You promised that you would fight to keep me too, although you were attached to someone else. You said, you would negotiate a balance by which you were able to hold us both in respect. It was not your fault that you had met her before me, but it certainly is a fault that having been with me, you can return to her as if there was never a thing between us.

You say I am not the type who can be committed to one; I say, yes, I can’t. My philosophy has been that of free flow, never to be tied up to anyone, nor allow myself to force tie upon anyone to me. Yet, in these moments I wonder at your tales of liberation from all ties; I wonder what truth there is in the words that you spilled in my ears – you belonged to the world and the world belonged to you, you shared it with your lover who too was composed of the same ether and for both of you, stings were but chains. I wonder then, how you failed to even inform your love about both of us.

You promised you would share what conspired between the two of us; you would work towards a means by which you could be a common love for both of us. It seems that you have now hidden behind your own words, unable to meet the demand you laid on your self.

I met your best friend the other day. He said you had even lost sense of your own self. You confessed that there was a huge amount of pain in your heart which you could find a solution to. You had lost yourself in work in such a way, that you could remember nothing of the past. You said that your poor heart could not bare the torture of insecurity lashing out at you, from your lover and hence you have preferred to put a lock on your tongue.

Such deceitful acts will only make you remember me more. The more you try to cover it with the sand of time, the more it will show up, night and day, and one day, in your trial to forget your past, you may forget who you are.

Fight Anuraga, fight! Fight for me, to be at your side. Remember yourself through me again, remember, the days we spent together, the nights we breathed as one. Remember, all those moments which made us what we are today; above all remember this Anuraga, that if you loved me as much as you said you did, you would fight for my place with you.

Lay down the mantle you have worn so far; dismantle the ideologies you held till now, come clean about the fact that all the books you studied and the talks you gave to re-engineer yourself breaking societal norms and constructs around you, that you are free of the shackles of all that you believed was true, for you were not able to walk your talk when it came to putting it in practice. It was easier for you to die to yourself and to me and perhaps her too, for the easiest roads are not less travelled. In fact the road map is already there. Or I will turn to say that, you used me, my emotions wrapping yourself around me with words and ideologies you could scarcely call your own.

Fight for me Anuraga, tear your heart, bleed, and tell the world that in your veins flow the poison you can safely call, me.

Don’t you remember you told me, you love me baby

“Why, she wrote in her diary, why must I see the world? I fear that if I do, then the impressions which will form in my mind from interacting with the world will overwrite in indelible ink over the face of him I have loved over ages. The delicate face I preserve in the depth of my heart is now so fragile that it stands the threat of being lost even to me, if I do not hold on to these impressions dearly. Therefore, forgive me world, in this life time, I can only look inside.”

It is not possible to count the number of years which had passed by since she had been waiting to see Mila. In her heart, she knew that one day, in some life time Milarepa would surface and erase the impression from past lives to replace with new ones from the present one. Was this not what he had done the last time too?

It was the eleventh hour. He was going on a long journey into the forests surrounding their monastery. They had sat close to each other, their eyes looking away at the far distant hills. Then suddenly he had turned to her. For one brief moment their eyes met, and that was the eternity.

The loud noise of beating drums split the air into a thousand pieces breaking into fragments their minds and bodies, as if they were made of fine porcelain. Their eyes had united to become one, washing away all distinctions and differences between their separateness. She had absorbed his face so deeply that her own was forgotten. On his part, hers replaced all memories of the monastery. He could not have carried all the memories. He was now on his own, he could choose from umpteen choices only one. He chose hers, because, in that was the whole experience of the stay at the monastery.

Was it not what he had carried with him, in his last birth too, which propelled him to search for her in this one too? He came as a novice to learn the art of transcending birth and death, the two finite points which held between them, the experience of life. The moment she saw him, she remembered him from their past lives together. Over lifetimes they had been following each other, sometimes he as Master and at others she as his Master.

This time, she knew he was ripe and she knew in his salvation lay hers as well.

The learning had been assisted by growing intense love for each other, a love that could burn the mid-night oil and precipitate into next day’s sermon and practices. The pages had filled up with the words of songs sung out of unblemished love whose layers of burning passion intermingled and intercourse with intense words of innumerable songs. From the very gut of their mutual existence sprouted volcanic eruptions of words that ached for freedom from the dense darkness of raw passions.

It was the last day they would see each other. If devotion could free them from the cycle of birth and death, then, love had done a fine job too. He was released, although still tied to her love, she was thrown into the ocean of waves that came and went forever.

Yet, nothing remained with her, except the fine texture of a memory of a face, long and quiet, subdued and liberated.

She had sat long hours at the gates of the monastery, having released him. She had watched him go further and further into the woods until, he only remained in her memory. She had not turned back from the gate that day; rather she had sat there long hours, even after darkness had enveloped her in her arms.

She had slept with him in her mind over eons, his soft but well defined features, forever, drawing a picture of him, her Milarepa, in the crevices of her mind – a thin tapestry of memories spread across her mind, covering the outside world from the inside vision.

Wretched!

I have turned into a crater
With a crevice
Whose depth can only be measured
Over lifetimes

This hunger in my veins
shrieks like congealed blood
scraping through its walls, somehow

No, I have not been alone
my bowl is full
of seeds from many men
and marks of lip-stick left behind
by women who have drunk from its depth

But alas!

Over the years this bowl has learnt
to speak the language of the heart
and to reveal that
Although, the gates to my soul
lie between my thighs
They are waiting for that one drop
Of soul-stirring elixir of life

The years are drawing to a close
My thirst remains un-quenched
I wait, holding my bowl like an open crater

Wretched!
shriveled and without juice
wrinkled enough to tell a story
of having waited eons

This bowl is empty in spite of being full
it will close its gates to open to another eon

Longing is   deathless.

There are two births a woman takes – one out of the womb of her mother; the other out of her own womb. It is in the second birth that a wo

man makes a statement about herself. This birth is preceded by pangs of wanting to come unto ones own, breaking out of the shackles of social norms, family expectations and the demands of her role in either. This birth is self willed, independent of all circumstances around her, absolutely a force within her that pushes her out of her own comfort zone, her womb of security to venture out into the world of newness, explorations and interests that define who she really is. There is a hunger and an anger, a desperation and a deprivation that all combine together to give her the final push out of the womb……and into the world of her own. It is what she wanted. She was born for and she longs to realize this.

In poet Manjul Bajaj’s poem, Sita the poet thanks the epic character for setting an example of the same.

Sita
This is a thank you note
from me to you:
Thanks so much for stepping over
. that lakshman rekha
I know it took you further than you expected
and there was hell to pay-
a ravenous Ravana, a fretting Ram,
monkey business, burning and pillage
and that whole darned deal
of walking through fire and having to ask
the earth to split and take you in.
But thank you, nevertheless,
for over-stepping the boundaries
of home and hearth
and letting the drama unfold.
Else there would be no grand epic,
no Ramayana to feed our souls
but the same sad story
of a wife in a hut, waiting dutifully,
for her husband
to come home.

One might argue that the poem only thanks Sita for her proverbal crossing the lakshman rekha for only being able to leave her home and hearth to explore what lies beyond. But really can anything be so simple? Can a woman resting quietly in the priviledged role of being protected from the big bad wolves, being the custodian of the family’s health and the being on the receiving end of husband’s erotic advances, ever want to leave the premises for the unknown?

Why should she?

But tarry! Sitas around the world are not born of lesser material than her hunting counterpart. There is a drive within her that propels her to move beyond these forced cages. Therefore, whether there is an external object, in any form, man, woman, images in the mind, or even objects that are inanimate, lying around her, her body and her mind will have its own desire to explore what lies outside the haveli. Hence, it is not necessary that she must have a lover or any other object of social construct to feel the desire to move out of her confines. Indeed, she is merely a tool in her own hands which initiate and propel her to break out.

Ditto about her body. Irrispective of what lies before her, the feeling around sex arise within her, without any stimulus from outside. Just like a breath that just is there, so are these desires, longings and needs of the body just there.

And of course there will be consequences. There is hue and cry; blame and shame games; war and bloodshed. But, once the swan has flown out of the nest, its wings spread to catch the power of the wind as it glides along to the destiny of its own making, hell and heaven may break; waters of the earth may rise in angry waves causing a social tsunami, lets face it, the bird has flown out, as it was meant to do.

In poet Manjul Bajaj’s voice, the lines are hard hitting.

Else there would be no grand epic,
no Ramayana to feed our souls
but the same sad story
of a wife in a hut, waiting dutifully,
for her husband
to come home.

The point I am trying to make here, is captured in the last four lines – but the same sad story, of a wife in a hut, waiting dutifully for her husband to come home.

Precisely, what Sita did not want to do, wait there dutifully for anyone to come. She had an agenda of her own. And that is why, for whatever be the excuse, she ventured out of the boundary line – the proverbial lakshman rekha, the line of control. Yes, and like the first time, breaking rules leads to many unforeseen ends, so did Sita’s.

Finally, then, what is the poet trying to say? Or is it that even she finds it hard to say, despite making this journey to voice lines that clearly state in no uncertain terms these facts: Was it not the desire in Sita which drove her finally to break the rules? Deep inside her, was it not the dictates of her subconscious mind that she had listened to – Go! Go out and explore; break the chains around you; Go! Explore what is beyond the boundaries.

Sita, represents every woman. She is that devoted daughter, that dutiful wife, or for that matter that caring mother, yet, deep within her she nurtures her own desire for freedom for herself.

The epics are wrong. They hide any portion that would make Sita a self-willed woman wanting to express her own needs. In the hands of Valmiki, she adorns the image of the perpetual victim, forever obedient and dutiful. In the hands of poet, Manjul Bajaj, however, Sita, a symbol of all women at large, has finally been set free -

Sita, This is a thank you note from me to you:Thanks so much for stepping over that lakshman rekha.

And again – But thank you, nevertheless,for over-stepping the boundaries of home and hearth and letting the drama unfold.

This is the drama, the drama of wanting to express her own inherent desire, which finally propel her to give herself the second birth : „the body has its own desires which is independent of any external object.“

Who is Sita: In the epic Ramayana, rishi Valmiki created the character Sita, who is the wife of dethroned King of Ayodhya, Rama. In the author’s interpretation, she is Every woman, on this side or that side of the land that gave birth to this Epic – India.

Please note: The thoughts expressed here are the writer’s own. They may not be the poet’s as well.

Ref:

Picture credit: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/collections/freeman/thai_ramayana/1024/thai_rama_189.jpg

To listen to Sita on Youtube:

I don’t seek them.
They seek me, these images painted, structured in rock and in earth
That bring back to my mind
Lust.
Lust for love and life.

I don’t seek them
These memories I stored in the back-burner
They seek me
With their clearly defined bodies
They thrust before me, images I longed to see
Lust.
Lust for love and for life.

Don’t blame me. It is not I who seek
My deepest passions
In fact, I am weary of them
They have burnt me and turned me to ashes

This lust has found no shore
to anchor itself upon
No hands to sculpture its highs and lows
No lips to kiss
No tongue to speak its gushing thoughts
No mouth to hold it’s outpour
It has lain there unattended
Unacknowledged even
For years.

Yet, it has held on to dear life
Like two fangs deeply entrenched in a lifeless rock
Sucking its juices
and thriving on it.

Sucking its juices
from deep within its source
Primodial waters
of lust, of hunger, of anger
turned inwards

What you don’t get
You never forget.

Yet, I don’t seek.
They seek me these images that bring back to my mind
Lust.
Lust, for love and for life.

Draupadi, stop those lies!

For five thousand years you have allowed humanity to believe in the notion that you were victimized by Yudhisthir and the Kauravas; your shame around your body exposed in broad daylight before an audience of men, you called your step brothers and your husbands. And that your loyalty to the Pandava brothers, was sacrosanct. That when Yudhisthir, in a fit of passion, staked himself, his brothers, his kingdom and finally you as well, you made it out to seem like you were the harmed one, driven to the other camp where the Kauravas stood waiting to devour you.

But, he, Yudhisthir, was the wronged one too. Wronged by you! For, you had cast a spell on him, so deep, he was obsessed with you. Alas, his infatuation found no respite, for as long as you were with Arjuna, he could never have you. His gripping desire for you boiled in his belly, waiting to spill out.

Yet…..

Draupadi, tell the world, that much before this day had dawned you enjoyed this play happening around you, when both Yudhisthir, the eldest of the Pandavas and his cousins, the Kauravas, were cast into the dungeon of smoldering heat obsessing with you.

I ask you, were you not responsible for this? This bath that the world knows you had come out from at the moment when you were dragged by your hair and placed on the dais, was it not what you had been bathing in, so many years in your mind? This longing, this wetness of a perennial flow of yearning, this burning flesh, this quiet and secret craving for other men – was it not what you had been pining for, that resulted in Yudhisthir being besotted with you? That you had played with his infatuation to the hilt, by placing your impression on his mind in such a way that he became powerless over his passion for you? And behind all this melodrama that took place that day, you hid the truth about your multi-fanged tongue with which you licked the carnal desire in many men, even the Kauravas?

You hid the fact that while you remained committed to one you would always dance to the tune of your desire for the other. The real drama goes on in your mind, flirting with the subconscious and the conscious mind. What they dare to reveal to the world and what they conceal within, unknown to everyone. Even to you sometimes.

In the contorted expression on your face that day, or the way your fingers and toes clenched inward, as you expressed pain, being dragged by your hair; in the manner you thrust your breast, now hiding, now exposing it before the Kauravas, the arch of your swollen hips, twisting this way and that, as if to resist, to hold back, yet, not quite, I have seen the hungry tide of longing mixed with passion, seething forth, like a woman about to meet the mounting pulsating throb inside her body and her mind.

Therefore, Draupadi, tell the world, that for you the distinction between pain and pleasure are blurred. Indeed, the two are too close and when one gives rise to the other, it is out of your control.

Nay, not true! It is indeed all within your control to determine how you want to participate in this wild dance, your wet with passion hair waving like tongues of fire, lashing out in the air. And if I have deciphered correctly, I can tell you Draupadi, I have heard the guttural laughter emanating from your throat, of satisfaction, so deep, you could only wait for just a few more moments before you lost yourself in the experience once again! And again…..and again!

Men are fools, you say. Look at Krishna! Trying to hide your shame externally, when in your mind you are drinking from the well of eternal ecstasy!

Draupadi, tell the world, that like a moth burns itself in the fire, you too must do it again and again, burning yourself out in the fire of your own feelings and therefore, you will always flirt with the forbidden. Tell the world that while you lived with Arjuna, you toyed with the desire for the other brothers as well. Tell the world that this is what you had all along fantasized, being forcefully thrown into the inferno of carnal desires; that the fight to possess you was what you yourself wanted most. And in the minds of the Kauravas, you had already been stripped off, of all your resistance, you lay in their hands to do what they so wished to do with you. Tell the world, this is what you wanted – to be possessed so completely by the other.

The boredom of complacency is not for you; the ‘given’ too unexciting. Hence, you will always play with danger, that which is taboo. For the taste of forbidden fruit is just too sweet to forego.

You are not the victim. You have perfected the art over generations of being with one, but spreading yourself widely across to many. At least in your mind, your need for many has sustained over generation, playing hide and seek between the layers of consciousness, between the hidden and the exposed, the acceptable and the forbidden, the blatantly obvious and the masked…..

While the whole world stops to cry…poor Draupadi! You are having the last laugh!

Draupadi, tell the truth!

***********************************************************************************************************

Who is Draupadi?

Every woman!

In the epic Mahabharata, however, she is the learned daughter of King Drupada of Panchala, and wife of Arjuna, one of the Pandava brothers. But because Kunti, mother of the Pandava brothers wished it, she became the wife of all the Pandavas brothers as well. Yudhisthir, who is besotted with her, is the eldest of the Pandava brothers.

The social practice, polyandry, still prevalent in parts of India, permits one women to marry many men, especially if they are brothers in the same family.

The desire monologue, in the above writing is the author’s own depiction. So is her claim that the potential to desire more than one lover is every woman’s Draupadic inheritance.

Picture credit: Rupa Ganguli as Draupadi: http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q114/deep86/rupa_padma03.jpg

Kolkata is fiery red all over. Conches are sounding all over. Hindi filmy music mixes with Bengali new Poojo sangeet Radio Mirchi is buzzing with new excitement. There is jubilation in the air. – She is coming. Only for four days. She is coming home. The rains continue to lash the streets. The little ponds laugh. The greens cannot be hidden by the growing grey of the city. The idols of Durga are in their finishing touches period. From where I am, I am floating on the Ganga….

It has begun with a hair message. Warm hair oil is poured over my head and I feel the circular movement of gentle hands as they rub the oil into my scalp…slowly…round and round…turning my head this way and that…. a soft Rabindra sangeet playing in the background…..I breathe deeply…..and let go…floating inward….still conscious of the hands working around my head…behind my ears…and at the nape of my neck. Slowly I am fading out…..my breathing has become heavy …and slow…….soundless…..with gaps in between…..and moments I am not breathing at all…….yet I am alive……I know it despite my deeply relaxed state of being. Fresh mud from the banks of the Ganga river flowing through Hoogly, touching Kolkata, has been brought, to be laid on a new terrain, my body. I have asked for a mud bath..the grey-brown, ever so soft silt from Ganga’s river bed. Handfuls of it are being laid out on my ………face to be follow by my body. It is cool..smoothe..creamy. I guess my face, leaving my eyes, and lip are laden with soil. To enhance the breezy coolness, I can feel two slices of cucumber being laid out over my eyes. Now I cannot open them …my ears have become sharper. I can hear the sizzling sound from the kitchen as seasoning is being done to daal. The haunting aroma of paanch phoran fills the air and my olfactory glands take a deep doze of the fragrance of Bengal’s unique but simple five-spice seasoning. I can also hear the poojo songs on radio…the hands that are today’s guide to the celestrial are on my neck and my shoulders are now being turned to the banks of the river Ganga……slowly the silt spreads through my torso..the overwhelming feeling is that of a cold paste. How easy it is to feel cool in the middle of summer! My intestines are freezing as the mud spreads over my stomach.

My legs and thighs are in a let go….perhaps I will never walk again as they cannot be willed to move any more…I will only float like a plank of wood, without direction, on the body of Ganga……just float aimlessly…. The hands are rolling over my thighs and legs. Together with the coolness, I can simultaneously feel Ganga slowly but surely taking a firm grip of me, first my face and then the rest of the body as the mud dries over my body, slowly embracing my skin in its pores. No! It is not pissible to be away from Her too long….She has caught me today and will not let me go…..These hands are driving me closer to Her bosom…I don’t have to make any effort to come close to Her – She grips me to her bosom. I am in a let go…I cannot resist. My feet and toes are now covered by  Her soil. There is a hand that is transporting me, transforming me……..the hands that now message my arms in a downward motion… …and before my fingers move into the soil, spreading themselves in the cool water of the earth of Bengal, I feel her lips touching the tips of my fingers….I feel the kiss of death….the kiss which will make me die to myself. In my head I hear my English School Headmistress, Miss Thomson read in her clear and British accent, “ The Touch Of The Masters’ Hand” The story of the man who driven by poverty puts his guitar out to auction. But nobody buys it till he comes and tunes it. At the touch of the Master’s hand, the guitar fills the room with such melodious music that it is auctioned at a very high price.

The music in the room has changed and I can hear Beethovan as I am dying to myself….the Lady takes over what belongs to Her………I am powerless. I am Hers. She has gripped me now firmly. My fingers are firm and even the web between them are now cast in her soil. Gently, the cucumber slices are lifted and I open my eyes…….my vision is filled with Kolkata. My jaws have fallen slightly and the song on her lips is the song we sang together at midnight, that night of poems and song lyrics –

Mamma, when I look at the clear waters of my soul

I see your face

Mamma, when I hear the voices in my head

A thousand voices speak like you

Tell me mamma,

Is loving another woman, like loving myself

When Kolkata plays on her guitar, your ears can feel like they have got so finely tuned, like as if you’d smoked some pot……gently strumming on her guitar, the strong embrace of the earth over me and around me….I drift off into a deep slumber……..Daughters of the soil, I see my mother merging into the beautiful idol of Durga, floating over the large breast of the Ganga.

I am Her.