Saint John

Magic light hour in the hills,
People, tiny and sluggish,
But suddenly bathed in generous, gold light,
Your dark face bronzed by the setting sun,
Your hair, flowing like a river
Eyes, fastened to the dying god's face


The grand performance,
Luxury and splendour of a whole universe
Unfurled for just two measly souls
Tired, bruised, still laughing hard desperately,
Like a peasant in a king's party
Trying hard to hide the tear in her clothes
But,
Breaking the moment, yet capturing it
With one swift blow,
You pointed to the setting sun and said:
'That fellow is in full form today.'

 

Dara

 

P.M. Narayanan

Translated from Malayalam by Bindu K.C.

Dara was unaware,

He sat alone

In one of the many private chambers

Of his sprawling palace.

He held a quill

Paint dripping from it. 

A half-finished portrait

The painting of a young gardener

With her pitcher balancing on her hips,

Watering the plants. 

 

He remembered: 

Bygone evenings,

Past nights.

Those broken stories,

Shattered in the moonlight of Yamuna’s sands.

Those lilting songs,

Melting into the atmosphere,

While reclining on those flower-beds

Under the garden bowers. 

Her farewell

That drizzled down his chest,

Yesterday night,

When he sneaked into her humble hut,

Escaping the surveilling eyes of

His own guards. 

He sat, his gaze fixed,

On those long lashed, half bloomed

Pair of eyes on the canvas. 

With a deep sorrow,

With deep ecstasy, 

His hands drawing,

He didn’t hear the door unlocking,

He didn’t feel his younger brother’s sword

Descending on his neck,

Lightening swift. 

He was in the land of the moonlight

That never sets. 

He was in the land of flowers,

That never wither.   

 

* Dara Shikoh was the eldest son of the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan.  Dara was said to be a thinker and philosopher. 

 

 

 

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[1] Dara Shikoh was the eldest son of the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan.  Dara was said to be a thinker and philosopher. 

A Prayer for that Little Girl

     I remember the wet, warmth that spreads between one’s legs.  It must be around three at night, an ungodly hour, when everyone is asleep.  I opened my eyes.  I had dreamt I was peeing.  Feeling the relief of the relaxing muscles, the relief when your bladder lets off. 

    The relief immediately turned into shame.  I had, yet again, peed in bed. 

    I was 12 years old, already in the 7^th standard.  I could not believe I had yet again, lost bladder control.  I imagined my mother’s angry shouting the next day, her face contorted in sarcasm.  It would mean extra work for her.  But, she would also be worried.  Her technique to hide anxiety was being angry at me. 

    My brain started working hard.  “Suppose I get up and wash the sheets now itself?  I could be caught doing that because I never wash sheets, let alone at 3 AM in the morning.  Suppose I drag my sleeping brother and get him to sleep on the wet mattress?  He might not wake up because he was a sound sleeper.  Yes, I will do that.  Of course, he would be blamed the next day.  He himself would not know he was not responsible.  But, that would be ok, because he was a child and children are allowed to pee in bed.”  I kept calculating the pros and cons of my con-job. 

    I knew just one thing.  I could not blamed for this.  I was no more a child, I was almost a young woman.  And, I knew one thing for sure - I had to face this alone. 

    I still don’t know why I lost control at that time in my life.  I can connect it to a particular teacher – Sister Ivodia.  A skinny, old and dark face comes to my mind when I utter that name to myself.  She hated me.  In a class of 60 odd students, she would focus on me to express all her violence.  I started failing in Maths, for that was her subject.  I had just forged my mom’s signature to return the progress card.  I had faced the shame of failing then, and developed a secret to hold, a self that I could not show to the world.  Now, I was facing shame again, by peeing in bed, and developing a secret to escape that shame.

    That was a period of shame, generally.  My milk teeth had all given way to large, protruding buck teeth.  My childish beauty had disappeared.  I never knew I had it when I was beautiful.  But, I knew my ugliness everyday.  I had turned into an awkward, ugly girl, sprouting one single breast (another secret I hid from everyone). 

    I felt nobody loved me, least of all me. 

    But, looking back, I am so proud of that 12 year old girl.  She handled her situation so well! 

    She went to her father, whom she feared, when he was resting in the outside verandah, and with much trepidation but some resolve, demanded money for Maths tuitions.  She had found the tuition class herself, run by a poor Christian woman who was staying in the convent she studied.  She started scoring high in Maths in just one month, with that little extra attention!.  She started greedily reading up Malayalam psychology journals and found that she could control her bladder.  She developed a ritual of emptying her bladder every night before bed.  She understood she could control her dreams!  The moment a bathroom appeared in her dreams she taught herself to wake up, for that was the clue she would pee now. 

    Somehow, she became an adult those days. 

    And, looking back, I hug that little girl.  She was alone, she had no one to share her trials.  Yet, she survived. 

    May that little girl in me never leave me.  May she always pick herself up and survive.  Amen!

A Visionary

     It was his 70th birthday. Relatives were all gathered. I was also with them.

    I am usually shy with public speaking. But that day, I felt I must speak.  

    People were remembering him as an individual. His humor, his weird habits, his sunny pleasant character, his Hindi songs ..all these were recounted and remembered. 

    But, I wanted to give a social speech about him. I wanted to remember him, not as an individual who had touched me (he had, very deeply), but as a "visionary."  I wanted to introduce him to all of us, as a person who could see the future.  I wanted to "place" his contributions to the world, to the next generation, especially the next generation in our larger family.  

    He used to work in a bank.  It must have been in his forties, that he resigned from his job, chasing dreams that no one understood.  He joined the first batch of Engineering graduates in Trivandrum Engineering college in a discipline that was just introduced - Computer Science.  

    He must have been older than all his classmates.  He joined the course because he was already knowledgeable in the possibilities computers represented in the world.  He could, unlike many of us, and perhaps his teachers and classmates included, see the future.  

    He knew this thing that he was currently obsessed with would profoundly change the world.  He gave up his job and never got into any private company at that time.  Instead, he became an entrepreneur and set up a small computer centre in the middle of Calicut town.  

    This became a place where young boys (I notice the gendered story here) from the larger family came to play with the machine.  He smilingly indulged them.  Night after night was dedicated to the play - solving of some abstract mathematical puzzle in newer and newer languages coming up that the machine was throwing out.  I heard strange words like "Cobol" etc being bandied about in the house those days.  

    Now, looking back at the path the world took, we can clearly see, that he could see then - the next turn the world would take.  But, he was not instrumentally using this knowledge.  Like all visionaries, his pleasure was in the game itself - it was hardly in the winning!  

    I wanted to say  all this, and much more.  But, somehow, I didn't.  

The Cobra Game

     

When I want to remember something happy, I remember our "cobra game" best - Gabriella's (or Gaby as she is called) and mine.  

    Gaby, all of three years old, would start coming from one end of the house.  

    I was supposed to act like a stupid and complacent person, loitering in the sofa.  All the while, I would be going on an incessant, on-the-spot commentary.  So, it runs like this:  

    "I am sitting in my house.  It is very peaceful.  Sunny."  I am sipping my tea. " (I might actually be sipping Aneta's green tea while speaking). I keep improvising these dialogues for each game.  

    I might add as if talking to myself:  "There is nothing to worry!  All's well with me and the world..." or something like that.  

`    Then, Gaby will appear  from the next room.  I have to pretend I am seeing something suspicious coming from very far away.  Sometimes, I make up a landscape filled with hills and trees and treacherous corners.  Sometimes it is a view from very far, where Gaby is appearing like a dot, coming closer and closer, like the inevitability of destiny.  

    Of course, the fun for me, and Gaby, lies in my incessant commentary:  "Oh, what is that thing crawling towards the house?  I can't see it well..."  By now, I am screwing my eyes to see better and acting it out.  Gaby is mirroring my excitement by coming very fast towards me.  I will continue the dialogue by again, pretending complacence even at face of danger.  I might say things like:  "I hope it is nothing dangerous.  Maybe a dog.  Maybe a bird...nothing to worry."  

    By now, Gaby's face will be all flush with the excitement of the game.  Its a hunt for her.  Now, she would be coming with speed, seriously drawing herself forward.  

    By the time she reaches me, I will act totally surprised and cry out:  "Oh, it is a cobra!  It is going to bite me.  Somebody save me!"  

    By now, Gaby would be so excited, and she would be aiming to touch my face all the while gnashing her teeth, more like a dog than a cobra (but who cares?).  Once she touches me, I have to die, supposedly with a snake bite.  

    I am her reward, her hunt. And, I happily die for her.  

    This is our own little "cobra game."  We restart the game, the moment I "die" with the cobtra bite.  We play it again, and again and yet again.  Never tiring, never ending it, in an endless loop of love.  

Giving Up

 His body was not under his control anymore.  The steps he took had reduced to half his former strides.  That made him walk like a marionette - a doll controlled through invisible strings, almost like an automaton.  

    He had deliberately reduced his life to this.  He told himself it was because his body was giving way.  But, it was also his self.  

    He had been feeling irrelevant for years.  He had spent his youth chasing after the beauty and meaning of something so ephemeral - words. Words in poetry.  

    His own father was silent for years, weighed down with the grey weight of depression and spent his life starting into the heavens on an armchair, unaware of his surroundings, stewing in his private hell.  He was never available to him as a boy, emotionally.  Yet, his father became his unfortunate role model.  But, even while he had to pick up the broken pieces left by his father, he could not be angry with him.  

    His mother became his responsibility at ten, when he was a mere boy.  That day his anarchic but passionate father had come home, holding the hands of his teacher.  The father declared his love for the woman teacher to his wife and son.  The house was already hell because his gentle mother had already fallen down in illness, not able to bear the irresponsible but powerful weight of her husband's anarchies.  

    The entry of the new woman stirred the muddied waters again.  The sickly boy that he was, asthma stricken and struggling to breath, suddenly had to grow up.  He understood that it was upto him to save his mother from that house, for she (nor he) had nowhere else to go.  

    So, he killed the poetry welling within him.  He got into a banker's calculations of numbers. He was never at ease with money.  He could never play with it, like some of his colleagues, invest in stocks and shares and become rich.  He only knew hoarding, like his mother, who hoarded one week's worth of provisions and stretched it for a whole month, often giving up on her own comforts. 

    His own life became interesting only in the evenings - in the verandahs of the local intellectuals. There he found the father he had, but never had.  He found the stable, strong and kind brilliance of minds - men who mentored him, disciplined him and whose quiet grace and careful use of words appealed to him.  He found a home, finally.  

    But, today was a world were those words were hardly important.  This was a fast world.  This was the world of very short attentions spans, where loud YouTube videos themselves became too long to engage and people were scrolling from one video short to another...he, and his world had receded.  It had become irrelevant.  

    He retreated without a fight.  He gave up reading.  He could not sit for hours anymore, so he also gave up writing.  He had already given up walking.  His ambition was to give up thinking and then give up, being itself.  

    Now, he just waited, lying down in the meantime.  

Alone, Happy

I walked through the walk-way of the path. It was my fifth round. Each round took around twelve minutes to complete. I would start with walking. Once the body had heated up enough, and I could feel the blood flowing a bit more through my capillaries, I would slowly start a jog. It was Delhi. It was winter. And, I was alone. I had decided to take up a permanent job when it was finally offered to me - after I turned forty, i.e. It was a "low level" position compared to my age and my experience. But, a position, neverthless. I had a chequered career graph. And, it was a story of career mixing up with intimacies gone awry, of broken dreams and hearts - and, it was a particular story women giving up careers to be tethered to men they loved (or, thought they did, at least). After so many years, I had almost nothing - my relationship was shaky, my career had just restarted. But, that day, in the park, on a Delhi winter afternoon, I had my own steps and my breath to count. After the fifth round, I would sit on the benches strewn around in the park, sweating. It would already be sunny because in winter, you use the afternoons to jog. The small knot of old women friends, many of them migrants from UP and Haryana villages nearby, would all be scattered around in small circles. The golden-winter sunlight bathing all of us in an extra-beauty. I remember I was happy. I had just found out I can be happy, alone.

Green and Peacock Blue Days

That was our last trip together. We both knew that. She had decided to get married. I knew she would be lost to me forever after that. Marriages, even good ones, tend to do something like that. Bad ones surely had a way of totally gobbling up the woman. It would eat at our core, tell us we are door mats, a cog in the system of endless family dinners, full-time servants, who should ideally, never be heard, seen, or felt. We were taught the fine art of being invisible from our childhoods. That, we realized later, was the training to be daughters-in-laws and wives. 

    I failed spectacularly at it. She was, unfortunately for her, a roaring successful. 

     She was never invisible. But, her deep empathy for others worked against her. She knew (magically, I would say) who needed what, the moment she entered a room. Physical comfort, emotional succour, even intellectual stimulation… she gave everything selflessly. In fact, she reveled in it. 

     But, I knew she would be destroyed by her decision. It hardly came from self-love. It came from self-hatred. I strangely felt sorry for the young man who had haplessly got trapped in her very own elaborate schemes of hating herself. I knew he would see through her one day. I knew he would be destroyed in her flame of cynical anger directed against her own beautiful self. He was, just collateral damage, nothing more. But, before he destroyed himself, I knew he would try everything in his power to destroy her. All for nothing- that was the tragedy of it which I knew, I saw and I resented. 

     Yet, that day was magical. We went to an old fort in the northern tip of the state. We were totally alone in that vastness. She wore a green and peacock blue dress. The dupatta flying in the light breeze. It became a combination of colors, I always associated with her later in life. The grass in the fort was parrot green. She emerged from the undulations of the hills, like a goddess, a part of it. Young, beautiful and liltingly earthy. 

     I snapped a mental picture that day. For I knew, this moment is passing. And, I knew then, we are alive now… But soon, we won’t be!

Naked to the Elements

Two days ago, Vinaya called me over the phone. I was glad to hear his voice. I told him: "Vinaya, you have entered my university's syllabus. My collegue Krishna and me, we have designed a course on Bhakti women saints, and your translation of Akka figures in the reading list." Vinaya sounded upbeat and the conversation took us to the topic of "nakedness." Akka, a 12th century Bhakti saint, had famously abandoned her cloths. She is depicted as covering her body with her long hair in popular visual representations. But, I always felt that "covering" is our ugly minds looking at her and foolishly trying to "cover" her up in the false modesty of our hypocritic gaze on a naked female body. I picture her in all her abandonment - flowling hair, her nipples exposed to the elements, pubic hair visible..and her, singing the praises of her very own god of her universe - "her lord, white as jasmine" (coming to me in the English poetry of A.K. Ramanujan). Vinaya translated it as "Channamallikarjuna, Jasmine tender" - I love it also, it signifies the tenderness of her intimacy with the lord, and also reflects the local god she made universal with her devotion. I then spoke to Vinaya about this experience that I had long ago. I was travelling in a friend's car in the coldness of a North Indian winter. The car passed by a street - one of those Delhi streets that have these huge trees in the sidewalk - comparatively clean and peaceful, but also dotted with some walkers. I suddenly felt in my subconcious mind, I had a vision of something I normally don't expect in a public street anywhere. I thought I had a glimpse of a male genitalia for a second and then the car had passed that scene and therefore, probably, I wasn't sure I had seen it at all. I turned back. And, there there were. Not one, not two, but three naked bums. One was slightly old and wrinkled. The others were fairly young, maybe middle aged. They were all crossing the street in the cold January of a New Delhi winter. The bodies didnt give out the meaning of "mad" (the only other naked body that you might come across in a public street like that). They seemed calm. I was surprised by my own reaction to the sudden glimpse of human nakedness, when you least expect it. I didn't feel "strange." I didn't feel "disgust." I didn't feel, they didn't "belong." It was so mundane, so ordinary and precisely because of it, so extra-ordinary. I did ask my friend whowas driving whether he noticed them. He hadn't. That he missed them clearly showed me how these bodies were just part of of the landscapte. And, I suspected, it might also be because of the aura they were sending out. They were not drawing attention to themselves. Nor were they covering their selves and hiding either. They were just "being..." My friend said, maybe they belonged to a sect of digambaras (has a beautiful translation possible - the one who has chosen the four directions as her raiment) with their ashram nearby. That made practical sense. They entered my bucket list of things to do in my life. I had to reach there somehow, one day. I had to give up my self. I had to become comfortable with my beautiful/ugly human body and present myself to my self and the worl - with no claims, no thing to hide!