself up in order to radiate light/energy/life. It performed the balancing act of gravity and expansion. And then it had to die. It became a 'dwarf' or an eternity called 'black hole'.

Life cycle of a star

*****

Is the star there as I see it now?

I can see it twinkling! It is actual, I guess. But, it may have died and its light is still crossing the seas of the universe to reach me. Does that make it virtual?

*****

Feeling homesick on a day when celebrations of a mother goddess fill my mother's house with laughter and joy. Before the deity leaves the threshold of the home, I skype home. I dress up as a traditional Bengali married woman - complete with sari, the jewellery, the vermillion on the forehead. I have arranged a candle, the vermillion (sindoor, the mark of marriage), a flower, an Arab sweet, a small glass filled with water on a dish. The camera looks into the face of the deity. From across the oceans, I hold the platter in my hands and perform an action that every married woman does at the end of the festival for any Hindu goddess. I boron (a ceremony performed to cordially welcome) the deity. 

 
boron

[It is strange that the festival begins and ends with the same custom of boron. Even when the deity is taken away for the immersion in water, marking the end of the festival, it is wished a good journey and an invitation to return in the next cycle of time.]     

What I did was in real time but not in real space. Does that make it any more virtual or any less actual? 

I do not know. The conventions of understanding the time and the space are somehow soiled by the sense of happiness I had at the end of the act. I felt  as if I participated actively in the joy that exuded in the household for the past few days. I felt the warmth of having a family filling me in this chilly land. That is the perspective I choose.

Images: 

"Life cycle of a star" from "Nebulas" in E.Encyclopedia Science on Fact Monster. Web.

"boron" : Image boron performed by my mother. The deity is that of the Mother Goddess Jagadhatri.  © Susmita Paul 2010.

Puja Chronicles: the memory and the questions blend ...

Be it Deepabali/Diwali or, Halloween, the fearful and the dreadful are not kept at a distance. Each is a celebration of the duality of existence - of light and of darkness. The legends behind each is varied. The legends associated with Diwali include the mythical return of Rama to his kingdom after a period of 14 years; the mythical slaying of the demon Narakasura by Krishna (an incarnation of Vishnu); the return of Bali (the demon-god slayed by another incarnation of Vishnu- Vamana) from the nether-world, to dispel ignorance; the celebration of goddess Lakshmi and that of goddess Kali. Each of the myths involves the victory of good over evil, light being the symbol of wisdom, knowledge, wealth and goodness. 

Of all the rituals that I have seen, I feel intrigued by three specific rituals. 

The first is the act of praying to the goddess Alakshmi (see the post regarding this here). 

The second is the the lighting of the 14 lamps on the eve of Deepabali, which is said to be a custom that started when lamps were lit as the mythical Rama returned to his kingdom after 14 years. I didn't know of this myth for a long time and created a significance of it in my mind. I believed (and continue to do so) that the 14 lamps lit somehow signify the 14 generations of ancestors who preceded me. I had no idea of myths involving Halloween celebrations then. In the presence of the pumpkin being 'Halloweenified' by K_ and A_, I thought of looking up the legend behind the celebrations.

I was in for a surprise when I realised that the legend of remembering the ancestors, that I had thought of as the explanation of the 14 lamps-lighting ceremony as a child, is eerily linked to the beginning of the custom of Halloween celebrations! Traced backed to the Celtic custom of celebrating Samhain, Halloween has its origins in the belief that on this day of the year, the border between this world and the Otherworld becomes thin allowing the passage of spirits into the human world. The spirits that could harm were repelled by carving out hollowed faces in turnips (pumpkin was adopted at a later stage for the same function) and placing them at the entrance of the house/ at windows; and, by wearing costumes that were repelling. The lamp placed within the hollowed turnip/pumpkin is symbolic of the souls in purgatory. 

It left me perplexed and humbled to feel that the Alakshmi, the 14 lamps and the carved face on the pumpkin on Halloween are connected by this inherent idea that the positive and the negative co-exist simultaneously. Life is not a shade of black and white. When the prayer to Alakshmi is offered, the act is that of humble request to the 'goddess of misfortune' to leave. When the Halloween pumpkin is lit with a candle, it is not to ward off the spirits of one's ancestors. Goodness and evil, darkness and light, hope and frustration (and all the antithetical ideas that can occur in your mind) co-exist in a strange sense of simultaneity. 

The idea of simultaneity is also evoked in the act of worshipping goddess Kali, which is the third ritual that intrigues me during this festive days. Kali has a terrifying form. The mythology of Kali is beyond the scope of the blog. You could have a look at  the wikipedia article on Kali. To an individual who does not understand the complex symbolism, Kali appears to me to be the confluence of all the oppositional ideas. When in the battlefield, the mother goddess, in the form of Kali is fierce. Her form can repel an individual. All that the mind tutors to believe as bad and ugly is present in her form. In popular iconography of Kali, she is naked; her tongue hanging out as she steps on her husband, Siva; she wears a garland of severed heads; and carries in her two hands a sword like weapon called kharga, a severed head while the other two are in the abhaya mudra (a gesture bestowing fearlessness) and varada mudra (a gesture bestowing blessings). She is usually depicted as dark skinned. The apparent opposites blend in this iconography. The violence of expression cohabits with the benevolence of bestowing blessings. 

It is possibly this simultaneity of the opposing forces/worlds that makes Little Miss Muffet of the household so excited to celebrate Halloween. In her innocence, she does not find the difference between what the adult world would designate as 'good' and 'evil'. Perhaps, this is the wisdom, that, inclusivity is more potent than exclusivity; maybe,this is the 'light' that dispels the 'darkness' of prejudice.

As the season of Halloween and Diwali passes this year, this humble blogger continues her journey towards that light ... an apprentice journeying to realise the celebration of that 'sound' which was 'noise' before....

 (Concluded)

Image: candles lit at the Esztergom Cathedral in Esztergom, Hungary @ self.

Puja Chronicles: questions in the mind ...

There is a strange custom among some Hindu households that perform the worship of goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, on the day of the festival of lights. Before prayers are offered to Lakshmi, an idol made from mud, accompanied by the urine of a cow are taken outside the entrance of the household. Prayers are offered to this strange goddess, goddess Alakshmi and is requested to leave the household. Children of the household, beat bamboo sticks on kulo (an instrument used in villages for husking paddy/rice)¹ with all their might so that the bamboo sticks are broken. They sing a couplet in a completely out-of-tune format :

alakshmi biday hou / ghorer lakshmi ghore eso 

alakshmi go away / lakshmi of the household please return.

- a prayer in earnest by the adults, sung by innocents.

I was always intrigued by this phenomenon. Why do the rituals demand a prayer to the one who is unwelcome, a prayer to the one who is associated with filth and misery, a prayer to the one of misfortune? Deification of the negative forces is not uncommon in Hindu mythology. But why pray to it, before the prayer to the goddess of wealth and prosperity is performed? 

*****

Halloween has always seemed ominous to a child, feeding on Hollywood interpretations of it. This year as K_ marked out the eyes, the nose and the mouth on the pumpkin, I looked on and thought, why the pumpkin is made to look dreadful on Halloween? (Either way, it is dreadful for all those who dislike its appearance on dinner tables in different culinary versions) Or, to cave in the question - why is Halloween thought to be dreadful at all? Why do kids dress up (and yes, some adults dress up too) in something sinister and hop around the neighbourhood asking for 'Trick or treat!' ? Why celebrate something that evokes fear in the minds? Why is the Little Miss Muffet of the household so excited to see A_ carving out the pumpkin so that it gains that fearful dimension? 

Halloween at home

1 'kulo' is defined as "winnowing fan; a bamboo winnowing fan; a multipurpose household implement; a  

    sacred adjunct to almost all folk rituals and ceremonies in Bengal" in 

    the The Quilts of India.. Nov. 5 2010.

To be contd.

Puja Chronicles:A memory

On the eve of the festival of lights or Deepabali/Diwali (deep/dia=an oil lamp), 14 earthen lamps are placed on a round tray. We sit and talk about all the trivialities as we make the cotton wicks (solte) by rolling the cotton between our hands. With the wicks ready in the lamps, we vie for the opportunity to pour oil into the lamps. And then we light them. one by one, as the oil-soaked-wick starts being consumed and starts emanating light, I always remember a Tagore song Ei korechho bhalo... where occurs the expression:

Aamar e dhup na porale, gondho kichui nahi dhale 

amar e deep na jalale dei na kichhui alo ...

If I do not burn my incense stick, it doesn't spread its scent 

if I do not kindle my lamp, no light is emanated ....

To be contd.

Image courtesy: yummy4tummy.wordpress.com

Sound and Noise

Each thought is a vibration. When there are too many vibrations, only a maestro can create a harmony out of it. For apprentices, it becomes noise. The apprentice aspires for the harmony of the 'sound'. But the transformation of the noise into sound needs experience, meditation and wisdom. That is the path that the apprentice journeys ... not for the celebration of being a maestro, but for the celebration of that 'sound' which was 'noise' before...

Image courtesy: the web , where noise and sound cohabit .

Puja Chronicles : To continue or not ...

Now that the festival is over, it seems appropriate to conclude the series 'Puja Chronicles'. That time has passed.But does any time really 'end' ?

The smell of the slightly chilly morning wind, that of the incense sticks; the sounds of the dhak and the repeated-forever selection of songs in the para (neigbourhood) pandal (the structure which houses the deities for the festival); the illegible mantras (Sanskrit slokas used in the process of praying to the deity) of the mumbling priests; the sight of the strangely blue sky of shorot (a month in the Bengali calendar in which the Durga Puja takes place) - do they not leave behind traces of life in our beings? A friend and a reader of this creative blabbering, Supratikda, commented on a previous post, asking whether the pain of an ending can be mellowed by the resurgent nature of hope. That made me think. Do we really want to mellow down an experience that is rich and trying? I, for one, wouldn't want to do so. But yes, hope is the elixir of life. It does not only signify the possibility of a better tomorrow, but, to this hopelessly optimist soul, it also keeps alive, and burning, the possibility of miracles. Or, to use a more candid expression - the possibility of the absolutely unexpected awesome happenings. This brings us to another bend in the road of thought. What defines and measures the awesomeness of a happening? Well, I am sorry to confide that I can not help in your understanding of the element of 'awesomeness' in a concrete manner. But I can, and will, share with you my experiences of the 'awesomeness' of life which happened in strange corners of the busy-dom in which we live.

P.S. I choose to continue the series 'Puja Chronicles' not because they have some connection to the event of the puja itself (well, it may, at times), but because life is possibly the greatest puja (prayer) that any being can perform. 'Puja Chronicles' henceforth will celebrate life with its resplendent awesomeness.         

resplendent in its awesomeness

Image: An Evening Sky in Lund, Sweden.

           © 2010 Susmita Paul

Puja Chronicles contd. : A film and a poem blend with the deity

How can I explain the rhapsody of thoughts generated by El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel) by Luis Buñuel that I watched yesterday night? Logically, the discussion and/or my thoughts on the film should be filed under a less frequented blog that I had ceremoniously created especially for some of my other passions : http://passions-of-a-pligrim.blogspot.com/. But, I feel, this film has a strong connection to my present condition.

No, I have not achieved angelhood and I do not face extermination or act as a similar agency :) It is simply the fact that I am, like hundreds and thousands of other Bengalis, missing the fervour of the Durga Puja back in my hometown.

I felt miserable till the Mahalaya (the last day of the fortnight preceding the Debipokkho). Ever since that day, I have chosen to be pro-active in managing my missing-the-puja-blues (the why and the how of this radical shift is another story altogether). To come back to the film, and the idea behind the idea to have a scribble about it here, I realised today (I had a faint feeling yesterday of this upcoming realisation) that the film profoundly is about the necessity to be pro-active in life. And, that realisation crystallised in the mind as I was reading Yasmeen's beautifully powerful poem - Take a stand  (click on the link to read). Her words kept throwing me back to different scenes in the movie :

...

you can't change what happened
but you can choose what you see
so step out to your balcony
breathe...and hurl the skipping record
into cheering rush hour (I will be there)
close the past, open the loop
create the space     

...

life has no meaning
but what we assign
made real in time and space

... 

And, it is then that I realised what I heard the film say to me.

The celebration of the warrior form of the mother goddess shows her annihilating a demon. Her eyes are simultaneously fierce and calm and they look straight into you (if the deity is sculpted in the traditional form):

Photo copyright: Abhiks in Flicker

(If however, the deity is sculpted in the artistic style, you will see her eyes angled variously.) This reminds me of the concluding section of Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost where the master painter is painting the eyes of the Buddha. He feels a strange penetrating glance...

Maybe it is all in the mind...

Actually, it is.

The mind has the power to create and to annihilate. Whether we choose to crib over spilled milk or take a mop to rub it and go on with normal activities, it always has to do with us, and no one else. It is easy to point fingers at others/ other things and find an explanation of the same. It is easy to completely abandon will power of the self to the will of the unexplainable deities and things. I do not intend to argue for or against the existence of the divine being here, but, is it not a saying that god helps them who help themselves? 

We are social beings and each of us have a unique set of beliefs. But the primary belief and faith that we need to have is on the possibilities that lie deep in us. The prayer to the mother goddess, uttered during the course of the festival of Durga Puja, is, in reality, an invocation to that self in us which hides in the guise of obligations, necessities, social customs and other such authoritative needs. The demons will always be there- within and without- but we have to be pro-active in slaying them. That is possibly the path of advancement. That is possibly the path to divinity. Slay ignorance with wisdom. Slay slavish dependence on others with self-empowerment. Slay fear with the courage to walk through it. In the eve of Mahasaptami (the seventh day in the Debipokkho), Buñuel, Yasmeen and Durga seamlessly weave this realisation in me.    

Postscript: This is a foreword to my thoughts on the film El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel) by Luis Buñuel. More discussions and/or thoughts about the film in particular will be posted here tomorrow.

Copyright of the poem quoted is owned by Yasmeen Najmi. 

watching autumn

the more the leaf grows from being a benign green to an aged green, ... to a dusky green ... to either a faded orange or a crisp brown ... the tree knows for sure its head is in the sky... it watches, wonderstruck... the infinite permutations and combinations of the infinite things that inhabit in this chasm of eternity continue unperturbed... eternity is a baffling word ... a word that is as impractical as the desire to grasp the moment and its bliss ... does the tree understand the sky with its implausibility ? ... we can not know since its mind is the matter of the wind... it feels the wind as it blows through its leaves ... creates a rustle ... flutters the birds nested in its branches ... and passes... and then, another wave of wind comes ... or may be a moment of stillness... as the leaves whisper the tale of the wind that passed .. as its branches bloom and the little pods burst into flowers ... in that infinitesimally small moment, the tree realizes it's roots are deeply dug into the heart of it's womb ...

Image : in Lund, Sweden