Does Spring spring out of nowhere?

According to the Encyclopedia of Religion and the Encyclopedia Britannica, the timing of April Fool's Day is directly related to the arrival of Spring, when nature 'fools' humans with erratic weather.
 
as if spring arrives on a date that you can mark in your calendar! as if, till the 31st of March, the buds are trained to remain shut and at the dawn of the 1st of April,(amidst the twittering of the birds) they march to full bloom, as kids dressed as flowers would do in a performance as the teacher animated the movements from the side-screen! 

Spring doesn't really sprint into our lives, does it? 

In hot and humid Kolkata, spring makes it presence felt through the soft winds blowing through the thickly populated city. It is in the air that you can smell the arrival of spring. In such times, our neigbour's mango tree brings in the smell of the juicy mangoes that will populate its branches a few weeks from now. The 'mukul' (the flower which will become mangoes) have a tantalising smell. 

mangoes-to-be ... 'mukul'

The kids passing through the lane look up with expectant eyes. The mango tree's human neigbours looked at it with longing. Maybe one summer storm called 'Kalbaisakhi' (since the storm usually happens in the Bengali month of Baishakh, it has gained this name - the black storm of Baishakh) will make several seed-flowers to fall (unfulfilled mangoes ... sigh!). The owners of the mango tree, their neighbours and all the people passing the lane would mourn for the untimely loss. Spring is also such cruel times.

flowers that bloom from the soggy earth

In countries which suffer devoid-of-the-sun winters, spring arrives with sogginess. As the snow thaws, (and doesn't return anymore, thankfully), the soil becomes soggy - wet and dirty as mud. The few green stems and leaves that had been covered with snow all this while looks maligned. They lie in a wet heap. And then, suddenly, you see flowers blooming out of nowhere. 

flowers that bloom in light

The flowers appear because of the increase in light. Or, it seems that the soil, that was suffocated with snow for so long, feels relieved as the weight of the snow melts into life-sustaining water. If you look at the muddy, soggy soil for long, you can have the feeling that the soil is quenching its thirst, soaking in the pleasure of being able to breathe freely once again. 

so, is it spring now?

May be, the true arrival of spring happens as the new green shoots appear, the new leaves curled in sleep appear on the branches that have been starkly empty for long. 

up above in its

The birds too have returned to inspect the branches that can be used for making nests. They hop around the trees and shrubs, identifying the perfect branch, swiftly breaking it in its beak and flying off to where it plans to have its nest. 

Perhaps, the vitality of all things natural is the actual harbinger of spring. 


With not much ado, Lustrous Lives too seeks vitality ... in words and patterns. Hence the new look. 
Please do stop by to share your opinion on the same. Please share your opinion on whether the posts are reader-friendly in appearance, or not. All opinions (both favourable and unfavourable) are heartily welcome.

Wish you all a vitality of the mind, the body and the soul this spring :) 

Images: "mangoes-to-be ... 'mukul'" by my uncle Subhendu, a few years back. Copyright retained by him. The rest of the images are shot here and there in Lund by the blogger. spring 2011.


 

words erupted when reading p.267 of Starbook by Ben Okri

It is not love that doesn't lead to death. The death of the fear of being vulnerable. The death of the fear of being hurt. The death of the fear for the all-overpowering joy that love can bring. Each death in love leads to a new birth of the soul. Drenched in the light of the sun, you can not tell if the soul is a golden orb of fire or of light. Loving once is not like dying once. The clamour to preserve the walls that lock in and hence protect the self rises each time it is demolished. Each time love passes through such a wall,  making it disappear into dust, another wall, somewhere ahead is born. To cross each wall, death must come in the hands of love. 

Can you believe in this realm of life, the one in which we live and hope to love, that love is a power? Can you believe that loving is a vulnerability as well as a strength? It actually is, if we see at love without fear. Love is knowing the limitations and walking along. This idea of walking along needs continual renewed fervour. We are afraid to exert ourselves to that extent. We are secured in our habit of living with the image. We are afraid to look behind the mirror, or beyond it. We are after all afraid of all the new that can be born from our own selves. Love is a challenge to face that fear. Not all new is blissful, not all new comes with calm. And that is possibly the reason why utopias don't exist. The picture perfect image is good only within the frame that hangs in our drawing rooms. 

Love is the principle of life itself. It doesn't promise all glory, all smiles, all affection. It does promise a lifetime of an experience. It can be a process of individuation, a realisation of the amazing potential that lies dormant in each of us.

With the risk of being termed cliched, these words pour out in this space, populating a deep rooted idea that, all that life is, is, ultimately about evolving as a better individual. The possibility of loving another individual (loving in the sense the prince in Starbook expresses, or as the humble blogger meditates upon it) arises only when one can love oneself with all the promises and all the failures that one is. Loving then becomes an act one bestows upon oneself in the journey of becoming the best one can. And the best you can be is by surrendering all the fears of the past, the present or the future ... like a fish in the water, like a bird in the air ...

From : "Starbook" by Ben Okri ... an interlude on love

p.267


All love must lead to death. And out of this death a new man or woman is born. But ... also love does not lead to only one death, but to several deaths; and that because of love one must keep dying and being reborn, from time to time. And ... love dies only when you resist another death which love brings upon you, in order that you be reborn, and grow. That is why there are few real loves in the world, because people fear yet another death that they must endure. They count the deaths and rebirths they have undergone and say 'so many and no more, so far but no further; I will not die again for you, but intend to stay here where I am, how I am now, and here in this fixed place. I intend to build the castle of myself on this rock.' 


...[T]here was no end to the deaths that love brings about, and no end to the rebirths either. Each death making us lighter, freer, simpler, more human, more vulnerable, more strong, more spiritual, more tender, and more universal. Till we become unrepresentative of our clan, tribe, country, sex, religion, or any other classification; but just a beautifully  dying  living  being, dying and being reborn, regenerated, refined, for ever, till we become a kind of dream of light, ....

Reading it for the second time ... an essay on love is happening ... now ... in the eve of the day designed for love in this world of ours ...

                          With

                                                                             :)

the kid's back!!!

The kid is out of bed! See the whims of the kid blotted across this page TONIGHT!!! YES! It is back backpacking thoughts, right now! :)

Thanks for the lovely patience you showed to the kid! The support, sometimes silent, sometimes verbal, means a lot to the kid. It is more determined to be a kid forever, scrapping this and that, out from under the dusty cupboards that some call life! It is a kid's play henceforth!

JOIN IN THE FUN, AGAIN! :D

Announcing the whims of a kid called the mind

For the last few months I have been regularly conversing with you through this blog. Prior to that it was an introspective zone, a self-reflexive writing of sorts. Then, whether I write a post in a week or in a month did not bother me. But now, since you take time off your busy schedules to peek into this thought zone of mine, I feel it to be my responsibility to communicate with you the current state of affairs, which is the absence of an 'actual' blog post for exactly a week (The last 'actual' post was Learning the elements: Water on last Saturday).

Such days as these are not new. And unfortunately are not few either. On these days, if I had the habit of chewing a pencil while thinking, I would have needed several packets of pencils each  such day. On these days, the mind is in a limbo. It is un-rested, always in a continuous state of agitation. While on the pro-writing days, I step out of bed in the morning with an idea or a thought (an inspiration of sorts, for the entire day); on such black-listed days when no writing happens, I wake up grudging against the need to have morning tea. The inspiration is not only lost, it seems it never was. Even if I do not spell out another word, I guess, you understand what these days are like to me. Frustration oozes out in every sphere. The hopeless realisation at the end of the day that not a worthwhile or a worthless word have been framed during the course of the day! It is disturbing. 

But then, you don't always drive a car in the top gear. I try not to pressurise my mind. It is a playful thing. It is like a kid. May be it is not in the mood of playing now. I will have to wait till it feels good and is ready for the acrobatics of the word-games I play. Till then, dear friends and readers, bear with me. 

I will share with you all the little words and phrases or images that pop-up in books or paintings or in the clouds. That is, if I happen to see them.    

waiting for the light

Image: an unlit lamp, Salzburg castle, Austria. By self.

to be a storm

the wind plays merry-go-round,
the grass bows near your feet,
clearing the streams,
making pathways to somewhere

you feel the bending wind
rushing through your veins
the madness of life
straining through the thumb
that press down the eye of the tornado-

it is dreadful to be there alone.
you may be brushed from the soil
and piled at another place, in another din.
the bones may rattle
with the newness of the blow,
and guard you into a shell ...

and yet,
the storm brews something in you
something with flavours.
something, you can feel.

you've never seen the skies so drunk,
you gesture them to calm down
but sobering seems a strain.

cut out the past in cardboard shapes
hang it in loose circles near the window
open the panes-
you may be the eye for a while.

stepping into creation

The initiative to write the previous post was largely derived from an event that happened the evening before. I was facing a writer's block. Ample thoughts were floating in the top-sphere, but, it was becoming increasingly difficult to harness them in words. I put down the pen and put on the cooking flame. 

It is only recently that I had realised my love for cooking. Along with finding the poetry in the act of cooking (the outcome of which was meditations while cooking... (click on title to read that post)), I have also realised how cooking with consciousness de-stresses me. During most of such sessions, I use conventional recipes. The act of de-stressing involves, in such cases, an awareness of the subtle change of aroma, of the colour of the spices and of the texture of the constituent elements. The evening in question gave me an opportunity to realise the effects of meditation in a new way.

while creating ...

As I stepped into the kitchen that evening, I had no idea what am I going to cook. I passed a glance through the storage counters in the refrigerator; it seemed it created certain sparks. I didn't mind having a disaster dinner, but I wanted to 'create' something 'new'. Stepping back from the 'busyness' of life, and the need to be 'proper', I wanted a breathing space of unadulterated joy of creating. The kind of joy that a kid feels while making arbitrary scratches of colour on the paper and defining them as something substantial. I became that kid in the kitchen. I had several ingredients at hand. I simply decided to cook on instinct. Instead of planning elaborately the recipe. I decided on the first step only (on hard-boiling the eggs). The next half an hour I spent making a paste of this, a batter of that, a spice mixture of this and that. As each of the ingredients, changed colour, changed texture, changed aroma, the mind not only felt relaxed; it was elated. Dancing to a flowing music of creation, I cooked that evening. At the end of that cooking session, I felt a joy that, in turn, re-invoked the confidence in my dreams and the possibility of creating some beautiful word pictures. The act to re-instate the poise in writing gifted me an additional pleasure of having a delicious dinner. 

Image courtesy: the web

stopgap

At times too many thoughts and ideas crowd the top level of the body. It almost reminds me how the top of the mountain is usually painted as if shrouded in mists. Too many water particles getting heavy at the top. Guess am at that part of the mountain. The droplets of words and ideas are getting collected in various soul-buckets. 

In the mean time, am sharing with you a translation that I did of the bengali poem, "Anandabhairabi" by Shakti Chattopadhyay, some time back. A special thank you to Supratikda for initiating me in this process.

The Joyous Bhairabi

By Shakti Chattopadhyay

in that room today, the image has dipped;

it wasn’t like this at the monsoons’ end-

with rain-drenched blooms in the gardens

was the joyous bhairabi.

no shepherd boy comes to that lea,

banyan roots shed no tear at the enchanting flute-

yet, when the rains dig through the clouds,

streaks of lightning are found.

wasn’t it known that such hard times

leap and seize the cock’s red crest?

wasn’t it known that in a squandered heart

the miser’s gains rest?

wasn’t it known, though the seat be vast,

the heartland is not known that much?

wasn’t it known, much that I know

is but oceans in the nails?

in that room today, the image has dipped.

it wasn’t like this at the monsoons’ end,

With rain drenched blooms in the gardens

Was the joyous bhairabi.

Translated by Susmita Paul

© 2010

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

rumbling crumbling: Intermission

Was reading the last post ... rumbling crumbling 2 .... It seemed to the reader in the blogger that, the words are flying in circles ... creating a cone of a wind ... something that is also called a tornado. The blogger had once seen a television series titled "Chasing a tornado". Seemed pretty futile, since it really couldn't be chased away! It wrecks what comes in its way nonetheless.  Remembering that tv series, the blogger decided to stop chasing the tornado within. (Learning in such an ubiquitous act!) The fury of the tornado can not really be 'chased' away with either words or mere contemplation.

The blogger is attempting to chart out a self-therapeutic method to deal with that not-so-smooth-flying-superman-called-anger. Words and ideas are good, but not really great until one really deciphers the implication of them. (See, I am back to word-pouncing again!!!!)

rumbling crumbling

Temper flew like a free-spirited Superman. It simply had a mind of its own. Or, so I thought.

My father, till date, has given me a single advice - be patient. For me, however, to be patient was to be silent, and silence seemed to imply weakness. It seemed logical that being patient was to be vulnerable. Patience seemed to mean acceptance, and hence a way of permitting the causes of agitation and disturbances to continue approaching the self. Temper was a shield. A cocoon to save the self from the blows.  

Then, Professordadu (dadu means grandfather, in Bengali) said something about it. He said, if,anger empowers to create something constructive, then it is of use. Or else, it is best to dump it. 

THUD. 

Around the same time, I came across the poetry of William Blake. I got introduced to a strange concoction of poems which used simple language, as if that of children's poetry. That was my first experience with Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

front cover of that book, hand-painted by Blake @WEB

Blake had created the two sets of poems - The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience - where, each poem in the first book has a mirror poem in the next. For, example, while a poem titled "The Lamb"

was part of the first book; its mirror poem in the second book was titled "The Tyger". The meekness of the lamb and the ferocity of the tiger are instances of the two "contrary states" that Blake wanted to express. In between preparing essays on 'how' the selected poems in the curriculum expressed "the two contrary states of the human soul" (the words are written above the two human figures in the given picture; "shewing" means showing), I was intrigued by the thought: are things truely so mirror-like in life? Does patience really imply weakness? Does being patient means the absence of anger? Do we really have no choice but to be either

The Lamb by William Blake @ WEB

Or,

The Tyger by William Blake @ WEB

  ????????

TO BE CONTD.

A view ...

The worlds separated by the glass worlds melt in this room.

The lean wooden cupboards stand tall, the soft lights in the apartments across the pathway remain unmoved on it. The yellow light, at the entrance of the building opposite to the room, makes the presence of the 'de-leaved' trees felt.Looking a little observantly will actually reveal the last leaf on that branch, still waiting for the wind that will blow it to dust.

Nonetheless, the lamp in the room glows brightly. And, a few notches above, behind the thin film of darkness, caused by the rain-clouds, is a hemisphere of a moon. Little black patches of night imprinted on it, and a fluorescent white light- the light of the burning zeal of the sun, that some call 'life'.

A few miles beyond the glass, a soul is sick of the elements. On the other side of the glass, a strange unnerving sensation creeps up the spine of the phantom of solitude. A few nights beyond this night, the phantom and its soul sunbathe in sunshine-islands.

The lean wooden cupboards stand lean, soft lights smoothen the edges of the lanky towers. The yellow light, hanging at the entrance causes nausea to the insects and humans alike. A few notches beyond the light, across the luxuriating waters, a glowing ball of light fires up the sky. Streaks of colours spread across the sky as an inattentive hairdresser would spread the streaks on your hair. It is strangely nauseating - the colours. 

Some may call that 'life'.

colours of water

Image @ Self, 2010

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

Postscript to 'Thanksgiving Prayer'

It has happened after a patch of sunshine and rains. Words had twittered down the sky or crept along with the sun these last few days, weeks, months. And today it happened. It slipped out of the fingers as if they are the drops of blood from the accidentally tampered artery. It settled on the page, the page blotting with those words. And as soon as they are no more but a blot or a patch on that now non-blank page, you realize, they are the impure blood drops. They needed to be exhumed so that you redeem them and free their dead spirits. but you are no Christ or Rama. Your touch can not undo and redo. Yours is not 'The Word'. Yours is but the words that flow. Like the blood in your veins. Sometimes they spill on your neat blank pages. Darkening the under-eyes with a gross soot that you call the past. Level the dust. Pave a road. Make another scratch. And then leave it to the winds to blow them away this Fall.