Touching the face of God

I am a Brahmin by birth.They say that being a 'Brahmin' is a way of life..then how a Brahmin chooses that life should be up to them. For a long time I have wanted to go to the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, not for asking but to seek that face of God that is seen in music.

Some day perhaps, hearing and singing along with the Kawwali sung every Thursday, shall show me the face of God, in not so odd a place, in not so odd a meaning that life now assumes.

( Image courtesy Google, Video courtesy Youtube)

Connecting the dots

While in Palolem, in Goa I saw a man one day practicing with a bow and arrows, on a target made out of a tree stump. As our eyes met, he did a Namaste and asked me where I was from. That's a question not many outsiders ask I thought and I smiled wondering if he would understand if I told him from where I was, or where I was not and if at all it would make a difference. To my surprise he elaborated you see India is a big country and every part has something to add to the whole picture. I asked him where he was from & he said he was from Norway, staying in Goa for 6 months now, trying to find himself and his God and practicing archery while at it. He says that here, in spite of being so many or perhaps because of being so many, you have not lost your way..

I mused to myself and told him that while, outsiders often come here looking for God, for a way, many of our young have lost that way and in fact look at the west for 'upgrading' themselves. He looked at me quizzically and said "perhaps in this haze of drugs, of spiritualism, of diverse people, I shall find something..or maybe when that haze lifts..it shall be emptiness, till that time I shall try."..I asked and said, "like your arrows trying to break the block of wood to find more wood?"..he smiled and said, " See, you are one of the dots that join & it is precisely for this, I am here"..Spooky, Philosophy, ..India?

( Image courtesy Google)

Dancing with the elements

'Tis the season for caps, some gloves and the sensuousness of being tucked into someone cozy. But caps have never been my thing ..am more of a hat person. Yesterday as I walked with my boots making some mighty clickity clack..my hat flew out of my hair..some softness of the hair tumbled over..I could see some of me pour forth along with the leaves gathered on the sidewalk and as I bend to collect the hat..It flew just out of my reach again, teasing, tantalizing, playing as if a game. I looked at it in wonder & felt within me brewing an amazing sense of Joy..Joy is somewhat different from happiness..its existence does not depend on some occurrence..you feel it as a part of your being ..You look around you and finally you find that there is actually immense joy around you, that emanates from beauty as terrific as the mundane ..in the little rustle of the leaves, my cap flying around me like a dream, as if it were trying to gather me in its arms saying, come dance with us..and I did. While I was dancing such on the streets I wasn't really aware of myself and what I was doing, it was just some sheer bliss of being one with the elements.





I have danced for long and many a times for making others happy, to hear their sighs and expression of satiation. But it was when I saw my little hat fluttering in the air, happy for itself and without a care in the world, I realized how fantastic it can be to dance for yourself. Release yourself of bonds that tie you, in the ME, the HE, the US..Dance is the only form where I feel liberated and away from all that binds me down..it is my way of being God..being attached and yet not.

( Video courtesy Youtube)

Hour of worship

Purnashya Purnamadaya Purnam Eb Abashishyate

( Take away the Nothing from the Nothing...and yet Nothing remains...)

In the hour of worship your faith is your deity
In the hour of need the stranger your Love,
Seeking familiarity in faces new
Seeking permanent images in waters untrue

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Image courtesy Google)

When the Gods came home

I have a God today..one which I didn’t have yesterday..or so I thought. The age was the 90’s, the spring, very young, much like my naivety, without the essence of faith or fear of the unknown. It was quite a fashion among the young girls in the college to fast on Mondays, wear clean clothes, put a sprig of a flower, torn from someone’s garden or stolen from the temple gate that the moneyed had left, on to their heads. The lipsticks that adorned the lips, on those days were a faint resemblance of their counterparts on other days, they resembled an art form called, carefully careless..just luscious enough to eat, faint enough to be stopped from calling a whore. Piousness was all about decorum I thought. And since I had learnt neither discipline nor decorum from anyone largely, I remained uncouth to the priests, the girls and divinity I guess.
But like in the everything of life I went along here too..curious to see what it held for me..or not…pot bellied structures, damsels in various poses of passion adorned every structure called temple in every vicinity..I wondered about man’s extreme passion hid in the realms of statues they named the Gods.

One such morning, washed and adequately pious for the consumption of the Gods, I stood in mute abstract near a temple gate, close to where I stayed..the place was nice, people of every hue..the rich blended with the poor in unanimous hues of faith..some for homage..some for blessings..all about the package called Divinity I suppose. Inside the temple, sat the lord, dark hued..absorbing the evils of man.. we had colored him so I suppose, and yet more to go..that’s large hearted I thought and accommodating still. I came out, the puja in the mind complete and looked about me for some answers for the within.

Close to the temple quarters stood a tree..numerous wishes had been made there..if one were to gauge the number of threads tied to the tree..some for love, some for health..how many for Divinity I thought? In one corner of the wish tree, in pious stillness stood a tiny figurine in black ..the scales had somewhat peeled off his Devine self , the face was a studious expression of nothingness, and yet I felt a tug within me. Dazed I looked at my feet leave my self and walk in somber progression towards it. I sat on the little circular dais, usually allotted to faith and cradled the little statue in hand. It seemed to be pleased by the fact that I had picked it up, somewhere somethings smiled.. .the God’s cousin’s perhaps?

Suddenly someone screamed, from the depth of the earth it seemed. I looked up, a man in bare nothings, smeared in mud and madness looked at me with brazen eyes of the ascetic. He was the ‘mad sadhu’..as everyone knew. He screamed at me in a language I did not know, in spite of knowing the language of the land.. something I had taken that was his?... I thought. The stone had slipped from my hands since long and settled into the debris of the tree and its followers. The incensed sadhu pushed me back and sat himself where I had. He cradled the lord in hands that were smeared in ashes and insecurities of the everyday. I walked away, it was a private moment after all, this meeting between him and the lord. A little distance away, and that call again, this time from somewhere long lost it seemed. I turned my back and looked at him and the strange one beckoned me. As I stood before him silently knowing not what to say, and yet there seemed to be nothing to be afraid of, in this man…where the God’s resided. He stretched his hands, cradled in the palms lay the figure in black, skin peeled of in parts. He said, “Tu le ja” ( you take him)

The little black God, my God it had become, remained..in times both bad and good. The Gods had finally come home and to me.

My little Ganesha, shall stay within the me- and the myself
In his hues of black he shall show me colors of faith
Piety and happiness..in the pot bellied structure of fulfillment-
In him I shall merge from time to time
And emerge from me to me..
In the nothingness of the everything and beyond.

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

MIL..a different version

Eleven years is a long time, some would say a life time. Yet when I close my eyes and look back upon the brick backs and the creases that fall, it seems to zip past in a flurry of here there s and nowhere s of emotions, twists and turns. As a dainty bride when I took my first nervous steps into my, to be home, I was greeted by a somewhat smiling somewhat nervous face of my Mother- in- law for the first time. In true Bengali tradition, she had not been to her son’s marriage and this was the first time she was a part of the brouhaha that surrounded the home coming of a bride. Amongst nervous steps and smiles that slowly changed to steady and confident ones we covered a dual journey that was somewhat formal and somewhat caged. Yet amidst it all, a happy presence prevailed. When the daughter-in-law cooked, she sang a song to entertain. When the Kolkata heat pervaded the kitchen she quietly placed a wet towel nearby. In flip flop ways, and now sauntering now gurgling manner we managed a precautious balance.

The death of a close one always affects us severely and so it did to her, on the death of her husband, as the sudden realisation of what loneliness was dawned on her. In true Indian tradition she separated her vegetarian kitchen from ours and her already God inclined persona turned into that of a shuttle between the Puja room and her own limited corridors. Amidst the hustle and bustle of our daily life, in cities now here and now there, she staunchly refused to let go of her home. But all of a sudden in a sudden departure or perhaps the whims of age, she gracefully descended on us as we made home of Chettiand country. The busy schedules and hustle and bustle continued here too, but as each of us went about our work, a quiet presence made its way into each of our lives in such soft footed manner as was unprecedented.

When I forgot breakfast, she was the fruit seller, when as a couple we wanted private space, she was baby sitter, when arguments ensued in our home she was the balm, when we came back home tired, she was the smile. For my child returned from home she was the adorable grandma, for a tired me, she was my cup of tea, for a tired husband, she was the hand that ruffles the hair. A generation and more apart, this white, creased and frail image of dignity taught me a lesson everyday in love, the love of giving and not expecting. Today she left us, to go to another home that of another son, another visage and another life for a month or two and she shall perhaps spread her light there too.

As I browsed through her room, among little packets of spices, fragrances, bits of clothing, small spoons, the neatly folded bed, God and her Godliness, I sat in silence and watched how the little things of life matter so less and yet so much. In cooking, collecting, buying, yet leaving behind it all, she spread a fragrance far more potent than the headiest of perfumes. It’s the presence that matters after all, I guess. In a house that is suddenly full of loneliness more and less of the ‘US’, I miss the absence of someone I call MA.

© 2010 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

Strong winds of Timelessness

All the commandments, engraved in my soul
Lost to an eternity that is time
Strong winds of timelessness I call them,
Circumstances and life I name them
Books and poems, like a mother cat, licked the kitten of my thoughts to shape
And left me at the altar called life,
A sacrosant creatureDevoid of a presence, God & shame
Barbed wires at times, criss crossed across a strech in life
French windows at others in carriage with the winds
No traditions, nor the name of the lord looming large
A smile here, a tear there and life assumes sanctity devine...
I've streched my emotions spread across people become milestones,
Over thoughts that meander loud as a typewriter's click
My private voice stashed away for an eternity now seeks to roam out loud-
My worries doze, in the pensive froze
When the bubbles in the glass of life arose
Forgive this briefness of mine, in attention as in love
For my glass of life brimeth over in the juices of discovery called LIFE!
Maitreyee Chowdhury (24-11-2009)

© 2009 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

Moments

There have been times and moments when,
The urge to put every thing aside comes aloft my mind.
To be as free as the bird that sings,
It’s, swan- song from the skies above.

To move with total abandon, not to think,
No more secrets not even from one self.
To be as light as the wind,
To be like the soaring imaginations--------

Just to smile as I walk by
And count God’s blessings that,
I am free and free and alive.

To dance a jig on the crowded streets
That I am one of this huge congregation of humanity.
Big dreams do people dream,
But I have the urge,
For some such mundane pleasures,
That would fill my life, with joy unbound.

But things lie just as they are,
Still to be done, still to be felt,
Still to be experienced --------------------

© 2007 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury