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

When the pebbles taught the soul ... Noori Ganga's Philosophy

 Ganga descending from the heavens

The cool breeze is blowing across Har-ki-Pauri. The ghat (the river side area) is lit with a thousand twinkling flames that are flowing across the Ganga. Prayers for plentitude, for health, for peace sail in those little boats of fire. Looking out to the busy riverbanks in Haridwar, one will notice the bustling devotees eager to wash off their bad karma in the Ganga. They stand in a singularly identifiable posture-hands folded at the chest, eyes closed and the lips making arbitrary movements. It makes one wonder, whether, organically, the river is more polluted by all the sins that it washes off from the soul, or, by the filth that it washes out from the bodies of the modern metropolis. There is however little time to ponder on this philosophic proposition since the water of Ganga has started receding. We watch in amazement as the flowing vital river gradually reduces to a trickle, till its bed is visible. It is not the wrath of the Gods that has taken away the mythical bestowal of the Ganges from the earthlings. It is but a temporary situation caused by the technical functioning of a dam, a human endeavour with machines. That however does not take away the charm of philosophising about it!

The penitent figures gradually get replaced by several kids and teens, running along the river bed, waiting cautiously for the water to recede completely. They are the paisa collectors. The five rupee coin that you had thrown in the Ganga this morning, wishing for a raise in your salary, is now his. They fight fiercely over the territory each will cover. From the bed of the river, that once flowed down the jata (patted hair) of Lord Shiva, now provides them with 'survival' money. As the evening light recedes and the land of the lords fall asleep, these busy hands continue to search the pebbles and their glistening corners for a coin or two. 

The evening, that saw the drying of the river to the white-and-light-brown-stained pebbles and rocks, melted into the morning light. The morning brought with it the scorching sun and the curious onlookers. What now lies before me is the route that the melted waters of the Gomukh glaciers had chosen a couple of thousand years ago, maybe. 

As I set foot on the pebbles and the rocks that usually lie uneventfully at the belly of this ancient river, I feel tremors of myths and histories rumbling under my feet. Several artefacts are strewn across the river bed. Who knows to which age this statue of Nandi (the companion of Lord Shiva) dates back to? Who knows what god or goddess was this four-legged deity in some lost temple of the yesteryears? Which was the era in which Ganga changed her course, making those houses of the gods vulnerable to temporality? All these redundant questions clatter in the mind as I walk across the  noori Ganga (pebbled Ganga). Murmuring winds blew across the expanse. They echo voices from the past...telling tales of grandeur withered by time ... from the present ... the curious tourists randomly picking artefacts strewn  across the bed ... from the future ... the rambling waters that will flow again in this course and will wither more eras and their cravings to transcend time.

People call Haridwar the seat of Hindu pilgrimage. To me, on this very day, when Ganga dried, I realised in this bustling city of religion, a law of life in its resplendent purity. What we may be in the times to come are but  hypothetical ideas. What is, in this moment; what I am , in this moment is true to my being. There is no before or an after. It is all in the NOW.

Remembering Birth

I ask my mother,

As I count to three:

“Did you find me

Under a tree?”

She stooped across the sea

To light the waves, and

Whispered in my ears:

“I found you in dew, floating

On the waves at my door!”

I grasped her aanchal and

Let out a glee -

“I knew! I knew!

I came from the sea!”

I ask my mother,

As I sit on the swing:

“Did you find me

Blowing in the wind?”

She cuddled the trees,

Kissed the moon, and

Whispered in my ears:

“I found you in

The sun’s womb!”

I grasped her aanchal and

Broke into laughter-

“I knew! I knew!

I came from the sky!”

I ask my mother,

As I hear the bee:

“Did you find me

Floating in the sea?”

She blended the mud

With a drop of ray,

Touched it with passion,

And set it free:-

She took me in her soul

And whispered in my heart:

You are the dream that

I always have had.

You touch my feet

As I stand in the ocean,

And run across the earth

As fast as you can...

I reach out my hand-

You smile at me,

Clicking the leaves

You climb up a tree...

You hide in the sun

As I wait an era,

And the next,

And a few more,

Till you blow

Down the sky

As dew on my shore …

Note:

aanchal means

the flowing end of Saree,

an Indian dress for women

Postscript:

written when suddenly felt

the onslaught of images from

Rabindranth Tagore’s Shishu

Calling out to Odysseus

The umbilical cord hangs from the soul
seeking in the flow the flights known,
the songs forgotten
the volcanoes busted and stoned to silence-
the wave , the womb has a forbidden light
that the firefly spies, planning
to jump into the hissing flames
to revive the cosmic volcanoes

and the ancient songs buried in the sea beds

Image: reflection of a painting on a glass case, The Museum of Art History, Vienna

A new page for Facebook writings

With increasing participation in the social networking forums, it seemed I will lose track of what I write and where I write. So I have created a page "Writings in Facebook" in which will feature the writings that I post as notes in Facebook. There is a single comments section at the end of the notes, and not after each post, as you see in the main page. Please do leave your feedback ... Thanks for reading!!!

Nandini ...

There are faces
that shine in the moon,
translucent in peace
with stars on their lips
and flights in their eyes

Some dreams
trickle down
the palm of the soil...
and bring the gurgles near
tumbling over
the conch shell's sphere ...

As honour sheds its darkness
and lust spreads its doom,
As hope springs in flowers
and boats in rainy streams
cross the oceans of silence:
the little beam of soul
steer us back to the moon

... the translucent robes of peace
with tenderness in eyes
a silent hymn they sing ...

can you hear the song?
can you feel it clear?

Image:
Photo of The Divine Comedy - Paradise
Canto 8 The Highest Beauty of Beatrice
by Salvador Dali
Wood-cut 1960

the forever NEW...

A new year comes with a peculiar entourage. The English New Year is just round the corner of the week celebrating Christmas. So it is like a practice match, celebrating celebrations! With the Bengali New Year, there’s nothing dramatic as that. Occasionally though, the “kalbaisakhi” (the storm, peculiar to the Bengali month of Baisakh) used to act as an announcer of sorts.

The kalbaisakhi, which was more frequent when we were kids, used to be a typical blinding storm of dust, which would leave people on the streets in tears, literally. I remember another aspect of the kalbaisakhi too. The first rains of the season would mean the smell of the parched earth drinking water like the thirsty car in Rwitwik Ghatak’s film, “Ajantrik”. The smell of the wet earth is a dreamy nausea of sorts. Imagine yourself to be terribly thirsty under the scorching tropical sun. Imagine yourself drinking after that dryness. The sounds that you would hear - the sound of the gulping down of water - is what the director used in a scene, in the movie “Ajantrik”, where water is being poured down the ‘throat’ of the car by the driver. I always visualise the same sound coming from the dry earth, greedily drinking the rain water in huge gulps. I love the way it sounds in the smell it emanates.

Another aspect of the Bengali New Year is similar to any new year – the ritual of sharing greetings. It would almost be a competition of sorts to be able to call and greet first. Those were kiddo days but they were good nonetheless! The greeting ritual would typically begin in an interesting fashion in my home. No matter how late we slept the night before, we (i.e. my sis n me) would wake up early on the first day of the Bong New Year. Sleepy, as we would obviously be, we would dress up in a new saree (that great Indian drape!), and, accompany my mom n my aunt to the nearby temple. I have always lacked consistency in matters of faith. Some years, I would be devoutly greeting the deity and, in others, the ritual of the new year greeting with God would be more of a fun-filled outing in the morning (the reasons varied from me believing that I was a believer or an atheist; to the more humdrum reality of me being in a soup or not). Either way, the Bong New Year was eventually a day when we would end up buying the absolutely yummy packets of Uncle Chips and if good luck prevailed, then hot kachori and potato curry from a shop which believed that cleanliness is conflicting to the perfect taste of the crispy kachoris and the spicy aloo curry. It surely was a pleasantly auspicious day!

The element of the auspiciousness of this particular day, the first of the first month of the year (poila baisakh) was, however, more seriously taken by some. These are people who have businesses. On this particular morning, the temple would be thronged by several businessmen and they would, usually, wear the white kurta-pajama duo. I couldn’t help but notice their eagerness to have their business registers (haal-khata) marked by the holy sign of good luck (the swastika; well it existed even before the Nazis you see) by people, who I presumed were yet to be initiated in the duties of the priest. So, it could be that a novice priest was drawing the swastika in unsteady hands as a devout businessman was thanking the Almighty for assuring security and steadiness! The most interesting people in the crowd were however the most busy ones. They were the little ladies and gentlemen who imitated their parents in everything. If the mom was seen covering her head with the saree as she bowed to god, the little lady would wrap the “dupatta” over her head and attempt to bow with a greater arch of the body. The little ladies and gentlemen would also be seen climbing on to their parents’ lap to reach the temple bell and played it till the guardians forcefully put them down.

The fun and frolic of the day would pass and the eventual outcome of the grand Bengali New Year would however be the gruelling truth of the scorching sun the day after, and a fatigued and perspiring self only 24 hours from the grand opening of another lunar Bengali year! For all that and more ... let the Bengalis keep celebrating the Bengali New Year forever!

odd flights...

...

sometimes the old wind catches up pretty fast,
no matter if I am riding the rocking horse
that gives me visions.

On such days,
above the clouds,
the planets hang out
the sun takes a nap, and,
the holy cow flies across the moon.

And then, the pegasus of my vision
shrinks to the rocking horse,
that once gave me dreams ...

image: detail of a bird, medium: porcelain, @ Szentendre, Hungary

I have a author in my head...

There are times, in the real time mode, when mornings are not noons and summers are not winters. Yet, homogeneity is a latent dream that we nurture. If the only thing constant is change, then, why does the mind continues to desire the dream? Guess the desire for change is interspersed with bouts of those for the droning regularity, a hum of the bees (or of mosquitoes in more tropical regions). Someone (or, possibly every human being has got philosophical enough, at least once in his/er lifetime, to make this observation) articulated it precisely- habits are deadening. I add, now, (this is my bit of philosophical input) it is the most deadly addiction. If given a undiluted control of the mind, it becomes an up-mountain task to undo the rules of the game of life that it produces- to be an armchair critic ( I refrain from using the term uphill, since, it undermines the significance I want to attach to the task; besides authors are not liable to write meaningful stuff). This deadly addiction (but it never appears to you that it has the potency of blinking the bone-and-the-skull logo at any juncture) numbs the senses, making the reflexes unaware of variable stimuli. In English, this means it makes us as good as dead. The mind stops functioning and it sloths and slumbers and continues to say in a mangled voice: “Delhi abhi dur hai!!!”* To him, like to many of the species, concord was/is a natural alibi to calm. But what is calm if not juxtaposed with the discord of the impending storm at the horizon?! Unilateral thinking, the armchair critic and writer would say [don’t accuse me of generating opinion in favour of any (or, all) political party(/ies) though]. It is a two-dimensional diagram that draws the locus of the mind in the dubious dual coordinates of singular time (nullifying the possibility of time-transfer and time-machines sadly; I wanted to visit the Atlantis, the lost Greek city) and singular space (quantum space is still a theory hence). The dimension of the chasm in between is not considered at all!

The mind is not always functioning, neither is it idle when it is not functioning. In English this is the equivalent to the statement that nothing can be definitely defined (if that is English enough or not, I don’t know. If not, kindly help yourself). There are lapses in time when the mind is suffering from what I would call the third-person-narrator-syndrome. Like in the novels (the ones that Jane Austen and her clan wrote) the omniscient narrator is like Casper, the friendly ghost. S/he observes, though not too objectively as we presume. These observations are almost always induced by the authorial intention. In the functioning of the mind too, the author is omniscient (though Barthes proclaims otherwise). The author that is making me write all these crappy pseudo-philosophical rambling is possibly the same one that makes me choose between butter and cheese. Her name is Prejudice.

* Bahadur Shah Zafar’s observation when the British forces were approaching his fort and he was busy in shayari mehfils (Urdu poetry soiree)

Image: Original Woodcut illustration from the Just So Stories 'The Crab that played with the sea' by Rudyard Kipling

Winds of change?!

Whether or not it’s happening in the human political framework, it surely did unfold today, in front of my eyes, in what can only be called the political work of evolution. I don’t remember who told me (or if anyone ever told me at all!) that cats chase rats, and, get chased by dogs. It is possible that Jung would call this the archetype of enmity arising from the Collective Unconscious of all species. But, I don’t know what he would make out of today’s incident.

I was appreciating the bounty of colours brought forth by spring, when movement in my field of sight attracted my attention. The archetypal European with her dog was nothing intriguing. The lady was wearing a red jacket with navy blue tracksuits, and was holding on to the collar of her dog. I have watched her dog very often. He (I assume from his gruff attitude) is a very strange dog. He is a huge dog with a lot of hair, the kind of hair that you can possibly imagine falling on the face of a rock-star and hence contributing to his enigma. It incidentally does obstruct this dog’s face too, and, makes me feel that it’s a mobile bundle of wool, with innumerable loose ends that is. So, this woolly, hairy, black, gruff dog was being held at its collar by his master.

And then, the third unassuming protagonist came into view. It was a she-cat (I assume this from its slender movements directed at attracting attention). She was looking at this disgustingly chauvinist dog from behind the trunk of the tree, with little or no attempt to hide herself from him. The dog didn’t even care to sniff and look up in that direction. This, I think attracted the cat, because she trailed him throughout his walk, keeping the same tactic of hiding-and-not-so-hiding intact. I expected a final showdown when I saw her making a desperate attempt to gain attention, when she mustered enough courage (and also enough readiness to flee in a hopeful way of sorts) to stand within a finger’s distance as the lady led him home. I was ready to see a screaming lady trying her best to control that huge dog growling and charging at that cat, and she gleefully sprinting across the ground. with her mission (of irritating the dog and causally its owner) accomplished.

Instead, what I saw would deeply affect the confidence of that cat if she knew I saw her failure, both as archetypal representatives of her species and of her gender. That dog didn’t even look up!!! He dispassionately walked past her!!!! Her next neck movements validate my assumption that she was at a loss. She looked around to check if anyone of her kin was audience to the spectacle of her absolute failure. What would her father say? “MEOW!!You are not cat enough to provoke a dog!!!” Her mother would be doubly devastated: “O Almighty Bastet *! What is to happen to my girl! If dogs don’t charge her, where will I find a suitable groom for her!!!” Thinking about Jung’s possible thoughts, I presume he would possibly brood over his archetypes and deem the archetype of the Everlasting Maid appropriate to her.

But that surely doesn’t lessen the probability of the dying hostility between cats and dogs (since Jung is not here to validate my observations on what he would have said and besides, you don't presume Jung and I think alike!) That would surely make this world more peaceful. If only humans care to learn from cats and dogs as George Orwell wanted them to learn from pigs! However, if this extends to the domain of cats and rats, frankly, I wouldn’t be too happy. I don’t want to lose out on the Tom and Jerry cartoons after all!.

*Bastet is the Egyptian Cat-Goddess