Three Words…

                                       

With a flair of charm and with the air of apprehension she says the first three words ….

Utkarsh : For Her…

Lingering in my mind, these words I longed to hear, did not find the air inside the mouth to form the words and give it shape nor found the air outside to set the words sailing so they could reach my ears, vibrate and ripple and reach my brain and caress the wells, long dried in the heat of arguments….three words would have filled the gaps forever.

But!

The mind wanders again, far away in distant lands, the smell and taste of the earth of which I have forgotten. So many years ago and yet, fresh in the storehouse of things I desired but did not receive.

The breath at my nostrils have cooled. Like gentle breeze, they come and go. I am supposed to move with the breath, just be aware of the incoming and the outgoing breath, cool as it enters, warm as it leave.

Just like us. Could we not have kept the flow going. No! You were too different from me. Culturally. Did you not say, I would have to change? How can you change anything, without distroying it first. I am who I am.

And again the mind has travelled away to things past long ago….

Patient. Blame not the mind. Rome was not built in a day. Don’t be judgemental. Just return to the breath.

True, I have been holding up my breath in the last few moments which to me seemed eternity. Maybe only a fraction of a second turned to eternity….I was away much longer so let me get back to my breath….that incoming cool breath, flowing gently in and then leaving my body too, softly. The solar plexus have relaxed and my lower back is no more aching with the tightness of air held between its columns….relax. Let go!

And off I go. There in front of me is a screen, white in colour. We are sitting on the stool facing each other. Uncomfortable with the weight of the words, unsaid. I am looking at you as you fidget around, looking at me and then away. I know the pregnancy of these moments, heavy with the onset of labour pains in the mind, desparete moments when the ache of unsaid words, sentences, paragraphs….I can see us both on my mental screen, even with my eyes shut tight, one struggling to give birth, the other waiting with longing palms turned upward and outward…..

Yet! No word said. Only the heaviness in the air, the weight in the heart so heavy that we both let out a sigh…

Bringing me back to my breath once again. The words die in the womb. They do not find the air inside the mouth to form the words and give it shape nor find the air outside to set the words sailing so that they could reach my ears, vibrate and ripple and reach my brain and caress the wells, long dried in the heat of arguments….three words which would have filled the gaps forever.

And so I breath, watching the inflow and outflow of life, prana, while my mind takes me back and forth, like a jhula, a cradle from this moment to the past or the future….

Another hour lost to the conniving devices of the mind. In futile basking, much blabbering without a voice. Many visuals behind closed eyes. Many diversions from the chosen Path.

I am sitting in the Buddha pose. Silence is around me. Stillness so unmoving, it is like death. My mouth is shut and there is no energy that is moving outward and feeding the mind further. Thus, the thoughts are slowly receding and I settle in Silence….. The Silence of the Lamps.

 

 

NB: Art by Smriti Vohra 

 

Monkey

                                     

                                                                 

There is no light nor sound, which can reach this space, this 8 x 4 ft cell in which I have locked myself in. It is pitch dark and except for that one opening at the top of the cell, which allows air to enter, there are no windows or skylight.

 

I stretch my arms, but there is nothing I can see. I close my eyes and there is darkness. Even when I open them there is darkness. It is silent as a tomb inside, like the silence of the dead.

I am looking within, inside myself, my mind, my eyes closed. Volumes of sounds, conversations, pictures, flow out of my memory like reels of films I have put away somewhere, in the backburner. Ream upon ream of written matter, tapes of sounds and conversations….unending and on and on. If I open my eyes the thoughts cease only for a second. However, when I close my eyes, I am distanced from these flowing thoughts and can go on watching as each follows the other.

 

Until, the monkey takes hold of me.

 

The grey coat that covered your shoulders hung like a flowering shrub on a cliff, the colour perfectly matching your salt and pepper hair. Contrasting sharply with the hues of the soft pink shirt, the collar of which could just about be a little loose, but for your burgundy tie. I could feel my fingers tie a noose around your neck, so tight, that your lips pouted. Pearl-like teeth exposed between lustrous full lips like that of a woman’s.

 

My lips! You are wearing my lips.

 

We were at the conference of minds, great minds, great thoughts and great imagination. But I wanted a different diet.

 

The heat is on. It is summer, although, the air conditioning froze us.  My eyes have traveled to the cuff-links on your shirt. The diamond threw cutting glares at me.

 

I smiled.

 

Only a fool thinks that they can scare away the intent in a woman’s mind. A diamond’s sparkle, are no match to my ruby lips, my sapphire eyes, my garnet studded breasts.

 

With one dart of my eyes, the cuff-links can open to reveal the arm – the arm that will be around me in no more than a few seconds. And the buttons on the shirt will snap out, revealing a thick growth of darkness on your chest.

 

We are close together, just a few seats away. The tip of my shoe centimeters away from you. I can feel your growth of passion. I am wet too.

 

And then you rise, grabbing the coat around you, buttoning it, just a bit too late. I have seen the size and length of the whole summer.

It did rain heavily that night. There were puddles of water everywhere. We rained passion, we bathed in love. Not once, not twice, many times over.

 

The overwhelming thought is but one – you, your passion for me. I can feel it now, my limbs are limp….you are all over me, inside me, outside me, the throbbing reality of a mind gone astray, uncontrolled in your arms I am experiencing the union of powerful energies, wild animal desires and I can feel the throbbing at the base while I rise to the occasion in my heart, my breasts thrust and plastered against your chest. I can see your face, contorted by the agony of  the last minute tension just before the release of peace…I can see the last straw before you let go.

 

Forbidden fruits of labour hammer in the last nail on the coffin, the death of Self and the birth of Cosmic Orgasm.

 

I am still sitting in the same pose, lost in the finale of the act, far away from the world I am here to discover. Monkeys. Demons of the past. Another hour lost to the conniving devices of the mind. Far, too far, from where I wish to be.

 

I am sitting in the Buddha pose. Silence is around me. Stillness so unmoving, it is like death. My mouth is shut and there is no energy that is moving outward and feeding the mind further. Thus, the thoughts are slowly receding and I settle in Silence….. The Silence of the Lamps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NB: Art by Smriti Vohra 

 

Goodbye Devashish!

                                                        One-Handed Basket Weaving

 

There was a dervish who lived alone in the mountains,

who made a vow never to pick fruit from the trees,

or to shake them down,

or to ask anyone to pick fruit from him.

 

“Only what the wind makes fall.”

This was his way

of giving in to God’s will.

 

There is a traditional saying from the Prophet

that a human being is like a feather in the desert

being blown about wherever the wind takes it.

 

So for a while in the joy of this surrender

he woke each dawn with a new direction to follow.

 

But then came five days with no wind,

and no pears fell.

 

He patiently restrained himself,

until a breeze blew just strong enough

to lower a bough full of ripe pears

close to his hand, but not strong enough

to detach the pears.

 

He reached out and picked one.

 

Nearby, a band of thieves were dividing

what they had stolen.

 

The authorities surprised them and immediately

began the punishments: the severing

of right hands and left feet.

 

The hermit was seized by mistake

and his hand cut off,

But before his foot could be severed also,

he was recognised.

 

The prefect came. “Forgive these men.

They did not know. Forgive us all!”

 

The sheikh said, “This is not your fault.

I broke my vow, and the Beloved

has punished me.”

 

He became known as Sheikh Aqta,

which means, ‘the teacher

whose hand has been cut off’.

 

One day a visitor entered his hut without knocking

and saw him weaving palm-leaf baskets.

It takes two hands to weave!

 

“Why have you entered without warning?”

 

“Out of love for you.”

 

“Then keep this secret which you see

has been given to me.”

 

But others began to know about this,

and many came to the hut to watch.

 

The hand that helped

when he was weaving palm leaves

came because he no longer had any fear

of dismemberment or death.

 

When those anxious, self-protecting

imaginations leave, the real,

cooperative work begins.

 

–        Jalaluddin Rumi, Mathnawi, III

 

 

At last, the walls that were full of stories written of you and me have left their hold on me. They have just dropped away. For years I held in the crevices of my mind, indeed all the empty spaces inside, words, thoughts, acts, memories…

 

Suddenly, the walls are no more. They have vanished. Not even whitewashed! They have no colour; not even the absence of colour. The stories have just vanished. There is no rubble to retrieve the stories from, even if I wanted to. Just nothing! All is gone!

Chor aaye hum, woh galiya…..said Gulzar. He was right. I too have left the gallis and the roads. Even, those rooms in my mind full of your fragrance. I know I held on to them as long as I needed them. These stories had their purpose. They took me on a journey to my Self. They broke my resistance and they brought the flood to my eyes. They seasoned me, molded me, twisted me like you turn an iron rod in the furnace to make it steel…and when that is done, neither the iron knows itself, nor is the furnace any more needed.

 

Suddenly the walls that were full of stories of you and me are no more. They have disappeared. As long as I was insecure without them, they were with me.

 

When those anxious, self-protecting

imaginations leave, the real,

cooperative work begins.

 

Goodbye Devashish! Our work together is over. I must be on my Way…..

 

 

Radha, The Feminine Energy

“Radha
immortal lover girl,
Survivor in love’s hustings,
against all odds,
I like to think
that on some days at least
you felt above it all.
Seeing in his many loves
only myriad reflections
of your own mystic
feminine power.”
- Poet Manjul Bajaj, poem Radha:
  Book: Here and Now, Volume I Pg. 410-411

Veiled. Hidden. Secret. Mysterious.

Radha, symbol of the feminine energy, silent, yet speaking volumes. Always behind the purdah, yet so very conspicuous.

What is so unique about this?

Poet after poet has spoken of the mysterious engagement we have with the feminine energy, because it is shy, concealed, we seek it. Because it is silent, we want to hear its voice, because it is behind the purdah, we are anxious to reveal it to ourselves.

Radha, the feminine energy, exists forever. She is primordial. She haunts us perpetually.

She attracts the opposite, the masculine energy, purusha, which is drawn irresistibly to her from its position of detached observation, pure Awareness.

But tarry, the true meaning of the poem, or its ultimate transcendence over all other thoughts on Radha, lies in the fact that while for centuries we have believed that it is Radha, the feminine energy, which entices the stationary, detached purusha to herself, like Parvati, dancing in front of Shiva, which stirred him out of his trance, in fact, the truth is that she is only being herself; it is the active energy in purusha, which is drawn to her, because it needs an anchor in her. Why else, would purusha, believed to be so self-contained, detached, resting in pure Awareness, find the need to move at all?

We are in the habit of thinking that purusha is still, when the opposite is the fact.

And inevitably, Radha, knows in her heart, the fine art of luring: she casts her magic wand around the stationary, unmoving masculine energy, thereby weaving a mysterious web around him, an enchantment that sets him in motion. He moves, unable to hold himself back. His stationery position is long lost as he unwittingly enmeshes himself in her.

He will never be the same again. He will then move in time, trying to re-discover his own identity all over again, in his rebellious ways –

He will break free. He will chase many. He will conquer many too. However, he will never be able to shake off Radha’s hangover. Perpetually moving from one to the other, again and again finding himself, caught in the perennial web of Radha, the feminine energy.

For ages the fallacy has continued…. Purusha is what one must seek, strive for. Purusha, the detached Aloneness, is the goal of life. The secret lies with Radha – purusha himself is striving hard to set himself free from the bondage of Radha.

On and on, time after time, thus striving for ages, seeking freedom from one Radha, to find yet another, on and on, determined to set free, but bound yet again with Radha.

The genius of the poem lies in the fact that it highlights the opposite of what we believe, it challenges the thought we are have developed our comfort zone around. And so it brings out the rebel in us.

We may fight the newness of thought – that, it is the feminine energy, which is stationery, the still, the undisturbed – only till we accept the failure of what we believed before.

It is after all purusha, who is in movement, at one time caught in her web of mystery and then chasing Radha in her many forms in others as well. It is purusha who has to rest and find his stillness. But alas! This is not to be. The world cannot cease. It must go on, and hence purusha will forever, move from one Radha to another, never resting, forever moving, moving, moving. Finding in every newness, the old.

Why then must Radha drop a tear -

“Seeing in his many loves
only myriad reflections
of your own mystic
feminine power.”

The wired mesh holds fish from the sea struggling to return to the water. But the ferryman knows that the struggle will at some point cease as the fish resigns to its destiny. It will rest forever. In Radha, the feminine energy.

Radha

Tell me Radha
were you really above it all?
Did not thoughts of Rukmini and Satyabhama
irk you
or twist your insides out?
Did not the gaggle of giggling gopis
around your Kanha
rent a tear
in the skin just above your heart?
Did not sniveling Draupadi’s
damsel-in-distress calls
to one who was supposedly your knight
in shining aura
make you jealously wonder
about what he meant to her
or she to him?
And did you not once wish that
that maudlin Meera-come-lately
would shut up and go away
taking her bleating bhajans with her?

 

 

Radha,

immortal lover girl,

survivor in love’s hustings,

against all odds,

I like to think

that on some days at least

you felt above it all:

seeing in his many loves

only myriad reflections

of your own mystic

feminine power.

I like to think of you

laughing to yourself-

a quiet, gentle laugh-

about that idiot man of yours

who thought himself a God.

 

 Other poems by Manjul Bajaj: http://manjulbajaj.blogspot.com/

To read more of Manjul Bajaj, google search Manjul Bajaj

Listen to her on YouTube LIVE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWZ0MtuY_wg

 

Note: The thoughts expressed here are entirely the author’s. The poet’s verse is an instrument of inspiration. The poet herself is in no way responsible for the author’s interpretation of the poem. 

Black and White

Gayatri lay out the table on the floor. She was expecting a visitor who had been frequenting her studio apartment at Ganeshkhind Road, in the Deccan Gymkhana, Pune. But today, for the first time, he was coming for lunch. She had decided to do an original Bengali lunch, carefully choosing the vegetables and fruits from the Mandi the evening before.

“ Kidney beans, leun ghe ”, Shanta Maushi, the lady vegetable vendor had suggested. “Changla aahe!”

Kidney beans, fruits, green salad, grapes from Nasik, besanladdoos – she had already started to plan what she would make for lunch. But her guest made her promise she would have to wait till he came. They would cook the lunch together.

Cases of this nature are unknown to Bengali hospitality. A meal without fish is in itself unthinkable. Have you fed the guest at all, if there is no fish?

Times had changed for Gayatri. In the last two years she had become a complete vegetarian. That was one of the demands of her Guru, in order that along with yoga, she could cultivate a life that was moderate, disciplined with not too many moments of extreme happiness or sadness, too much excitement or lack of it. A life that was measured and smooth. These years had to be years of sadhana and not of just learning yoga. Yoga was a way of life, not just a practice of some back-breaking acrobatics.

For Gayatri this was an experience of sorts. M oderation, for her was for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence-sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It was for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. She lacked the sustainable theories of using everything in a moderate way. In fact, it was her husband who encouraged her to come to Pune for three years to learn a way to do just that under a Guru. She would not only learn the theory but also the practice of a balanced life. No doubt, Gayatri had just begun to feel the difference.

There was a gentle knock at the door. She opened the door to find a small bunch of mogra flowers carefully wrapped in the folds of green leaves greeting her.

“Come in Andre!” she smiled taking the flowers from his hands.

“I did not know what to get for you….”

“Thanks for the mogra and your presence. Both are very well appreciated,” Gayatri said placing the mogras in a bowl of water at the feet of a large picture of Krishna and Radha. She put her hands together in a namaste. Andre followed to do so too.

“Lunch ready? I am hungry”

“In a bit. You said it was going to be a joint venture…” Gayatri smiled. She went to the kitchen basin and turned the tap on over the kidney beans lying in a flat plate at the floor of the basin. The gentle fragrance of mogras filled the air as she began to peal the cover away from the beans. Andre came and stood behind her.

“May I help” he said placing his hands over hers on the wash basin.

Gayatri hailed from a small town called Aurangabad, just about four hours journey by bus from Pune. Andre had lived many years in Auroville, near Pondicherry. He had travelled to India for the first time in the 80s on holiday. In Pondy, quite by chance he was introduced to Shefali, a Bengali devotee of Aurobindo Ashram. They fell in love and married. Two years ago he came to Pune to learn yoga and here he met Gayatri. As it happens to many people, since both of them were from out of town, they grew close.

Andre had dreams of starting his own yoga school in Madagascar from where he hailed. And teach yoga in Auroville for six months of the year. Gayatri came on the behest of her husband, but was already desirous of including yoga in her medical practice in Aurangabad, after she returned.

Andre and Gayatri were both aware that there was a thread of attraction between them. Gayatri was naturally surprised at herself for feeling this way. So was Andre. Tall, blonde and thin, with deep blue eyes, Andre was fond of her, especially because they shared a common Guru as well.

After the yoga classes, they always broke one rule. They met at PhiloCafe and indulged their senses with a thick coffee with cream. Although their strict schedule and diet made coffee a no-no product, the Philoppuccino they shared together was their only excuse to keep meeting over a large cup of philosophy.

“What could be the reason, why a person born in another country, takes a trip to India and continues to live here forgetting his own country….”

“It is his search, his search for meaning in life”

Andre recalled the day he met his wife Shefali. She wore on her neck a necklace of tulsi beads. Her hair was long and black and she had a chandan tikka on her forehead. He found her reclusive and withdrawn. In fact that is why he was drawn to her. She had a dark complexion, a very dark shade of brown. She also had very steady black eyes. Lying on a background of white, carefully protected by long lashes, her eyes had looked at him without batting an eyelid. He was transfixed. They had looked on at each other for a long time without speaking. The communication was complete without saying a word. In a week they were married. It is Shefali who drew him to Sri Aurobindo. They walked together on the spiritual path, she half following Sri Aurobindo and half her own religion from rural Bengal. She sang Baul songs with such devotion, Andre, always saw a little Krishna sitting beside her when she gave voice to her longing to see Him. Andre thought perhaps he had married Radha incarnate. In Shefali his life’s search came to an end.

But there is a time for everything. Even his dedication to her, ripened and the fruit fell. A new thirst, bigger that ever started to gnaw at his soul. His feet found the road again. They carried him to Pune, this time to learn Yoga. Shefali did not accompany him. They spoke quite often to each other. But her world was Pondy. It was her Kasi too. She would never leave that little quintessential town to be anywhere else. Last year on Janmasthami day, she told him she was going to spend five days at the temple complex just outside the only Krishna temple in Pondicherry. This year, she went without telling him anything.

“She too has grown far away from me”, Andre had confided in Gayatri.

“How do you know?”

“Because, she thought I was her very own at one time, she always told me everything before she did it. But this time she has not told me anything. She has gone without even telling me she would be away for these many days. Clearly, she has grown apart from me. She does not feel I am a part of her life….” he concluded in a matter-of-fact manner.

The quest for meaning in life goes on. It is the same quest which had now brought him to the gates of Gayatri’s house.

“May I help” he said placing his hands over hers at the wash basin. Gayatri’s hand movement slowed down, as Andre’s increased. He rubbed the inside of her palm still holding her from behind. Gayatri had recently bought a brick red kurta with long sleeves from FabIndia. As the sleeves began to roll up, pushed up by Andre, she felt the gentle surge of warm blood filling her underbelly. Her mind prompted her to stop, but her body relaxed.

“All I want, he whispered “is your brick red kurta…”

Andre’s hand travelled up and just as she thought it was going to cup…..a quick, sudden movement from him and he had pulled her kurta off her body. She swirled around hastily covering her naked body with the front of his. The fragrance of his body mingled with the mogras filled her. His warm breath lay behind her ear….she could not help but let go.

Black and white. A photographer’s dream frame. Black and white, Gayatri’s dark brown body, naked from head to waist pressed against Andre’s white kurta. Black and white, like day and night, at once their exposed emotions and yet, the words that were never spoken. Black and white, like Krishna and Radha locked in their eternal flow of love song. Black and white, the conscious and the subconscious, the journey of life we are aware of and that we are not. Black and white, like his face pressed against hers, his pale blonde hair, wet at the side with the flowing sweat, juxtaposed against her jet black hair, flowing down to her back yet not covering it or hiding it from his eyes. There is indeed no shame to guard against, no guilt to dodge, just two flames of desire burning as one, their bodies pressed against each other, two colours, black and white, in a dance of ecstasy.

Normally this is not the diet for a first time guest at a Bengali home. There are other exotic recipes a Bengali woman can spread out on the table called sorse maach. In fact, the best sorse maach is made from Ilish maach. It leaves a strong taste both in your tongue and your nostrils. The aroma of the curry stays with you even after you have finished your lunch. It stays in your mind for an even longer time. The soft flesh, between your fingers, the tender bones you lick and put away, the mouthful of a flesh with an exquisite taste, so unique you can never ever forget it. You want to taste it again and again. Relish its refined taste. You will always return to shorshe ilish macch, as long as you live for even when you place your fingers at your nose, you will always smell the fragrance of that days delicious lunch, although today it is flat kidney beans mixed with the exquisite fragrance of the mogras….

In his mind, Andre imagined it was Shefali’s sorse ilish. It is the true Bengali flavour he could never forget – Ever!

Love – A Pleasurable Pain

” May I share the table with you” I asked the lady sitting on the only table with an empty chair.

” Of course” she said ” Please”!

Prem’s Restaurant was jam-packed. A favourite among the people, who live in Pune, a city in Maharashtra, India, Prem’s is famous for its Chicken tandoori. I was in Pune for that one evening only. I was terribly distraught and knew I had to get my teeth into some chicken to ease the hungry pain in my heart.

I settled on the chair opposite her and looked up. She was a foreigner. I smiled and introduced myself.

In response she said in a very British accent” Hel – lo! I am Dhyan Sagar” She read the question in my eyes. ” If you are wondering about my name, it is not my legal name. Peggy O’ Hara. I am Irish”. Ah- huh! I thought. That explains the lovely far-away looks….it had to be from Enya’s country.

” What brings you to India?” I asked looking around for the waiter.

” Love. ” she said simply. ” Love of the land – and a man”. I smiled again. Oh! Didn’t I know that feeling?

Strangely, when the waiter came to take the order, we both ordered chicken tandoori.

” It’s one of those days, ” she continued with a ringing British laughter ” I need to get my teeth into some meat. Other wise I am a vegetarian”.

This was beginning to sound like a déjà vu. We chatted while our orders were being prepared. Dhyan Sagar was a teacher in Liverpool and sang in the Pub in the night. Around seven years ago she met a man while she was visiting India for the first time. She had broken off from a long live-in relationship five years prior to that and had taken a decision to not fall in love for a long time. She had shut herself out from the world, coming out only in the evenings to the Pub on Saturdays. She sang from her heart and even as we spoke, I could imagine her music. Her voice was alive. It had a “soul”.

” I can’t say what took over me. I was hit from the back I think. I couldn’t get him off my mind. We were travelling together to Ladakh. Suddenly all my mind could think of was him. Day and night, I wanted to be close to him. We stuck to each other like glue. No! That is a lie. I stuck to him like glue….”

I loved her honesty and it rang a certain note of familiarity in me. I thought of Ramesh. How I had met him on my first job as a Time- Life Bookseller and after that, my sales calls began and ended at his office! Thank God it was a vacation job!

” I know that feeling” I began ” I have experienced it myself….”

” Oh! Have you? He did not reveal himself to me quite clearly for a few days. Then one day, we were alone together and I reached up to him and began to kiss him. Can you believe, we had not even kissed for over three days after we met, even though it was quite evident that we both fancied each other?”

I nodded and was about to say my piece when she continued with hers.

” He stopped me. I was so dismayed! How insulting I thought. Then he revealed to me, he was married and had a baby girl. I was perplexed. So why did he not say that before, I thought. It was very hard for me”. Sagar stopped and took a sip from her glass of water and a bite of the chicken leg. I cleared my throat.

” Ramesh was similar…he too was …..”

” What did you say? Was he married? Oh yes, of course that is what he said to me”.

I got it this time. I decided to let her do the talking.

” Don’t you think” she questioned me, looking deep into my eyes, he could have told me he was married, at least on the second day of our meeting? He knew he was not going to play game!”

” Perhaps, he meant to tell you but….” I was interrupted again.

” I know it was his love that kept him from telling me….he had begun to love me, you know….I could feel it”.

I cleared my throat again and was preparing to fill in the gap. However, it was not necessary.

” He said to me one day on the trip, I don’t want you to feel I have not responded to your love. I can feel how you feel about me…and he put his arms around me and gave me a long hug. Somehow, the tears came to my eyes and although I tried to stop them, he saw them running down my cheeks”.

” Oh! Darling!” he said, ” I don’t mean to hurt you”.

Sagar was crying again. I stared at her. Would it be appropriate to gently touch someone’s hand lying on the table? Even, if I wanted to show my empathy? To reassure her?

As quickly as she began to cry, that quickly, she wiped her tears away.

” I am sorry! Didn’t mean to. Let’s change the subject”.

“Yes, I said ” Lets!”

” But just one more thing…..do you think he loves me? He has refused my erotic advances, but never my love…”

” I can’t really say, but I ….” My theory remained unheard.

” I know he does. My heart tells me so. And that is why I have been coming back to this beautiful land over and over again. Because of him, and my love for him, everything seems so much more beautiful!”

I loved the genuine ray of love that emitted from her eyes as she said these lines to me. It spread across the room covering it with a gentle hue, warmth you could touch only if you were looking into her eyes at that moment.

” As I was saying, I had a similar experience with someone. But you know what? After two years, I had to cut the relation off….I had to move on……” I said.

” I can’t do that Samasti, because I know he loves me. I need to wait for him”. She looked stubborn.

” But what about you? You are not getting anything out of this love are you?”

” Does not matter! One loves for the pure joy of loving.”

” And hope that he will love you back in the same way some day?” I said without thinking too deeply on it.

I had made a mistake. Suddenly, Sagar began to look quite cold…chilling in fact.

” I believe in the power of love, Samasti. I know if you love someone so dearly, you can hold the torch for him or her for as long as it takes them to come to you. “

” Yes! You can. But time and tide waits for no man. Opportunity to move on in life reduces with every passing day. So does our will. These are the reasons why I moved on from Ramesh. “

She was quick and caustic.

” You did not believe in your love. You had never known loss of love. If you did, you would not have given up the second time. You would have clung on and fought your lonely battle and even if you did not win at the end, you would have lived with the fact that you had not lost, because you held on to that love “.

The impact of the words left me speechless. An arrow plunged into my heart. I did not need to hear the rest of her story. I knew it is not love she was seeking; not this man either. He was merely a catalyst. Someone, who could instill in her, her own individual self worth, by precisely, not responding in the way she desired him to. And by so doing she inadvertently proved to herself that she could love eternally, no matter what. It was her power statement to herself.

Hats off! I said to myself, pensively wiping my lips with the super white laundered napkin. We rose from our table together and walked to the exit. Outside the doorway, we turned briefly to one another. We looked at each other very deeply and made connection for the first time that evening.

” It’s been a delightful evening. We must do this again”. She said.

” Yes! ” I agreed. ” We must”!

Then we both went our ways not exchanging business cards. I knew there was nothing for her to meet me again. She had told me her story and now she must find a new pair of ears to tell the same story to. She had to affirm her love worthiness. Again and again.

It was her obsession.

No Water; No Moon

Relationships.

Who is the other? Or is it I forever relating with myself through others? Is there a purpose why we meet? Why the pull? What is unfinished karma? What is the clearing that takes place when there is someone with whom we are relating? There must be some reason why we have come together? And then we draw apart? What is completing a cycle? What is it that keeps us together? What is permanence? What is the alchemy of love?

I don’t know.

I am not visiting this lifetime to find answers. If there are questions, there will be answers to them. Often the question holds in itself the answer as well, like a seed holds in it the whole tree. My reason for this visit is clear to me – I have come to clear my Path. I need to be free of past baggage and so on hindsight I look at my life and know that I have been doing just that throughout. Sometimes with awareness, most times without. Only when I choose to look back I am aware of how I have been choosing every episode, person, circumstance to serve this purpose. I chose my parents. I am deeply proud of my mother for her spirit and my father for the art of renunciation. Together, the exact mix of being completely involved and being totally distanced at the same time came to me as genetic inheritance. I can’t be anything else.

So the road has been strewn with many lovers and many Masters. Unfinished karma from past lives. How can I see myself if I was not facing a mirror? Similarly, how can I see my own realities unless I am with lovers who reflect your own reality and Masters who put me on the Path again? This process gave rise to real aspirations. My Masters become my doorway. The relationships gave me reflections of myself but my Masters gave me the technique to look into myself, gradually distancing my Self from myself. As if the Self was separate from myself. It is the finest art I learnt to do in this lifetime. I had learnt from being a student of philosophy that the Self was different from myself. My Masters taught me how.

Distancing is such a wonderful art. It needs skills I could not have learnt in any classroom except the school of life. The first whiff came by, when I received a letter from my first love in school saying she was going to marry soon. But I thought ” She said she wanted to spend her entire life with me! What happened?” Days were spent in early college when I pondered over declarations without explanations. I sat for long periods of time at Marine Drive in Bombay just looking out at the sea. Something about water – it washes out everything. I could be like a boatman sitting on his anchored boat on the banks – just sitting there watching! Watching! Watching! The waves cleared my cobwebs and I had the first experience of sitting in a large meadow in my mind, so far in a little chair that I thought if I really had to see myself in my mind, perhaps I would have to use binoculars! The first love remains with you for life. So does the first rejection. How you handle it makes or breaks your life. I had already started my journey to my Self.

He had to be a different kind of man and if he did not know the concept of space how was he ever going to address where I was already. He had all these and he had more! He had traveled through rejection not looking at the Arabian Sea. He had a Master already. We were by then identifiably soul mates. Our values were the same. We spoke the same language. It was bound to happen. But what was shocking to me – I was converting to his Master. I had no religion I could say I had allegiance to. I could not bear temples, God-men and temple pundits. They made me feel nauseous. I did not have a strand of religiosity in my body. I still don’t but this Master took me on a different journey – from reading of Buddha as a student of philosophy, he taught me the art of meditation as taught by Buddha. I could bear this, even love it. Buddha was an agnostic. So He was acceptable to me. He had a method to go beyond, pleasure and pain establishing the transitoriness of everything and changing realities. Nothing was forever. Change was the only permanent thing. Just a simple formula – be watchful. Meeting with this Master, made all relationships after that like water down a duck’s back. However, as long as I am in the body, I do not know how my desires will drive my body but I can surely say that all relationships are a fresh look at myself and all Masters are a door to the divine.

Where I stand today, I have focus and a friend, philosopher and guide whose drive and search is deeper than mine and she has taken it on herself to make me walk the Path with her. That is her only concern. I have finally come home after travelling over many roads, my feet tired and my soles torn. Yet I have not dropped my mother’s spirit of absolute involvement and my fathers armour of worldly distance and renunciation. I am in the body and weary of my long stay at the Master’s House, the office romances and Yogi, even Kolkata are a must to my life. They all reflect my own reality and without their presence I would never know my truth, my inner Self. Without a mirror it is impossible to see my real face.

No water; no moon.

Rinanubandh

A soft tap on my shoulder pulled me out of the pages of the book I was reading at the Manny’s Book Store in Pune. It was late evening and I had returned to that city to take a longish break and complete a painting lying the in attic of a dear friend. I turned around and looked at the face staring down at me. Soft aquiline features of the face were framed in a cascade of salt and pepper hair falling from the head to below the shoulders, gently covering the well-formed breasts of a woman, not more than forty-eight years ofage. I searched my mind – she looked familiar, but….

She smiled. The laugh lines on either side of her mouth looked sad to me.

” Sagar….” she said. ” Remember we met at Prem’s a couple of years ago?”

How could I forget! ” Of course I remember you! How have you been?” I said looking at the book in her hand.

” Pretty good really” She said with another smile that could have melted the Book Store.

” So what are you reading” I asked.

” Inheritance Of Loss by Kiraaaan Desaaaay”

” You are not planning to buy it, are you?” I asked quickly.

” I thought I might….it’s won the Booker”.

I had to say my line –

” Oh, well! Man Booker has become a God of Small Things it seems. No literary genius this! Buy the last one, if you must, God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. That really was a literally genius”.

She bought Arundhati Roy. We moved out of the Book Shop. ” So what are you doing for the rest of the evening? Any plans?”

” Not really. I am here on a holiday to complete a painting. Just thought I would like to revisit the past….?

She looked questioningly at me and then said, ” Would you like to come home with me? I have some lovely tea from Darjeeling!”

Oof! The romance of tea! It’s something I can’t resist. ” Thank you! That will be lovely”.

Sagar’s room, on the top floor of a building in the small inner lanes, was tastefully done with a large French window opening out to a private terrace.

” I’ll just put the kettle on.” she said trying to make me comfortable on a large cushion. I picked up the blue crystal lying on a wad of cotton wool, on the shelve, with a light bulb over it, “May I, please?”

” At night, I put all the lights out and just that one over the crystal, and the room fills with blue waves. It’s so soothing.” She said putting her hands on her heart.

I could imagine.

She returned with the tea carefully placed on a tray made of bamboo. I recognized it as Made In Meghalaya – my part of the country.

” Where did you get that from”? I said in astonishment.

” Well from the shop outside the German Bakery. They sell some great cane stuff”.

She settled down and we both looked at each other for a long time.

” You look tired and withdrawn….not like I remember you from last time” She was very observant.

” I am coming off a relationship” . I said without much ado.

” Oh? Long one?”

” No! Actually a very short one. Only three months! Yet it has been so intense for me as if it was something I have experienced for over lifetimes. I feel tired.”

The aroma of tea had already filled the room She poured out a light liquor in a fine china cup – white with a light lace of gold around the rim. I took the first sip without being invited to. Lovely! The aroma and the warm tea filled my senses.

” So tell me ……” she was saying.

I did not feel like talking about it. It was too close for me to look at it with distance. I had come to paint the pain away. I knew that when words were hard for me to speak, the brush made up for the loss of words. Colourful strokes of on the canvas always changed the picture in my mind.

” Too close to it, still. Can’t talk,” I said simply.

She began to talk instead.

” Relationships come and go. They are like boats sailing. You climb on to some. You let go of others. And you just watch some happening to others. They are both real and unreal…real because they bring you very close to yourself and unreal because, when they pass you are still left with yourself, quite untouched by what has passed”

” But they do change you don’t they?” I was sure.

” You change yourself through them.” She said thoughtfully.

Something hit me like a bolt of light. There was truth in what she was saying. So why was I passing through this mental muck, before the “sky cleared” so to say?

Sagar continued, ” We change ourselves through them”, she repeated. ” We become aware of things we did not know we were capable of. Love changes us, transforms us and takes us to places we never thought we could visit ever. Like an onion peeling off, it exposes different layers in ourselves, we did not know even existed. But the question is, why do we jump on to some boats and not others? Why?”

Suddenly, my head began to clear and I knew –

” Past connections. We have known each other before. We have a word in India for it….”

” What? Sagar was curious.

” Rinanubandh ” – when two people are ” tied ” to each other from past lives, it is called Rinanubandh. They meet because there is a thread of continuation from the past to the present and to the next if you like….”

” Interesting! So you are never out of the karmic cycle of things. You are never free of each other”.

” No, not exactly. The cycle runs itself out in time. You are attracted or call it attached to something or someone so long as the cycle of karma does not end. The moment it finishes, if you are to watch yourself, you might say to yourself – how surprising! I had a great delight for this person only sometime ago and now I am off it. The cycle has indeed completed itself.”

Sagar sat pensively looking out at the trees bending over to touch the floor of her private terrace.

” That is why I suppose, relationships are both real and unreal…real because they bring you very close to yourself and unreal because, when they pass you are still left with yourself quite untouched by what has passed.” She said finally.

” Not quite! The relationship has helped you evolve. You are not the same person, even to yourself are you?” I repeated what I had heard her say just a while ago.

” No! You are not the same person. You have changed and because you have changed, everything around you changes because your perception of things have changed”.

” In other words Sagar, the outside only reflects what is inside of us. Time is not the essence; it could take only three months to come to the same results…..”

” …..or nine years, as it did in mine!” Sagar concluded.

I looked at her again deeply, as I now knew why the laugh lines on either side of her mouth, looked sad to me. Sad because they had a history of tears behind them and yet they did not affect the serene beauty of her face. The feminine quality of sadness had in fact enhanced her already far away, distant looks of Enya’s country.

Growth, is such a beautiful thing to happen to you!

If Only….

If only I could love you less, I would not have waited a thousand years for you.

If you look at the map of Tibet or you search the net to find Laipei, you can’t. It is too insignificant a place, too small, to be placed on the map and yet, for both of us it has been so eventful. And we have held it in our hearts for all these years because there was a longing we could only touch, but not explore, a happening, we could not submit to totally and a desire, we could not fulfill. It was a veil cast over our souls that took us a thousand years to unveil, but we both know in our hearts that over each lifetime, we have been searching to find each other….and perhaps we did in one way or the other. But in this lifetime, we remember the spell we cast on each other, binding us over lifetimes….

If only.

The monastery with its thick high walls could not keep us from seeing each other every morning when we went for the prayers. The thick mist in the early morning, the nip in the air could not stop us from the instant warmth we felt when our eyes fell on each other, for that one brief moment, before we were inside the common hall for the early morning prayers. That one moment we held for the rest of the day and night, until again we saw each other the next day. One moment stretched to the length of sunrise to sunset – to sunrise again. Yes, I know the pain of longing. I know the attitude of quiet surrender in waiting ….I have known it for so many years. So I knew it when I saw your eyes, only for a brief moment; they held the quiet, yet restless hours of the night because they lay like deadpan in the crater of their sockets. These endless hours of the night were like eons for both of us.

Then one day as you passed, I saw you drop a piece of paper on the ground. I knew it was for me. That morning’s prayer for me was pitched on the paper lying outside the hall. I picked it up on my way back to my room. Inside, I opened it to find your name. You had written it out for me.

That was it! All my chanting changed words. But for one word, which was your name, my mind forgot all other words. Day and night, in prayer and in worship, walking or in work, in sleep or in wakefulness, only one word, your name. I was full of it. My body languished without food. I was not hungry. My belly was full – full of you. Every word escaped my thoughts, save your name. It was easier to listen to others, than to talk. What is my language, I often asked myself? What to say? From one dawn to the other and to the next, I saw only the vision of your face and I chanted the Word. Then again I saw the anguish in your eyes one day….I knew it then…I had traveled that path. Next day I dropped a piece of paper on the ground just as you had done and I knew, even as we sat in prayer, your mind would be outside the hall, just as was mine. When I left the hall that day, the paper was gone and from the look in your eyes the next dawn, I knew your mind was fixed on one word too, like mine – my name, which you had now read on the paper. I knew it was growing in you and somewhere in the depth of the night, as if concealed from the watchful eyes of the other monks, our chanting met each other – my name in your mind and yours in mine.

Such passions cannot go unnoticed. They found out and the monastery was full of gossip. Wherever I went I was looked at with disapproval. I had broken the law. I had not. We were not to blame. Our hearts knew no rules and they lived without a boundary. They were free. They would have met anyway.

The day of the last judgement was not too far.

Both of us were out. The cold morning air outside the prayer hall could not penetrate our bodies thrown close together about a hundred feet away from the gates of the monastery. Two humans who had been cast inside the walled monastery at Laipei were now outcast from the inner safety of a monks’ life and thrown to the ways of the world. We did not know what it entailed but no sooner we were faced with ourselves, all hell broke lose.

Entangled in each other’s arms, our bodies tout with passion, we became one and inside each other. Our boundaries were lost forever. Our fingers intertwined; our energies locked as one….the shivering cold of Laipei’s winter and the frosty floor of the earth on which we lay burnt with fire emitting out of our bodies and the whole cosmic journey was made in these single moments, stretching and intermingling and dissolving into each other. I heard you cry, ” Just once call out my name….Speak! I want to hear you call my name….” My mouth opened to voice the Word…my breath came to my aid and I uttered only the first syllable ” Mi..” and your mouth was on mine, inhaling my breath with your name on it… our bodies now breaking into a throbbing presence, our minds, finally, finally leaving each other in the outbreak of convulsions that brought us back to ourselves only….together, yet so far inside our own selves, jointly meeting the cosmic throb inside and around us.

And in that moment, a sharp pain pierced our hearts…. a stabbing pain of a sword driven through us. We have been stabbed. And although, our bodies are now loosening out, our mouths still hold each other. We are still throbbing inside each other. And slowly…….ever so slowly, our breath still holding us as one, we ebb out like the receding waters of a sea, when the tide goes down.

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

” …lereppa”, I say, like a person coming out of a coma, completing your name where I first left off, that fatal morning when we died in each other’s arms. ” Milereppa.” I whisper to you as my friend, unaware of the past we have held together, introduces us to each other.

It is not a coincidence. Nor a chance happening that I have met you again after all these years, here at the IIC. With every passing day, we have been drawing closer to each other, one step at a time, one day at a time, our hearts knowing that there is that one person we are looking for, very close to us. We have known, even before we came to Kumkum’s birthday party today, that tonight we will be giving birth to a new day in our lives. That is why no matter what it took of us to be here, we have both arrived.

” How do you know his name? Have you met before? Do you know each other?” I heard my friend ask in amazement.

Neither of us said anything.

Sometimes the best answers are silent.

The Spirit Is Sexless

Smriti lay tossing and turning in her bed. She was not awake but she was not in deep sleep either. In fact she was dreaming. She was having a dream within a dream. In her dream she had woken up with a shock, finding herself in a public area, right in the middle of a market place, completely naked. She was aghast. People were jeering at her. She looked here and there, but nowhere could she see any of her clothing. She tried to hide her body placing her hands over sensitive parts but to no avail. If she hid this part, she was exposed there. And in this struggle, she woke up with very anxious over her state. Awake, she searched her body and was relieved to find herself fully clad.

On her journey to Badrinath, by a path less traveled on foot from Rishikesh, Mokshaprana Mataji decided to do it alone as others she had invited to join her on this pilgrimage dropped out at the last moment. It was in fact a difficult trip and the ladies had all decided to dress as men. Mokshaprana Mataji was biologically a woman, but could cover up as male as she had a shaven head and smaller breasts. The decision to travel in the garb of a man was to keep away from danger of other male pilgrims or bandits if any on the way. She decided to keep a Vow of Silence all the way to Badrinath in order to conceal her true identity further. She began one early morning on her month long journey. On the route she shared the resting space with many pilgrims, men at large, in the night. No one knew or ever suspected her real sexual identity. After travelling many days, ultimately, she came upon one single small room which could be locked from inside. She decided that she was going to spend the night alone. But at about 8 p.m., there were a few knocks on the door. She did not respond. Then there were more. Ultimately there was banging – ” Open the door! We need to also come in and rest” screamed the men outside. Mataji was scared. What was she going to do now? If she opened the door they would certainly inspect her body with their roving eyes, all the more, and perhaps her sexual identity would be revealed. She resorted to the only protection she knew; she began to pray for the mercy of her Guru. After sometime, she heard a voice of a man – ” Why are all of you shouting. Maybe the sadhu inside is in meditation. There is a big hall in at the top of the hill just a few metres away. Come there”. The noise subsided. The men had gone.

That night, Mataji struggled with her feminine identity even though she had planned to cover it with a male one.

In both the cases above, there is a fear of the body being structured in a certain way, female, and therefore preempted as being either shameful of something that must be protected from being abused by men. In the dream, Smriti is full of shame as she sees herself completely naked in front of people in the middle of the market place. And in the case of Mokshaprana Mataji, it is preempted that should her female identity be revealed to the male pilgrims, she might have to face harm, abuse from the fellow travelers.

In both cases here is an attachment to the female body as it appears biologically and a need to hide it or protect it from harm.

Freudian Interpretation of dream:

Smriti’s ” clothings” are symbolic. They are clothing she has put on as a member of society. These are norms and rules that have been put on her by society – How she must dress, what she must wear, how she must present herself in public and so on and so forth. These rules have been constructed by society in order to keep her under their control ( See the endless list on
http://blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com/2006/03/spill.html ) In order to be acceptable in society, she must conform. In fact, she has begun to believe all these things about herself. She may not even feel complete unless she has all these clothing on. If she fails, she will be an outcast and she will have to shrink from public eyes, because she would be ashamed to face it without these clothing. She will be the point of ridicule. People will laugh at her. She shares in common with society at large, her attachment to these norms. They have become her identity, her social self. Her individuality is lost. In the dream, the shame and the fear caused in her is reflective of a breakdown of what is expected of her by society at large.

The Spirit is Sexless. It is neither man nor woman. It has no biological features that can distinguish it as man or woman. Gender is a social construct. It is a set of norms, do’s and don’t that society has created both for men and women. Only when we conform, we are acceptable to society. The first fear that society instills upon women, is fear and shame over their bodies. Therefore even a Brahmachari like Mokshaprana Mataji, who has in fact cast away all her belongings and left behind the materialist world to join the order of women pravrajikas is still carrying within her the fear and the shame of her body. First by dressing as a man to avoid harassment from men and second actually experiencing the fears around her safety (read body) at that room along the journey to Badrinath. It has been cemented into the minds in such a way, right from birth, that it has become the first nature.

The real nature, the real truth, the real existence of that, which lives beyond our lives and our deaths, is truly never born, never dies. It has no gender, no sexuality. It was always there and no matter whether we are here to agree or disagree, accept or reject, it goes on forever. It is a given. Always there. It is never born and therefore cannot die. It cannot be constructed nor deconstructed. It is beyond all these petty considerations.

The Spirit, the Self, the Essence of our existence is sexless, neither man nor woman. Nor any other emerging sexual identity.

Never. Ever.