Fragments

When darkness falls
Time falls apart
Consciousness falls apart
Love falls apart

Fragments
Shackle
Visions fall apart
Eyes rupture

Like a child
I stare
Into space
Into time

The red rushes
Vision blur
Visions scream
The child stares

Space that has no form
I stare
The eyes wink into the half
Of the night

Dream like, I lay awake
The echoes whisper into a scream
Looking into time
Eerie muttering

Hackneyed rattle
Echo
Braking silence
Time lazily prolonged

Like a child
I stare
Into the mirror
Broken into a thousand pieces
~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

Metamorphosis of the Saffron in the Tricolor

I wonder if the deep saffron in our Tri-color is shameful.

The deep saffron today has metamorphosed to a rigid meaning and association. It is associated with people like Pramod Muthalik (and the likes) who think this color is theirs, and is symbolic of their pig-headedness of a “monophonic” culture. Through this color, they have taken our country to ransom.

I wonder if the Green in our tri-color represents the Muslims – a people that make this land.

I wonder if the white in our tri-color represents all the other people, believers and agnostics’, men and women, the first sex, second sex and the third, straight and gay, and every other combination.

I wonder if the Asoka Chakra – the wheel of Righteousness is still the essence of what the Buddha preached of right action, right speech, right thought, truth, and dharma.

It must be known that when the Tri-colour was designed by Pingali Venkayya, the tri-colour was not saffron (as it is today), but was Red, to represent Hindus. It should also be noted that all religions other then Muslims and Christian are termed as “Hindu”. This includes Jain, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Daliths). To ensure the India’s Tiranga should not divide the country on communal lines, the Red was changed to saffron – to denote truth that is ingrained in all religion and renunciation Hindu-Buddhist goal for each individual in pursuit of happiness and salvation.

I wonder if I am momentarily ashamed to call myself a Hindu the way the Saffron Brigade defines a Hindu.
I am glad that the Hindu religion’s innate distinction is questioning of the I. It has always allowed debates and discussions – a part of the religion is the discourse of the atheistic and agnostic.
I continue to be a Hindu despite my atheist or agnostic debates. I still am a Hindu.
I am not stripped of my identity.
I continue to be a Hindu, through the worship of not one god or prophet.



I continue to be Hindu, through the reverence of the Female strength that is personified through the spirits of Kali – the goddess who garlands herself with the skull of demon heads who have terrorized the earth (like the men who have today manifested into forms like Muthalik and the likes).

I am glad to call myself a Hindu, because being a Hindu does not define me to a universally accepted definition. There is no one definition. There is no one god. There is no one dictum.

"When we think of the Hindu religion, unlike other religions in the world, the Hindu religion does not claim any one prophet; it does not worship any one god; it does not subscribe to any one dogma; it does not believe in any one philosophic concept; it does not follow any one set of religious rites or performances; in fact, it does not appear to satisfy the narrow traditional features of any religion or creed. It may broadly be described as a way of life and nothing more." Chief Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar (1999)

When that is the case, why is it that our land is allowed to be colonized by people who create the communal divide?
Why is it that stricter laws are not slapped on offenders who break this fabric that has triumphed through centuries of co-inhibiting the earth?
Why do the offenders like Muthalik get bail soon after they have instigated the blinded to burn down places of gatherings (schools, pubs, economic establishments, houses where human flesh and blood reside, monuments that have historical significance of a bygone era, places of worship) in places like Gujarat, Mysore, Mangalore, Orissa…(the list is endless).

Would a time come when we re-claim our flag?
Would a time come when the flag would not be called a Tiranga anymore?
Would a time come when it would metamorphose to one color with a one “Hitlerian” symbol?

I THINK Therefore I AM

An individual is a culmination of experiences, a metamorphosis of life and its journey. This metamorphosis is the phases of awakening, discovering, knowing, seeking and finding, that is the defining factor of who the I is. And, as the I operates through the now and then, thoughts are assimilated to defining the I.

The Descartian saying “I think therefore I am” is a truism of my life.

In the midst of narrating my very young, yet eventful journey, I’ll unravel the making of Lavanya Devdas to you. Sit back and listen and travel with me as I take you through the crooked journey of my life this far, and of the dreams that I have to be when I am at the end of the journey on this earth.
(Oh by the way, when I mean crooked, I don’t mean it in any negative way, it is just that my life has not been simple, and a boring straight line! Therefore crooked.)

I carry myself, and my life’s journey with great equanimity, believing in the egalitarian principles of life and the value of universal ties. Being one who strives to reach such an ideal, the most beautiful and poetic words of Jon Donne almost capture my views on life in its most perfect:

And into that gate they shall enter, and in that house they shall dwell,
Where there shall be no cloud, nor sun,
No darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light,
No noise nor silence, but one equal music,
No fears nor hopes, but one equal possession,
No foes nor friends, but one equal communion and identity,
No ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity.

I see the humility of this equanimity in all that I do. Having traveled a fair bit in India and abroad, understanding different cultures, making the best of friends around the globe, has been a humbling journey, this far. My social work, in spite of the fast-paced corporate life that I live in, I devote an equal effort in social responsibility. Knowing that one day, I’ll bring to reality my yearning to write, and devote my life to social work, in the midst of adventure, fun, and traveling that I love.

The famous lines of Ulysses have never ceased to echo in my mind. These lines have lived through me through the years of graduation where I majored in literature and physiology and then culminating to understanding the essence of it when pursuing my masters in Literature, and finally when it all came together when teaching literature for three years in a first grade college.

The lines are quintessential to knowledge and discovery that makes life an eternal journey:

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
Forever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

Through these years, especially through the years at the university, my life shaped itself, to know it cannot be un-crooked and plain. The realization that shouldering integrity on ones shoulders (devoid of a god or moral yardsticks that society thrusts on you) and be the instrument of change is so imperative in making ones life meaningful to living. This quality, I think I exhibited in me at a very young age, and I turned out to be one of my most stubborn idiosyncrasies through adolescence and now through my adulthood.

I recollect that as a child, I was inspired with the famous legend about the Buddha’s renunciation (and off course the Jataka Tales): it described of how the sheltered Shakya prince called Siddhartha wanders outside the city of Kapilavsthu and encounters successively an old man, a sick man and a funeral procession, and a wandering ascetic. Little did his father know that these sights would compel Siddhartha to think of life - decay, suffering and death that come everyone’s way. He is caught by a trance, when he sees a farmer tilting the dry earth, and a sparrow waiting to snatch an earthworm form the red earth. He cannot go back to his palace where there is "forced perfection" and pretend that these dichotomies of life do not exist. He decides to renounce the world, in order to seek answers. One night when he is twenty-nine, he walks without a whisper to the peacefully sleeping wife Yashodhara and son Rahula and silently bids farewell. Sets forth, he, into the world as a seeker of wisdom.

This has probably been one of the many things that has truly shaped in defining who I am, and giving me the true meaning of life.

Books have been my companion in many ways.

Today that has translated into traveling. It is through books and through the intermingling of cultures that I try to trace my roots to the past – beyond the now, to the past – going back sometime to the Axis age and beyond.

I am a product of my history. I am.

The Axis age lived through the great Indian civilization. Little has it peculated into people’s minds and heart. The Axis age is an age that will never be. It was an age where great thinkers of the lived at this same moment - The Buddha and Mahavir in India (though they had heard of each other, though never met!), Pythagoras in Greece Confucius, Leo Tzu and Chuang Tzu in China; the Old Testament prophets, Zorester in Persia.

This has also helped me understand the greatness of our civilization that I have begun to believe that life is a continuous process of knowing. Today I can firmly say that I understand the Decartian philosophy through understanding my country, its history, its socio –political-historic evolution, and thus understanding who I am. It is only through a consciousness of the centuries that has been; a person of character is born. Therefore, I am because of the multitudes of hues that make this land, and therefore I am a product of my consciousness through the civilizations that have come before me.


Mourning the death of M.k Gandhi, Albert Einstein asserted:
“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood.”

Gandhi himself put it, “the quest foe truth cannot be prosecuted in a cave” – a sentiment that the Buddha would have approved. His life long attempt as a leader of the anti-colonial movement was to infuse morality into the realm of politics where falsehood and violence have become widely accepted norms.

This collective history defines who I am. I am a product of colonization. I am a woman. I AM.

I am also a Gandian (no I am not old and old fashioned). It is seldom in life that people affect change in us, but for me I think there has been one person who has affected change in me. It is in the words of M.K Gandhi “You must be the change you wish to see in the world” that inspires me to be instruments of change on the lives simple things of integrity and truth.

In the meanwhile, as I live through, day after day, I would need to examine the breaths of my life and see the world through Blake’s apocalyptic vision:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour…

~*~*~*~

The Swan Song

I shall sing to you, oh Muse!
My farewell song,
As the notes echo into the stillness of the night
Dissolving into the quiet of death.

Before the mystery of my song unravels,
I would have drifted,
Along the scudding drifts,
Away from the shores,
Into the untrodden realms of perfection,
Where there shall be no light, nor darkness,
No time, nor space, no movement, nor chaos,
No love, nor regret.
No life, nor death,
But one eternal silence.


Water colours on KG Cardboard (May 2001)

Question

How do I tell anybody
Why I am lonely

How do I tell anybody
Why I experience solitude

How do I tell anybody
Why I feel

How do I tell anybody
What reasoning runs in this

How do I tell anybody
Of the mire that resolves around
This that and the other

How do I tell anyone
Of the hopes that are lost
Found and lost again

How do I tell anyone
Of the umbilical cord
That binds, girdles, guides and is lost

How do I tell anyone
That skies speak to me
What is their language
How do I tell

Why do I tell?
~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

SILENCE

Silence is not consent
Silence is not agreement
Silence is not adherence
Silence is not silence

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

Ramblings and Stammerings

The Washed Streets

July 19, 2006

I stare at the shimmering roads
The florescent lights from the billboards
Fall on the gushing raindrops
That collect
Merge. Flow.

The streets are washed
Of human filth
Dissolving in rain drops
That pours in black
The billboard light
Reflects through the black

The roads suck
Every dark rain that falls
Yet glows in the night
Looking like a glossy page of a sleazy magazine

The black rain
The streaming water catching momentum
The brook that brakes into a thick stream
Meeting and sharing the filth the rain drop journeys

I stare, looking out of the hypocrite ridden coffee shop
Seeing splashing rain pouring black
Watching people rushing to bookstall for cover from filth
Scuttling through slippery marbles of sophisticated book stores

It never seizes to rain filth.

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

The Writer in Me - A Surreal Re-counting of My Initial Years When Turning Coats into Tech Writing – Year 2003

I have always been enthralled while watching the twilight glow change into darkness across the graveyard. As darkness lowers its curtains, a sudden quiet filters into the graveyard.
The stillness of death makes its presence felt evermore.
Time is frozen for a moment, and the darkness has no hues.
Death and darkness meet in a perfect unison.

These are some of the thoughts that are, for me, the most romantic, the most perfect, and the most revealing. With the passing time and cascading memory that I live in day in and day out, tomorrow fascinates me just as graveyards, death, or the realms of the unknown do.

If the dead were to tell their tale, I wonder, as I read the epitaphs inscribed on the tombs that attempt to quench man's greed and desire for posterity, would we have had masterpieces that would make the earth quiver?

The desire to tell the tale of the dead burns in me like the ember that will soon dissolve into quietness, after expression has seen its final culmination.
Yes, today I may have rattled many a fragmented story.
Yes, today I may have walked away from the un-pruned graveyards, only to know that I will journey back to it someday.
The burning desire to narrate the many untold tales is unquenched. The ink is yet to flow unrestrained on clear white paper.

The writer in me still needs to evolve, and that takes a lifetime.Today I am called a writer- a technical writer (as if that should console me!), and I write not about life or death, light or darkness, stillness or chaos, spring or winter, memory or experience, illusion or fantasy, of the then or the now. I realize that as a technical writer, the dualities of life with its many paradoxes have no place.

The paper and the pen have become obsolete to me.

The keyboard has become a sophisticated tool that I use to type and retype words. Ink no more flows on white paper that's patterned with scribbles, which reveals the conflicting state of mind and the effort to chronicle the choosing of the right word to capture the right expression.

I recall the day I was told that typing would be the skill, apart from other things, that I would have to master to become a successful technical writer. Computers would be my world, I was warned, and I would have to grapple with it sooner than later.

I must confess that I did feel threatened with the ever-ruling machine, knowing that I had as much to gain as I had to lose. A transition from innocence to experience was certain and the futility of running away was absurd. I had set out to be a writer- a technical writer, and that was no small matter. Braving challenges was all part of the game and I was ready to play the game in fairness to my many dreams and myself. I told myself that my inherent bond with the paper and pen would not and could not be snatched by a machine.

However, today, the fact that I have typed this piece of personal contemplation is acknowledgment of the indispensable technology. The writer's world has changed for me.

I recall the promises made to my friends that distance would be countered, and defeated with the ancient art of letter writing that would not be sullied by "emails".

However, today I know I lied.

I have been entangled by the email etiquette that is followed religiously by me, for that is the norm- "nothing personal about it". I had always thought that I would never adhere to norms. The emails no longer carry poetic verses of banal realities, but instead now my emails carry sweet nothings, in the most atrocious of slang, distorting the language beyond recognition.

The Orwellian world is relived in an effort to reduce language of all "redundancies" which negate experience, which a technical writer needs to remember as the dictum from the gospel.

The sands of time filter through my fingers, and I am trying in vain to hold back the last grins of sand. As a technical writer the world with its abstractness and symbolism have no relevance to me. I need to write technical stuff that is precise and accurate. The politics of narratology is barred here. A new language needs to be learnt and fast. This language is accurate and precise. It seems to be easy for I do not have to debate over complex philosophical reflections of the many nuances of life. The alluring technology has snatched a lot, taking me into the realms of a cold, calculating, and capitalist world. Hypocrisy stares into the face of reality, satiating the everyday into hollowness.

I do not have a tale to narrate - not yet.

Yes, I would have to journey back to where darkness and the eternal silence meet, to have the apocalyptic vision:

To see a world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour…