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

 

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.

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 .

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



be a bag today...

When such strange status statements appeared in women-friends' profiles, I was intrigued.When that message came in, I was amused. Amused at the diverse ways we can think. Amused that after years of coyness, we are choosing to shrug it off with a pseudo-coy statement.  The message cleared the intrigue and challenged me. I remembered the last year's challenge. I failed it. Because I was thinking too much about people's reaction. I was afraid by the barge of queries that may come up. And the year passed. 

*****

Maima (approximately translated as 'aunty') has weeks when the right hand swells up like a big balloon. Not only the movement of the hand gets restricted, but also the pain etches itself out on her face as dark patches under the eyes. Once, she had curly long hair. After all the sessions, her hair is now short and thinning. Yet she smiles every time we meet, asking me if I am keeping well or not. I don't have the guts to ask her how she is.

*****

When the message settled into my inbox, I only thought about her. I thought about women like her. The only question that crossed my mind was: Could she have a better life if she was more aware? Or her family was more aware? The answer seems rhetorical. I responded to the message.

Image Courtesy: http://www.pursuegoodstuff.com/Events.htm

Gullible 

a stray flower in dumping grounds

is a stray incident.

look down as you walk the lanes

:

from the crevices

                 of indebted lives

peep                                the dreamy flowers

                   waiting 

to be squashed

by BIG feet,

to be cajoled into a bowl

in a funny residence

where laughter thaws the crude snow blades!

just a stray co-incidence i would say,

so just look down

as you brush the deadness from the green

:

the nauseating soil is the skin in the sun.

It alarms you -

             the ghosts of the dead dry leaves

throb      in your green manicured hearts!

oh, just a stray incident i would say,

so simply look away as you dress the mannequin

:

there is nothing  but  a mirror in the bed,

distorting the face 

                  that 

                 injects

                          

                 balance

                           into a familiar mask ...

oh, get over it!

It’s just a stray incident ,

a deadly petty coincidence i would say. 

© Susmita Paul 2010

The last and lasting glance

Across the strange borders, 

I see myself blooming:

in forgotten pathways,

in manicured gardens,

in bonsai artefacts,

in frozen mummies.

My eye sees the horizon...

a few dotted lines

-lines in pink, blue and green-

cast the slippery wet norms.

The me in the mirror is refracted.

They tell me, it's you.

I spread my hands

and follow my master,

floating in the air,

above the anomalies of the self:

as I float by your universe,

memoirs of the road

sting my feet

...

I was so sure

I touched me in you

photograph: Himalayas, Uttarakhand, India; self